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The Didactron
Educators' Lives in a High-Tech Teaching-Learning Space ©

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The Workup

Fran was six feet tall. Rare enough, she was also of splendidly average proportions, with one exception. Also rare, she had a doctorate in psychology. She wore a crisp white lab coat because she thought it looked good with her platinum hair, because it kept her dress clean, because it warmed as well or better than any of her sweaters, and because it was not out of place.

"Going along with the group" is much different than "not out of place." Fran would never be classified as prone to go with the group. Yet she never chose extreme or bizarre behaviors. She much preferred the main stream and longed for others to come along with her. She saw herself as group center. Why others did not recognize that position was a mystery; and their problem. Fran also wore the white lab coat to hide her disproportionately large breasts. She was in male company most of the time and wanted to talk eye-to-eye with them, not have them engage their curiosity about her chest. It was a means to reduce the distractions so the business of teaching could be mastered. No shame, hang-ups, anything -- she just wanted a clear, clean, straight-forward interaction. Stimulus, response; stimulus, response. No noise, no nonsense. She was consistently this way whether at work, cooking, or making love.

The lab coat was a symbol in the other places she had worked. It was worn as a shroud-badge. It was supposed to bring to an encounter (and still did for many) all of the professional mysteries and courtesies, all of the alleged wisdom, all of the tolerance for ineptness and the automated excuses for impoliteness, thoughtlessness, and social cruelty that can be packed into a symbol. She almost rejected it for all of its impropriety; she wore it because it worked.

"If you are going to get into my head you'll have to do it from the outside in!" Don was unusually agitated. Fran had submitted a planning paper about the use of several chemicals that had been demonstrated to improve memory and retention of information. Her proposals, made by others more than two decades ago were but another attack on the fortified walls of the educational bastion. The drugs were merely to allow people who wished to use them, under a doctor's supervision, to improve learning. The tests were well underway. More was learned each year. Safety was no longer an issue.

There were many other issues though. Although well reared in the rational tradition, she had only recently come to understand that "'cause" is a good reason for not doing something. It has most of the formal roots. It works; it's stated with high probability: ""just 'cause; that's why!" It was simply a summation statement of a group of weighted probabilities. She was wiser now with her knowledge of the local 'cause cluster. Of course it needed some work to analyze it, but then who said analysis is necessary? The 'ransack rule' for belief statements has never been voted on though perhaps in academia. She felt compelled to ransack every gross, clustered notion or phrase like 'cause… until recently.

Dr. Don Pace was a respected colleague and not prone to use 'cause clusters. He voiced complaints about the possibility of too much control over students, of reduced freedom of thought, of medical interactions yet undreamed, of long-term effects. Then he issued the rule: "if into my head…then from the outside in." It was bothersome, a mixed group of signals and concepts from the wrong source, at least an unexpected source of resistance.

"If resistance is encountered in Don, what can I expect elsewhere?" she wondered.

"I don't understand you," she said.

"There is no one in the Didactron more adventuresome and prone to adopt new techniques and concepts. You almost browbeat your students into accepting your ideas because you know they (are right and good for them and for humankind in the long run. You hardly ever are caught comparing theories because you've told me that is a waste of time and that improvisations off of your teaching is what is needed, not comparing your work with all of the failures and pits into which the other ideas have fallen. You've already done that work. You do not want student freedom …you want acceptance.

"You have used the Didactron from the beginning. I dare say your charted improvement in student changes is steeper than almost anyone in the group. You monitor, you evaluate, use every technique imaginable in all permutations.

"Then along I come and I present you with a sure-fire increase in desired change behavior of over 12 percent and you give me this 'outside in' business. Of course we continue to teach as best we know how,but the student given these days is physiologically better prepared than ever for receiving, storing, and preventing loss of the materials taught."

"Sorry, Fran, but that's just the way it is with me. I have a garden. I cannot bear to plow it. I use a shovel. It just seems more fair, more natural. Me and my shovel are a match for the proper piece of ground. I don't make the plot too big. I see every worm and rock. I sense what is there to give me tomatoes and I know why one row of lettuce didn't grow too well. It was the spot of soil, not an earth-god.

"I carve wood. I use hand tools. I was given a power saw. None of the things I now whittle are as much fun. On one hand I feel stupid for working so hard when a saw is on the bench. On the other hand I do not finish as quickly and delay th enjoyment of my finished object but the finished object is tainted, spoiled, desecrated by my new machines -- some such notion -- and only I can see it or know the difference, but it is there.

"One day I'm going to put on a loin cloth and hunt rabbits with a spear."

Fran couldn't restrain. She threw back her head and laughed with all-out merriment. It was a laugh as genuine as spring water.

"You laugh!" He was too, but trying to look stern.

"I mean it. All of this fancy archery and rifle and shotgun machinery. My goodness, the bunny has no chance. I know he would if I tried with a spear." They both enjoyed the picture.

"Having drugs to help learning is unnatural. That may be the reason."

"I'm not arguing. I'm trying to understand. There's not much we do here in the Didactron that is 'natural' from one viewpoint. The concept is one of living in unnatural times with unnatural demands. There's nothing natural about television, rapidly changing temperatures and colors, instant replay, and compressed speech. I fail to see how a pill differs from an excellent cassette.

"I say: take this cassette and it will improve your knowledge of x by 10 percent.

"I say: take this pill and it will improve your knowledge of x by 12 percent. Why won't you take my pill? Why won't you take my cassette and my pill?!"

"I really don't know, but I won't, and I'll vote against using it in our programs."

