from She’s a Keeper!
To be middle school certified, one took a course called “The Middle School Learner”. In that course, we learned much about the mindset of 11-14 year olds. One of the major concepts I remembered learning was the term and definition of “brain dead.” You’ve heard it. You’ve probably said it. But did you know it came from a real educational idea?
I do not mean “brain dead” as in “A brain dead individual has no clinical evidence of brain function.” This “brain dead” idea came from the journals of doctors in education. Prior to the middle school years, a child’s brain worked at 80% capacity and the body worked at about 20%. The middle school age brain flipped-flopped…20% brain/80% body trying to catch up.
Our middle school Gifted students took yearly field trips to educational but fun locations like Reynolda House, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, and Charleston where we slept on the aircraft carrier, The Yorktown, visited graveyard haunts at night, rode cobblestone horse-drawn buggy tours during the day, and had a scavenger hunt to find historical places and relics. Every trip was a three day event.
One of the mothers of our students told me the story abut how her family went back to Charleston for a vacation about three years after her daughter’s school trip. The daughter, who was fourteen years old on our class trip, was now seventeen for her family excursion. Her mother commented how her daughter was “oooohhhing and aaahhing” all over the place in Charleston. She said she’d comment about how she “loved this street”, or “loved this house”, or “loved this graveyard,” or WHATEVER. She expressed excitement about everything Charleston had to offer.
Her mother finally said to her, “Honey, you act like this is the first time you’ve ever seen this place. You came here with your Gifted class trip three years ago.”
Her daughter looked at her and said, “Oh, this is where we were?”
And this girl graduated from TUFTS in Boston! Bless her heart…she was a victim of the adolescent “brain dead” theory.