Notes

1 My (rather literal) translation from the Russian original.

1. The End of Education Revisited

1 See Arendt, “The Crisis in Education.”

2 My excessive use of quotation marks reflects my inability to take at face value many common terms.

3 Postman and Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

4 Postman, Teaching as a Conserving Activity.

5 Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

6 Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School.

7 My excessive use of passive voice reflects a less egocentric mode of thinking and expression which is common to Slavic and many other languages.

8 See, for example, Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities; Delbanco, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be; Small, The Value of the Humanities.

9 For an extreme example, see Rhee, Radical: Fighting to Put Students First.

10 See Posner and Rothbart, Educating the Human Brain; Wolfe, Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice; Sousa et al., Mind, Brain, and Education: Neuroscience Implications for the Classroom.

11 See Lehrer, “The Truth Wears Off.” Unfortunately, Lehrer was disgraced when a vigilant journalist revealed that he had invented Bob Dylan quotes for his latest book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. He was also blamed for recycling some of his writing, sloppy research, and misrepresenting findings in neuroscience and medical research (see Kachka, “Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist. Neither Was Jonah Lehrer.”). As a result, publishers pulled Imagine and a previous book from bookstores. Though Lehrer’s lapses of judgment and integrity are inexcusable, I still believe some of his insights into the broader implications of neuroscientific research (and on the limitations of the scientific method in general) can be illuminating.

12 See Tallis, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinists and the Misrepresentation of Humanity.

13 See “The Rich, the Poor and Bulgaria.”

14 Quoted in McDonald, “Coming to America.”

15 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, ch. xv, “Unlimited Power of the Majority in the United States, and Its Consequences.”

16 See Baudrillard, America; Eagleton, Across the Pond: An Englishman’s View of America.

17 Except for the frequent passive constructions which I cannot quite resist. The same applies to the “buts” and “ands” at the start of many sentences, and some other linguistic oddities. Though I understand these are considered stylistically substandard in English, they partly reflect my own more convoluted thinking process. They are also quite typical of the Slavic languages I am familiar with—which are generally less egocentric and enmeshed with a more fatalistic worldview.

18 A more apt comparison here would be with Evgeny Morozov, the fierce critic of IT evangelism and algorithmic solutions to complex social problems (see To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism). He was a student of mine at the American University in Bulgaria, but I can claim no credit for his evolution as an intellectual and a skeptic regarding the alleged liberating potential of information technology. We had not been in touch since he graduated in 2005. When we met again in the spring of 2012, he struck me as having stronger faith in the empirical verification of even the broadest theories and in evidence-based policy solutions.

19 See Sussman, “Mental Illness and Creativity: A Neurological View of the ‘Tortured Artist.’” When I read this article a few years ago, it immediately struck me that the fine-tuned integration of emotional and logical processing in my own brain may have been knocked off balance by a few mild concussions I suffered as a child. The prefrontal cortex, which plays a vital role in orchestrating the potential cacophony of neural signaling in the brain (see Goldberg, The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind; The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a Complex World) and the neural fibers which connect it to other brain areas, are particularly vulnerable to even mild traumatic shocks. And even minor disruptions in the way the prefrontal cortex coordinates the brain’s neural ensemble can produce marked changes in personality, emotional attunement, and outlook. These problems have recently been brought into the public spotlight by experts and journalists discussing the dangers of concussions in American football, European football or soccer, boxing, extreme sports, etc. (particularly for children and teenagers).

20 I owe a particularly large debt to the numerous neuroscientists who have had the ingenuity and tenacity to design and see through thousands of clever experiments with lab animals and human subjects. I could have never conducted such research myself, even if I had the training—particularly experiments involving any surgery on living organisms. Though such experiments have sometimes produced truly insightful results, it is clearly not for the faint at heart.

21 Westen, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation; Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

22 This is how Sven Birkerts, one of my contemporary cultural heroes, describes “the central paradox facing the writer who would still try to address the present-day world in significant terms”: “the more faithful you are to your truth, the more deeply you see into the dynamics of what is taking place on all sides, the less of a chance there is that your version of things will get published, or, if published, bought and read” (The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, 207). Though Birkerts makes this observation with reference to a few modern writers, it could be applied to gloomy non-fiction, too (though his books—and other potentially disturbing prophesies—have been published by major imprints and have been much acclaimed). Applying the same maxim to my own musings borders on grotesque self-flattery—still I can hardly resist it.

23 There are easy ways to determine with sufficient precision if your own mental wavelength is on a different band from mine, if this is not already obvious. If Nicholas Carr’s provocative question “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or Susan Greenfield’s warnings about the perils of a “screen-based lifestyle” (Mind Change: How Digital Technologies Are Leaving Their Mark on Our Brains, 19) do not resonate with some of your concerns, probably nothing I say further will. I will try to explain later where this divergence of sensibilities and existential anxiety—or lack thereof—may come from.

24 A few of these boxes are based on entries in a blog I have maintained over the last couple of years (sardamov.blogspot.com).

2. College Teaching and Its Discontents

1 Until I graduated in 1998, the department I loved so much bore an old-fashioned name—Department of Government and International Studies. That name was quite appropriate since it reflected the more traditionalist approach to scholarship I found there. Later, a team of external evaluators recommended a more conventional name—Department of Political Science. The department took this advice, and has since moved on to hire more faculty with an empiricist bent as it has tried to compete against research powerhouses and rise up in academic rankings.

2 See Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy”; “Was Democracy Just a Moment?”

3 See Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.

4 Agha and Malley, “The Last Negotiation: How to End the Middle East Peace Process.”

5 In recent two-hour exams, a few graduating student have written three-four-page essays (A4 format) comprised of one such “paragraph.”

6 Dalrymple, “The Case for Cannibalism.”

7 In January 2012, as we were discussing an assigned reading on Pakistan’s tribal areas in my “Conflict and Conflict Resolution” class, I asked students if they knew what form of government the country had. No one had a clue, and several guessed it was some kind of dictatorship. At that point, no one had read or heard of “drones” either.

8 This overconfidence could reflect the now famous Kruger-Dunning effect—a cognitive bias which makes it difficult for incompetent individuals to recognize their own lack of knowledge or ability (see “Why People Have So Much Trouble Recognizing Their Own Incompetence”). Such a tendency among Bulgarian students is a bit surprising since Bulgarians tend to habitually underestimate their own abilities, achievements, and social status (see Sgourev, “Lake Wobegon Upside Down: The Paradox of Status-Devaluation”).

9 See Edmundson, “The Uses of Liberal Education: 1. As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students.”

10 English professor Ranjan Adiga offers a particularly unsettling example of what he sees as an “empathy vacuum” in American college classrooms. The morning after a destructive earthquake struck Nepal, his native country, he was disheartened by the reaction—or lack thereof—among his students at a liberal arts college in Salt Lake City. They had not followed the news, and showed little interest or sympathy when he mentioned the terrible disaster (see Adiga, “Even an Earthquake Can’t Stir Student Empathy”).

3. Neuroscience Rides to the Rescue

1 Brain Story was the title of a popular documentary series that aired on BBC in 2000. It was narrated by renowned, if sometimes controversial, British neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield.

2 See Herbert, “Sophistry or Sensitive Science?” Herbert later presented her ideas more comprehensively in a book she cowrote with Karen Weintraub, The Autism Revolution: Whole-Body Strategies for Making Life All It Can Be.

3 See Jill Neimark’s interview with immunologist and environmental health expert Claudia Miller, “Is The World Making You Sick?”; Bennett et al., “Project TENDR: Targeting Environmental Neuro-Developmental Risks. The TENDR Consensus Statement.”

4 See Ahlbom and Feychting, “Electromagnetic Radiation: Environmental Pollution and Health.”

5 Pearce, Evolution’s End: Claiming the Potential of Our Experience.

6 Zull, The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning.

7 Shenk, Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut. The growing frequency of episodes similar to the ones I described above made Shenk’s book resonate forcefully.

8 The term “information overload” was coined by futurologist Alvin Toffler in the early 1970s. See Toffler, Future Shock.

9 Sardamov, “Teaching and Learning in the Age of Audiovisual Pollution.”

10 American University in Bulgaria, “Fulfilling the Promise: A Strategic Plan for the American University in Bulgaria, 2010–2015.”