* * *

Fran had lectured to the Didactron faculty 10 days before her conversation with Don.

"Imagine a sloppy, heavy, helium-filled balloon in a room. It won't quite go to the ceiling; it just sits there in space. You've seen one or can imagine it. The balloon is a point existing in a space.The three-dimensions of this space are well known to us.

"Imagine a large ruby gem stone with many facets. Imagine becoming very small then stepping inside. The beauty of the place is as great as it is from the outside and you can move as if weightless. You move within the space skipping along the flats, tapping on the sides, and using your fingers to move your body away from the overhead slices from the gem which are the ceilings.

"Now imagine some inner voice telling you to move upward toward the right, now a little more left, now close into that corner. You have been positioned. there?Then there comes a question: How do you like it there?

"The ruby is shaken and you once again easily find your best place. A light is caught by one facet and it sent ricochetting within the volume and you adjust your position but only slightly, only briefly.

"The ruby is the potential physiochemical space of the student … and the teacher. From one surface all the way across the ruby to the surface on the other side is the temperature. You'll burn your brain at 106°F; 98.6° is best for most people and the body can become very cold before death occurs. There are many other variables or factors involved within the human body and especially the body in a learning condition. These variables or factors are 'dimensions.' There are many dimensions. Perhaps they can be counted but it is boring to do so and to argue whether there are two more or two less seems useless. We call the space n-dimensional. This condition of many dimensions is called 'hyper' and the space is bounded so it is a volume. Thus it is a hypervolume. The student exists in an n-dimensional chemical and physical hypervolume. Each student has a unique place in the volume. The odds are so close to zero that two will be alike (even identical twins) that it is meaningless to discuss it.

"What needs to be discussed is the meaningfulness of this knowledge to you, the men and women of the Didactron. I shall do that, but let us be in union on what we mean. I want you to think of the hypervolume. I want you to see Johnny at that corner of the ruby, Jane at this corner. That is their place. They have been put there by their genetics and their environment. Each od us has a similar place. We can move by diets, medicine, exercise, and self-adaptation or biofeedback,but even if moved, each of us -- a Jane or Johnny -- will occupy a point in the hypervolume.

"There are know differences, for example, in preference for salty taste among blacks and Caucasians. Young blacks prefer saltier test solutions than do whites. So what? you may readily ask, concentrating either on the cause or on the effect of your teaching. In the clinical mode of the Didactron, after we seem to understand the reasons for and principles behind the concept we can, and I think we must, move to application -- as fearlessly as any doctor says 'take these pills' - but then says 'call me tomorrow.' The reasons appear simply that the human species has evolved with a preference for sweetness, evidenced even in newborns. But there are individual and subpopulation differences. We may generalize individuals to a population of people but without our computer aids, classification causes loss of information about individuals. We can take the knowledge of each student and perceive his or her position among the variables. We do not have to group them. Take for example the taste-preference that I just mentioned. This should not cause us to group by race but to observe that some African-Americans prefer the very sweet. The differences are due to the other variables of the hypervolume, for example, needs for energy and requirements for sodium chloride. They may also include what the child -- even the baby -- learned about what to eat or not eat … which, as you remember from bad childhood experience with spinach, may in no way relate to optimum nutrition practice.

"You can imagine the genetic roots of taste preference …regional nutrition, food types available, and caloric needs. At least I can, and the bases seem plausible; a reasonable theory can be constructed.

"Now the excitement can begin. The answer to 'so what?' for the teacher is that once a month you see where your student is along the sweetness-saltiness taste continuum.A shift will be noted on the terminal screen and it may explain observed shifts in behavior and class progress. The computer will accommodate expected changes, for example, due to adolescent growth, and rate imbalances.

"There is a little tetrahedron once believed to include all tastes. The corners were labeled sweet, sour, salty, bitter."She projected it on the screen.

"Thus there are six edges, dimensions among these four corners, and an infinite number of positions within the space, positions that are called twangy, bland, and dozens of others.

" I still find it remarkable that taste theory is not well developed. With the billions of dollars that hang on 'good' or 'different' tastes, it is surprising to me that more is not know. It testifies that perhaps those of us in the Didactron that wail over the primitive state of knowledge about learning should take heart. Throwing money at a problem like taste will not necessarily solve it. Waiting may not. In the area of taste, we still do not know if body receptors read several substances and then mix them into some unit experience we might call "twangy," or does the mix of substances provide some one stimulus and the brain then respond to each unique stimulus? We do not know.

"One study shows taste responses evoked by electrical currents passing through the tongue. For a salt solution, a current is composed of inward sodium ion movement and outward chloride ion movement. Whether taste occurs or not is related to the composition and state of the saliva, salivary glands, supporting tissue, and finally the amygdala part of the brain. This is all very complicated but you can begin to see that there are thresholds (a salty taste only occurs above a certain concentration), buffers, and conditions which explain why tastes vary on different days, why people respond differently to the same substances, and on and on.

"Dethier said that "as soon as one realizes that the normal response to the chemical word is multi neuronal, one must add threshold, adaptation, then synergistic and inhibitory interactions. ""

"You persist; I see it in your eyes. You ask again: so what?

