The Focused Student: Electives expand the brain’s resources
While the national election is over, electives in education remain a topic of interest to students and parents. Too often these classes are thought of as filler or frivolous, rather than as the important building blocks they really are in a student’s education. Over the next few months let’s discuss the ways in which electives play a crucial supporting role for the core subjects such as English, science, history and mathematics.
Our brain, fortunately, integrates rather than separates knowledge from different realms. That’s the reason electives are important. They help create a broader base of interaction in the brain and help the brain learn from many more situations while discovering ways to apply that knowledge to new situations. There is great benefit to having more reference points to draw on when confronting new situations. The more resources available, the more likely a person is to find a solution that works in a given situation, and that’s the key to success in the world outside of school.
What’s most fascinating about the brain is its ability to construct solutions for situations it has not previously seen. Some types of robots, including driverless cars, constantly learn from what they have done. They’re very good at repeating what worked and avoiding what didn’t work. The human brain, on the other hand, takes what it knows and responds to novel situations, making up a plan on the fly based on all of its knowledge. It draws on its complete inventory of knowledge assets to make that plan. Electives are important because they provide some of those knowledge assets that later prove useful, often in ways you cannot predict.
STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) courses have been widely promoted as being urgently needed to assure our future success as a nation. Yet STEM has now become STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math). Why? Because the arts bring a different dimension to learning about STEM subjects.
Many students I talk with want to pursue careers in digital gaming. They want to test and or develop the next “Minecraft” or “Firefall.” What they often don’t realize is that almost all but the most trivial games are developed by teams — often very large teams. Working like a brain, team members each contribute from their particular realm of knowledge. Some are the idea people, the story tellers and story boarders (English); some design and create graphics (art); many, of course, translate the ideas and graphics into computer code (science, math, computer sciences). And while each contributes his or her knowledge, each must also be knowledgeable about the other components.
Electives can be the point of entry to core subjects for many students. Musical notes have a mathematical relationship to one another, and the fact that we hear music is a function of physics, physiology and other aspects of science. A music elective might be the way a student begins to get a better understanding of and appreciation for math and science. A student interested in art might see that the theory of thirds is really about math as well as art.
We’ll take a look at specific elective subjects and the ways in which they can enhance core subjects, as well as the importance they possess on their own.
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ROBERT FRANK is the executive director of the Hillside School and Learning Center in La Cañada. He holds a master’s of science degree in special education and has more than 40 years of teaching experience. His column appears on the last Thursday of each month. He can be reached at frank@hillsideforsuccess.org.
