Wilderness of the Brain

It is winter, and during winter, I teach my students about the human body.  Within the unit, I teach about the brain and how it works and how we acquire knowledge.  I often compare our newborn brains to a forest.  I say over and over again that the size of our brain is not as important as the paths that we build to lead us through the wilderness of our brain. 

I talk about how the places we go to most frequently in our brains are like interstates and the places we only go to once (or very infrequently) are like bushwhacking through the forest.  I talk about how it is not so great to have a bunch of buildings without the ability to get to them.  We discuss how as teens, they begin synaptic pruning to weed out the side roads that the brain does not deem necessary.  A chaotic but necessary quieting of all the information they have taken in so far.

With all this said, I am a lover of the wilderness and inelegance. Thus it has gotten me to thinking.  I must say, this year I have had a bit of an existential crisis as an educator, parent and homeschooling.  I love watching the mind grow and expand in function, problem solving, and innovation.  Yet, I despise noise, and facts, just for facts and noise sake.  I like peaceful and elegant. 

What does this mean then in regards to how we build roads into our brain.  A wilderness, no road area, is probably not the best.  But, on the flip side a criss cross of millions of pathways, roads, sidewalks, and interstates, is probably not the ideal either. 

So now, I am led to think about why we need wilderness and how we utilize civilization.  Wilderness provides clean water, clean air, natural resources, that when harvested sustainably, provide support for the society.  Wilderness provides a reprieve from the chaos of society.  It provides a template for much of modern inventions.  It provides a home for "the other" forms of life not so welcomed in day to day human life. 

So as a teacher and mother, how do I responsibly develop roads into such a pristine place. My students come to me as middle schoolers with a chaotic system of trails, roads, sidewalks leading inefficiently around the woods of their brain.  Do I make thousands of factual trails that a student's mind might go down one time for a test, only to have the trail grow over as soon as they never go down that path again.  Do I drill information in so that they have a super highway of basic facts.  Or, do I spend my time giving them the materials to build their roads, like curiosity, problem solving, experiences, passion... 

I am not naive enough to think it must be one or the other.  Kids do need to know basic math facts, grammar rules, basics about the human body, historical events, how the world works.  Yet, should facts be the focus, or the how to learn be the focus? 

The question I am left with is, how do I create an educational experience for my students that improves their knowledge and at the same time respects the wilderness of the brain and the quiet spaces that allow refuge from the constant hum of civilization?