Our brains are complex and in spite of ongoing research, we are still very ignorant about the way they work. What we do know is that typical school-related tasks need multiple areas of the brain to work together. For example, activities related to language skills (listening, reading, thinking up words, answering a question) involve many separate parts of the brain. These different parts will be linked by networks of brain cells (neurons) that enable them to work together to produce a desired outcome.
If a child’s brain has not developed enough to function in this complex way, learning may be difficult. Such a child may not be learning ready
Learning readiness shouldn’t be confused with school readiness. School readiness may be achieved by many children because they have learned many of the skills required to cope with school. These include having a measure of emotional independence, the ability to get along with same-aged peers, being able to sit still, manipulate pencils, listen to instructions, and so on. It doesn’t mean that these children will all thrive at school. Somewhere along the way, be it in Grade 1 or 2 or 3, children who showed school readiness but were not learning ready will begin to find school more and more challenging.
The brain’s readiness to learn anything quickly, efficiently and joyfully depends on two things, both partially reliant on input from the environment. The first is the growth of the neurons and the second is the formation of connections between the neurons.
A brain cell’s development can be thought of as a young tree. Remember when you planted the tree it had a thin, fragile stem with just a few roots and branches. As it grew, the stem thickened, the root system spread out and the branches sprouted to form a thick overhead canopy.
The thickening of the stem of the neural ‘tree’ happens through a process known as ‘myelination’. Myelin is a fatty substance that insulates the ‘stem’ of the neuron so that electrical messages can be conveyed efficiently from one neuron to the next. Before a neural network is myelinated, messages can easily get lost or scrambled. A diet rich in omega-3 will supply the raw materials needed for good myelin but the regular use of a certain neural network is needed to supply the stimulus to begin the myelination.
Myelin develops from the lower brain areas and gradually moves up to higher levels, reflecting the child’s growing ability. For example, at birth the child is capable of very little. Areas needed for walking, talking and learning are still not myelinated.
The cycles of myelin formation will coincide with a child’s mastery of increasingly complex learning throughout the school years and early adulthood. Sometimes, a child appears to be having a hard time in school then suddenly seems to blossom. Such ‘late bloomers’ show that different brains have a different schedule and not all will be ready to learn at the same age.
The connections between the neurons (which happen at the synapses between the brain cells) are formed at the same time as myelination and depend on the experiences of the child. These are mainly experiences offered through body movements and stimulation through the senses. They give rise to the trillions of cells in various brain areas that are linked in neural networks and which are needed for learning and task completion.
If something has occurred along the child’s development pathway to prevent either myelination or enough connections, he or she may not be learning ready.
At this stage, you have to be careful not to try and force the readiness by the wrong kind of stimulation. Intensive, remedial work can certainly help stimulate development of the networks but may not always be helpful because some aspects of development can’t be forced. Skills that are forced may cause a child to use immature, inappropriate neural networks that will not be able to support later, even more complex tasks. Forcing learning can also cause emotional problems.
A better approach is to revisit the child’s developmental history to find out what brain areas may be underdeveloped and to help the brain ‘catch up’ by using the movements responsible for brain development in the first place. We know how the brain is structured through movement and also what movements are responsible for the development of neural networks. This makes it possible to help the child achieve a state of ‘readiness to learn’ rather than focusing on the weaknesses he or she shows at school.
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