Change Ethnic Poverty

Students of African American and Hispanic background were recently part of a pilot project using a novel system of cognitive assessment to assess children’s learning potential. It was developed by Professor Reuven Feuerstein. The assessment consists of a battery of six to eight tests which measure abstract thinking, analogies, and qualitative thinking and are not culturally-biased.

“Nationally, African American students are identified as educationally mentally retarded twice as often as their white peers; and African Americans are identified as emotionally/behaviorally disordered one and a half times as often as their white peers. The actual number of these “BD” (Behavioral Disorder) diagnoses has increased by 500% between 1974 and 1998.”

Dr. Eric Cooper, President of the National Urban Alliance notes how unfortunate it is that “misdiagnosis of special education status has been used to place a significant number of children of color into programs that doom them to a life of low expectations and low achievement.”

Professor Feuerstein agrees and writes that “Too often we give up on children who are labeled with learning disabilities, but my work has found that using more creative techniques to teach these children will lead them to the same successes that life offers the other children in the classroom. Poverty is not destiny and we can reverse major depression in a child’s cognitive development and realize impressive results.”

Feuerstein’s theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability “views the human organism as open, adaptive and amenable for change. The aim of this approach is to modify the individual, emphasizing autonomous and self-regulated change. Intelligence is viewed as a propensity of the organism to modify itself when confronted with the need to do so. Intelligence is defined as a changeable state rather than an immutable trait.”

Feuerstein’s claim that “poverty is not destiny” and that we can improve a child’s cognitive development and realize impressive results is profoundly important. He asserts that the benefits to all of society cannot be overstated.

Let me give one example. It has been proposed by Dr. Paul Nussbaum that learning may act as a potential vaccine again Alzheimer’s Disease and other age-related neurodegenerative diseases of the brain.

If we begin to think of learning as a process that improves health, like nutrition and exercise, then all students need to maximize their cognitive development. If tens and hundreds of thousands of poor children are placed in programs that doom them to a life of low expectations and low achievement and learning does act as a vaccine against age-related neurodegenerative diseases of the brain, we are accelerating the rate of dementias.

Childhood poverty has already been linked to dementia. Author of the research, Dr Moceri, said that “a poor quality childhood environment could prevent the brain from reaching a complete level of maturation.” The areas of the brain that show the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s are the one that take the longest time to mature during childhood and adolescence.

There are more than 5 million people in the United States living with Alzheimer’s. This means that every 72 seconds, someone develops Alzheimer’s. The indirect costs of Alzheimer’s and other dementias amount to more than $148 billion annually. Feuerstein’s International Center for the Enhancement of Learning works with children throughout the world. Plans are underway to start implementing the partnership in 20 U.S. cities. Educators, policy makers and journalists should follow the story carefully.

–Dr. Rohn Kessler

CEO and Founder Sparks Of Genius

"Junk DNA" Courtesy Crystal Links.com 2009

By Amy Price PhD

Not so many years ago we were told as students that a very small part of the genome coded for genes and the rest was ‘Junk DNA”. The questions why? followed by what if  come quickly when I am faced with such literal statements. The answer they are junk because no one knows what they do brought cause for alarm in my view because I don’t know what a good portion of the human race does  yet I would not relegate them to junk. I countered with I want to know what happened when you took them all out…turns out that was not doable and I was relegated to the divergent thinker category and lectured on the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle.

I later found a few people such as McClintock who saw this DNA may have value in the 1940s and worked tirelessly  to explore the DNA as a regulatory source for determining which genes are turned on and when they were activated (McClintock, 1965) Around the same time  Britten and  Davidson agreed and further  speculated the junk DNA plays a role in generating different cell types and different biological structures, depending on where in the genome they insert themselves (Britten & Davidson, 1969).

Recently, scientists from Princeton  and Indiana Universities studied the genome of a pond organism and found  that junk DNA or transposons may perform functions that are central to the existence of an organism. Apparently  these genes jump from location to location rearranging  the genome in a way that initiates growth just as McClintock thought. 

These genes are labelled transposons. In and during development, the transposons appear to first influence hundreds of thousands of DNA pieces to regroup. Then, when they are no longer needed the organism can erase the transposases from its genetic material, paring its genome to about 5 percent of its original load.

“The transposons actually perform a central role for the cell,” said Laura Landweber, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biologyat Princeton and an author of the study. “They stitch together the genes in working form.” This research  appeared in the May 15 edition of Science. (MacPherson, Princeton, 2009)

We are just now finding the science that existed in the mind of a researcher over sixty years ago and can watch revelation unravel as  science begins to explore how extensive the role of  junk  or as sometimes coined selfish DNA plays in  the circle of life….Sometimes just as in life it is those quietly working without accolades that are holding it all together who are the real stars!
Britten, R. J., & Davidson, E. H. Gene regulation for higher cells: A theory. Science 165, 349–357 (1969)

 McClintock, B. Components of action of the regulators Spm and Ac. Carnegie Institution of Washington Year Book 64, 527–536 (1965)

MacPherson ,2009 http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/ accessed june 27, 2009)