11 See Brown, Roediger III, and McDaniel, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.

4. The Limits of “Neuroeducation”

1 This is a graduation exam mandated under Bulgarian law, a less daunting version of similar exams in the Soviet and particularly the German education systems. It is taken by Bulgarian students and many others in whose native countries a Bulgarian diploma is more easily recognized by the education authorities than an American one (former Soviet republics adhere to the agreement for the mutual recognition of academic degrees Bulgaria once signed with the Soviet Union).

2 Freeland, “The Rise of the New Global Elite.”

3 Bremmer and Roubini, “A G-Zero World: The New Economic Club Will Produce Conflict, Not Cooperation.”

4 My term.

5 This confusion has persisted as I have subsequently asked students to discuss the same question and produce a written response in small groups in class.

6 See Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).

7 Cf. Edmundson, “Uses of Liberal Education.”

8 Following the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the European Union in 2007, more Bulgarian students are choosing to study at West European universities, and AUBG has lost all attraction for Romanian students. Higher numbers of young people from other Southeast European countries are also looking West as many newly-hatched English-language programs (which often charge zero or nominal tuition) are clamoring to attract qualified applicants. As a result, AUBG has needed to become a bit less selective.

9 Lehrer, “The Truth Wears Off.”

10 Edmundson, “Uses of Liberal Education.”

11 Bauerlein, Dumbest Generation. I am wondering how many of the American students in Bauerlein’s English classes would immediately recognize the historical associations in his title, and in the subtitle which includes the phrase “Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30.” In an upper-level class on “Culture and Power” I taught in the spring of 2014, no one out of 26 students had come across the phrase Bauerlein mocks—though one guessed right when I hinted that it was a famous slogan from the 1960s youth rebellion.

12 See Shenkman, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter.

5. The End of Authority

1 It is quite common to see groups of students smoking fairly close to the main entrances of high schools, and alcohol consumption sometimes takes place after classes just a bit farther away. In June 2011, we took Gali to visit one of the most prestigious high schools in Sofia which we were considering for her. The grounds just outside the school’s fence were strewn with cigarette buts, empty cigarette packs, and beer bottles.

2 See “PISA: Bulgarian Students Come Last in Europe”; Resmovits, “And the World’s Worst Problem Solvers Are…”

3 See Thompson, Moral Panics.

4 See Lazzeri, “Dad’s Not Alfie.”

5 See, for example, Barrett, “Anti-Social Behavior Growing, Says Official Survey”; Seligson, “Cutting: The Self-Injury Puzzle”; Barrionuevo, “In Tangle of Young Lips, a Sex Rebellion in Chile”; Sternbergh, “Up with Grups.”

6 Rosen, “The Overpraised American.”

7 Veno and van den Eynde, “Moral Panic Neutralization Project: A Media-Based Intervention.”

8 Barron and Lacombe, “Moral Panic and the Nasty Girl.”

9 Ibid., 64.

10 Ibid., 65.

11 See Welch, “Heroin Epidemic? Not So Fast, Says Carl Hart”; “Drug Legislation: On Bongs and Bureaucrats.”

12 Heffernan, “When the Cravings Won’t Quit, Turn On the Camera.”

13 See Westen, Political Brain; Haidt, Righteous Mind; Hibbing, Smith, and Alford, Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences. I use the term “neurosomatic” to point to the unity of brain and body. While the workings of the human mind are not reducible to neural processing, I do believe mental “operations” depend on how the human brain functions, and how it is integrated with the body. More on this in chapter 10.

6. My Stroke of Insight

1 That evening, I might have had an extra drink or two; or perhaps I was tired after a day of teaching and commuting. There is some research indicating that these conditions could unchain creativity. According to the theory explaining this correlation, when the external focus and inhibitory powers of the prefrontal cortex are weakened, the brain becomes capable of forming more far-flung associations (see Smith, “Creativity and IQ, Part I: What Is Divergent Thinking? How Is It Helped by Sleep, Humor, and Alcohol?”). Weaker cognitive control and self-discipline could thus help you become more creative—and in some cases die from an overdose of drugs or alcohol, or succumb to serious mental illness. Sleepiness (particularly when half-awake early in the morning) can also disrupt prefrontal activity–providing a safer creativity boost, as long as sleep-deprivation does not become chronic.

2 See Malamed, “Emotion and Learning.”

3 See Daniels, “Living with Intensity: Overexcitabilities in Profoundly Gifted Children.” David Dobbs has popularized a related theory, the “orchid hypothesis” (see Dobbs, “The Science of Success”).

4 Friedman, “Lasting Pleasures, Robbed by Drug Abuse.”

5 See Kang, “The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High.”

6 See Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”; The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

7. A Well-Tempered Brain

1 Neuropsychiatrist Peter Whybrow refers to a “well-tuned brain” in the title of his latest book (see The Well-Tuned Brain: Neuroscience and the Life Well Lived. He explains he chose this phrase with reference to Johan Sebastian Bach’s famous collection, “A Well-Tempered Clavier.” I had settled on “well-tempered brain” before I read Whybrow’s book, and decided to keep it as I find it a bit more resonant.

2 By all accounts, the behavior I found so shocking at the conference has fast become common. For example, during the proceedings of the Breivik trial in Oslo, one of the five judges was caught by a camera playing solitaire on his laptop (see “Breivik Judge Caught Playing Solitaire in Court”). This kind of multi-tasking seemed particularly striking because of the nature of Breivik’s crime and the harrowing testimony offered during his trial. A spokeswoman for the court explained that the judges were, indeed, attentively following the proceedings. “There are different ways to stay focused,” she added.

3 Carr, “Keep Your Thumbs Still While I’m Talking to You.” The participants, mostly young men, were IT enthusiasts and early adopters. But in recent years participants in academic conferences in the humanities and social sciences have similarly been encouraged to live-blog, tweet, tune into streamed sessions, etc.

4 Stone, “Continuous Partial Attention.”

5 A few years ago I read about an IT consultant who bragged how he always carried with him several electronic devices dedicated to different purposes. He said he was in almost constant communication with co-workers, family, and friends; and he regularly updated several blogs geared towards those different professional and social circles. That level of digital interaction struck me as weird at the time. But now someone like this would also be tweeting and calling up different apps throughout the day. And, as the saying goes, this is already close to becoming the new normal.

6 See Young, “Internet Addiction: The Emergence of a New Clinical Disorder”; Aboujaoude, Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality; Christakis, “Internet Addiction: A 21st Century Epidemic?”

7 See Seib and Dayton, “When Games Start Playing You: Cyber Addicts”; Siew, “U.S. Students Suffering from Internet Addiction.” The notion of “internet addiction” may have initially cropped up as a satirical hoax (see Beato, “Internet Addiction”), but has recently received more traction. Of course, there are many doubters (see Civita, “Internet Addiction as New Addiction?”; Frances, “Internet Addiction: The Next New Fad Diagnosis”; Heffernan, “Case of Internet Addiction”).

8 As already indicated, the ur-text describing these concerns is Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”; see also Birkerts, Gutenberg Elegies; Birkerts, “Reading in a Digital Age”; Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time.

9 See Seib and Dayton, “When Games Start Playing You.”

10 See “S. Korea Child ‘Starves as Parents Raise Virtual Baby.’”

11 The 2013 documentary, Web Junkie, describes the problem of internet addiction in China and the ordeals of adolescents boys sent to a rehabilitation center in Beijing.

12 See Young, Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction—and a Winning Strategy for Recovery.

13 See Dunckley, Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time.

14 According to a recent study, just a few days of digital abstinence in a natural setting can noticeably improve the ability of sixth graders to read emotions (see Uhls et al. “Five Days at Outdoor Education Camp Without Screens Improves Preteen Skills with Nonverbal Emotion Cues”). More radical approaches to “resetting” one’s dopamine system may be even more effective, but would require awareness of the deficits induced by chronic overstimulation and much willpower—precisely the mental resources that are depleted the most by compulsive self-stimulation (see Moyer, “Overstimulation and Desensitization—How Civilization Affects Your Brain”; Becker, “Change Your Receptors, Change Your Set Point”).

15 See Newman and Harris, “The Scientific Contributions of Paul D. MacLean (1913–2007).” Though MacLean’s theory of the “triune brain” has recently been criticized as overly simplistic, it may provide a crucial insight into the basic, fairly inelegant, design of the human brain. More detailed models, on the other hand, may have their own problems. More on that later.

