A Fresh Look at Brain-Based Education

TEN YEARS ago John Bruer, executive administrator of James S. McDonnell Foundation, began a series of articles critical of brain-based education. They included and Brain: A Bridge Too Far (1997), In Search of . . . Brain-Based Education (1999), and, most recently, On Implications of Neuroscience Research for Science Teaching and Learning: Are There Any? (2006).1 Bruer argued that educators should ignore neuroscience and focus on what psychologists and cognitive scientists have already discovered about teaching and learning. His message to educators was hands off brain research, and he predicted it would be 25 years before we would see practical classroom applications of new brain research. Bruer linked brain-based education with tabloid mythology by announcing that, if brain-based education is true, then the pyramids were built by aliens -to house Elvis.2