"High salt intake, particularly early in life, has been related to hypertension. We are discussing the learning systems of people, the nerve systems, the networks that store and process and operate on all of the stuff we throw at our kids. We know these are bathed in ionic solutions, that the entire system is electromagnetic and that somehow the substances consumed can maintain, bring to a new high level, or degrade the neuronal system. We must have a healthy neuronal system; we must be masters and manipulators of that system. "

Fran had realized she used the word neuronal several times and was a bit angry at this group from whom she expected on-the-spot questions. In lecture after lecture she had been asked afterwards why she used "neurona1" and not just 'nerve' or 'nervous.' She thought she could predict the question. The answer was fun, too much so to be lost on only one questioner…but perhaps that one would make a difference. Did all of the others know or were they so ignorant or mentally calloused to presentations that they no longer could feel the pain, the entrophy of a question?

"The brain is not a nerve," she would say. "It is, but it is much different…and so much more. It is a semi-solid, a gel, a flexible chemical storage tank. It hardly seems fair to call the spinal cord a nerve. Then there are solutions that are part of the vascular or blood system that operate as nerves. There are perplexing and subtle differences among hormones and these are called neurohumoral solutions. 'Neuronal' is the word-umbrella for all of these … including the nerves."

"The teacher must perceive herself or himself as a manipulator of the neuronal system!" was the way she would end most of her explanations.

"I think we need to at least have our eyes on that neuronal system," she continued. "We have one peephole through which to look now. There are others. By observing, we can formulate working hypotheses about the systems.

"At least you can stop blaming yourselves for failures in conventional teaching. It could be that the chemistry of the student was turned off. I say conventional teaching because I'm slowly becoming aware of the broader systems work you are doing here -- seeking to manage the entire student-teacher learning system.

"For the researchers among you, at least use sweetness as a variable to control your observations and correlations. 'There was so much variance we could draw no conclusions' is a sorry statement. For our students it will mean from here on we did not make enough observations of important variables to find out where each student was within the hypervolume.

"We now have over a dozen test substances that are genetically linked. We have not known what they mean, merely that some people think a substance like phenylthiourea is very bitter tasting while others think it tasteless or sweet. A simple battery of tests quickly given with students entering their response at a terminal could give a teacher new power to achieve educational objectives. The location of each student within the 10 to 15 dimensions of the taste hyperspace can be automatically graphed for the teacher. Students in large groups can then be clustered, but for small groups, say 10 or less, the specific location will be graphed. The pictures will ease the teacher's task and enable special attention to be given to students who are outliers - those who do not fall in the clusters.

"Why guess at causes for a student's tired appearance? There are many causes and they can significantly affect the learning likely to take place. They should affect the teaching strategy employed. But what if there is a condition you cannot recognize like Itiredl? What if there is some other phisiological state like tired that you cannot see. You cannot see bacteria without a microscope. You may not be able to see this alternate state of your student. What then? The teacher must not waste time, talent or facility: assistance is needed to prescribe precisely and specifically for each student each day. Once utterly infeasible, it is now possible.

"Did you know that three-fourths of all people have unequal sized feet?" Fran paused longer than usual."It's true. In right-handed females, the left foot is larger; in right-handed males, the right foot. In left-handed people, the reverse is true. Left-handed males -- big left foot. You can generalize from this. The differences are very likely. The sex steroids have a strong genetic and sex influenced or linked effect on foot symmetry as well as on handedness.

"By measuring foot size differences in our students, we have a check on handedness and thus a new security in conclusions based on that condition. But we have an alternative condition -- the inconsistency and thus a means for understanding student performance or non-performance.While foot size can provide a strong test for handedness, the significance is too important to leave it to a simple measure. Dominance by which side of the brain? is the question. It can be further clarified by whether left-handers write in an inverted or non-inverted pencil-holding position. This inverted position seems to be a form of compensation for an abnormal visual organization but it occurs in about half of all left-handers.

"There are many things we can learn about a student from observing things like handedness. Alone, they tell little, but in combination they may specify the position of a student in the hypervolume. They allow us to understand, to explain, to prescribe.

"The left-handed person, for example, is likely to have language disorders, especially difficulty in learning to read. This allows us to adjust class performance and average progress based on the proportion of left-handers. It suggests that more time and richer media and other options should be used with such learners. Left-handedness and language-related disabilities may result from one part of the brain gaining dominance.

"We know from research that the two sides of the brain, the hemispheres, control separate functions. The left is in charge of language, the right in charge of spatial abilities.'Left for language; right for rectangles' is my memory slogan. A fascinating aspect of this complicated architecture is that the left hemisphere controls the right hand; the right, the left.

"Not always, though. That is what makes the mastery of the student so exciting, a continuing challenge. About 95 percent of right-handed students are left-brain-hemisphere dominant for language; only 65 percent of left-handers show such brain control. The others seem either to have language controlled by the total brain or only by the right side. While research has brought this out, it is not unexpected. The human is very plastic. One observer commented that the effects of a study were 'smeared' over the two brain hemispheres. Smearing is well-known to all biologist, to almost all scientists. Nothing is very distinct; the boundary problem, how to separate things, is one of the most important pursuits.

"We cannot be sure of anything with our students, but we can play the odds. The computer systems we've developed can state the probability of a student's condition. As we observe more and bracket them in and continue research and revise our programs, we can be more sure about each student. We can get started along the correct educational course more quickly.

"These 'lefties' are in trouble with language largely under control by the right side, even to the extent of developing immune systems that begin attacking the body's tissues. The attacks produce inflammation of joints, the thyroid, and colon. It's not just stress, either, because it occurs in their parents.

