On June 24th this year, TES (once The Times Educational Supplement) had an article "The False Promise of Neuroeducation" by Hilary and Steven Rose. If you want to catch the article it's behind a paywall.
I did't read it - because I had just then bought the Rose's book "Can neuroscience change our minds?" A good read it was too. But I didn't quite buy in to the basic premise, of which more in a moment.
I did read, many years ago, the 2007 OECD Report, "Understanding the Brain: the birth of a learning science" mentioned in the TES article. A good read that was too.
Many of the ideas coming then from neuroscience (brain plasticity, for one) have now passed into common currency. Conductive education has (in places and by some) embraced neuroscience as evidence of the efficacy of conductive education.
The Rose's TES article and book provide useful correctives to over-enthusiasm for 'training the brain'. As the TES article begins:
Neuroscience may eventually provide practical strategies to use in the classroom, but we’re not there yet – with too many neuromyths and not enough concrete evidence, teachers need to be wary, argue Hilary and Steven Rose
"Can neuroscience change our minds?" goes somewhat deeper, but to much the same conclusion "that neuroscience on its own is not able to bear the weight of these hopes."
From the back cover to the book (and the publisher's website):
Neuroscience, with its astounding new technologies, is uncovering the workings of the brain and with this perhaps the mind. The 'neuro' prefix spills out into every area of life, from neuroaesthetics to neuroeconomics, neurogastronomy and neuroeducation. With its promise to cure physical and social ills, government sees neuroscience as a tool to increase the 'mental capital' of the children of the deprived and workless. It sets aside intensifying poverty and inequality, instead claiming that basing children's rearing and education on brain science will transform both the child's and the nation's health and wealth.
Leading critic of such neuropretensions, neuroscientist Steven Rose and sociologist of science Hilary Rose take a sceptical look at these claims and the science underlying them, sifting out the sensible from the snake oil. Examining the ways in which science is shaped by and shapes the political economy of neoliberalism, they argue that neuroscience on its own is not able to bear the weight of these hopes.
Being of a sceptical turn-of-mind, yet at the same time interested in developments in neuroscience as a general reader, I would recommend the Rose's book, especially to those who have embraced "neuroscience" in their explanations of conductive education. It is, as I said above, a good read - and an accessible one. What I am less than wholly convinced by on just one reading is the wider political case that is made. That science is shaped by and shapes culture, including political culture, I would not especially quibble with. That, as the Rose's appear to say in the book, more specifically that neuroscience is shaped by neoliberalism, is a case that I would prefer much more time to reflect on - as with so much in neuroscience.
This is a book I shall certainly read again, and shortly.
Footnote:
Hilary Rose is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy, University of Bradford
Steve Rose is Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience at The Open University
(Sometime joint Professors of Genetics and Society at Gresham College).