Leonardo

Half-Brained Ideas about Education: Thinking and Learning with Both the Left and Right Brain
in a Visual Culture
Author(s): Lawrence E. Murr and James B. Williams
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1988), pp. 413-419
Published by: MIT Press
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 Half-Brained Ideas about Education:
Thinking and Learning with Both the Left and
Right Brain in a Visual Culture

Lawrence E. Murr and James B. Williams

Abstract-For centurieseducators have focused on the printedand spokenword as the medium

for transferringknowledge. This emphasis on speech and text has meant that the areas of the
brain's left hemisphere linked to these types of language processing are well exercised, while
spatial reasoning, symbolic processing and pictorial interpretation,whichseem to be tied to the
right hemisphere, remain largely ignored. With the development of television and the
microcomputer, print-based text no longer can monopolize our symbolic environment. The
emphasison text must be balancedby attention to graphicformats andthe visual arts, by raising
our consciousness of symbols, connecting text and graphics through language networks and
creating a compatibilitywith our visual culture.

I. INTRODUCTION
Hardly a day goes by any more that
anyone who reads virtually anything does
not find a crisis alert, a warning, a
recommendation or a new idea about
altering or improving education in the
United States. We read that more than
half of the teachers teaching this or that
(particularly math and science) are not
qualified, that student scores are going
down or not improving, that teachers are
burned out, that students are bored and
expect to be entertained in the classroom,
that teachers should be tested, that
kindergartners should be discouraged
from competing, that teachers are not
held in high regard,that readingprograms
are failing, that colleges are faltering, and
so on. Parallelingthese incessant diatribes
are those that blame as many of these
dilemmas as possible on the 'bad influence
of television'. And of course there is the
persistent allusion to curing most of the
educational ills, including that of teacher
morale, if only we had the billions of
dollars necessary to make it all right.
Why, we ask, is this happening? Some
of us wonder how it is that we have
developed the sophisticated technology
base that has taken us to the moon and is
Lawrence E. Murr (research scientist, author,
educator), Oregon Graduate Center, 19600 N.W.
Von Neumann Dr., Beaverton, OR 97006-1999,
U.S.A.
James. B. Williams, (biomedical communications
administrator, educator), Oregon Health Sciences
University, 3181 S.W. Sam Jackson Park Rd,
Portland OR 97201, U.S.A.
Received 6 July 1987.
repairing 'broken hearts' through bypass
operations and 'ballooning of our arteries'
at the rate of some 100,000 operations a
year, during a time when our schools
from kindergarten through the Ph.D.
were deteriorating so rapidly. Even the
attitudes of entering college freshmen
have turned around in the last 2 decades.
In 1967, 44% of college freshmen in the
U.S. believed it essential or important to
be well-off financially. In 1985 this
number had grown to 71%. In 1967, 83%
of these same freshmen believed it was
important to develop a meaningful
philosophy of life, but by 1985 this
number had dropped to 43% [1]. Four
decadesago, our parentsand grandparents
had jobs they held for most if not all of
their lives. Many jobs were passed down
from generation to generation. Many
were farming or farm related, many more
were in manufacturing.
The simplest explanation for all this
involves change, and those associated
elements of time which are ongoing and
irrevocable. But change itself is multi-
lateral:the farming economy, the embodi-
ment of the Agricultural Age, is declining
in the U.S., along with its complement,
the manufacturing economy of the
IndustrialAge. The emergingtechnologies
of the Information Age, which drive a
large service economy, are ever changing,
and our awareness of this new economic
turbulence is increasing as a new visual
culture characterized by the infusion of
television, USA Today,VCRs, computers,
etc., takes shape.
These declining and emerging social,
economic and cultural phenomena are
forcing fundamental changes in how we
educate our children and reeducate
ourselves. The changes are jeopardizing
our familiar ways of the past and the
tradition of job stability at the heart of the
so-called work ethic. A 'good' education
and hard work no longer assure job
security, and we hear an accumulating
chorus of career consultants urging us to
be lifelong learners in order to develop
flexible talents to coincide with flexible
jobs. The prospect of having to be
continual learners is frightening for most
of us. Most of us do not enjoy learning;
most of us have never really learned how
to learn. Most of us have believed that
what we learned for a diploma or a degree
would provide us with a lifelong trade or
job. We learned to earn. Now we are
being asked to learn to learn.
It is our inability to recognize some of
these changes, let alone to deal effectively
with them, that has sparked a recent rash
of half-brained ideas for improving the
nature and quality of our schools and
colleges. Since change involves time, and
time past often holds templates of past
changes, history may provide us with a
certain insight, and even foresight.
II. THE CULTURE OF THE BOOK
Before the printed book, memory ruled
daily life and served as the principal
vehicle for learning. Education, the
methodology of learning, relied upon
memory as its delivery system. The
memory of individuals and communities
transported knowledge through space
and time, and the elements of education
were garnered, preserved and stored in
memory. Even well into the Middle Ages,