"It starts with excessive testosterone, the main male sex hormone in the fetus. The excess is usually genetic but it may be caused by some environmental or toxic condition. The testes of the fetus secrete large amounts of testosterone. This affects the development of brain structures. Castration, obviously with a loss of the male hormone, can also cause change in the brain anatomy. Males and females secrete testosterone. It is a substance in a war with estrogen. Maleness or femaleness displays the winner. Testosterone slows the growth of the left hemisphere of the brain, thus the spatial abilities. Thus more males are left handed. The beauty is that the misshapen brain can develop special abilities, compensating perhaps, but skull space filling at least. An unusually large number of artists, musicians, and engineers are left-handed.

"Our hearing tests make general sense and, as a result, we can position students well within a group or provide hearing improvement aids. More importantly, we've learned that hearing deficits can induce paranoia. It goes something like this and intuitively seems reasonable: the partially-deaf may not hear people nearby. Asked what they are whispering about (perhaps me) the denial may be viewed as a lie, since it does not match well with observed evidence. Others, watching, will judge the behavior bizarre or thought pathology, and exclude them from their activities. This adds to the paranoia and becomes upsetting. Social relations deteriorate; there are no corrective behaviors; delusions of persecution increase. Experimental hearing loss subjects have exhibited the symptoms of far too many students: irritated, agitated, hostile, and unfriendly. They also used value-loaded language (right-wrong, good-bad). It now makes sense to learn how our students hear. This one idea, itself, has three dimensions, namely loudness, pitch, and timbre. These three, alone, create a nearly unique condition, a sound-space for a student. There is likely to be a I"goodl" space or condition, then various grades of poor to deaf. But I am not so sure that there is a threshold. Having expericed loss of high-pitch hearing, and having lost awareness of many birds in the fields near here, I am concerned about losses of other things in the environment. I'm delighted when colleagues describe subtle points on a music tape, some of which I cannot perceive.Their's is a richer perceptual environment than mine…at least as they hear. Our task is to perceive the limits of the sensory environment of our students, to increase them where possible, and then to enhance them wherever the student is located.

"I've devised from the available research by Pihl and Parkes in 1977 a simple hair analysis for a cadmium, cobalt, manganese, chromium, and lithium.These place our students over a surface inside thehypervolume. The poor creatures' positions are very much a function of what is in their bodies as expressed by what is in their hair. This, unfortunately, expresses the conditionals, the little jail in which they live due to the substances they have eaten or breathed. I'm convinced that until you (1) prevent or (2) modify these conditions, there will be little changed behavior occurring. You can rant and rave and work until your teaching juices boil over, and it will do no good until these substances are purged pharmacologically and the system stabilized. It may be that permanent damage has been done to some students, but I suspect not. The student must be able to learn and being in an optimal physiological state is in part a definition of being "able."

"If damage is permanent, then we must stop teaching at the limit for after that we waste time and money, and we can cause further psychological damage by our pressures to achieve beyond these limits.

"In some cases our students' teeth are so decadent or poorly tended that they cannot take in food very well or prepare it for full digestion. They thus deprive themselves of the nutrients of the food they consume for mental work and also deprive themselves of the costs of a part of their food bill.

"It is now inappropriate to speak of students being unique.It is now appropriate to act as if they are. No more words; the time and technology are right for action.Words only from here on are a denial that uniqueness is good, and useful, and worth perservering, and worth cultivating. More importantly, from the viewpoint of improving teaching effectiveness, because each is unique, then to use our teaching approach or method always means only one learner may be influenced well. Oh, the others will be influenced, but that is not the issue. As elsewhere in the Didactron, the quest is for desired behavior change in all students for the lowest cost. We must know precisely where each student is within his hypervolume, where he or she is to be moved, and spend the time and techniques to do it,but not one second or one penny more than possible due to existing constraints … or necessary. We have no surplus of time or money.

"Each student is different and has different needs, and I'm asking you to take two giant steps in the educational game. Those steps are to acknowledge actively that they are different and, second, that they are different each day. By 'acknowledge' I mean 'do something different.' No more talk; no more acquiescence…only action. The action includes conducting a regular physiological and psychological workup to assess the status of each pupil and secondly, to use didactic drugs before intensive teaching sessions.

"We now have for our use throughout the Didactron the laboratory support that gives within 20 minutes a complete personal and class analysis based on an analysis of urine, saliva, weight, menstral status, an electronic physical coordination test, several taste tests, and reported recent sleep, and reported uses of medicines, especially antihistamines. These are combined with baseline personal data and quarterly analyses of blood and hair. What this does is to position a pupil in our n-dimensional space. It locates them as a point in the hypervolume. Seeing where the students are and how they move themselves and how you move them around in the space to the desireable regions -- this is the excitement of the workup on each student.

"Too much information? As compared to what? The Didactron's W is a comprehensive index that we have developed that has as its base of 1000 the status of a person in an optimum learning status. There are lots of ways to achieve it. A personal insult can move a person in the conceptual hypervolume in the same direction as can a disease. People who work with indices like W which are composed of many factors, speak of 'equifinality.' It is a system that can produce the same answer, like 3 times 3 is 9 or 4 plus 5 is 9. The answer is the same. There are lots of ways a student can achieve a particular state or position.

"We now make each pupil's status available to you on the terminal at the teaching center. There's plenty to learn about how to use and interpret the factors. W may be used; the separate components will be of greater use, but sometimes only W will be relevant to the situation.

"Interlocked with the W concept is that of the didactic drugs. I'll distribute details later, but I want to introduce the procedures so that you can think through the issues and so we can have a fruitful seminar next week.