16 This term was introduced by MacLean. It has also been criticized as simplistic, since the brain centers he described as forming the “limbic system” do not seem to form a distinct functional ensemble; and it has become obvious that parts of the neocortex play a key role in the processing of emotions (see LeDoux, “Parallel Memories: Putting Emotions Back into the Brain”). Yet, identifying this separate “limbic system” as part of the triune brain may serve a larger purpose, despite any perceived lack of neuroscientific precision.

17 For example, the cerebellum plays a key role in sustaining attention, and some neuroscientists believe the “reptilian brain” may act as the brain’s “spam filter” by helping block out irrelevant stimuli (see McCollough and Vogel, “Your Inner Spam Filter”). As it will become clear, the release of dopamine in the midbrain has a profound effect on the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain.

18 See Goldberg, Executive Brain; New Executive Brain.

19 Quoted in Blakeslee, “In a Host of Ailments, Seeing a Brain Out of Rhythm.”

20 Whybrow, American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, 62–3.

21 See McNamara, “The God Effect.”

22 See Yoffe, “Seeking: How the Brain Hard-Wires Us to Love Google, Twitter, and Texting. And Why That’s Dangerous.”

23 See Fleming, “The Science of Craving.”

24 Other researchers have similarly come to the conclusion that an excess of dopamine serves to produce not “pleasure,” but heightened arousal and motivation for exploration and learning. This tendency is illustrated by the typical profile and behavior of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition marked by chronically elevated dopamine levels in the brain. As psychologist Richard Katz once commented, if the “pleasure” hypothesis was valid, such patients should be “inextinguishably fat and happy”; instead, “they are just the opposite” (quoted in Wickelgren, “Getting the Brain’s Attention”).

25 Lehrer, “The Itch of Curiosity”; cf. Biederman and Vessel, “Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain.”

26 See Blakeslee, “A Small Part of the Brain, and Its Profound Effects.”

27 See Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.

28 See Wickelgren, “Getting the Brain’s Attention.”

29 See Pert, Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel.

30 See Pearce, Evolution’s End.

31 See Gershon, The Second Brain: The Scientific Basis of Gut Instinct and a Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine.

32 See Peretti, “Why Our Food Is Making Us Fat.”

33 See Almedrala, “The Surprising Things Exercise Can Do for Your Brain.”

34 Recent research has demonstrated that sleep is essential for the formation of long-term memories. According to one theory, during deep, slow-wave sleep the hippocampus reactivates emotionally tagged memories from the preceding waking hours. Replaying such memories facilitates their long-term storage in the neocortex (see Begley, “How to Improve Your Memory with Sleep”). According to recent research, just one sleepless night can affect the expression of genes controlling the human body clock (see Dockrill, “Just One Night of Sleep Loss Can Alter Our Genes, Study Finds”).

35 See Lubin et al., “Epigenetic Mechanisms: Critical Contributors to Long-Term Memory Formation.”

36 See Hood, “Re-creating the Real World.”

8. A Fatal Attraction

1 For a real-life example of someone who has “monetized” even more spectacularly his brilliance as a mathematician, see Broad, “Seeker, Doer, Giver, Ponderer: A Billionaire Mathematician’s Life of Ferocious Curiosity.”

2 See Rosen, “The Age of Egocasting.”

3 See Wickelgren, “Getting the Brain’s Attention.”

4 See Robbins, “Missing the Big Picture.”

5 See Bechara et al., “Decision Making, Impulse Control and Loss of Willpower to Resist Drugs: A Neurocognitive Perspective.”

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.; cf. Friedman, “Pleasures Robbed by Drug Abuse.” Adolescents are particularly susceptible to such ill-advised pursuits since they tend to experience excitements more powerfully, while the reflective system in their brains is still underdeveloped (see Dobbs, “Beautiful Brains”).

8 See Rasheed and Alghasham, “Central Dopaminergic System and Its Implications in Stress-Mediated Neurological Disorders and Gastric Ulcers: Short Review.”

9 See Bechara et al., “Loss of Willpower to Resist Drugs”; Friedman, “Pleasures Robbed by Drug Abuse.” The warped perspective of heavy drug addicts can sometimes lead them to commit grotesque crimes. In the past, such crimes were associated mostly with illegal drugs. More recently, the abuse of illegal substances has been supplemented by addiction to prescription drugs. This shift has resulted in a spike of pharmacy robberies. In some states, these have even outpaced the more traditional bank robberies. While some of the hold-ups are carried out by well-organized gangs, others are done by desperate addicts (see Goodnough, “Pharmacies Besieged by Addicted Thieves”).

10 See Fields, “Money Buys Unhappiness, Proven in a New Study”; Seltzer, “Greed: The Ultimate Addiction.”

11 See Friedman, “Pleasures Robbed by Drug Abuse.”

12 Ibid.

13 Kang, “The High Is Always the Pain.”

14 As the Wikipedia entry states (as of July 6, 2016), “behavioral addiction has been proposed as a new class in DSM-5, but the only category included is gambling addiction. Internet gaming addiction is included in the appendix as a condition for further study.”

15 With the morphing of many “investment” techniques into high-stakes gambling, a similar desensitization and loss of perspective can perhaps help explain the reckless pursuit of ever higher financial pay-offs that led to the current financial debacle. See Friedman, “A Crisis of Confidence for Masters of the Universe.”

16 See Cash et al., “Internet Addiction: A Brief Summary of Research and Practice.”

17 See Bechara et al., “Loss of Willpower to Resist Drugs”; Sample, “The New Pleasure Seekers.”

18 In 2007, John Paulson’s firm managing several hedge funds made 15 billion dollars—a sum which seems to defy the human imagination. Interestingly, he never entertained the obvious thought that maybe that kind of reward for his foresight was enough, and he could retire and spend the rest of his life in leisure and luxury.

19 See Yoffe, “Seeking.”

20 See Knight, “‘Info-Mania’ Dents IQ More Than Marijuana.”

21 See Young, “Internet Addiction”; Aboujaoude, Virtually You.

22 See Anderson, “Just One More Game.”

23 See Greenfield, i.d.: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century, 199–202.

24 See Zuder, “A General in the Drug War”; Richard A. Friedman, “Who Falls to Addiction and Who Is Unscathed?”; cf. Pulvirenti and Diana, “Drug Dependence as a Disorder of Brain Plasticity: Focus on Dopamine and Glutamate.”

25 See Patoine, “Is ‘Internet Addiction’ a Psychiatric Disorder?”

26 See Heffernan, “Case of Internet Addiction.”

27 Curiously, Heffernan has credited Twitter with ushering in a new golden age of ubiquitous poetry (see Heffernan, “Poetry in the Age of Poetry”). Her inability to cringe from almost anything is matched by journalist and writer Hanna Rosin. Chronically upbeat, she has argued (partly based on her own experience) against breastfeeding and imposing any limits on the use of digital devices by children (see “The Case Against Breastfeeding”; “The Touch-Screen Generation”). She has also concluded that the “hook-up culture” is ultimately good for young women since it allows them to combine the pursuit of higher education and a successful career with sexual gratification until they decide to pursue (or forego) matrimony (see “Boys on the Side”).

28 See Greenfield, Mind Change, 165–6, 170.

29 See Small and Vorgan, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.

30 For example, some studies have found that experienced gamers make better drone pilots and laproscopic surgeons (see Lasalle, “Gamers Make Awsome Drone ‘Pilots,’ Study Says (Be Afraid)”; Rosser et al., “The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century”).

31 See Mosher, “High Wired: Does Addictive Internet Use Rewire the Brain?”; Greenfield, Mind Change. There is some research indicating that similar changes in the brain can be induced even by physiological influences rarely associated with any form of addiction—for example, regular tanning (see O’Connor, “How Tanning Changes the Brain”).

32 See Greenfield, Mind Change, 209.

33 See de Zengotita, “The Numbing of the American Mind: Culture as Anesthetic.”

34 See Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”; Shallows; cf. Birkerts, “Reading in a Digital Age.”

9. Dumb and Dumber

1 Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on Academic Campuses.