? 1988 ISAST
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 students had almost no sources of
information or ideas other than the words
their teachers spoke from memory. The
spoken word was the principal mode of
communication until Gutenberg invented
moveable type and the book became the
principal agent for the transfer of
knowledge.
In The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin
writes, "Men tend to resent the intrusion
of a new medium of communication and
often feel compelled to defend the older
medium against anticipated or actual
competition. Socrates, for example, wrote
no books and believed that they were
inferior to the spoken word as a means of
education.... The learned community
warned that popularizing books would
vulgarize learning. Even before 1500
[A.D.], a squeamish Venetian man of
letters complained that you could not
walk along the canal without having
cheap books pushed at you 'like cats in a
bag.' More means worse. Abundance of
books makes men less studious" [2].
Now that television and hypertele-
vision-video tools such as the micro-
computer,the compact disk and interactive
video technologies-have become some-
what pervasive in our society, we are
warnedagain that popularizingtelevision,
video tapes and video tools will vulgarize
education. In one study, teachers warned
too, learn to love the written word, or
would they succumb and follow an
electronic Pied Piper off to some non-
intellectual[italics ours] never-neverland?
Not to worry, for it seems the piper's
pitch has grown a bit off-key. Children
across the land once again are following
an old-fashioneddrummerinto bookstores
across the country. ... From 1980to 1985,
sales of hardcover children's and juvenile
books jumped from $16 million to an
astonishing $219 million.... Meanwhile
sales of paperback books in the same
genre rose from $66 million to $113
million..." [5].
During the same period (1980-1985)
the personal computer emerged and more
than 12 million such computers were sold
K--KF
in the United States [6]. Also during the
same time, the video cassette recorder
(VCR) was developed, manufactured and
sold commercially. By 1986 nearly 7 of 10
homes in the United States had a VCR.
By comparison, only about 2 homes in 10
had a sizeable book collection, including
encyclopedias [7]. So the portable 'visual
book', the video cassette tape, over a
period of 5 years has intruded into our
consciousness to a far greaterextent than
500 years of book publishing.
For nearly 500 years, Western civili-
zation has lived in the age of Gutenberg.
Print has dominated our conception and
perception of the educational process.
Print has shaped our literature and
conditioned our response to literary
re
Thalamus

