For the New Decade: A Whole New Mind

I see from my Facebook page early this morning that everyone is off to the usual new year’s resolutions: exercise and weight loss.

But what about our brains?

Some of the most interesting research and policy recommendations to emerge from the decade just past have to do not with the benefits of physical exercise, but rather with the social, political, economic and yes, personal benefits of understanding and exercising our brains.

I therefore propose we consider the value of pursuing whole new minds for this new decade.

Both brain research and first-hand documentation of the experience of stroke victims, such as brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s, have increasingly brought us the news that our emotions, behaviors, learning capacities—and resulting social and economic successes—are as much about choices we make, and educational opportunities we are offered, as about innate genetic or biological factors.

In short, the ways we learn to understand the world and to express ourselves are the result not of uncontrollable tissue but of the conscious development and nurturing of specific neural pathways: pathways which throughout our lives can be re-shaped and re-developed, even in old age, even after devastating brain injuries or stroke. Having trouble holding a job because you can’t control your anger? You can learn to consciously re-direct the habitual flow of neurons when you react to something, and change your seemingly uncontrollable responses. Are fears and anxiety keeping you from the family life or career you want to have? The focus of most meditative practices is to shift the locus of understanding from our task-oriented left brain to our right, which experiences connectedness and wholeness and can reduce the power of our daily anxieties.

Alert educators and parents have known for some time that intelligence and achievement are not all about biological I.Q., but rather about the stimuli the brain is offered—say, the number of words to which an infant is regularly exposed; the aspirations and expectations that are set for and by us; and the encouragement we receive for different types of behaviors. But how much of this new brain knowledge, moving us away from the old worlds of I.Q. tests, has made its way into our public policy, public schools curricula, and, more importantly, our daily lives?

For adults, integrating current knowledge of brain development into our lives and the lives of our children can take several forms.

On behalf of our children, researchers increasingly recognize that our public education systems are too “left brain” focused: our classrooms are good (sometimes) at teaching facts and basic math and literacy—all functions governed in the left hemispheres of our brains—and much less good at teaching problem solving and the type of creative and innovative thinking being demanded by the U.S.’s position in the global economy. Teaching creativity and innovation requires development of the right hemispheres of our brains: sectors most effectively developed through learning in and through artistic practices (the performing and visual arts). Best-selling writers Daniel Pink (author of the recent Drive and A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, from where I borrowed my title) and Thomas Friedman (Hot, Flat, and Crowded) have been consistently and loudly eloquent on this subject and its importance to U.S. competitiveness in global markets: but are we working to change our local schools, and parenting, accordingly?

And with the new understanding that the brain is in fact a lifelong learner—plastic and flexible throughout our lives, “allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” according to professor Dr. Kathleen Taylor in a recent New York Times Education Life story—are we adults keeping our brains and communities as healthy as we might be? Research shows our more mature brains hunger for learning that is not merely about taking in more stuff, but rather that which challenges our perceptions of the world: a kind of stretching of the brain beyond its comfort zone that breaks it away from established connections, thereby encouraging the growth of new pathways. “If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections,” Dr. Taylor concludes.

Taking new routes to work; learning new languages; having conversations with those different from us as well as those who share our world views; experiencing the arts and ensuring our children do as well; meditating: these are new year’s resolutions which will, in the long term and as importantly as physical fitness, benefit our national health as well as our personal well-being. Whole new minds for the new decade.

Birds & Beatles Video

Provenances of Beauty

How do we see and understand the beauty hidden all around us--especially when both our definitions of beauty and the world itself are constantly shifting? The Foundry Theater's new performance piece, "Provenance of Beauty," takes audience members on a bus tour of the South Bronx to explore this question. During the 90-minute "tour," narrated by three voices (two recorded, one live), participants are treated to a personal, political, and often hidden history of that most downtrodden of New York City's five boroughs, the Bronx.