"In our business we work with the many-parted neuronal system. It's a big chemical factory - influenced by pH, temperature, and dozens of factors. I can put a student under cold stress, for example, by making him study outdoors in winter, and influence his learning, probably nearly destroying it. The chemistry of the body's factory has been influenced negatively by me. If he is sleepy, cold stress may keep him awake so learning may occur. We regulate the status of the body to achieve our teaching objectives. We already regulate the student's body chemistry, both by changing the environmental factors and psychological factors by stresses within the groups where we place him.

"We may, similarly, work with a medical doctor to regulate the student's body chemistry. There are several drugs now well known to enhance learning.

"The vitamin, biotin, is a conspicuous example. It is needed and readily administered. A high protein diet followed by fasting just prior to a large teaching effort can enhance performance.

"Small quantities of the stimulants picrotoxin, strychnine, and metranol improve actions following teaching-learning events.

"Not taking medicines, like puromycin which can inhibit protein formation, is as important as taking other substances.

"Naloxone, an antagonist to the opiates, improves retention of materials learned and norepinephrine and physostigmine can enhance long-term memory.

"There is resentment over the use of drugs in education. But, I for one, just to counter, resent the massive expenditures in educational facilities -- floor space as well as equipment -- and the ineffectual use of that investment. In fairly active schools, it is used only 14 percent of the time. Any taxicab owner or bull dozer mortgage holder would go broke if they only worked their machines that long! The meter is always running on space or equipment and it is accompanined by depreciation. Here in the Didaction we operate around the clock; usage is 84 percent compared to the 14 of other places. We have many 'shifts'. We use a benzodiazepine, like triazdam, to alter the 24-hour cycle when we change shifts. This cuts insomnia and later drowsiness for teachers and students and keeps the time loss during these rotation periods to a minimum. Drug costs are minimal compared to time and space-use losses. They make the educational shift tolerable.

"In the western U.S. I've seen dams and highways being built at night, the work area illuminated by spotlights. I've never seen that in the East. There's a kind of Eastern-U.S. mentality grasping education. Strangely, it is the area where the people seem very business-oriented and shout for reduced school costs" She paused. "But then ,no one ever decreed a consistency rule."

She paused, thinking, "I must be more positive. Negative is cute, but it will not change behavior. She was not sure how many in the group were tolerant of using pharmaceuticals in teaching, so to continue this argumentative line, of building information and of excising poor images may be unproductive. She knew she could overlay or obscure the poor data with new facts and figures. The true concepts, those that eventually became consistent with everything else within the chemistry of the brain, would survive. Excise or overlay were the strategies she tended to use. Both produced the same results. Excision was faster and more sure, but only on a one-to-one basis. She knew students would vibrate when what they knew was in conflict with what they just learned. Dissonance it was called.Unless they could relieve this dissonance, this energy-dispersing condition, most students would return to the "known," the pre-teaching condition. Arguments swept clear the cluttered, trinagulated brain storehouse. The new was then welcome. Without a cleanout job, skillfully done, then only new material and time for the internal action, the "work it out" condition would have the same results.

She proceeded, trying to be more positive."Don't you agree that students can be put in a cool, green room and that they will respond differently to a taped lecture than those same students put in a warm, red room?"

"Most teachers do. Would you agree that the teacher should be able to chose the color and temperature he wants to use? Most teachers do. You already chose between slides, overheads, models, and other media as the best aids for teaching. It seems consistent to me for a goal-oriented group of teachers to use almost any means (that are safe) in order to teach -- to move those guys, to cause something to happen for as few coins as possible. Why not drugs? "

There were a few hands raised and a few comments, but she was asking questions to stimulate some brains, not to tri gger some dog-slobber response as in ringing a bell at meal time. These adults raised their arms like a leg-reflex when hit on the knee.

This was not the time for discussion -- for serious manipulation of images and matching them with language. This was a time for taking in new unpublished information. That was the action for which a lecture was most suitable. She courteously answered a few, calmed the erect, and got back to the work.

"This brain of your students' is very complex." She displayed a model.

"There are differences in size but these can be overcome. The processes change with age, but these can be altered and overcome. There are structural differences between male and female brains, but these too can be altered or overcome. There are two sides to the brain. These are the hemispheres," she said pointing and removing a part of the model.

"These differ as we have already discussed. There is even a part of the brain that works when everything is put to sleep, as when on the operating table. Epinephrine, a hormone usually associated with stress, does that. I suspect it goes on all of the time. We're probably processing at several different levels.

"When a student is embarassed in class, that act, a collection of words or whatever it is, is a stimulus transmitted to the brain. The brain triggers the face flush and other signs of embarassment.The way the signal gets to the brain is in body fluids, namely blood. The stuff that carries the message "be embarassed" include serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, histamine, and glycine. Where did these come from? Food. These are all nutrition related. How fast the brain enzymes create these transmitters is limited by the raw materials available from food.

Every person who walks into your class, in addition to the above listed differences, has a unique brain, each a function of the recent diet of the body -- especially the proteins, carbohydrates, and the levels of calcium, sodium, potassium, and phosphorous.

"We are already well aware that low calcium intake, as in the millions of children on low milk intake, along with increase salt or sodium intake, can result in hypertension. Calcium consumption is now drastically low among the blacks and elderly and this can influence the systems we've just discussed as well as the operational environment of the nerves themselves.