that television had made their students

expect to be entertained in the classroom erebellum
and that viewing television had changed Superior co
nmissures
students' ability to learn. They thought Inferik
their students had shorterattention spans,
but found them more responsive to visual
methods of teaching. Many teachers
surveyed said they actually had changed
their teaching methods in response to
television's impact [3].
But since the sixteenth century we have
lived in the age of Gutenberg and teachers
have been largelyobsessedwith instructing
their students in how to read. This
obsession continues along with our
obsession with the printed, serial book
and with the 'culture of the book'. In
College: The UndergraduateExperiencein
America, published by the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching, we find, "The undergraduate There is no way to tell whether the Visual and spatial functions, in-
college also has a special obligation not patterns extracted by the right hemi- cluding the ideographic reading
of linguisticsounds, andthe sphere are real or imagined without of Eastern languages (such as
only to support adequately the library, processingof text (T)ingener- subjecting them to left hemisphere Chinese and Japanese) are inti-
but in a larger sense to sustain the culture alix intimatelytiedto the oper- scrutiny. On the other hand, mere mately tied to those centers in the
ationofareas inthe left hemi- critical thinking, without creative and right hemisphere of the brain that
of the book [italics ours]. Colleges should sphere of the brain. intuitive insights, without the search interpret and process pictorial and
celebrate the book and schedule activities for new patterns, is sterile and graphic (G) materials.
doomed. To solve complex prob-
each year that feature books and lems in changing circumstances re-
quires the activity of both cerebral
reading..." [4]. In the Oregonian News- hemispheres: the path to the future
paper, Paul Pintarich has written, "Once lies through the corpus callosum
(from Carl Sagan in The Dragons of
upon a time, in a land filled with Eden, 1977.)
television sets and video display terminals,
people who still loved books began to
Fig. 1. Schematic representationof left and right brain hemispheresand correspondingtext and
worry about the children. Would they, graphics processingcomponentsof the personal computer.

