Mysteries of the Brain; Tragedy of Leave No Child Behind

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
I see the states are getting their annual reports on whether they are meeting the challenge of Leave No Child Behind’s (LNCB) “Adequate Yearly Progress” standards. In that the law was designed to ensure that all public schools would be listed as failures by 2014 (so they could be replaced by private and charter schools), I am not surprised that Minnesota, regarded as a state with an excellent education system in spite of Governor Tim “Toolittle” Pawlenty’s drive to equal Mississippi, has one-half of its K-12 schools “failing to meet AYP.”

If LNCB is not dropped, it will only get worse. Remember, each year the standards are raised while students actually remain much the same. Every student is supposed to be proficient in math and reading by 2014. So someday pigs will fly, but they will not be aerodynamic by 2014.
Being a cynic who looks around to see the casket if he smells lovely flowers, I am slightly amused and yet terribly angry that we concentrate on math and science while neglecting the rest of the mind and body. Why are we preparing 21st century students for 20th century assembly lines?

Certainly math and science are important but they are only part of the picture. Advanced Asian societies, concentrating on math and science to create engineers, are beginning to see the error of their ways. They are visiting us to see why our students are so creative. We are visiting each other, dodging airplanes at 39,000 feet over the Pacific, when we should be spending the time and money to see how the brain functions.
“Candy Is Dandy but Liquor Is Quicker”
I used to use this Ogden Nash epic “Reflections On Ice Breaking” in teaching poetry to show the many levels of meaning in assembling words in passages.  Being high school seniors, most of them had experienced using candy and booze in their lifetime to gain pleasure or pain–or had watched their parents using candy and booze to break down social barriers while standing in circles gossiping and impressing.

How does one assess poetry, or art, or history, or physicality, or the dozens of disciplines that make us whole persons-–but are totally ignored by standardized, bastardized LNCB tests?

A European space probe (yes, those damn socialists can examine space, too) recently flew by a 62-mile rather weird asteroid on its way to visit the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. The asteroid Lutetia is one of the largest in our solar system so the Europeans photographed and measured using its 17 instruments on the spacecraft Rossetta.

This asteroid is unlike others, being all angles and flat plains. It also has tracks which might indicate that very large boulders rolled over it. To figure this one out we will have to use all of our powers–math, science, creativity, religion, philosophy, astronomy, and imagination. We even might have to use ten percent of our brain’s capacity instead of five percent.  That’s why we have to study the brain and its complexities.

German anthropologists have used their brains and an electron microscope to determine that our oldest ancestor, even with a brain just a third the size of ours, used tools on buffalo and antelope bones over 3.4 million years ago to get the meat off for lunch. Previously they had thought that our early cousins were strictly vegans. Spanish anthropologists have discovered 1,039 different bones, including those of mammoths and our cousins, in a cave from 800,000 years ago, proving that our prehuman ancestors were also cannibals on occasion. We have an awful lot (and some of it is really awful) to learn about how our brain functions.
The Bountiful, Amazing Mind of the Savant
I have been fascinated by the savant syndrome for many years. A savant is an individual with unusual ability in one or more fields who is also disabled in some way.

A new book by Dr. Darold A. Treffert, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University Of Wisconsin School of Medicine, will certainly be the laymen’s bible for a number of years. He has researched the savant syndrome for over 30 years. The book’s title is “Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired, and Sudden Savant.” 

There are thousands of questions and just a few answers about the savant syndrome. If we had any idea of how the brain worked in these situations I’m positive we would drop LNCB in a second:

::A 54-year-old construction worker has a stroke and becomes an accomplished poet, artist, and sculptor in a New York minute. Previously he had no interest or talent in any of these skills.

::A 54-year-old surgeon is struck by lightning and suffers several weeks of memory impairment. In that time he develops an obsessive interest in classical music although he had no interest in it before he was struck. He learns to play the piano, becomes so skilled that he now plays professionally. His surgical skills survive.

::A 40-year-old motivational speaker suffers a major concussion when he dives into a shallow pool. Immediately following his accident he is able to play the piano and guitar at a professional level, neither of which he could play before the accident. He now makes a good living composing movie sound tracks and performing at concerts. These are examples of what Treffert calls “sudden” savants. He has no explanation for these abilities.
Fantastic Abilities With Very Low IQs
Most savants measure between 50 and 80 on IQ scales, way below the average of 100. One of Treffert’s first patients was an adolescent boy who had memorized all of the routes, street names, and numbers associated with the Milwaukee bus system. He knew all of the bus routes, often much better than the route’s drivers.

He worked with a young boy who was mute and severely mentally handicapped who could look at a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, picture side down on the table, and methodically, without hesitation, assemble the puzzle without error.

One of his more interesting characters was a boy who could make hundreds of free throws in a row on a basketball court, using the same obsessive mechanical form and position each time.

