Ellen Galinsky has been on a seven-year quest to understand what neuroscience has to say about how to better educate and parent adolescents. Over the past few years, we have improved our understanding of this period, during which the brain undergoes almost as many changes as in the early years of life.
Until now, Galinsky says, researchers and educators have focused too much on portraying the emotional turmoil and risky decision-making typical of adolescence as negative. “The greatest progress has been in understanding that what we saw as problematic, deviant, and immature was actually developmentally necessary. ” she claims.
Galinsky, co-founder of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute on Family and Work, also surveyed about 2,000 parents and students for the study, and found that many parents considered the teenage years problematic. While viewing it as a negative period with many negative experiences, students found that they felt unfairly stereotyped and misunderstood. She published the results in her new book, “The Year of Breakthroughs: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Growing Teens.”
What her findings mean for educators, she argues, is that lessons for young people should be designed around this period of human development.
“Adolescence is the time when young people make the leap into the world. Think of it as a young bird leaving the nest,” she says. “And it’s important for them to be exploratory. They wonder what’s safe and what’s not safe, who they can trust and who they can’t trust, where they belong and where they don’t belong. , they react very strongly to experiences because they have to figure out who they want to be and who they want to be. They’re in a much more extended world than their family.”
She wants to reframe this period of development as what she calls a “period of possibility.”
And thanks to this research, she has strong opinions on the question of whether to ban smartphones in schools.
Hear the full conversation on this week’s episode. apple podcast, cloudy, spotifywherever you listen to podcasts or use the player on this page, or read the partial transcript below, lightly edited for clarity.
EdSurge: What’s going on in the brain at this stage of human development?
Ellen Galinsky: I like the analogy that Jennifer Silvers from UCLA used. She spoke of adolescence as a time to lay new roads. This means that connections between different parts of the brain are formed and strengthened during adolescence. And on stormy days, the concrete can get wet and muddy and messy, she says, and that’s how adolescents feel.
But now is a time when these new connections are being made, especially those that help develop what are called executive functioning skills. And I think that’s a pretty misunderstood name. If people know anything about it, it’s “Shut up, sit still, listen to the teacher, obey, obey, keep your notes in order, don’t forget to bring your homework.” It sounds like a management skill. That’s partially true; these are brain-based skills that underlie the ability to set goals.
But executive function skills are always goal-driven. It is the time when we can understand the situation we are in, the social situation. We can understand our own perspective, the perspective of others, and how they differ from our own. It’s time to learn to communicate. It doesn’t mean just keep talking. It means thinking about what we say and better understanding how it will sound to others. It’s a time when we learn to cooperate, and that means dealing with relationships with people and the conflicts that cooperation can bring.
This country could use a little bit of executive functioning skills right now and learn how to work together. This is a time to learn how to problem-solve, and that includes a lot of different components: making sense of a situation, thinking creatively about solutions; how can we solve this in a different way, not just what we’ve done before? How? And then understanding what works and what doesn’t work with that solution.
In other words, evaluating solutions, or what the literature calls relational reasoning. and critical thinking, which means making decisions based on what you believe to be valid and accurate information and implementing those decisions. It’s also a time to learn how to tackle challenges. Now, there are some core skills underlying this, brain-based skills. In addition to those who think of executive function skills as “shut up and listen to your teacher or parents,” some people sometimes think of them as soft skills. These are the most neurocognitive skills we have. The part of the brain that coordinates social, emotional, and behavioral abilities to achieve goals.
The idea is that schools are primarily about academic content, and that is what is usually measured by statewide achievement tests. However, you seem to be arguing that soft skills are even more important than academic ability for teenagers.
I guess we call them soft skills to distinguish them from academic skills, but they’re not soft. They’re really hard skills. They bring all of our capabilities together to help us achieve what we want to achieve and to live purposefully. So these are really powerful neurocognitive skills, and they’re not some soft, fluffy thing that’s beside the point.
We tend to think of early childhood learning as learning numbers and letters and math and how to read, and while those things are important, these soft skills are the skills that help children learn numbers and letters and learn math and how to read.
Twenty years of research has shown that these soft skills are more important in predicting success in school and in life. These skills are as predictive, if not more so, than IQ and socioeconomic status, both of which are important in predicting how well you do in life.
You were talking about something I haven’t heard much about. It’s that schools are often too focused on the future. She also quotes her 16-year-old child as saying: In middle school, everyone puts pressure on you to be ready for high school. In high school, everyone puts pressure on you to get ready for college. In college, everyone puts pressure on you to prepare for life. ” Can you tell me more about this?