"Chel and Wurtman in 1981 reported that the proprtion of protein and carbohydrates in each meal can affect the amount of tryptophan and tyrosine taken up into the brain. Serotin is made from tryptophan. Dopamine and norepinephrine, the mood and motion substances, are made from tyrosine. Tyrosine will increase after a person eats a big steak. The amount of lecithin or choline in the diet can affect the synthesis of neuronal acetylcholine.The effect is produced by the protein-to-carbohydrate ratio -- not the weight, or fat in the steak. Large doses of a protein, like tryptophan, will cause losses in the other brain amino acids. Effects on the brain occur after one meal. Since mother's milk varies in quality with their diets, different babies may very likely get quite different amounts of trypophan.

"Tyrosine in the diet will increase the epinephrine and that I just told you is controlling an entirely different level of thinking.

"One of these days, DMSO or dimethyl sulfoxide, will be used in our educational work both to modify activity of the spinal area, and to open and close the blood-brain barrier when we need to allow introduction of substances important in memory like dopamine glutamate. Ganglioside, a glycolipid molecule, may one day be used to build the structures in the brain to help create superior optical abilities. We already have a means to get these large proteins past the barrier. It is called the redox system. I suggest we shall some day infuse a brain with the stimulus-structured, large neural proteins of near-death people.

"Humans are cyclic. The female menstral cycle is about monthly, not always regular but consistently 28 days worldwide. Predictable is the word, highly-probable is the phrase. There are no surprises with a little irregularity; the cycle is not denied just because of some small change, for whatever reason, in the regularity. The menstral cycle is one type of cycle. Another, called ultradian, is much shorter: 96 minutes. It occurs 15 times per day in humans. It is seen in oral behavior, the impact of certain spiral visuals in heart rate, vigilance, and fantasy content of dreams. It is seen every night in rapid-eye movement patterns in sleeping people.

"This cycle is caused by a flip-flop in brain work. The left hemisphere works for 96 minutes, then the right takes over. The change is gradual. One half of your head shifts to other activities while the other works at specific tasks of structuring proteins or re-arranging electrical charges to reduce the noise, or take in stimuli. The brain does not rest; it engages in diverse functions. The two-dimensional, up and down graph usually drawn by psychologists is really a three dimensional helix, left and right action depicted over time. The brain is doing is lots of things all at the same time. We can see it controlling heart rate up and down, up and down, over 96 minutes but if we looked, during the down part of the curve, it would be up on some other dimension like fantasizing.

"Fantasizing. Ah, note the connection. Where is fantisizing going on in most people? The left hemisphere. What people are most dominated by the left hemisphere? Right handed? Now we have named a sub group that can be analyzed, ultradian peaks analyzed, and creative efforts focused by teachers. Knowledge of the peaks gives us control! Here's a poor analogy, but real. If you give me a car and never tell me it has more than first gear, it will perform. Knowledge of the other gears and capabilities of that car system allows me to operate it to its potential. That is the story; we must gain control; we must teach in high gear. It is wasteful of our time and talent not to use fully what we know; it is wasteful of your cohort of students if you do not."

The Heed system showed responses from the group suggesting they had had enough for the day. The scheduled time was not up but that was an outer limit, not a quantity to be filled. She dismissed the group and announced another meeting.

In another session, Fran continued to explain, "With a simple fecal analysis from each student, taken perhaps every 6 months, we can determine the presence of parasites. Parasites in test animals change their explorations, activities, learning, and coordination in movement. The migrating larvae of these worms penetrate the nervous system. Anexciting finding was the lead in the body such as gotten from paint and gasoline, can reduce the affects of the parasites. This makes interpretation difficult but it begins to explain the variability in the results and why conclusions about affects of parasites on children are so hard to make. What parasites are in U.S. children? Mother of Biology! Dog parasites, the second stage larvae of which migrate around the bodies of our children…and perhaps us. Pinworms, tape worms, and dozens of others in different areas of the U.S. invade our children. We bear tissue scars of their tracks as adults. Not only do these influence our nutritional status, clearly related to learning, but they migrate to the brain. The corpus callosum portion of the nervous system is often involved.These physically modify the brain," she said pointing to the model and showing slides of a series of pictures of microscope slides of the migrants and their cysts. I

"These can-be prevented by hygiene, public health measures, and then with monitoring given medical treatment. They are very much a part of the educational system, especially for those without ample supplies of hot water and health training. They impair learning as much as aircraft noise over a schoolhouse."

"Just because we see a brain, we wrongly simplify there is one process. We desire to, we need to simplify, but alas there can be more. The parallels or homologies we learned in elementary biology. For example, we learned to expect that human arms are like bird wings. Such homologies are not available in the brain. The chemistry of the human brain, of mammals, is not like that of reptiles. It is now clear from the work of Lynch and Baudry at Irvine, California, that we've used the wrong words. Memory is several things; learning is several things. It involves different chemistry and different places where it goes on. Simple phrases like I"short term memoryl" have lead us down wrong pathways and to recognize this limitation begins to help us understand why we get apparently variable, unexpected, and inconsistent results from our experiments.

"We've been very precise in some ways, gross in others. The effects on our understanding of teaching and learning can be compared to biologists who might have called all four-legged, warm-blooded creatures 'mammals', then gone on to study their livers. 'Mammals' is too big a name. There is a need to separate the creatures into families, genera, species, and even subspecies. An Arctic fox is very, very different from a kit fox of the desert. But if the biologists had lumped, they would still be discussing elephants and mice in the same breath. There are wonderful similarities, but for understanding the natural world students have split where splitting seemed appropriate and described the differences and tried to account for them. We've assumed, unknowing, that there is one thing…learning…and have hardly gone beyond the assumption.

