While we may not respect right brains as much as left brains in our western culture, history does show us that they do add greatly to society.
Albert Einstein
According to Patty Emerson, "Einstein had a hard time in school." He couldn't show is work in math. He would skip steps. His mind would process answers so quickly that he just couldn't slow down to show his work. His brain streaked toward the answer so quickly that he lost focus if forced to slow down. Showing his work distracted him so much that he could not continue the process. Of course, we now know that Einstein knew the process and computers are still proving his theories.
Learning Disabled
He was considered learning disabled and was sent home as a hopeless case. His mother homeschooled him. Today, he would be tested, labeled and probably placed into the Resource Room or the Behavior Disorder Room. And, unless homeschooling fit the family schedule, he would have been forced to endure continuous testing and labels.
Einstein was very right-brained. Many learning disabled students are right-brained. It is their misfortune to be right-brained in a left-brained world that favors a different wiring system--left. Breaking things down into little chunks where you can not see the big picture drives right brains nuts.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Da Vinci was an inventor, scientist and artist. He developed his own paints. He did it by experience, not by careful calculation. The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are two of his great works.
He believed that man could fly. His sketches were found revealing that Leonardo had drawings of a helicopter hundreds of years before invented. When the helicopter design was tested, what did they find? It could have flown. He was centuries ahead of his time--thought out of the box. That is what right brains do.
Right brains often find reading difficult. The severely right-brained often see the written word backwards. Da Vinci was so right-brained that you need to hold a mirror up to his writing to read it. It was written in mirror image. He didn't need glasses. Today's eye exam would probably show that he had good vision but when the word reached the page, it was processed into something we do not see when we read.
Jonas Salk
According to Patty Emerson, Jonas Salk disliked school. He didn't learn like the teacher was teaching. So, Salk studied the material on his own, figured out what was being taught and then filled in the worksheets and homework assignments to fit the teachers specifications. It "looked" like he was understanding it the way it was being taught. He was not. He learned how to play the school game. Salk started a creative institute for children so they wouldn't have to get an education under "insane" conditions.
Salk knew he had cured polio long before all the calculations and experiments were done. He just knew. His mind processed the end result and he had to go back and prove his theory to be accepted. This is the way right brains think.
L.D. vs. T.A.G.
"LD, Learning Disabled, students are not that much different from TAG, Talented and Gifted," says Emerson. "The difference is that the TAG students have learned to play the school game." LD students know that it is a game and refuse to play or have not figured out how to play because of their disability. TAG students know that it is a game but will play because they want to be successful in the world. IQ is often the same.
Because half of the students are right brained, teachers must teach to many modalities and not just one--lecture. Find out how right brains differ from left brains next.
Related articles: Left Brains and Right Brains, Right/Left Brain Background
Read previous articles on Educational Issues.
Copyright article 2006 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.