Historically, it can be traced back to 1992, when the first President Bush established his educational goals. The first educational goal was to prepare young children for school. And I think that, at least in my years of education, this signaled the arrival of a period of “preparation.” And then we’re ready for school, then we’re ready for college, and then we’re ready for life. And they work in the sense that people understand that that’s how they understand the importance of education.
But I think there was also a downside to that. Adults must learn to live in the moment. Think about how many books have been written to help us live as adults right now, and pay attention to who we’re with. It’s not always about to-do lists or focusing on the future.
Preparation is key. We’re not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But we also need to live in the moment. We need to be able to support our children during these years. In that particular group of 16-year-olds I quoted earlier, another 16-year-old said, “My parents always say, ‘These are the best years of my life.'” But why can’t I live them? They want to go back, but they can’t let me live like that now. ”
I want to ask you about a big topic in the news these days: whether to ban smartphones from schools and ban people under 16 from social media. The biggest proponent of this right now is Jonathan Haidt, who has a new book out called .A generation of anxiety, how a massive rewiring of childhood is driving an epidemic of mental illness” Do you agree with Haidt’s assertion there that teens are much better off without access to social media and smartphones during this developmental period?
There is no yes or no response. I think Mr. Haidt raises a very important question: “What are mobile phones doing in our society?” But he wishes he hadn’t called it the Anxious Generation. That’s just stereotyping kids. And he wishes he hadn’t startled his parents so much that he overreacted. Parents are waiting for bad news about their children. We want to protect our children. We want them to be safe. We want them to have a good life. Being scared of something doesn’t necessarily help it.
Science is about correlation. There’s no evidence that phones or social media are causing anxiety, because he ultimately says so. Last December, the National Academy of Sciences released a report saying there is a correlation in science. I don’t know about all the kids especially. There is some evidence that it can be harmful for some children, but there is also evidence that it can be beneficial.
But here’s my biggest problem with heights. I think he has a great understanding of the importance of play and the importance of independence, but… [he argues for] We jump in and react without teaching our children the skills to cope on their own. If we ban cell phones, the first thing kids will do is avoid them, right? It’s a child currency. If we do it in a way that doesn’t involve them, we will repeat the mistakes we made with “smoking.” The evidence is very clear that the “just say no” approach does not work for adolescents who need autonomy. Studies on smoking have increased smoking.
It would be great if we practiced the autonomy that John Haidt emphasized and schools said, “Look, the kids agree, there are bad things about cell phones.” They are distracting and addictive. There are people who are “perfect”. It turns out you weren’t invited to the mall with girls like Taylor Swift. But its use cannot simply be negative. Therefore, it requires some rules, and children can also help adults think of rules. We don’t want cell phones in school, but how can we make it work if kids aren’t part of the solution?
One of the things young people ask me most often is, “Once I solve children’s problems, how can I develop the skills to make it in the adult world?”
If we can solve our children’s problems, they will go to college and connect with us whenever they have a problem. Therefore, we will continue to fix the issue for them. They will be taking anti-anxiety medication. I’m exaggerating, but now is the time for them to learn these skills and start dealing with society in a constructive way. Young people can be part of the solution, so we will develop their skills. That’s my main point about the current debate.
What advice do you have for educators to best embrace teens’ developmental years?
Taking risks is seen as a negative thing. We define it as negative risk-taking, drinking, drugs, dangerous driving, and texting. We say, “Why would they make such a stupid decision, such a dangerous action?” And you need to understand that this is the period in their life when they are learning to be brave.
I love this quote from Ron Dahl of the University of California, Berkeley. They have a strong fear response and tend to be sensation seeking. The highs are higher and the lows are lower. Therefore, we need to give them opportunities to take positive risks. Positive risks to help those less fortunate, positive risks to try things that may be difficult for themselves, positive risks to stand up for what they believe in.
We need to give children opportunities to understand themselves, help them grow at a time when they feel things strongly, and give them experiences for their own benefit and that of society.
For example, think about learning how to clean a polluted pond or giving toys to children who don’t have toys near their playground or have too many things. That’s a positive risk. That’s very cool. To do something for the world. We are learning about what young people are interested in and the skills that go with it. They are learning that they can contribute to society.
listen to the entire conversation On the EdSurge Podcast.