"Some have gotten stuck on the word itself. There have been dozens of definitions proposed. This diversity is symptomatic of the difficulty.The problem is not in the word or its definition, but in the enormously large and complex topic over which it must be an umbrella…without any part getting wet in a shower.

"'Behavior' is, likewise, too general.

"A new word is needed because of all of the noise and confusion in a century of literature and studies. The word is neurota, following a biology model and is the general name of all of the relevant, nameable, observable action of biological things. Plants have observable acts such as leaf movement in relation to sun angle and these can be studied and altered.These are a part of the neurota and easily grouped as botanical and faunal.

"We can follow the biological taxonomy a short ways but only in the sense of gaining organization and clarity and finding levels for communication. Separating long-term and short-term memory was a move in this direction. We can only see the needs for and possibility of a comprehensive classification of the neurota now because of the vast work of the scientific community -- its successes and failures.

"That person has depression," is the diagnosis. "How can you tell?" is a thoughtful response.

"By the way he acts" is the answer."

"What do you mean 'acts'?" is the next question."Well, you know…"

"But I don't."

"Now the 'symptoms' can be listed, the actions: movement per hour, positioning of the facial muscles; time with erect posture; sleep length and activity patterns, and more.

"Each can be given a weight or probability of occurrence in a set of activities. One such set is called 'depression.' Much sleep activity (e.g., thrashing about) can be caused by many things but not in combination with 10 other usually-associated acts. There are equifinal outcomes, lots of ways to get to the same result. By analogy, there are many combinations of soil, water, and fertilizer that will produce 100 bushels of corn per acre. There are as many ways to produce a sure case of 'depression.' Each situation is probably unique but the results are of interest…and concern.

"We need to define actions -- like eye movements, blinks, scratching (vertical or horizontal), striking with forelimb, kicking, licking, swallowing, back-to-wall standing, rocking forward, and hundreds more. These should be described like genera of animals and then the differences as in scratching clearly stated. Scratching with forelimb or hand? with another part of body? against another object? flat or sharp object? alternating vertical and horizontal? circular? All of these have genetic roots, are caused and may have multiple causes, but they can be discovered.

"In some cases, they will be never be worked out. Who cares? or so what? are very important questions.The basic researcher will claim that these are not good questions.That perhaps some day, any work toward the answers may become useful. I suggest the need to have a modifier, namely 'relevant', in the definition of the neurota. Scratching my nose is a relevant act. I don't describe every muscle movement, bending of the elbow, rate of hand movement to the nose, or manipulating the fingers. The act is "nose scratching." It is relevant. Now we can potentially determine (1) the energy required, (2) the start, (3) the time of starting from the time of the stimulus, (4) the duration, (5) when it stopped, and (6) where it took place. It is an action describable in energy units in time and space. Now we can relate everything in the world to it -- stimulus, time since last stimulus, nature of stimulus, social setting, brain waves, diet, etc., etc. There will be many things that produce approximately the same nose scratching. But that act is relevant. After naming and classifying, we can pursue the cost-effective strategies that increase, decrease, or stabilize each act -- whether it be flashing ladies on the street, bed wetting, head banging, stammering, recalling poems, writing analogs, or assigning the proper name to pickled frogs in the museum."

"How well do these things act together, is a concept of efficiency. It has been called 'intelligence.' You can believe its assessment is in disarray if the basics are in disarray. One person even wrote that 'intelligence is what intelligence tests measure'. In the Didactron we hardly ever use the word intelligence for it is meaningless. It is usually some index to efficiency -- of gaining ability to act in new ways, the speed of storage, retrieval, matching, duplicating, and in many cases pulling analogies from their stores, then matching and judging the closeness of fit (lack of dissonance). 'Thinking' is the garbage-heap word that includes all of those processes. Such acts occur in the brain and elsewhere -- the entire neurohumoral system.

"Each type of action has its own separate efficiency or economy.

"Imagine two people who have never seen anyone put-the-shot at a track and field sports meet. The champion says to the lads, 'try very hard and do it exactly like this. Concentrate and watch everything that I do. Do exactly as I do.' One steps up and performs very well, the other merely throws it, probably straining his arm. One learned, the other didn't? One was intelligent, the other not? The words are almost meaningless in this situation but clearly shot putting is not an innate action, genetically endowed. It can be learned, improvements in distance made. Some people have 'natural ability,' they are 'born athletes', we say.We are commenting on their ability to receive stimuli match it with sequential, rapid body movements, and duplicate physically a set of three-dimensional visual stimuli with their bodies. Mimes and actors have similar talents or intelligence. Some achieve good representations, they model what they see readily. Some are slower. Some,the actors, reproduce emotions quickly or efficiently. Others reproduce feats of strength or coordinated action efficiently. Some people are poor athletes but win over the good ones because they improve their capabilities. They learn. Similarly in all other fields. Each person has a wide variety of neuronal equipment and chemistry. Some is genetic. After this, here in the Didactron, we must concern ourselves with the final relevant acts. Some will 'get it' quickly; others slowly. Almost everyone will do it in a different way. 'It' means achieve ability to act in a pre-stated, desireable way. We must work at achieving these actions. The concentration needs to be on the methods to achive the desired end result. Efficiency is our problem for it is related to our costs. We want to reduce them. Effi ci ency is the student's problem also, for he or she needs to reduce the amounts of money paid to us, and the time spent, the costs to them. Education is thus not a teaching problem or a learning problem but a joint cost-minimizing problem. It is one of how to assign correctly tentative competency or tentative desired status for the lowest costs to the student and to folks within the Didactron.

