There is no way to directly apply neuroscience to education. While we have learned a great deal recently about how the brain learns, the studies simply don’t exist that can test one “brain-based” strategy over another. The best that we can do is read the research and use common sense to figure out what approach is most likely to benefit the largest number of children. With that in mind, I am proposing a series of posts that detail things parents or teachers can easily do to help raise healthier, happier children. I often come across articles that make me pause and say, well, I can’t prove it, but it wouldn’t hurt to try…
…so here is the first research-based, but completely untested, untestable idea that it wouldn’t hurt to try. Daniel Lieberman, a human evolutionary biologist, was featured in the latest issue of Harvard magazine. He has just recently published a book, The Evolution of the Human Head. What interested me was the finding that human heads have become smaller in the brief (evolutionarily speaking) time of recorded human history. Far too brief a time, in fact, for evolution to explain. His experiments show that eating a diet of highly processed food has resulted in jaws too small for our teeth to fit into, in as little as one generation.
Did you need braces? Teeth pulled? Would you change your diet to potentially avoid that experience for your children (and that cost for yourself)?
The research (conducted by giving pigs hard or soft food to chew as they matured) suggests that eating tougher foods causes the jaw to grow larger – large enough to fit all of our teeth. It couldn’t hurt to have our children eat raw carrots every day, or beef jerky, or other crunchable, less finely-processed foods. In fact, in an era when highly processed foods often contain chemical additives, hormones, and toxins, it couldn’t hurt to add a lot more raw, crunchy food to our diet for more reasons than a healthier jaw. For me, though, a stronger jaw is enough. Having been through years of biteplates, headgear, braces, and retainers myself, I plan on sending my children to school every day with some carrots to crunch on.
It couldn’t hurt.
