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    Seeing Inside the Brain (Book 1 of Minds in Bloom)
    Seeing Inside the Brain (Book 1 of Minds in Bloom)
    Seeing Inside the Brain (Book 1 of Minds in Bloom)
    Ebook144 pages2 hours

    Seeing Inside the Brain (Book 1 of Minds in Bloom)

    By Glenn Fieber

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    Minds in Bloom is a 4-book publication about thinking, teaching, learning and anything else that matters. Seeing Inside the Brain is an illustrated look at the engine under our hood: the physical brain (from hemispheres to homunculus; from cortex to corpus callosum; from frontal lobes to the effects of language on thinking). All this to provide the background for understanding the operating system housed in the brain, the software that controls our thinking. If we know how the brain works, how we decide to do what we do, in other words, then we are in a position both to make better decisions and to repair the damage caused by poor ones instead of just regretting them. Also, we can understand how to achieve better results from time spent in skill training, scholarship—or really any pursuit: the value of intelligent repetition and practice. And by considering the difference between mind and brain, we can learn that sometimes the brain has a mind of its own: it leads us down weedy paths without our knowing why; we look down to see the mud on our shoes and wonder how we got there.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGlenn Fieber
    Release dateJan 21, 2014
    ISBN9781311106162
    Seeing Inside the Brain (Book 1 of Minds in Bloom)
    Author

    Glenn Fieber

    Teaching has taken me around the world—literally and philosophically. After I retired from Kamloops, B.C. in 1999, I taught 7 more years in China. China was different; her differences intrigued me. I tried to learn the language and culture: I studied tai qi and calligraphy; I wrote a history of China’s first emperor, the infamous Qin (Emperor of Stone).When I was a kid, most of my friends were bigger and stronger; I learned to share. In education—and in life—we need to share more. I have taught teachers in Canada, China and Korea and given countless workshops about teaching because I believe that teaching is important: teachers create the future; they can change lives.I began my career as a romantic idealist in Grand Forks, B.C. in the 60s. It was the time of a great social upheaval, when we all believed in dreams...then were forced to watch them unfold.Today, I am still at it, whatever it is. My idealism has been tempered by reality, but I am perhaps even more optimistic: whenever I walk into a classroom, I still get goosebumps.I welcome an exchange of ideas: You can contact me at mindsinbloom@gmail.com

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      Book preview

      Seeing Inside the Brain (Book 1 of Minds in Bloom) - Glenn Fieber

      Seeing

      Inside the Brain

      BOOK 1

      of

      Minds in Bloom

      Copyright Glenn Fieber

      Kamloops, B.C. Canada

      December, 2010

      Revised 2012,2013, 2014

      Smashwords Edition

      ISBN: 9781311106162

      Minds in Bloom

      (a book about thinking, teaching, learning, the universe, and anything else that matters)

      Minds in Bloom was first published as an e-book by Smashwords Publishing in 2010. Since the book deals with brain/mind, teaching and learning…and the universe, there has been a continuous flow of new information for me to consider. I have attempted to include much of it in the several revisions I have made since 2010. This latest revision in 2014 has brought me closer to home. But not home.

      Minds in Bloom combines 4 separate books:

      Seeing Inside the Brain

      Seeing Inside the Mind

      Seeing Inside the Theories of Behavior and Learning

      Seeing Inside the Universe

      Also by Glenn Fieber:

      Emperor of Stone: Qin and the Terracotta Armies, China Intercontinental Press, 2008

      Aristotle eating ice cream and other poems that float

      Minds in Bloom is not just another book about the brain. It is more about what reaches beyond the narrow boundaries of the skull and into infinity: the mind.

      OK, there is some brain in here: I describe how it operates as a system for storing and sorting whatever the senses deliver to it; but what is even more interesting is how the mind often steers us down weedy paths without our realizing that we are being taken for a ride until we look down and see the mud on our shoes.

      The main purpose of this book, however, is to take a new look at teaching and learning. More than ever, society needs people who think. Learning is the key to that Holy Grail: Progress. And also to happiness and well-being. If we can make teaching better, then schools will become better places for learning. To that end, I describe the traditional theories that we use to try to explain both human behavior and how we learn. But I do it all from a new perspective: the exciting discoveries being made by neuroscientists, whose machines can look inside our heads while we are thinking.

      Then I conclude with an ambitious reach: how the universe is all connected—or interconnected—to each of us.

      And I enrich all that with some personal experiences and observations about learning harvested from my 45 years in the field—65 if you add in my time spent as a student. Sixty-five years teaching and learning? Either I am insane, or I have something to say. Or both.

      Glenn Fieber, M. Ed.

      December 2010; March, 2013, January 2014

      Preface to the 2014 Edition

      I have been working on Minds in Bloom forever: In today’s digital world, the flow of knowledge is more like a tsunami that both inundates me and requires me to reconsider everything I once thought I knew.

      In this revision I’ve added new information on how free radicals from gluten and glucose can damage our cells, including our neurons, and thereby impair both our brains and our bodies, causing dementia and a myriad of other conditions, none of them good. Yet we cling to old ideas about nutrition in a death grip. Also, exciting new approaches to teaching and learning. And there is new evidence that regular fasting sharpens brain function. Who wouldn’t hunger for more information on that?

