4th R Foundation: Our Leaders are Ignorant of the Real Issues of Education Reform. Our Experts Sincerely Want to Reform Education but Have Very Little Clue how to Educate Both the Mind and Brain

NEW YORK, NY, April 02, 2012 (Press-News.org) /A RELATIVELY new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life./ - The Brain on Love, By Diane Ackerman in the NY Times. We have created a subject that rewires the brain of an emotionally challenged student. In effect making the student's brain emotionally healthy and capable of becoming a successful student.

It is now becoming more and more scientifically evident that the brain changes physically as time goes by. It is well known that experience by old age makes man wise. What actually happens is that our emotional baggage in the brain gets constantly ground out by being exposed to the reality of life, leaving the brain emotional baggage free. The 4th R Foundation is suggesting that we deliberately grind out the emotional baggage from the brains of students, to speed up the wisdom process. We have been suggesting brain therapy for decades; as a compulsory subject to grind out the emotional baggage from the emotionally challenged brains of our students from early on.

The real problem is that our experts who sincerely want to reform education have very little clue to the differences between brain and mind. Given the different nature of the brain and mind the way to educate the two is also different. The brain acts/reacts/thinks physically in biochemical reactions. The mind thinks in words but even this thinking emerges through the physical activity of the brain. So it is the quality of the brain that determines the quality of the mind. We have hundreds of subjects to teach/educate the mind and hardly any clue of how to teach the brain.

The problem is that the brain requires more than education. The brain requires therapy to physically change the brain. We already have therapies that make the subnormal into normal; we must use the same to make the subnormal brain and even the so called normal brain into a super normal brain.

We educate the brain the same way we educate the mind. It is like teaching everyone to become a singer even when one has no singing talent. We try to educate the brain by providing knowledge by pleading, preaching, coaxing and even threatening through rewards and punishment. It is like pouring fresh and clean water into a glass that is itself producing dirty and stale water. The fresh knowledge gets overwhelmed/polluted with the brain generated stale/ill knowledge. We even miseducated the emotionally challenged brains which due to no fault of their own are labeled as failures.

My email conversation with Dr. Melody Burns, the Director of Domestic Policy at the White House is a perfect example of how ignorant our education leaders are. When I explained to her that we should teach the 4th R of reality/truth she said that she has her own R of responsibility! I asked her, how is she going to teach responsibility? I said let me guess. You are going to teach by imparting knowledge, pleading and preaching etc. Well responsibility is an innate part of wisdom and could she teach wisdom? She had no answer!

No matter how much money is spent and no matter how many new techniques of teaching with improved methods are introduced; an emotionally challenged brain cannot be forced, cajoled, preached, punished, rewarded and/or showered with knowledge to learn, as the emotionally challenged brain is too unfocused and incapable of learning. The problem of emotionally challenged brains has to be addressed. The brain has to be physically and emotionally made healthy and only then it will become capable of focusing on learning, integrating and absorbing knowledge.

The 4th R Foundation is a non-profit education research foundation that researches informal/emotional intelligence education, human nature, brain, mind, conscientiousness, self, wisdom, life coaching, adult reeducation, shyness, self image, emotional brain baggage etc.