414 Murr and Williams, Education in a Visual Culture

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Sketches and graphicelements
fromthe morethan8000 pages
of Leonardoda Vinci'snotes illus-
tratethe non-serialconnections
of text blocks and graphiccompo-
nents to providean understand-
ing of complex technical,scientif- _ J 1^-^
ic, and even philosophicalcon-
cepts. His notes provideunusual L.-;,--.
examples of contextbuilding.It
musthave been da Vinciwho eli-
cited the expression "a pictureis
wortha thousandwords."
Fig. 2. Excerpts from the works of Leonardo da Vinci illustrating the graphics-heavystyle of his
thinking and processing of complex information. Non-serially linked blocks of textual descriptions
and drawings(graphics) prompta format for rapidly 'getting the picture'.
experiences. The literati have been the
gatekeepers of this age, monopolizing the
educational process, dominating schools
of education and inhibiting society's
ability to comprehend and utilize the
emerging visual culture and its tools-
television and the microcomputer. The
emergence of this visual culture began
with the invention of the first practical
method of photography in 1839 and
continued with the introduction of movies
in 1894, the first televised picture in 1923,
the first animated cartoon in 1928, full
commercial television in 1941 and the
acceleration of visual concepts over the
past decade with the introduction of the
personal computer, the VCR and video
and compact disks. Certainly print and
the printed book will continue to exert a
powerful influence on our educational
processes and our society, but equally
certain is the fact that print-based text no
longer can monopolize our symbolic
environment. Since language shapes our
perception of reality it is clear that new
concepts of language must be developed
with the emergence of the visual culture.
Just as the practice of language in
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Western civilization, as served by speech
and memory, was altered by the invention
of an alphabet and later its encoding in
books through moveable type, so it must
be altered again as a result of the
invention of visual tools.
VS. RIGHT-BRAIN
III. LEFT-BRAIN
LEARNING
Our emphasis on the linguistic trans-
mission of knowledge through speech
and text during at least the last 500 years
has meant that certain areas in the left
hemisphere of the brain linked to these
features of language processing have been
well exercised, while the realm of spatial
reasoning, symbolic processing and
pictorial interpretation, which seems to
be predominantly tied to the right
hemisphere of the brain, has remained
largelyignored (Fig. 1). Cognitive scientist
Howard Gardner, in his 1984 book
Frames of Mind, has written,
Progress in science may, in fact, be
closely yoked to the development of
certain spatial displays. According to
E. Ferguson, many of the problems in
Murr and Williams, Education in a Visual Culture
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
which scientists and engineers are
engaged cannot be described in verbal
form. The scientific progress in the
Renaissance may have been intimately
tied to the recording and conveying of a
vast body of knowledge in drawings-
as for instance, in the renownedsketches
of Leonardo da Vinci [see Fig. 2].
Instead of memorizing lists of objects
or parts (as medieval workers often had
to do), aspiring scientists could now
study the actual organization of
machines and organisms that were not
available for inspection.... And in a
moment closer to our own times, the
structure of the DNA molecule, as
ferreted out by James Watson and
Francis Crick, depended critically upon
the ability to sketch the various ways in
which molecules might be bound with
one another. These experiments-some-
times constructed in the scientists'
heads, sometimes on paper, and some-
times using an actual three-dimensional
model-led in the end to the correct
r sJ .:; reconstruction of the double helix [8].
f i^ .
(See Fig. 3.)
Science populist Carl Sagan in The
-- Dragons of Eden writes,
' ' -
. :'.........,
f
'
1..._f|
#? "
'd
There is no way to tell whether the
patterns extracted by the right hemi-
sphere are real or imagined without
subjecting them to left hemisphere
scrutiny. On the other hand, more
critical thinking, without creative and
intuitive insights, without the search for
new patterns, is sterile and doomed. To
solve complex problems in changing
circumstances requires the activity of
both cerebral hemispheres:The path to
the future lies through the corpus
callosum [9]. (See Fig. 1.)
The clinical (neurological) evidence for
hemispheric processing selectivity within
the brainhas accumulatedto an enormous
force over the past several decades. Paul
Bakan, in an article in the journal
Perceptual and Motor Skills, showed in
1969 that right hemisphere preference, as
indicated by lateral eye movements, was
noted for science and engineering majors
versus left hemisphere preference for
literatureand humanitiesmajorsin under-
graduate college programs [10]. James
Dabbs, reporting in the journal Psycho-
physiology in 1980, noted a distinction in
blood flow to each side of the brain for
college students majoring in English as
compared to students majoring in
architecture. A higher flow of blood to
the left brain hemisphere was found in
English students, while a higher flow to
the right hemisphere was shown in
architecture students [11]. Joseph Bogen,
a neurosurgeon, argued in a 1975 paper
that the emphasis on the acquisition of
verbal skills and the development of
analytic thought processes neglects the
development of important nonverbal
abilities. This, he claimed, was starving
415
half the brain and ignoring its potential Classroom, and Linda Williams, in [16]. But teaching, on the whole, has
contribution to the whole person [12]. Teachingfor the Two-SidedMind:A Guide involved maintaining the 'Socratic
Similarly, Robert Ornstein, in his 1977 to Right Brain/Left Brain Education [15]. method', the mnemonic art, even in the
book The Psychology of Consciousness, The message and hundreds of supporting face of the popularization of the book.
concluded that the emphasis on language clinical arguments are also contained in What has been slow to change in the past
and logical thinking in Western societies the 1984 edition of Left Brain, Right Brain 2000 years will certainly not be altered in
has ensured that the left hemisphere is by Sally Springer and Georg Deutsch the next 2 or 20 years, but change it must
well exercised while functions of the right
hemisphereare largelyneglected. Ornstein
asserted that schools spent most of their
time training students in predominantly
left-hemisphere skills [13].
The implications of differencesbetween
Western and Eastern cultures also have
been scrutinized. In Frames of Mind
Howard Gardner writes,

In the phonologicallybasedsystemsof
the West,readingreliesparticularlyon
those areas of the brain that process
linguisticsounds;but in thosesystems
(in the Orient)whereideographicreading
is preferred,readingis morecrucially
dependent upon those centers that
interpret pictorial materials. (This
dependence may also obtain for those
deaf individuals who have learned to
read.) Finally, in the case of the
Japanese, who have both a syllabary
reading system (Kana) and an ideo-
graphicsystem (Kanji),two mechanisms
for reading are housed in the same
individual. Thus, one kind of lesion will
cause relatively greater injury to the
decodingof Kanasymbols, while another
will wreak its havoc particularly on the
decoding of Kanji symbols [14].