"The costs are incurred at (1) receiving a stimulus (2) moving it to the correct place or places in the body, (3) using it, (4) deciding whether to store it or not, (5) storing it, (6) maintaining it in storage, (7) retrieving it ('Hey Joe, send down a blueprint of page A-16'), (8) matching or comparing with a condition or a norm, and (9) sending signals, in sequence, to the observable body parts for action.

"Careful. 'I am thinking' is not an action…unless it is being observed on devices that measure brain activity. 'Observable actions' needs to be understood. It must not be restricted to the normal senses. We can use appropriate technology. We must, however be sure we lable the relevant actions we perceive very carefully and precisely. The effect is the action in which we are interested. It is very easy to mix cause and effect when you start using sophisticated techniques.

"Nowhere in biology, except for humans, is there any evidence that animals can or do think about the future. Squirrels that put nuts in a tree hole survive better than those who do not.That they are saving for a hard winter ahead is impossible to prove. In fact, they store about equally each year.

"Humans can ask the simulation or modeling question 'what if I do this, wht will result..?" They can do it in solving an immediate problem like untying a shoe or a distant problem like "what if we have a war?" These are more or less complex. Innate or inherited actions are those which work most of the time, have survival value, and cost too much energy to solve every time the problem comes up. Just imagine how difficult it would be to decide whether to sneeze. The handling of complex, new, and maybe-good, maybe bad situations are those that we usually discuss in terms of thinking and complex mental work.

"You've seen a test question that asks for a best answer. It can stimulate in one person images of 100 alternative conditions. He or she sorts and compares and matches the probable condition described in the question with all of the possible end conditions and then selects an answer. That person may only answer half of the questions on a test because they are 'so slow' and get a score of 50. Another person, taking the same test, may generate two or three options per question, pick one per question, and get a score of 50. Which is more intelligent? You cannot tell from the measuring device. You cannot tell. The question is leading -- like 'when did you stop masturbating?' The actions need to be separated and specified and measured and progress measured.

"Actions are one thing, desired actions another. This is where the notion of ethics and morality arise. An act is more or less good depending, in the final analysis on survival and reproduction. This is tied tightly to the costs of living, especially as measured in energy. The goodness or desireability or value of an action is based on how risky it is, when and where it occurs, how much is needed or in demand, and of course the intensity of feeling of the observer or observers. 'Stabbing in the chest' with a knife is an action usually associated with intense feeling or value judgement, and is good or bad depending on whether the person stabbing is friend or enemy -- whether the act is life saving or life threatening.

"Belching is an action.Its control can be learned. Its goodness is very much social and varies from whether it is purposeful in a teenage party contest or inadvertant at a formal dinner.

"ls the degree of control within the domain of intelligence? Perhaps. Is the ability to match up properly when it is allowable to belch publically a matter of intelligence? Perhaps.

"The situation is now that we have need for standards of goodness, or models of the desired best condition. These can be physical or human models, guidelines, policies, and laws. We have a definition of "the good." We may act in several ways. We select and then engage in the actions that seems most consistent with that condition of 'the good' or desired end state.

"It is very easy to understand the difficulty of a person with a fuzzy notion of what to do (as inconsistent parents will produce in a child) having to decide among many alternatives, all outcomes. If great risk (like being spanked) is associated with failing, a child will develop the pathologies observed in test animals. These may be cleverly masked, for the penalties of exhibiting these actions may be prohibitive.

"In our work together we need to give the clearest possible pictures or models of the desired end result. Then we must efficiently help students get there, efficiently. Then we must help them develop procedures for maintaining these gains.

"You've heard of gathering treasures where 'neither moth nor rust doth corrupt'? Well, even in the brain, 'rust doth corrupt' and the images and bits of information stored there can be lost due to biochemical change, improper 'filing', and electro-magnetic noise.We need to help our students develop maintenance techniques.

"Now it seems appropriate, and I do hope I have the proper sequence in this material, to layout for you what happens in this complex receiving, processing, and storage system. The gradation that exists between so-called short-term and long-term memory is more important than knowing that both exist. Storage of stimuli occurs in two places and they are connected. As a computer, there is a temporary active file, then a larger, slower, inactive file that can be called up as needed. The active file can be dumped to the less-active file.

"The two systems run on different ki nds of neuronal 'gas,' the short stuff runs on glucose, the long-term runs on ketones. More of that in just a minute.

"In the human, in parts of the brain (but not all of it), very low levels of calcium from the spine activate a substance called calpain. This is an enzyme, a building and tearing down substance. It exposes and increases some snake-tongue-like receptors on the nerve synapse. The synapse is where the nerve action takes place -- the electricity. The nerve fiber or cell is bathed in small amounts of potassium which excite or enhance it further, before or after it receives a stimulus. It is recognized in 'getting ready' to take a hypodermic shot. The receptors on the synapse gather up and bind a substance called glutamic acid. The final product in glutamate. This large protein is the neurotransmitter. It is within this chemical structure, the thousands of triangulated electro-magnetic tetrahedrons, where stimulus is stored. The storage is electro-magnetic or electro-chemical as some prefer to call it. The vast triangulation, the short distances, and the speed of light allow the awesome speeds with which some people recall or can 'think'. There are proteins, some are enzymes or substances which may break down these large molecules. The brain cortex is where the so-called short-term memory largely occurs.

"It is here."She pointed. The realistic model and a projected diagram with labels provided clear images for the class to store in their brains or to compare with what they knew from earlier education.

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Last revision November, 2007.