2 The first thing students learn in an introductory social science methodology course is that correlation does not equal causation. In this particular case, it could well be that stronger, more intelligent and motivated students will choose more rigorous courses and spend more time studying. In any case, many other studies had already confirmed that students were recently studying much less compared to earlier generations. One such survey found that between 1961 and 2003 the average time college students spent preparing for courses had declined from 24 to 14 hours per week (see Avila, “Children These Days Spend Less Time Studying and More Time Playing, Study Finds”).

3 See Gelman, “Is ‘Academically Adrift’ Statistically Adrift?”; Sternberg, “Who Is Really Adrift?” Not taking a challenging test seriously, on the other hand, could be seen as symptomatic in its own right.

4 Professors who want to reduce the time and energy they commit to teaching can draw on ready-made tools provided by textbook publishers—banks of PowerPoint presentations, quiz and exam questions (including multiple-choice), assignments, etc. The growing numbers of adjuncts and graduate students teaching key courses may find it difficult to give each course and student adequate attention for wholly different reasons.

5 See Edmundson, “Who Are You, and What Are You Doing Here?”

6 Bauerlein, Dumbest Generation.

7 Ibid., 17–18.

8 See Cunningham and Stanovich. “What Reading Does to the Mind,” 144–5.

9 See Intercollegiate Studies Institute, “The Coming Crisis in Citizenship.”

10 McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 7. To dramatize this point, McLuhan paraphrased a quote by T. S. Eliot into an evocative metaphor. He compared the content of any mediated message to “the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind” (32).

11 McLuhan and Zingrone, Essential McLuhan, 239.

12 See McLuhan, “The Brain and the Media: The ‘Western’ Hemisphere.”

13 See Winn, The Plug-In Drug: Television, Children, and the Family.

14 Kubay and Csikszentmihalyi, “TV Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor.” Csikszentmihalyi is the more famous of the two authors, best known for his theory of “flow”—a term indicating rapt absorption in an activity (see Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience).

15 Lewin, “If Your Kids Are Awake, They Are Probably Online.”

16 Ibid.

17 See Richtel, “Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era.”

18 Coates, “Social Network Disconnect.”

19 National Center for Educational Statistics, “The Nation’s Report Card: Civics 2006 (National Assessment of Educational Progress at Grades 4, 8, and 12).”

20 National Center for Educational Statistics, “The Nation’s Report Card: U.S. History 2006 (National Assessment of Educational Progress at Grades 4, 8, and 12).”

21 Gould, Guardians of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools, 18–19.

22 Torney-Purta, “Patterns of the Civic Knowledge, Engagement, and Attitudes of European Adolescents: The IEA Civic Education Study,” 136.

23 See Bartunek, “Belgian Trainee Teachers Fail in Basic General Knowledge.”

24 Romano, “Literacy of College Graduates Is in Decline.”

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Lauritsen, “Study: More College Students Need Remedial Classes.”

28 Romano, “Will the Book Survive Generation Text?”; cf. Baron, “The Plague of tl; dr.”

29 Crain, “Twilight of the Books: What Will Life Be Like If People Stop Reading?”

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

10. …or a Neurosomatic Crisis?

1 See, for example, Willingham, “Is Technology Changing How Students Learn?”

2 See Giedd, “The Digital Revolution and Adolescent Brain Evolution.”

3 The best known developmental psychologist who has argued along these lines is Harvard professor Jerome Kagan. See Kagan, Three Seductive Ideas.

4 Brain plasticity is most frequently understood as synaptic plasticity—the formation and long-term potentiation (or weakening and elimination) of synaptic connections between neurons. It is also related, however, to neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons) in key brain centers and the myelination of neural fibers or axons (their coating in white fatty sheathing which facilitates speedier and clearer neural transmission). Brain plasticity additionally includes other intricate changes in support cells, capillaries and blood flow, the synthesis of proteins, etc. All these modifications are influenced not only directly by experiences and neural signaling, but also by epigenetic changes. Moreover, the brain forms a functional whole with the body, and plasticity can thus involve adaptations at the level of the entire organism.

5 See Kagan, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.

6 Khamsi, “Dolphins Play the Name Game, Too.”

7 Griggs, “Border Collie Takes Record for Biggest Vocabulary.”

8 In 2009, a male chimpanzee that had apparently been “socialized” at a family’s house since birth (a process which included appearances in TV shows and commercials) became involved in a notorious incident. Though he had been given antidepressants, he went berserk and severely mauled an approaching family acquaintance. His owner rushed out of the house and stabbed him repeatedly with a knife, but was unable to stop the attack. The raging animal was eventually shot and killed by a police officer responding to the 911 call (see Walsh, Bryan. “Why the Stamford Chimp Attacked”).

9 See Kneissle, “Research into Changes in Brain Formation.”

10 Cited in ibid.

11 A few decades later, individuals in possession of such a “new brain,” or of even newer versions, form the bulk of German engineers. This could partly account for some embarrassing failings that have dulled a bit the prestige of German engineering—for example, the failure to launch the new Berlin airport into operation, the delayed delivery by Siemens of a major order of new trains for the German railways and Eurostar, and other problems (see Mangasarian, “Berlin Airport Fiasco Shows Chinks in German Engineering Armor”; Hawley, “Siemens Problems ‘Can Hardly Get Worse’”; Holden, “German Cars ‘Among Worst for Engine Failure’”). As the case of Volkswagen emissions cheating demonstrates, even competent engineering can cause tremendous problems when steered by managerial hubris. Such difficulties are unlikely to be limited to Germany, or to mechanical engineering and car sales—with too many decision-makers in politics, high finance, and “big data” companies demonstrating that the kids do not always end up alright.

12 Herbert, “Sophistry or Sensitive Science?”

13 Ibid.

14 In fact, physics teachers have long struggled to help high school and college students overcome this intuitive belief (see Champagne and Klopfer, “Native Knowledge and Science Learning,” 4).

15 See Allen, “A New International Business Language: Globish.”

16 See Foroni, “Do We Embody Second Language? Evidence for ‘Partial’ Simulation During Processing of a Second Language.” This effect of reading in a second language may be stronger with English which has a very “abnormal” structure and vocabulary (see McWhorter, “English Is Not Normal”). Since it is facilitated by adequate emotional response, learning could be made harder for non-native speakers who study in English.

17 Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan, “The Weirdest People in the World?” This syndrome will be addressed in some detail in chapter 12.

18 Healy, Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don’t Think, 222–34. Healy dissected in great detail the philosophy of the program and its likely impact on children’s brains. But its strongest impact has probably come from the excuse it has given to parents and educators to expose children from a very young age to an extra one-hour dose of TV viewing on an almost daily basis. Meanwhile, the program has spread like wildfire across the globe, reaching children in more than 140 countries. Of course, exposure to screens playing video has been taken to a whole new level by the explosive spread of tablet computers. In 2013, child protection organizations urged Fischer Price to withdraw a new infant recliner seat designed to hold a tablet in front of a baby’s face (see Kang, “Infant iPad Seats Raise Concerns About Screen Time for Babies”).

19 A video clip containing fragments from the documentary is available on YouTube. In it, newly minted Harvard graduates claim that it is warmer in summer because the Earth is closer to the sun. Incidentally, a few faculty and staff members shared the same misconception.

20 See Flesch, Why Johnny Can’t Read—And What You Can Do About It.

21 National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperatives for Educational Reform.” This report was partly motivated by concerns related to the Cold War and the competitiveness of the U.S. economy, but it also reinforced a broader sense that the country’s public education system was failing. In 1998, a report drafted under the aegis of the conservative Hoover Institution deemed the nation to be “still at risk” (see Bennett et al., “A Nation Still at Risk”). The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the Race to the Top funding contest launched in 2009, the 2012 report “U.S. Education Reform and National Security” of the Council on Foreign Relations task force (chaired by Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein), the recent Every Student Succeeds Act, and countless other projects for broad educational reform have all reflected similar concerns in the United States—even if the remedies offered may be controversial.

22 See Uddén, Folia, and Petersson, “The Neuropharmacology of Implicit Learning”; Frank, “‘Go’ and ‘noGo’: Learning and the Basal Ganglia.”

23 See Wilson et al., “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind.”

24 See Malamud, “One Big Yawn? The Academics Bewitched by Boredom.”

25 Samuelson, “School Reform’s Meager Results.”

26 See Ravitch, “Schools We Can Envy”; cf. Barkhorn, “America’s Math Textbooks Are More Rigorous Than South Korea’s.”

27 See Porter, “More in School but Not Learning.”

28 Quoted in McNeilage, “Students May Be Disadvantaged by Starting School at 5 Years Old”; cf. Whitebread, “Too Much Too Young: Should Schooling Start at Age 7?”; Christakis, “The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids”; Brosco and Bona, “Changes in Academic Demands and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Young Children.”