From this, we might begin to assert

that the economic success of Japan, as
compared to many Western countries,
might be rooted in the contrast between
the bilateral and multisensory processing
the Japanese learn through their language
and the limitations of Westerners'
predominantly left-brain, one-track minds.
We might even 'envision' a kind of
incompatibility when dealing with ideo-
graphic languages: left-brain processing
trying to connect with a right-brain
processor. 'Shoes that don't fit' might be
an accurate metaphor to describe the
many educationalproposals for 'changing'
or improving the lot of education in U.S.
schools and colleges as well as the current
enthusiasmfor Japaneselanguagecourses, ? 1987 Lawrence E. Murrand James B. Williams

which often involve left-brain language

teachersteaching ideographic, right-brain
languages!
IV. WHOLE-BRAIN EDUCATION
Teachers have been chided for nearly 2
decades to change their ways in order to
educate the whole brain, the whole
person. Postman and Weingartner, in
TeachingAs a SubversiveActivity, in 1969
made many of the points made more
recently by Michael Grady, in Teaching
and Brain Research: Guidelines for the
Fig. 3. Graphic, artistic and symbolic representationsof the conceptualdevelopmentof the benzene
ring from the snake dreamsof Kekuleand of the evolutionof stereochemistryleadingto the structural
representationsof DNA as the head of a snake. We submit that such visual images are essential for
understandingcomplex, structuraland microstructuralissues in science and technology. "The vivid
role of imagery in the solutionof problemshas often beenrecountedby scientists andinventors.In one
of the most famous of such accounts, the chemist FriedrichKekulecame across the structureof the
benzene ring. He fell asleep and 'again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes.... My mental
eye... could not distinguishlarger structures... all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But
look! Whatwas that?One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail andthe form whirledmockingly
before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning, I awoke.' These insights had suggested to Kekulethat
organic compoundslike benzene are not open structures,but closed rings. Andin a momentcloser to
our own times, the structure of the DNA molecule, as ferreted out by James Watson and Francis
Crick, dependedcritically upon the ability to sketch the various ways in which molecules might be
bound with one another. These experiments-sometimes constructed in the scientists' heads,
sometimes on paper, and sometimes using an actual three-dimensionalmodel-led in the end to the
correct reconstructionof the double helix." Quotation from Howard Gardner,Frames of Mind[8].

416 Murr and Williams, Education in a Visual Culture

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 -

- I ___
A single electron is both a particleand a wave and epitomizes the con-
cept of wave-particle dualism. This is elegantly depicted in an equa-
Eight years ago a boy was one- tion called the Schr6dinger Equationwhich forms the basis of the so-
|T -
fourth as old as he will be one year
from now. How old is he now?
called quantum theory.

(x - 8)= 1/4(x+1);
I
V 2 + 8M(E-U) = 0
GK -
x = 11 years old now

d2
x = # of years old the boy is now 2=
v d2 d /
dx2 +dy2 + dz2
(x - 8) = # of years old he was 8 years ago
(x + 1) = # of years old he will be one year =
from now WAVE FUNCTION- T
I

M = MASS |
* (x - 8) = 1/4(x+1) * (x - 8) = 1/4 (x+1)
6 = SOME CONSTANT
* (x - x/4) = 8 + 1/4; * 4x - 32 = x + 1
(8 = 32/4) E = ELECTRON ENERGY
* 3x = 33
* (3x/4) = 33/4
* x = 11 U = POTENTIALENERGY INFLU-
* 3x = 33
* x = 11 [ ENCING THE ELECTRON
---------------------------l I I:
I

The simplepictureshowingan electronas some kindof wave packetis

II l II I _
an attemptto depict graphicallythe pattern implicitin the mathematical
? 1987LawrenceE. MurrandJamesB. Williams aexpression.
-
. - -
I -

