Anyone professionally involved in education knows there are quite a few opinions on how we learn and what the best methods are for teaching. However, whether we ascribe to the methods of Jean Piaget, B.F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, John Dewey, William Glasser, or any combination of them and/or of all the other theorists, we can better understand what is taking place during learning by looking at recent developments in neuroscience.

We all regularly demand "body compatible" chairs that match our body contours comfortably and hand-compatible tools for our work. Why then, don't we also insist on "brain-compatible schools" for our students? Taking advantage of the vast knowledge reservoir from neuroscience will surely advance education in the 21st Century.

If it's our job as educators to develop young minds, shouldn't we know how the brain works? The human brain is the best organized, most flexible, and highest functioning object in the known universe. We ask, "How is it that collective actions inside a three pound, 2-millimeter thick organ composed of over one trillion brain cells, 100 billion of them neurons, with vast ensembles of neural circuits numbering in the hundred of millions, intricate wide-area networks crisscrossing the brain, with a large number of strangely shaped sub-cortical structures housed just beneath the cerebral cortex, all work together giving rise to children who learn, walk, talk, think, memorize, invent wild stories, do long division, and develop an astounding catalogue of other phenomenal and uniquely human capabilities?" A clear understanding of the brain's development, functions and processing strategies should be the first area of study for all educators worldwide.

Prior to the new brain imaging methodologies that were developed during the 1990s, the human brain was considered a mysterious "black box." The brain was extremely stingy when it came to sharing any of its secrets. We now can gather more information in 20 minutes about an individual by analyzing neural firing patterns that are monitored during specific tasks, than we could in 20 years previously. Today, we have techniques such as PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography) measuring "fuel" uptake in the brain; EEGs (electroencephalography) measuring the electrical patterns of brain waves; MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and fMRI identifying how atomic particles are reacting to different kinds of tissue (the new technique, fast MRI produces, four brain images per second). We can utilize CAT scans, which convert MRI information into a three-dimensional picture and MEG (Magnetoencephalography) which measures the tiny magnetic pulse in neuronal activity, rather than to the electrical signal that is used in EEGs. With these new navigational tools for brain mapping, neuroscientists are prying that black box open in healthy, alive, alert and talkative subjects, and are no longer restricted to analyses from unresponsive cadavers.

Because we have learned so much about how it works, o future conversation about learning should ever take place unless the human brain is recognized as the centerpiece of that discussion. Educators should be aware of these important brain facts:

In a developing human fetus, brain cell production reaches a peak production period during which brain cells are produced at the amazing rate of over 250,000 every minute. Once born, life experiences almost literally sculpt a child's brain. Experiences determine how much growth will take place, in what regions, and even when, if, and where development will take place in the brain. As new learning occurs, neurons (the "network communicators") respond by reaching out to one another in an elaborate branching process that connects millions of previously unaligned brain cells into neural networks creating "magic trees," as UC Berkeley's Marian Diamond refers to the dense newly-formed "neural forests" that are produced. The vast number of neural pathways inside the brain will constantly expand or contract based on the quantity and the richness of our experiences.