Right-Brain Learner in a Left-Brain World

For the most part, school teaches to tests, and value-logic brain tasks. Computation, categorization, sequence, logic, and verbal skills are all highly valued abilities in school. Visual ability and visualizing; the capacity for emotion, humor, and intuition; rhythmic movement, and other gestalt aptitudes are not cultivated or tested, nor particularly valued. It isn’t until we find ourselves outside the classroom in the "real world," where success depends on entrepreneurship, insight, and imagination that we begin to appreciate the importance of the gestalt aptitudes.

Although the majority of people in the world are left-brain dominant, this is slowly changing to a more gestalt and whole brain dominance. This is evidenced by the learning styles studies of the ever growing "special education" population. When we investigate the population of our special education students in schools we find that the greater number of them are gestalt-brain-dominant learners.

Our individual life experiences shape our perceptions, how we learn, and who we are. However, inborn factors also play a part in determining our neuronal wiring and each of our brains are uniquely wired. For instance, we each show a preference to use one hand, eye, ear, foot, and brain hemisphere.

Our neuronal wiring is also influenced by the unique way we choose to take in sensory information and the dominant sense’s connection to the preferred brain hemisphere. This nerve network establishes the basis for our individual learning style, and one style is not superior to another. This learning style does, however, create a preference for and ease with certain tasks and leads us to favor certain types of perception. If a person’s learning experiences never or rarely match her preference or strengths, however, she can begin to feel that her learning style is inferior.

Recognizing and attending to this one awareness alone would eliminate most of the problems ADD students have in the traditional classroom, thereby reducing their behavioral difficulties. In teaching these children, it is also important to recognize the value of whole-brain learning techniques.

Learning has long been based on memory and repetition (rote learning); and our standing reliance on standardized testing reflects this focus. However, current research on the brain shows we have very little capacity for these types of activity. Research shows instead, that the brain has an infinite capacity for remembering patterns because you tie new ideas into what you have already learned.

A child learns best when participating in the discovery, integration, and use of information rather than sitting and listening to a teacher. A child also learns faster when sharing ideas with others in a safe, friendly, give-and-take learning environment. The skills involved in these types of learning are particular strengths for the ADD child. Once recognized as skills, the preferred learning angle for the ADD child can help educators and parents to improve learning environments for all children in a way that incorporates more participation, discovery, integration, and the use of information rather than simply memorization of it. Marianne Williamson describes the dilemma aptly when she says, "To heal the havoc wreaked by a left-brain ...bias, we must be willing to question the bias itself."