Fig. 4. The linking of text-based and graphic or symbolic paradigmsto understandmathematical and related issues. (a) Correspondencebetweenco-called
reading problems and their mathematical (symbolic) representation.Learners are often unable to process the textual context but can easily deal with the
symbolic (graphic) regime. (b) Symbols and graphics can deal with complex issues in science such as quantumphysics and the wave-particlenature of
electrons in ways that text cannot.

and change it will. Given the rate of
change of technology, our ability to
work, our very survival, will depend on
our being involved in the momentum of
the emerging visual culture.
Let us assume, in spite of the
complexities of the brain and our meager
efforts to explain specific intricacies, that
left-brain and right-brain distinctions do
indeed exist and that we process infor-
mation and create our realities by
integrating verbal, textual and visual
input in order to 'get the picture'. Then to
describe in text the structure of DNA, for
example (processing this information in
the left hemisphere) makes no sense when
the context can be developed immediately
by processing a model or picture of the
DNA molecule in the right hemisphere
(see Fig. 3). To expand this argument, it
does not make sense to emphasize text-
based descriptionsof scientificphenomena
in general, or mathematical phenomena
in particular (Fig. 4).
To learn science and mathematics
effectively might requirethe configuration
of right-brain tools. Gardner has written,
"Like a painter or a poet, a mathematician
is a maker of patterns: but the special
characteristics of mathematical patterns
are that they are more likely to be
permanent because they are made with
ideas..." [17]. Therefore, creating cur-
riculum innovations and trying to extend
or 'assure' academic excellence in the
schools by extending memory-based
learning science and mathematics is an
outstanding exercise in futility, a magni-
fication of the educational frustration we
have felt for several decades.
In the context of differences between
left-brain and right-brain processing, the
rhetoric describing the debate over math
teaching in California, chronicled in the
WashingtonPost, seems patently absurd.
Oneof themostenduringandperplexing
mysteries in education has been why
students who sail through history and
spelling wince at long division and
algebra. Educators, researchersand
parentshave long arguedover how to
overcome problems with math, an
argumentthat led in the 1960sto the
'New Math,'whichreliedon teaching
the theory behind the computations.
Thatmethodwasgenerallyregardedas
unsuccessfulandwasabandoned....In
thelate 1970s,theback-to-basicsmove-
mentemphasized drillandmemorization
in math courses, an emphasismany
educatorssay they believeneglecteda
broaderunderstanding of suchabstract
conceptsas 'borrowing,'andfractions.
Studentslearninghow to dividewhole
numbers by fractions, for example,
havebeentold to memorizequipssuch
as: 'Yours is not to reasonwhy, just
invertandmultiply.'Butmanyhaveno
idea why they are inverting the
fraction ... [18].
Indeed, memorizing the symbolism of
mathematics, a graphic, ideographic
language, is preserving needlessly the left-
brain processing methodologies of 2000
years ago. Put this in the perspective of
the student who enjoys symbolic algebra
but is completely confused by 'reading
problems', i.e. mathematical problems
couched in verbal form. How many of us
found it confusing to work on a problem
in which the graphic, symbolic language
of mathematics was encoded in 'alphabetic
software' (i.e. text) for processing in the
left hemisphere, in order to elicit a
solution to be pictured in the spatial
processor of the right hemisphere? What
an exercise in absurdity to write left-brain
software for a right-brain processor (see
Fig. 4)!
V. VISUAL TOOLS IN EDUCATION
Now that we have introduced the
computer as a metaphor, both hardware
and software, let us examine the reality of
the minicomputer or the personal
computer. Here is a visual tool, an
example of hypertelevision, a right-brain
preprocessor, a supercharger of graphic
information and graphic knowledge, which
we have merely reconfigured as a high-
tech typewriter! Word processing is
simply a reconfiguration of left-brain
software, a massaging of text displayed in
a visual field, appealing to the right
hemisphere but incompatible with its
processing protocols. We create mental
images as we learn and conceptualize to
'get the picture' (Fig. 5). We often affirm