Another young boy memorized Gibbon’s “The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire” verbatim. The fascinating thing about that successful task is that he could recite it backwards or forwards upon demand. One boy memorized the address of every candy shop in London–-and the date on which he had visited each one!

Treffert has examined the savant syndrome of Leslie Lemke, who has appeared several times on “60 Minutes.” Leslie was born prematurely and was given up for adoption immediately. Both of his eyes were removed at six months because of severe glaucoma.

At age eight his foster mother bought him a piano. One night his parents and Leslie watched and listened to a TV movie called “Sincerely Yours” which contained Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as its theme song. The Lemkes awoke at two in the morning and heard the number coming from the living room. May Lemke went downstairs, thinking that the TV had come on and that the movie was repeating. But here was Leslie playing the concerto without error from beginning to end. From that time on, although he had never had a piano lesson, Leslie could play perfectly any piece he listened to. Treffert has a chapter on Leslie that covers his absolutely amazing abilities.

I love the story of Max the Bookie, a savant who baffles the police in the art of bookmaking. Max takes bets on sporting and other events, which is only legal in Nevada. Max doesn’t live there. The police have seized as much as $700,000 from Max for illegal bookmaking and have taken him to court. According to experts, Max is so mentally retarded that he cannot understand the nature of his crimes. Therefore, they cannot charge him according to our rules! He cannot read or write–but he has a fantastic memory for numbers–and bookmaking is a numbers game. The police have finally let him alone.
Guys Who Are Pretty Good With the Numbers
The savant syndrome is not new. It is not caused by chemicals in the air or radon in the ground. Jedediah Buxton (1702-1772), an Englishman with no formal education and unable to write his name, performed math miracles although he had the mental capacity of a ten-year-old. He was asked: “In a body whose three sides are 23,145,789 yards, 5,642,732 yards and 54,965 yards, how many 1/8 inches exist?” Five hours later Jedediah gave the correct answer in 28 digits–and could recite it forwards or backwards!

The most famous savant to this point is Kim Peek, who died eight months ago. Treffert calls him the Mt. Everest of memory. Although Peek could not remember how to tie his shoelaces or button his shirts, he memorized more than 12,000 books and didn’t forget a detail. He could read a page in eight to ten seconds. And here’s how he read so many. He read the left page with his left eye and the right page with his right eye—simultaneously–-and then synthesized the contents before turning to the next pages. His brain retained all of this information as if it were a “hard” computer disk. His nickname was “Kimputer.” His knowledge was encyclopedic, not limited to what he liked. He knew all the area codes in the country. He could identify most classical music numbers and the date they were written, including the composer’s birth date and place of birth. He memorized all of the TV stations in the country–and their markets.

Kim memorized all of Shakespeare’s plays. While attending a Shakespeare play with his father, Kim yelled out: “Stop the play! You missed some of the words!” The actor said, “I didn’t think anyone would notice.” Kim brought down the house with this retort: “Well, Shakespeare would have cared.”

Perhaps you saw the Movie “Rain Man” starring Dustin Hoffman and the actor who can play Tom Cruise quite well. Much of the movie was based on the abilities of Kim Peek.
Other Strange Abilities of the Brain
Anyone who believes in standardized tests and No Child Left Behind should read up on the savant syndrome. I still remember a mentally handicapped boy I had in senior English who had lots of trouble with verb agreement, gerunds, and objects of prepositions, but ended up owning about ten hairdressing establishments and probably is a millionaire ten times over.

There is a man in Wisconsin who can listen to a vacuum cleaner motor and tell you the year, make, and model. 

There is a woman who has an internal clock in her prodigious brain. She wears no watch, but if you ask her the time she will give you the correct time to the second.

Raymond Babbitt could multiply numbers such as 4343 X 1234 and give you the answer instantly (5,359,262).  He could give you the square root of 2130 (46.15192304) instantly.

In his book Treffert attempts to explain why there are six times as many male savants as there are female.  It’s all about testosterone. Read the book. Most female savants are calendar nuts. Flo and Kay are identical twin autistic savants. Give them a date in 2134 and they will tell you what day of the week it is.

One of the most unusual calendar savants is a person who is so paralyzed he can only move his upper lip. His only word is “buh” which stands for bottle. Ask him to name the day of the week for dates between 1915 and 1945 and he never misses.

Brain experts estimate we have over a 100 trillion brain cells at our disposal but only use from one to ten percent of them.  We need education programs that create a fire in the brain, not douse the flames with rote learning and the heavy water of No Child Left Behind.

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant with a tested IQ in the 70’s—but he speaks seven languages and is now creating his own. He can define the formula pi (3.14++) to 22,514 decimal places. What is his Annual Yearly Progress (AYP)?
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