29 See Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

11. The Pursuit of Overstimulation

1 See Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primary Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose.

2 See Robbins, “Missing the Big Picture.”

3 Quoted in ibid.

4 See Jabr, “How the Brain Ignores Distractions.”

5 Quoted in McGowan, “Addiction: Pay Attention.”

6 Yoffe, “Seeking.”

7 See Chabris, “Is the Brain Good at What It Does?”

8 See Greenfield, Mind Change, 209.

9 See Zimbardo and Coulombe, Man (Dis)connected: How the Digital Age Is Changing Young Men Forever.

10 See Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli.

11 See Moss, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.”

12 Whybrow, American Mania.

13 See Linden, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel so Good; Levitin, “Why the Modern World Is Bad for Your Brain”; Hanna, Stressaholic: 5 Steps to Transform Your Relationship with Stress.

14 See Previc, The Dopaminergic Mind in Human Evolution and History.

15 See Dokoupil, “Is the Internet Making Us Crazy? What the New Research Says.”

16 Previc, Dopaminergic Mind, 162.

17 See Elsevier Health Sciences, “Am I Fat? Many of Today’s Adolescents Don’t Think So: Body Weight Perceptions Changing in the US.”

18 See Shin, “4 In 5 Millennials Optimistic for Future, But Half Live Paycheck To Paycheck.”

19 See Brooks, “Midlife Crisis Economics.”

20 See Kraus, Davidai, and Nussbaum, “American Dream? Or Mirage?”

21 See Whybrow, “Dangerously Addictive.”

22 See Brown, Speed: Facing Our Addiction to Fast and Faster—and Overcoming Our Fear of Slowing Down.

23 See Marcuse, Eros and Civilization; Crawford, “Shop Class as Soulcraft.”

24 See Bergen-Cico, “The ‘Lee Robins Study’ and Its Legacy.”

25 See Alexander, “The Myth of Drug-Induced Addiction.”

26 See Whybrow, Well-Tuned Brain, 21–4; Berreby, “The Obesity Era.”

27 See Levitin, “Modern World Is Bad for Your Brain.”

28 Quoted de Zengotita, “Numbing of the American Mind.”

29 See Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life.”

30 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 46.

31 See Toffler, Future Shock, 350.

32 Milgram, “The Experience of Living in Cities.”

33 See Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art, and Other Writings on Art and Culture.

34 Quoted in Goldman, The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf, 123.

35 The Paris flâneur was typically a bohemian artist or writer who would stroll incognito along the streets and arcades of the big city looking primarily for rich sensory experiences. In the words of Evgeny Morozov, “his goal was to observe, to bathe in the crowd, taking in its noises, its chaos, its heterogeneity, its cosmopolitanism”; or “to cultivate what Honoré de Balzac called ‘the gastronomy of the eye’.” (“The Death of the Cyberflâneur”). This search for novel sensations was probably motivated by a sense of jadedness under the onslaught of the sensory overstimulation provided by the big city. Once that mild shell-shock passed a certain limit, a leisurely walk could no longer provide the uplift it previously did. The Paris flâneur then disappeared, moving on to search for stronger sensations.

36 See Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life.

37 See Sardamov, “Burnt into the Brain: Towards a Redefinition of Political Culture.”

38 See Small and Vorgan, iBrain.

39 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, ch. ii, “Of Individualism in Democratic Countries.”

40 Ibid.

41 Rushkoff, Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation, and How to Take It Back.

42 See Goleman, “Feeling Unreal? Many Others Feel the Same”; Simeon and Abugel, Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self.

43 McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, 19. McLuhan contrasted literate to non-literate culture, one emphasizing the eye and the other the ear in their perception of the world.

44 See Bergen, Louder than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning.

45 McKibben, “The Mental Environment.”

46 See Postman, Teaching as a Conserving Activity, 186.

12. …and Existential Disconnect

1 See Flynn, What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect. According to some researchers, the Flynn effect may have come to an end, at least in some Western countries (see Sundet, Barlaug, and Torjussen, “The End of the Flynn Effect?”.

2 See Case Western Reserve University, “Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, and Vice Versa: Brain Physiology Limits Simultaneous Use of Both Networks.”

3 See Sardamov, “Out of Touch: The Analytic Misconstrual of Social Knowledge.”

4 See Lieberman, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.

5 See Bergen, Louder Than Words.

6 See Lieberman, Social; Adolphs, “The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge”; Mars et al., “On the Relationship Between the ‘Default Mode Network’ and the ‘Social Brain.’”

7 See Jack et al., “fMRI Reveals Reciprocal Inhibition Between Social and Physical Cognitive Domains.”

8 Jack, “A Scientific Case for Conceptual Dualism: The Problem of Consciousness and the Opposing Domains Hypothesis,” 181 (emphasis in original).

9 See Adolphs, “Social Brain.”

10 See Yang and Li, “Brain Networks of Explicit and Implicit Learning”; Paul, “Learning but Not Trying.”

11 Mars et al., “‘Default Mode Network’ and ‘Social Brain,’” 7.

12 See Kaufman, “Social and Mechanical Reasoning Inhibit Each Other.”

13 See Boyle, The Tyranny of Numbers: Why Counting Can’t Make Us Happy, xiii.

14 See Ratey and Johnson, Shadow Syndromes: The Mild Forms of Major Mental Disorders That Sabotage Us.

15 See Carson, “Creativity and Psychopathology: A Shared Vulnerability Model.”

16 See Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, 69–115.

17 Above a certain level of complexity, mathematics may in fact require a more holistic perspective—which could account for the number of gifted mathematicians who have developed psychotic (rather than autistic) symptoms or even committed suicide as they have tackled baffling mathematical puzzles (see Wallace, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity).

18 Neuroscientists have uncovered some curious structural differences between the brains of science and humanities students, with the former displaying some quasi-autistic traits (see Takeuchi et al., “Brain Structures in the Sciences and Humanities”; cf. Tanaka, “Autism, Psychosis, and the ‘Two Cultures’”). Needless to say, such a divergence can only be reinforced as the two groups engage in their different fields of study and exploration.

19 This more specific condition was removed from DSM-5 as it was subsumed under the broader diagnosis of “autism spectrum disorder.” Individuals are allowed to retain the old diagnosis if, for some reason, they wish to do so.

20 See Case Western Reserve University, “Empathy Represses Analytic Thought.”

21 Ibid.

22 See Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 111–16.

23 Psychologist James Flynn has attributed much of the increase in IQ scores associated with his name to increased level of complexity and stimulation in modern societies (see Flynn, What Is Intelligence?).

24 The evaluations students completed in April 2014 for my upper level course, “Culture and Power,” displayed a particularly troubling tendency. A few students complained that the question marks which I had placed at the end of some statements or phrases in the PowerPoint outlines I showed in class were confusing (though these were only meant as a reminder that some complex problems defy a definite explanation or solution). There were also several complaints (by the same or other students) that they had become lost during the last few weeks of the semester, though I had repeatedly tried to outline the overall logic of the course.

25 See Immordino-Yang, Christodoulou, and Singh, “Rest Is Not Idleness: Implications of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education.”

26 See Mars et al., “‘Default Mode Network’ and ‘Social Brain.’”

27 See Chiao and Immordino-Yang, “Modularity and the Cultural Mind: Contributions of Cultural Neuroscience to Cognitive Theory.”

28 See Pappas, “When You’re at Rest, Your Brain’s Right Side Hums.”

29 See Adolphs, “Social Brain”; Sridharan, Levitin, and Menon, “A Critical Role for the Right Fronto-Insular Cortex in Switching Between Central-Executive and Default-Mode Networks.”

30 See Heberlein et al., “Effects of Damage to Right-Hemisphere Brain Structures on Spontaneous Emotional and Social Judgments”; Lewis, “Think You Have Self-Control? Careful.”

