Appropriate to the season, today I’m raking up some loose leaves as I wrap up Year Five of my blog, so I won’t be playing off one single topic. First, I wanted to return to last week’s entry which was frivolously titled Social Butterflies and Hermits. (Actually has a better rhythm if you reverse those two.) After I posted that piece, Rosellen brought me a fascinating piece from Harvard Magazine that I had missed. That’s what happens when you get fixated on reading the alumni obituaries section. In any case, I wanted to summarize for you the results of a study on the neurological roots of sociability which brings our more poetic speculations on the subject back down to earth.
After beginning with a disturbing post-Covid finding from the Surgeon General’s office that social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 29%, the article moves to reporting on the ground-breaking work of Catherine Dulac, a Harvard neuroscientist. In her research with mice whom she isolates for various lengths of time before reuniting them with other mice, she found that social interaction is a “homeostatic need, like the need for food, the need for water, the need for sleep. The longer animals, including humans, have been without food or water, for example, the more the brain pushes them to eat or drink to achieve a healthy, balanced state of homeostasis that promotes survival.” The longer the mice were isolated, the greater the prevalence of cancer, cognitive problems, and other diseases.
Using sophisticated brain mapping, Dulac and her colleagues were able to locate specific neurons in the hypothalamus that fired during isolation and others that were activated when the mice were reunited with others. As for our speculations in last week’s posting, I was interested in her findings that individual mice and mouse species differed in the intensity of their responses to isolation and reunion. It leaves me wondering whether studies of mice (and humans) exposed to others for extended periods and/or in great numbers would display some neurological needs to be alone. In Dr. Dulac’s own words, “Some people are going to thrive when they are with others and some people are going to thrive when they are not with others.
In the last year or two, I’ve been introduced to the world of substacks. Like blogs, they are regular postings by writers some of which are fee-based sources of income for their authors, while others are available free. One of my favorite substacks is the work of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose basketball exploits I’ve followed since his high school years in NYC when his name was Lew Alcindor. Kareem became one of the greatest NBA basketball stars of all time.
That would have been sufficient accomplishment for one lifetime, but it turns out that this 7-footer’s brain and heart are even bigger than his body. He is the author of books for adults and young readers, and when his substack shows up in my mailbox, it jumps to the front of the line in my reading order. In addition to astute political observations, it provides savvy commentary on popular media – books, movies, TV shows, music and videos. I don’t know how he finds time to keep up with all of it.
In addition, there’s a regular feature that begins with a quote that has caught Kareem’s attention, followed by an extended riff on that quote. I’m going to steal this week’s quote and commentary to share with you about teachers and teaching. Although it will interest all of you, I am especially dedicating it to my fellow educators because it provides some well-deserved uplift to counter all the negativity that is weighing us down in education.
Subscribe to Kareem’s substack and check out the others that are available. You’ll be better for it. See you in November.
“Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.”
Most people can remember a teacher who threw open a large window to the world with a view of limitless possibilities that had been unimaginable before. Many students describe such teachers as saving their lives because, without them, their choices for a better future would have been severely limited. Where before, they only saw themselves as staying in their hometown, working at the local farm or factory, thanks to that special teacher they could imagine themselves as a doctor, lawyer, CEO, writer, artist, scientist, or something else that excited them. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with staying in one’s hometown and working the farm or at the factory. It’s just that each child should have the opportunity to choose their path and to do that, they’ll need the educational skills to pursue those dreams. Many also just need someone to encourage them and have faith in them.
I’m not here to canonize teachers. There are plenty of bad ones. We all have memories of them as well. They not only don’t know much about their subject, but they don’t have the passion to teach or the love of their students. They’re there for a paycheck and to do as little work as possible. Or they get off on having authority over others and pontificating their political opinions to a captive audience. Teachers should never give their political opinions but instead teach students how to form their own through logic and research. As the adage says, “The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.”
Some teachers suck and they know it, and they are a blight on education. Your reaction to that might be that we should fire them but that tenure makes that impossible. Tenure is crucial, though, to protect teachers from the political pressures to teach only what parents want or what politicians want, rather than what qualified educators believe is important. That’s an important guardrail, especially in today’s climate of educational interference.
The same can be said of any profession: there are some good people and some bad people. Because teachers have such an influence on our children—and the adults they will become—good teachers can change the world, or at least the worlds of their students.
Teachers have been under attack in this country by conservatives trying to dumb down education by removing or restricting critical thinking, whitewashing history, and forcing Christianity into the curriculum. Abraham Lincoln said, “Teach the children so it will not be necessary to teach the adults.” Unfortunately, we have a lot of adults in dire need of teaching who want to make their children less intelligent and less educated so as not to challenge the adults. This is one of the major reasons there’s a teacher shortage across the country.
There’s another popular saying about teachers that I wish to dispute: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Anyone who repeats this or believes it is in severe need of more education. There’s an art to teaching—to inspire reluctant students, to make complex ideas understandable. Few people care enough to develop these skills. Being a genius writer, artist, scientist, or mathematician doesn’t mean they can teach whatever they’re brilliant at. An artist might produce a timeless masterpiece, but it often takes a dedicated teacher to show students why they should appreciate the work. And once they have, that work lives in the student’s heart forever.