Murr and Williams, Education in a Visual Culture 417

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 learning, the act of learning, by saying "I
see!" So let us begin to recognize the need
to use pictures to 'get the picture'. IYPERMAPPINGIl, 1

Presenting text or developing text to

create a picture is simply not compatible
with the non-serial connection we invoke
to develop mental images and pictures. cIsa 41
We are forcing the wearing of left-handed
gloves on the right hand.
In order to be more appropriately
educated, we need to begin to recognize
the correct uses for visual tools and to
create new visual tools that are more
compatible with the emerging visual
culture. Whole-brain learning, approach-
ing both the left and right hemispheres,
might make us effective learners.Learning
might even become fun, something we do
as a matter of living a useful, happy,
productive life. We need to integrate the
compendia of alphabetic writings, the
book of old and new, with the new forms
of visual documentation, the video cassette
and the compact disk.
Education, to be effective in our visual
culture, must change fundamentally. We
must understand the learning process,
perhaps even make bold assumptions
about why people perform, learn or
process differently, if people are to
become effective learners (Fig. 6). This is
essential to facilitate continual learning.
The fundamental changes need not be too
costly and will not abolish our schools or
displace our teachers. But we must begin
by abandoning our historical emphasis
on serial lectures, serial text, serial data
and data collection in serial text form, as
well as our obsession with reading,
writing and articulating at an intellectual Fig. 5. Schematicrepresentation
of 'hypermapping',
or the conceptuallinkingof text andgraphic
standard derived from a sense of scholar- elements to create language maps. This representation also depicts the non-serial, connectionist
ship invented before the Middle Ages. linking of ideas that leads to effective learning-'getting the picture'.
This emphasis must be balanced by some
attention to graphic formats, drawing,
painting and the visual arts, by raising
our consciousness of symbols, by con- intrusion of graphics bewildering; we book and the video cassette tape, the
necting text and graphics through the suffer from a kind of visual illiteracy. newspaper and television, visual statics
creation of language networks (a process It may not be a simple coincidence that and dynamics, science and the liberal
we call 'hypermapping' (see Fig. 5) and by in the period 1980-1985, when the arts, the West and the East, creating a
creatingan educational system compatible personal computer and the VCR became world convergence toward common per-
with our visual culture. This will help us popularized in the United States, the sale ceptions and singular realities.
'get the picture' and allow us to deal of children'sbooks increaseddramatically.
visually rather than simply textually and Visual tools finally may provide us with
verbally with the complexities of techno- the most effective learning formats of the
logy. past 500 years. To hear a story and to see REFERENCES AND NOTES
We do not advocate abandoning a the story at the same time forces sensory 1. Data fromthe CarnegieFoundationfor
commitment to reading and writing or connections to both the left- and right- the Advancementof Teaching;see for
arithmetic; we advocate abandoning only hemisphere processors. 'Teddy Ruxpen', example College: The Undergraduate
the historical emphasis on the teaching a toy bear accompanied by audio tapes ExperienceinAmerica(New York: Harper,
1987).
methodology. We have a fundamental keyed to picture books, may be the 2. Daniel Boorstin,TheDiscoverers(New
concern for literacy, but its context is forerunner of powerful teaching tools- York:RandomHouse, 1983)p. 529.
changing. The proliferation of icons and not simply teaching toys. The personal 3. MargueriteMichaels,"A Report Card
other graphic aids in our societies is computer should become the facilitator from Our Teachers", Parade Magazine
(1 December1985)pp. 4-5.
making the world a friendlier place for of whole-brain learning, the essence of 4. CarnegieFoundation[1].
nonreaders and poor readers of text the corpus callosum, bridling the left and 5. Paul Pintarich,"Hookedon Books" in
while readers of books are finding the right hemispheres and connecting the OregonianNewspaper(20 July 1986).