31 Jack, personal communication, Nov. 26, 2013

32 See Wanjek, “Left Brain vs. Right: It’s a Myth, Research Finds”; cf. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

33 See Brooks, “The Empirical Kids.”

34 See Yang and Li, “Brain Networks of Explicit and Implicit Learning”; Paul, “Learning but Not Trying.”

35 See Richtel, “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime.”

36 During AUBG’s 2015 commencement ceremony, there were five salutatorians on the stage. Two of them had been demoted to this status because of an A- they had received from me in their senior year. They had both suffered this iniquity because they were, in my judgment, unable to produce a well written paragraph and make some broader associations. Yet, they both believed they fully deserved to be valedictorians. Again, my consolation was that I am not alone facing similar problems (see Schuman, “Confessions of a Grade Inflator”). Incidentally, such cases serve to reinforce my gratitude to those truly exceptional students who combine a wide-eyed curiosity with a “growth mindset” and ability to recognize areas for improvement (see Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success).

37 Most of these test subjects had in fact been American undergraduates who appeared to be the most extreme outliers, the weirdest of the weird (see Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan, “Weirdest People”).

38 See Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why.

39 Ibid.

40 See Han and Northoff, “Understanding the Self: A Cultural Neuroscience Approach.”

41 See Polanyi, Great Transformation.

42 There is research indicating that involuntary blinking (which is normally more frequent than what is necessary for eye lubrication) is associated with momentary attentional disengagement and activation of the default mode network (see Nakano et al., “Blink-Related Momentary Activation of the Default Mode Network While Viewing Videos”). Incidentally, blinking is less frequent when we interact with screens. Since the intuitive network is so central to the overall integration of the brain and of the brain and body, it has apparently evolved to be activated during every spare moment in our daily lives (see Lieberman, Social, 19-20).

43 See Brooks, “Empirical Kids.”

44 Incidentally, these predispositions lead most economically unsuccessful Americans to blame mostly themselves for their misfortune (see Phillips-Fein, “Why Workers Won’t Unite”).

45 According to some researchers, the steady increase in IQ scores which started over a century ago does not reflect gains in “general intelligence.” Rather, it results from increasing aptitude for taking all kinds of tests and solving rule-dependent problems (see Robb, “Our IQs Are Climbing, But We’re Not Getting Smarter”).

46 See Sardamov, “Out of Touch.”

47 Watters, “We Aren’t the World.”

48 A prime example is the predominant instrumentalist approach to ethnic nationalism which focuses strongly on manipulation by unscrupulous leaders who pursue power and control over resources. Typically, such explanations of ethnic conflict blame large-scale violence on the likes of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic (see Sardamov, “Mandate of History: Serbian National Identity and Ethnic Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia”). Islamist terrorism seems less amenable to similar reductive explanations, but the alternatives are too disturbing to contemplate.

49 British author and journalist David Boyle provides a particularly evocative portrayal of Jeremy Bentham and Edwin Chadwick who in the 19th century exemplified these tendencies—applying much mental resourcefulness and self-assurance in the obsessive, somewhat childish pursuit of various utilitarian projects (see Boyle, Tyranny of Numbers, 16–35, 65–82). In recent years, famed psychologist Steven Pinker has offered the most influential version of “Whig history” positing progress toward stronger empathy, mutual understanding, and the consequent waning of violence on a global scale (see Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined).

13. Unenlightened

1 Updike, “Beer Can.”

2 See Dunckley, “The Hidden Agenda Behind 21st Century Learning.”

3 See Willis, “A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool.” This article is posted on Edutopia.org—a website maintained by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, an organization dedicated to “brain-based learning.”

4 See Oppenheimer, “The Computer Delusion.”

5 Willis, Research-Based Strategies to Reignite Student Learning.

6 See Arrowsmith-Young and Doidge, The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: How I Left My Learning Disability Behind and Other Stories of Cognitive Transformation.

7 Luria’s research is described in Crain, “Twilight of Books.”

8 See Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain; cf. Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of Human Invention.

9 See Birkerts, Gutenberg Elegies; cf. Wolf and Barzillai, “The Importance of Deep Reading.”

10 “Deep reading” is often confused with “close reading”—the detailed analysis of literary passages long favored at college English departments. According to poet and writer Dana Gioia, such nitpicking textual analysis stands in the way of truly appreciating poetry—and perhaps this verdict holds for literature in general (see Gioia, “Poetry as Enchantment”). Some experts nevertheless believe that instruction in “close reading” is essential for helping children comprehend what they read, and cannot wait until middle school (see Boyles, “Closing in on Close Reading”).

11 See Coyle, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown; Gladwell, Outliers. The 10,000-hour rule was first formulated in 1993 by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, but has been recently questioned as reductionist (see Carey, “How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Talent.”).

12 Myelination is an exceedingly intricate process which can easily be disrupted by chronic stress (see University at Buffalo, “New Form of Brain Plasticity: How Social Isolation Disrupts Myelin Production”). It also needs to be supplemented by proper pruning of inessential synaptic connections during the adolescent years—a similarly complex and tentative developmental process which can go awry, causing developmental disruptions (see Siegel, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, 97–100).

13 Darnton, “The First Steps toward a History of Reading,” quoted in Birkerts, Gutenberg Elegies, 71.

14 Idem, 72.

15 See Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?’; Shallows.

16 Quoted in Carr, Shallows, 111.

17 Curiously, Shirky eventually decided to ban laptops and other electronic devices in the classroom as he has observed growing levels of distraction among his students—not just in those using the equipment, but also among students sitting nearby (see Shirky, “Why Clay Shirky Decided to Ban Laptops, Tablets, and Phones from His Classroom”).

18 Burns, “Dopamine and Learning: What the Brain’s Reward Center Can Teach Educators” (emphasis in original).

19 Back in 2010, Harvard started offering a highly popular course (now available online) on “science and cooking” taught with the help of a few celebrity chefs. It falls within a broader thrust (starting much before college) aimed to make basic scientific concepts and theories more relevant and interesting—for example, by introducing their application in forensic science or other exciting areas.

20 Willis, Research-Based Strategies to Reignite Student Learning, 59; cf. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom; Sousa, Mind, Brain, and Education.

21 In late 2014, the MIT cut all ties with Walter Lewin, who had retired in 2009. This decision was taken after an investigation established that he had sexually harassed online at least one student (who was taking one of his courses on edX). Prof. Lewin’s lectures are still available online, though not on MIT-affiliated websites.

22 See Khadaroo, “When College Students Reinvent the World.”

23 Edmundson, “Dwelling on Possibilities.”

24 See Lambert, “Nonstop: Today’s Undergraduates Schedule Themselves 24/7. But Are They Missing Opportunities for Self-Discovery?”

25 Ibid.; cf. Brooks, “Organization Kid.”

26 See Haiken, “Lack of Sleep Kills Brain Cells, New Study Shows”; Cedernaes et al. “Acute Sleep Loss Induces Tissue-Specific Epigenetic and Transcriptional Alterations to Circadian Clock Genes in Men.”

27 Davidson, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn.

28 This experiment is also open to a different interpretation—as an illustration of the ability of the overly focused and analytic mind (and brain) to filter out potentially significant background information. But Davidson would probably be unconvinced.

29 Ibid., 278, 280–1.

30 Ibid., 285. Heavy media multitaskers may, in fact, perform better in “noisy” environments—but have difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli when they need to focus on a task, and switch less efficiently between tasks (see Ophir, Nass, and Wagner, “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers”).

14. Toward Edutopia?

1 See National Association for the Education of Young Children, “Play and Children’s Learning.” Unfortunately, none of the eight boys from our apartment building I regularly played with went on to pursue a higher education degree.

2 Birkerts, an even more avid reader, has similarly noted: “I value the state a book puts me in more than I value the specific contents” (Gutenberg Elegies, 85). Perhaps voracious reading can also be seen as a form of overindulgence, or even addiction, which could get in the way of directly experiencing reality (see Robson, “Living Life by the Book: Why Reading Isn’t Always Good for You”). Alas, we may be at a point where escaping all such addictive behaviors is no longer a realistic option—and deep reading is perhaps the healthiest mental preoccupation (unless it leads to an overly sedentary lifestyle and chronic sleep deprivation).

3 See Reynolds, “What You Read Matters More Than You Might Think.”

4 See Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?, 49.

5 Cunningham and Stanovich, “What Reading Does to the Mind.”

6 See Willingham, “How Knowledge Helps: It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension, Learning—and Thinking.”