      My favorite idea: tantalizing reflections on the interconnectedness of organic and inorganic matter, of man and machine. It’s coming: mind-controlled exoskeletons are here; Her is here.

      Writing this is both frustrating and exciting. New ideas pop up their heads like Whack-a-Moles, and I want to include everything relevant to learning and brain function. But at the same time I want to be finished—closure. In university I read the poems of A. E. Housman and was amused by his titles: his second book was Last Poems, but after that came More Poems. I understand now that nothing is ever finished.

      Glenn Fieber, M.Ed.

      Kamloops, B.C.

      mindsinbloom@gmail.com

      St. Genevieve’s School, 1947 (photo courtesy of Liz Rowe)

      That’s me in the 2nd row, just behind a Priest whose name I forget—though I fondly remember the white-haired Mrs. Pearce: she gave me a detention for being flippant but asked interesting questions. I am grinning like a monkey—perhaps because we had been let out early for the picture.

      All these faces looking out into our futures, with no idea of what life had in store for us.

      Contents: Minds in Bloom

      [Only the links for Book 1 are active.]

      Thanks

      Windswept

      BOOK ONE: Inside the Brain

      INSIDE THE BRAIN

      WAYS OF THINKING

      OTHER WAYS OF THINKING

      BRAIN ARCHITECTURE

      Sensory Regions of the Cortex

      Plasticity

      Homunculus

      Conscious and Unconscious Mind

      Glia Cells

      Astrocytes

      Right and Left Hemispheres

      The Frontal Lobes

      MEMORY

      Changing our Minds

      Making Memories Last

      Mega-Memories

      THE FORMATIVE YEARS

      ADOLESCENT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

      AUTOMATIC PILOT

      MINDFULNESS

      ON LANGUAGE AND THINKING

      BRAIN DAMAGE

      BOOK TWO: Inside the Mind: Controlling Behavior

      one: shock therapy

      two: Lobotomy

      three: Hypnosis

      four: Teaching and Learning

      Three Sisters

      Other Teachers

      Tour Guides

      Inside My Classroom

      Philosophy

      Curriculum

      Structures for Learning

      Measurement

      Open-Ended Alternatives

      Reflections

      Conclusions

      BOOK THREE: Inside the Theories of Behavior and Learning

      Behavior Theories

      one: B F Skinner

      two: Abraham Maslow

      Learning Theories

      three: Jerome Bruner

      four: Howard Gardner

      five: Benjamin Bloom

      six: Maria Montessori

      seven: Waldorf Education

      eight: Reuven Feuerstein

      nine: Knowledge is Power (KIPP)

      ten: Zen

      eleven: Seven Arrows

      twelve: Sugata Mitra

      thirteen: Barbara Arrowsmith-Young

      BOOK FOUR: Inside the Universe

      one: The Mind is a Universe

      two: Becoming Us

      three : Changing our Minds

      four: Foods for Thought

      one: The Body as an Energy System

      two: Prahlid Jhani

      three: Does the shape of a building matter?

      four: What about Prayer?

      five: Music and Healing

      six: Qi

      seven: The Shaolin Monks

      eight: Reiki

      nine: Feldenkrais

      ten: Gaia

      eleven: Full Circle

      REFERENCES

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Thanks

      Nothing ever comes from nothing—unless maybe it’s the universe. Though this book is small, it is the product of a very large debt:

      To Kurt Vonnegut Jr. whose Sirens of Titan first introduced me to the idea of cosmic interconnectedness; to Cliff Noakes, whose gift of a bound copy of my letters from China planted a seed; to Donna Martin, who swaps ideas and books with me at the generous rate of two for one; to my friends who’ve never seemed to tire of discussing ideas; to Doug Butler, who helped re-open the doors to the Inner School, and whose pictures unlocked memories. And to Principal Gordon Armes, who took risks to encourage learning.

      And to my five children, Paul, Shelley, Cameron, Kirstie, and Joel, and to my grandchildren Elliot, Karolina and Casey, who, though they carry the burden of my DNA, have wonderful minds of their own. (What time is it? Zero. How bad do you have to poop? Fifteen dollars.)

      And to my wife, Daryl, who continues to find me rabbits and keep me from getting lost.

      Tennyson (Ulysses) reminds us of what we already know: that we are a part of all that we have met; of each other; of the universe. This, too.

      Glenn Fieber

      Windswept

      Einstein tried to explain the workings of the universe with his Theory of Relativity, a formula that connects time and space. As if the universe were a place that could be measured and described mathematically. (Einstein readily accepts this limitation: Not everything that can be counted matters. Not everything that matters can be counted.) When his calculations did not work for quantum mechanics, along came Stephen Hawking and others with the Theory of Everything to tidy things up by sweeping them under the carpet and into a few black holes.

      But Einstein and Hawking miss the key point: the important events that shape the universe and our lives lie in places beyond description—mathematical or otherwise—because we cannot know the connectedness of all things; we can only get a sense of them after the fact. Sometimes long after the fact. In The Tao: Lao-Tse tells us there are roads we can know, and roads beyond our knowing, though we must travel both. And while we think of definition as an aspect of knowing, Lao-tse tells us that there is a place for naming to stop. Definitions are borders we put around things and they divide us and prevent us from thinking.

      Guanxi in China are calculated connections that will get you somewhere—a job, a promotion, a wife—tickets to life. Or protection. (When the intoxicated son of a police chief in

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