Did you know the Bronx was NOT named for a Dutch farmer, but rather for a Swede? Did you know that in Hunt's Point a prison barge; a water treatment plant; and a fertilizer manufacturer hold sway, shoulder to shoulder, over most of the waterfront? That in the late 1970s, the South Bronx burned at a rate of more than 10 city blocks per day for more than four years? That the "eminent" master planner Robert Moses constructed tens of thousands of low-income housing units in tall towers in the Bronx--consolidating and isolating those in poverty in ways that would forever mark this neighborhood; while simultaneously displacing more than 1500 families when building the Cross Bronx Expressway?

What the "Provenance of Beauty" shows most critically is the constant change that all of our communities undergo, and the tidal and often seemingly uncontrollable powers behind such changes. When a blighted waterfront is turned into park, are there losers as well as winners? When an abandoned piano factory is turned into high priced condos, how is a neighborhood and its population morphed? How does our particular aesthetic of what is "beautiful" or something we are able to see effect our community development and planning decisions? How do our aesthetics affect those living in poverty? And ultimately, what are the full ramifications from the process we know today as "gentification:" happening not only in the South Bronx but in many of our small, traditional, and rural communities as well? Who ultimately decides what is "beautiful"? Who wins, who loses?

A Consolidated Education

This Columbus Day Weekend, I drove from my current home in Stonington (ME) to Stonington (CT) for my 30th high school reunion. I hadn’t attended previous reunions, and catching up with my peers caused me to reflect on my 40-year old education in a consolidated public school district—an experience that may be relevant to many Maine residents as we debate how to cast our ballots on the consolidation issue in the November 3 “people’s veto” referendum.

There are obvious and maybe not so obvious similarities, as well as differences, between the two towns—Stonington, CT is a lobster fishing town with a village population of only 1,032. Like Stonington, ME on Deer Isle, there are several unique and beautiful surrounding villages with populations loyal to the shoreline geography and quality of life: a large proportion of my classmates returned there to live after college. Yet my long ago education included subjects and opportunities our island students can still only dream about, in large part because Stonington, CT was already a consolidated town and school district.

Stonington, CT’s school and municipal districts include the villages of Old Mystic, Mystic, the Borough of Stonington, and Pawcatuck, on the Rhode Island state border. These villages consolidated services and school administrations long before my memory, yet each maintains, to this day, a completely unique character: Mystic is the location of the Mystic Seaport and its preserved legacies of whaling and boat-building; Stonington Borough home to the predominantly Portuguese-American fishing fleet; Pawcatuck the poorest of the three, built on textile and other light manufacturing.

Through sixth grade I attended a “seven room schoolhouse”—one classroom for each grade—in Old Mystic. There were 15 students in my class, and the teacher-student ratio in the district is about the same today. There were multiple neighborhood K-6 elementary schools in each of the villages. These neighborhood schools sent us on to one of two middle schools, grades 7-9, one in Pawcatuck at the eastern end of the district, and one in Mystic at the western end—arch rivals in all things, of course. From there we brought our rivalries under the same roof, at Stonington High School: a 45-minute bus ride, 20 minutes by car, from my house.

This consolidation had many happy results for my own education: the district was able to pay more competitive salaries than any of the individual villages could have, and thus was able to attract and retain talented teachers. I am in Maine today because several of my very best teachers were Mainers: teachers who had relocated from their beloved home state because they could make a better living, and work in stronger school districts, while maintaining the quality of life they had in Maine. They encouraged me to attend Bowdoin College, which inspired my own deep love for, and subsequent relocation to, the Maine coast. The consolidated district was also able to support an excellent and diverse music program; great science labs; foreign language classes, including Latin; a full range of A/P courses, and, in addition to sports, co-curricular activities such as a school newspaper, which encouraged our civic engagement as well as educating our bodies and spirits.

As a volunteer in our local schools, I see that our students don’t have many of the same opportunities I had 40 years ago. It makes me want to cry: with sadness at their missed learning opportunities; and outrage at the adult decisions that cause them. So what if I had to travel 20 miles to high school? Mystic and Pawcatuck lost none of their uniqueness by not having their own high schools; and students there received a top-rate education that better prepared us to succeed in college and in life by providing more quality opportunities than Stonington, Maine’s students have access to today. The larger tax base created by consolidation makes it possible for Stonington, CT to spend almost $1,000 more per student than we spend in Stonington, ME. With Maine’s much lower property values, we don’t necessarily want to increase spending per pupil: instead, consolidation will enable us to provide increased educational opportunities by sharing and reallocating existing resources.