7 See Crain, “Twilight of Books.”

8 These issues are systematically addressed in the Moral Landscapes blog maintained by developmental psychologist Darcia Narvaez on the Psychology Today website.

9 See Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age; cf. Fallows, “Papa, Don’t Text: The Perils of Distracted Parenting.”

10 See Washbrook, Waldfogel, and Moullin, Parenting, Attachment and a Secure Base for Children.

11 See Narvaez, “How to Grow a Smart Baby.”

12 See Schulte, “Effects of Child Abuse Can Last a Lifetime: Watch the ‘Still Face’ Experiment to See Why.”

13 See BMJ, “2-Year-Olds Adept at Using Touch-Screen Technology: Able to Swipe, Unlock, and Actively Search for Features on Phones and Tablets.”

14 Psychologist Matthew Lieberman has argued that our “social brain” has a natural appetite for social connection which will always assert itself (see Lieberman, Social). As various forms of addiction illustrate, though, healthy natural instincts (and the neurosomatic mechanisms underlying these) can sometimes be hijacked by various forms of overindulgence.

15 The experience of the children of deaf parents is very instructive in this respect. Such children could potentially learn to speak, enlarge their vocabulary, and achieve a sense of grammar and syntax from television. In reality, they often have serious linguistic impairments when deprived of sufficient live communication (see Byeon and Hong, “Relationship Between Television Viewing and Language Delay in Toddlers: Evidence from a Korea National Cross-Sectional Survey”).

16 See Healy, Endangered Minds, 218–34.

17 See Dunckley, Reset Your Child’s Brain, 42–4.

18 The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians advise parents about the benefits of reading aloud to young children and talk with them about age-appropriate stories and pictures. According to some studies, digital books can interfere with such interactions, as parents and children tend to focus on the electronic device itself (see Quenqua, “Is E-Reading to Your Toddler Story Time, or Simply Screen Time?”).

19 Klass, “Bedtime Stories for Young Brains.”

20 See Bodrova, Germeroth, and Leong, “Play and Self-Regulation: Lessons from Vigotsky”; Lillard et al., “The Impact of Pretend Play on Children’s Development: A Review of the Evidence.” A recent study has found that a decrease in physical activity and motor skill has resulted in more frequent injuries in children (see Nauta et al., “A Systematic Review on the Effectiveness of School and Community-Based Injury Prevention Programmes on Risk Behaviour and Injury Risk in 8–12 Year Old Children”).

21 See Edwards, “Three Approaches from Europe: Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia”; Oppenheimer, “Schooling the Imagination.” According to psychologists Kevin Rathunde and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, American students in Montessori middle schools tend to have stronger intrinsic motivation to learn, and report more absorbed engagement in schoolwork (or “flow”—see Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi, “Middle School Student’ Motivation and Quality of Experience: A Comparison of Montessori and Traditional School Environments”).

22 See Zernike, “Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten?”; Christakis, “New Preschool Is Crushing Kids.”

23 Hamilton, “Reading Practice Can Strengthen Brain ‘Highways”; Cunningham and Stanovich, “What Reading Does to the Mind.”

24 Healy, Endangered Minds, 89.

25 Some children who are developmentally precocious and eager can learn to read and write earlier, a practice encouraged in Montessori schools through individualized instruction. Such earlier cognitive development, however, should not be forced.

26 Alas, such a reading-focused learning environment may not be beneficial for students with strong attention deficit or dyslexia symptoms. Implementing it may therefore require streaming students on the basis or their potential to become earnest readers.

27 See Bounds, “How Handwriting Trains the Brain: Forming Letters Is Key to Learning, Memory, Ideas”; Klass, “Why Handwriting Is Still Essential in the Keyboard Age.” Unfortunately, instruction in cursive handwriting is being phased out after the first few grades of schooling in the United States and many other countries in favor of typing—which is seen as a 21st century skill.

28 See May, “A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop.”

29 Healy, Endangered Minds, 170; cf. Belluck, “Traditional Toys May Beat Gadgets in Language Development.”

30 See Murgia, “Technology in Classrooms Doesn’t Make Students Smarter.”

31 See Baron, Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World.

32 Baron, “How E-Reading Threatens Learning in the Humanities.”

33 See Richtel, “A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute.”

34 See Hirsch, The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools; Brown, Roediger III, and McDaniel, Make It Stick.

35 Quoted in Durayappah-Harrison, “The Secret Benefits of a Curious Mind.”

36 See Kafka, “From the Desk of Roland Barthes.”

37 See Kolowich, “Confuse Students to Help Them Learn.”

38 See Lieberman, Social, 275–98.

39 According to a curious recent study, medical students learn anatomy better when the instruction process uses old-fashioned cadavers as opposed to cutting-edge computer simulations. Apparently, the “real thing” makes a stronger impression on most students (see Saltarelli, Roseth, and Saltarelli. “Human Cadavers vs. Multimedia Simulation: A Study of Student Learning in Anatomy”).

40 Claxton, Intelligence in the Flesh: Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More Than It Thinks, 272.

41 Barber, “Shrunken Sovereign: Consumerism, Globalization, and American Emptiness.” The series of articles on the American “disunion” 150 years ago in The New York Times provides another good example (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion).

42 See Dalrymple, “The Case for Cannibalism.”

43 See Durham University, “Star Trek Classroom: Next Generation of School Desks.”

44 This tendency is perhaps illustrated by a simulation exercise I observed in November 2013 at our department. It involved stylized international negotiations during which teams representing eurozone countries were able to score points as they adopted different policies. Some of the students were able to design a strategy which, once adopted by all teams, ensured that they all finish with an equal number of points, and all receive the bonus points that were to be allocated to the winners. This outcome produced much excitement and cheering. I had a sense that the build-up to it and the exhilaration it produced were much more likely to stick in most student’s minds than any substantive lessons the negotiation simulation was supposed to teach them.

45 Healy, Endangered Minds, 214; Lehrer, “The Educational Benefits of Ugly Fonts.”

46 Doidge, “Building a Better Brain.” There is also some research indicating that boys struggling in school may benefit from a more authoritative teaching style (see Hadjar, Backes, and Gysin, “School Alienation, Patriarchal Gender-Role Orientations and the Lower Educational Success of Boys: A Mixed-Method Study”).

47 See Paul, “Why Schools’ Efforts to Block the Internet Are So Laughably Lame, and Why It’s Seriously Important to Keep Students Off Facebook.”

48 See McLeod, “Jean Piaget.”

49 There is recent research indicating that even excessive decoration in kindergarten classrooms (much of which is directly intended to provide visual props for learning) can be counterproductive (see Hoffman, “Rethinking the Colorful Kindergarten Classroom”).

50 See Christakis, “New Preschool Is Crushing Kids.”

51 See Jabr, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: Why Paper Still Beats Screens.” If the meaning of a text derives mostly from our emotional responses to it, and reading from a screen evokes a denuded emotional response, then (and even some non-fiction) will have a different meaning when “delivered” through different media. In a sense, reading the same text from a physical “codex” (arranged collection of pages) and from a screen will be like reading two slightly different texts.

52 See Dartmouth College. “Digital Media May Be Changing How You Think: New Study Finds Users Focus on Concrete Details Rather Than the Big Picture.”

53 See Paul, “Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer.”

54 See Carr, “As Technology Advances, Deep Reading Suffers”; Jabr, “Reading Brain in the Digital Age.”; Baron, Words Onscreen.

55 See Giraldi, “Object Lesson: Why We Need Physical Books.”

56 Quoted in Bauerlein, “Screen Reading and Print Reading.”

57 See Millward Brown, “Using Neuroscience to Understand the Role of Direct Mail.”

58 Clabby, “Brains Like to Keep It Real.”

59 See Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift.

60 See Brooks, “Empirical Kids”; Sardamov, “Out of Touch.”

61 See Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?, 98–9.

62 See Schroeder, “New Students—New Learning Styles.”

63 See Cohen, “An SAT Without Analogies Is Like: (A) A Confused Citizenry…”

64 See Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift.

65 See Haidt, Righteous Mind; Jack, “Conceptual Dualism.”

66 See Cunningham and Stanovich, “What Reading Does to the Mind.”

67 See Dunckley, Reset Your Child’s Brain.

68 See Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift.

69 See Everett, “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language.”

70 See Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School?

15. The Last Oasis?

1 See Whybrow, Well-Tuned Brain, 293–312; Previc, Dopaminergic Mind, 155–72.

2 Whybrow, idem, xiii.

3 Idem, 176–209.

4 Idem, 206. Whybrow refers to “this collection of skills for resilience, empathic understanding, self-control, and prudent planning as character” (ibid., emphasis in original).