418 Murr and Williams, Education in a Visual Culture

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 6. See for example Russ Lockwood, "Trends:
Moving On", Personal Computing 11,
No. 10, 64 (1987). ?
SIMPLELEARNING ANDLETHODOLOGIES
THEORIES
7. From data of the Electronic Industries
Association, Washington, DC, 1986.
* BIMOOL. PRIMARY LEARNI(a 1.EORYI
More recent market analysis figures by
AdAl mm0 omsmpmu by omis
Paul Kajan Associates in Los Angeles, o tIed
I agatsImm t /d) dagripNa(sgm.
boiK ha ptalM. WhiM ib bympei-
tmra
CA, confirm these statistics.
8. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind (New mumdb ado mdowoiui k im Todpmc#suIX-
11y h Ih MtbanW hmlh _ Id pro-
York: Basic Books, 1983). Ingimay AInthodghIbmIisl I
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9. Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden (New
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Ib pdhtw iBimodi(c -on-
.. .
AMRughm0Ipi, U -.
10. P. Bakan, "Hypnotizability, Laterality of d)Ixmd"gM s, owur w_modoolmsmd hdhwy
ItdNrMS(I).lb poetbtWanwiylBnu ilmpo - Ily. I
Eye Movement, and Functional Brain orha a ppmuslytogb. .U miWUnw m m-
no mquin-s aby toredLa.. mng or Ong I
Asymmetry", PerceptualandMotor Skills
oNSOWIroim bb.mm~ amfNwo-mint dmuop
28, 927-932 (1969). d
fty. PmamiongMhI mbeCmm demmvnod@Iv c_
11. J. Dabbs, "Left-Right Differences in homiigmmy bu Ih byAN tm wonma tobe
Id fom p-dmIR M (T) bMdomr "pOh-
Cerebral Blood Flow and Cognition", i M0): orfhuoh _ di m 1 d_ .
Psychophysiology 17, 548-551 (1980).
dokoW. I. tookhl badmmd toammt
th|i -
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VII: Some Educational Aspects of
Hemispheric Specialization", UCLAEdu- *| IHEORYOFCOOMPATILtdNG MPATUBTYNHEORY)|
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| PEOTN Iqmmspbhr-
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14. Gardner [8] p. 88. See also H. Gardner,
"What We Know (and Don't Know) &o%SwiRd IsU I Ih (
about the Two Halves of the Brain", miMntabndmp i^
pwk
Harvard Magazine 80, 24-27 (1978). o, K4h
cap?t MI ourm _ pr-
our pi

15. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Ingbtp Inh

Inflo mmmfpImm
Mnin Mw"
wpo-
Teaching As a Subversive Activity (New am notaby pwdp s-
York:Delacorte, 1969);Michael P. Grady,
Teaching and Brain Research: Guidelines
for the Classroom (New York: Longman, mani bIho odr pm,m
Inom beP i is
H MMi-
0m N_-
1984); Linda Verlee Williams, Teaching od"Cuolw.o h1,mdldo
for the Two-SidedMind:A Guide to Right rnom gmmt- wlh lwaywe
Brain/Left Brain Education (New Jersey: fto hsWwlch.m
lewnh
Prentice Hall, 1983). 7
01 Ln9mm a1ktmdrmJ B.WlMI
16. Sally P. Springer and Georg Deutsch,
Left Brain, Right Brain (New York:
Freeman, 1981). Fig. 6. Graphicrepresentationof learningmethodologiesthat are based uponthe notion that text and
17. Gardner [8] p. 139. graphic formats are processed somewhat specifically in the left and right brain hemispheres.If one
18. Barbara Vobejda, The WashingtonPost, accepts this premise, then learning formats can be skewed to the efficiencies and deficiencies of
Section A8 (20 October 1986). individuallearnersto providea balance of processingskills using both hemispheresof the brainmore
effectively.

Murr and Williams, Education in a Visual Culture 419

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