Maine only recently passed legislation requiring the consolidation of school districts; yet Question 3 on the November 3 ballot asks us if we want to repeal this law. While the law isn’t perfect (what law is?), its concept is right on, designed to reduce our rural state’s top-heavy school management (does paying a school superintendent a six-figure salary to oversee a district which includes less than 700 students, as we do in Deer Isle-Stonington, Sedgwick, and Brooklin, make sense to anyone?) and to shift those resources to improving the quality of education for our students. Those districts which have focused efforts on using this legislation to share resources and improve educational quality are successfully creating additional opportunities for their students. It’s past time to give our Stonington, ME students the same opportunities I had in Stonington, CT 40 years ago. Vote “NO” on Question 3.

Navigating the cross-currents of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equal rights for all

I was baptized, raised, and confirmed a Catholic, and to this day, despite a wide range of experience with other world faiths, including a deep engagement with Buddhism, the Catholic liturgy and mass is the spiritual practice I consider my own.

I’ve had to make peace with contradictions between the actions of the Church hierarchy and my faith, my spiritual, and my political beliefs for most of my life, from the Church’s historical atrocities to its modern strictures against ordaining women. The majority of my friends and family long ago gave up this moral wrestling. And while I have deep respect for individuals’ personal moral choices, I have no tolerance for religious organizations such as the Catholic Church using their pulpits and funds to impose such choices on others in our secular democracy—particularly when the results seek to restrict and/or discriminate against the human rights of others.

I have been “married” to my partner, Judith Jerome, for more than 10 years—in the eyes of our loving god, our families, friends, colleagues, and communities. Under Maine state law, we are registered as domestic partners. Yet because the concept and term “marriage” is so intricately woven into the state and federal legal structures which confer rights and benefits upon couples, the creation of domestic partner and civil union laws are not enough to ensure our equal rights with heterosexual couples: the law must be changed to allow us to marry.

Legislation passed last spring by our elected Maine legislature, and signed by our governor, makes this change, lifting years of discrimination against gay people. At the same time, the legislation is very precise, as it should be, in not forcing the Catholic Church or any other religious denomination to conduct such marriages if they do not wish to.

Yet this Sunday, at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea where I am warmly accepted as a member by my fellow congregants, I had to prematurely leave the service when the priest began urging the assembled to attend a rally in Augusta next weekend to “defend” marriage against this pending legislation. Once home, I learned from the news that the Maine diocese is holding a second collection in masses statewide next Sunday to help fund the political effort to veto this legislation. Lobbying from the pulpit around a specific piece of legislation at best breaks the guidelines of the church’s federal, tax-exempt status; and at worst crosses the important and fragile line between spiritual ministry and political organizing. For many of us, the intersection of our faith; freedom of speech; and engaged citizenship can be much like a confluence of rivers, ever moving, and we count on our spiritual leaders’ sensitivity to this. As with previous issues, the political fight over the definition of “marriage” makes obvious moral contradictions between the spiritual tenets of Christianity and the worldly actions of many of its churches.

As a Catholic—who was brought up to believe in and to act upon “love thy neighbor as thyself” as the primary moral rule—I find these actions by the Maine church hierarchy, in opposition to my basic human right to be treated equally in love, to be heartbreaking. Participating in my Catholic heritage is always challenging, and such actions make it impossible for me to be at home in my own church.

As a citizen, I am outraged by the muscle the Maine diocese has opted to exercise in the political realm. To my fellow Catholics whom I love, and who I know love me: let the Church know this is not right. Don’t give to that second collection next weekend, and let your priests know you are affronted by their politicking from the pulpit. As Jesus himself taught us, sometimes being the best christian means standing up to church leadership. As history has repeatedly shown, they, like us, are only human, and just as fallible.

And for the rest of us: let’s affirm that love and respect are our guiding principles, and be sure to keep our country moving toward equal rights for all by getting to the polls in November and voting NO on 1, which seeks to overturn the new Maine law allowing same-sex couples to marry. For more information on how you can support this effort, go to www.protectmaineequality.org.