5 See Hanna, Stressaholic; Sieberg, The Digital Diet: The 4-Step Plan to Break Your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in Your Life; Linden, Compass of Pleasure; Levitin, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.

6 See Zimbardo and Coulombe, Man (Dis)connected.

7 See Greenfield, Mind Change, 274–86; cf. McKibben, “Mental Environment.”

8 Bell, Bishop, and Przybylski, “The Debate Over Digital Technology and Young People.”

9 Bell, “Head in the Cloud”; cf. Neuroskeptic, “Susan Greenfield Causes Autism”; Goldacre, “Speculation, Hypothesis and Ideas. But Where Is the Evidence?”

10 See Bolton, “Smartphones Are Making Children Borderline Autistic, Says Psychiatrist”; Oxenham, “No, Children Aren’t Making Children Autistic.”

11 My general sense is that our beliefs about the world, people, and ideas can tell us more about the way we function neuro-physiologically as opposed to the objects we contemplate (see Sardamov, “Out of Touch”). Which does not mean all beliefs are created equal, and everything is relative and potentially plausible (or less so). I tend to trust thinkers who seem to combine obvious intelligence and sufficient background knowledge with keen emotional and interoceptive sensitivity (see note 13 below).

12 See Greenfield, Mind Change, 30.

13 There are various way to assess someone’s affective-visceral reactivity—from brain scanning to measuring electrical skin conductance (as done in a polygraph test), or simply testing the ability of a person to sense their own heart rate at rest. As neuroscientist Hugo Critchley points out, “the better you are at tracking your own heartbeats, the better you are at experiencing the full gamut of human emotions and feelings. The more viscerally aware, the more emotionally attuned you are” (quoted in Blakeslee and Blakeslee, “My Insula Made Me Do It”). There is, indeed, growing recognition that such deeper affective-visceral attunement is key to adequate social understanding and judgment (and it tends to correlate with holistic thinking and more apprehensive attitudes). In the absence of data regarding the interoceptive sensitivity of intellectual opponents, I tend to rely on my own gut feeling and holistic assessment—which tell me I should rather trust the Baroness than her self-assured critics (for a fuller elaboration of this epistemological position, see Sardamov, “Out of Touch”).

14 Goldberg, Executive Brain, 222.

15 Idem, 219–23.

16 Goldberg, New Executive Brain, 275–81. Goldberg has also dismissed anxieties about an impending “anarchy” in the digital world—suggesting that search engines have effectively become “the digital frontal lobes” (281, emphasis in original).

17 Greenberg, “Why Last Chapters Disappoint.”

18 Ibid.

19 See Watters, “We Aren’t the World”; Scicurious, “Dopamine Goggles Make the Glass Half-Full”; Chang and Asakawa, “Cultural Variations on Optimistic and Pessimistic Bias for Self Versus a Sibling: Is There Evidence for Self-enhancement in the West and for Self-criticism in the East when the Referent Group Is Specified?”

20 See Eyal and Hoover, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products; Zuboff, “The Secret of Surveillance Capitalism.”

21 See American Educational Research Association, “Little Evidence That Executive Function Interventions Boost Student Achievement”; cf. Bornstein, “Teaching Social Skills to Improve Grades and Lives.” Disappointing results from programs emphasizing non-cognitive skill may partly reflect a negative effect of increased executive control on implicit learning.

22 See Abeles, “Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?” Leaving behind her career as a Wall Street attorney, in 2009 Vicki Abeles produced and co-directed the documentary Race to Nowhere highlighting these dangers. She later made another documentary, Beyond Measure, exploring innovative educational approaches.

23 See Previc, Dopaminergic Mind, 75.

24 See Reed, “Study: Digital Distraction in Class Is on the Rise.”

25 Natural birth is associated with healthier growth and development in babies (see Block, “Our C-Section Rate Won’t Bulge—Is It Because We Don’t Trust Women’s Hormones?”).

26 The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for up to two years, exclusively for the first six months of life (World Health Organization, “Exclusive Breastfeeding”).

27 Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, 240; see 240-59.

28 Palmer, Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World Is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About It.

29 See Aron, The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them. This neurosomatic type is akin to the “orchid children” and those “living with intensity” and heightened excitabilities mentioned earlier (see Dobbs, “Science of Success”; Daniels, “Living with Intensity: Overexcitabilities in Profoundly Gifted Children”). Psychologist Jerome Kagan has described in less positive light the typical temperament of high-reactive children (The Long Shadow of Temperament).

30 See Dobbs, ibid.; “Can Genes Send You High or Low? The Orchid Hypothesis A-Bloom”; Bartz, “Sense and Sensitivity.”

31 See Hayles, “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes.”

32 Ibid.

33 See Herbert and Weintraub, Autism Revolution; Miller, “Is the World Making You Sick?”; Chang, “Debate Continues on Hazards of Electromagnetic Fields.”

34 See Galambos, Barker, and Tilton-Weaver, “Who Gets Caught at Maturity Gap? A Study of Pseudomature, Immature, and Mature Adolescents.”

35 See Elias, The Civilizing Process. Curiously, Pinker believes American society has since the 1990s experienced a “recivilizing process,” reversing the decivilizing trend dating back to the 1960s. He marshals much data showing decreasing levels of violent crime and other forms or symptoms of social pathology (see Pinker, Better Angels, 116–28).

36 See Sardamov, “From ‘Bio-Power’ to ‘Neuropolitics’: Stepping Beyond Foucault.”

37 Stiegler, Taking Care of Youth and the Generations, 2 (emphasis in original).

38 Stiegler does place some hope in recent technological trends like the development of open-source and free software, and of collaborative practices and communities making use of these (idem).

39 It is well known that video games and websites are designed to be addictive, so they can attract the most clicks and elicit the longest “user experience” possible. A young Facebook “research scientist” commented ruefully a few years ago: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.” (quoted in Vance, “This Tech Bubble Is Different”).

40 Birkerts, Gutenberg Elegies, 190.

41 See Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.

42 This is my own loose translations of the slogan which comes from The Twelve Chairs, a much beloved satirical novel written by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov.

43 See Neufeld and Maté, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers (the updated edition of the book includes two chapters on the challenges of parenting in the digital age). According to one recent study, sixth-graders who spent just five days at a camp which bans TV and all digital devices showed a significant improvement in their ability to relate emotionally to others—and parents could similarly benefit from reduced screen time (see Wolpert, “In Our Digital World, are Young People Losing the Ability to Read Emotions?”.

44 When Gali was 12 years old, we were once standing in the street, waiting for a bus under the falling snow. As we were chatting, she suddenly exclaimed, “Look, it is exactly the way they draw it!” She was looking at a single snowflake sitting on the sleeve of my dark woolen coat.

45 See Lewis, “The End.”

46 Bauerlein, Dumbest Generation.

47 See Previc, Dopaminergic Mind, 163–4.

48 Duff, “The Information Revolution’s Dark Turn.”

49 See Popper, “The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street.”

50 See Huxley, Brave New World.

51 Mendelson, “In the Depth of the Digital Age.”

52 Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, viii.

53 Ibid.

54 See McGowan, “Addiction.”

55 Maté, Hungry Ghosts, 440.

56 This happened in 2010 at Cape Denison in Antarctica. The penguins then needed to waddle 60 km (over 37 miles) to catch fish. In five years, their colony shrunk by 150,000—with the remaining 10,000 apparently facing a dire future.

57 See Jenouvrier et al., “Effects of Climate Change on an Emperor Penguin Population: Analysis of Coupled Demographic and Climate Models.” Of course, penguins are not compounding their own predicament the way we, humans are.

58 Renowned social critic Lewis Mumford once criticized a type of liberals overly attached to “rational science and experimental practice.” In his view, such a liberal is always “hoping for the best” while he “remains unprepared to face the worst; and on the brink of what may turn out another Dark Age, … continues to scan the horizon for signs of dawn” (“The Corruption of Liberalism”). Writing at the outset of World War II, Mumford attributed this Pollyanna optimism to lack of adequate emotional response in the face of a mortal threat.