The effect of early childhood on the brain is significant and cries for more good research. In the book Disrupting Class, we draw on Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley’s work that shows that one of the fundamental reasons some children struggle to learn is that they don’t hear enough words before they reach the age of 3 and benefit from “language dancing.”

This raises many questions. Among them: Could a busy parent simply turn on the television and put the infant in front of it so they could hear the requisite number of words? The answer from research is a clear no. That sort of “background noise” has insignificant impact on a child’s intellect. But this Cornell study raises some questions here – maybe sitting the child in front of the TV would affect the brain in other ways.

This also leads us to think that the existence of multiple types of intelligences has its roots in the process in early childhood where our neural pathways are emblazoned in the brain. Babies who hear “extra talk” perhaps have strong verbal-linguistic intelligence; maybe listening to music helps produce stronger musical intelligence. And being disproportionately exposed to certain things like TV perhaps has strong effects on the brain, too.

As we advocate for more online learning, we need to be cognizant of how the medium for our information could in fact change how we think. Nicholas Carr writes about this phenomenon in the July/August cover story for the Atlantic Monthly titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

Of course, if the real world is changing regardless of whether we think it is good idea, and if students need to think differently to cope in this new world, we probably need to change how students learn in schools to match that evolution. We might also wonder if students in fact learn differently now than did students of an earlier generation, and if this, too, calls for different forms of learning.

There is mixed research on this last question to be sure. What do others think?

- Michael Horn

Results seem mixed. The difference doesn’t show up on test scores necessarily, according to this MSNBC article, but students are more enthusiastic about school.

What do you think?

My reaction is that it’s not the technology per se that improves learning, but is instead how you use the technology. Simply cramming computers into existing classrooms–-even in one laptop per child fashion–-doesn’t necessarily change the classroom by itself or allow for customized learning.

This is one of the core reasons we advocate implementing computer-based learning disruptively. This way all it has to be at the outset is better than the alternative—nothing at all— but over time it has its own space to redefine the interactions of learning between students and teachers and improve. It’s a slower process and more organic than the Maine one, but my guess is that it would ultimately be more effective, too.

- Michael B. Horn

In the piece, Christensen and Horn write about how Senator John McCain has thrown his support behind virtual learning and has shaped programs in his education platform that would provide funding for virtual learning opportunities to the tune of $1 billion. The article then describes the potential for virtual learning as a disruptive innovation and how it greatly changes the debate within education.

In the interview, Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson, describe how disruptive innovation can and is making a difference in education, how they came to take on this project, and the role of Innosight Institute to further the work.

It’s a disruption Clay Christensen has written about before (see “Disruptive Innovation for Social Change” in the December 2006 Harvard Business Review). The Christian Science Monitor is the latest to pick up on this growing disruption. In the August 4, 2008 article “Community Colleges: A Great Return on Investment,” Haas Graduate Business School professor Kathleen Connell chronicles the phenomenon of more and more students choosing to attend affordable community colleges instead of the traditional 4-year schools that are far more expensive.

Nearly half, or 6.5 million, of all undergraduate students now attend the roughly 1,200 community colleges out there, according to the article. And they bear the classic hallmarks of a disruptive innovation.

They are far more affordable, convenient, and accessible. $2,361 for tuition compared to $6,185 at public four-year institutions and $16,640 for out-of-state students. Students can live at home and attend. And they don’t have the conventional admission standards.

They also fill different purposes and can be judged on different metrics from traditional four-year schools as they target nonconsumers. They are far more market-driven, as the article makes clear; they educate 60 percent of new nurses and credential 80 percent of firefighters, law enforcement officers, and EMTs. Forty-one percent also offer online degrees, which often serves mid-career professionals – business leaders love them for retraining workforces, Dr. George R. Boggs, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) said. They also offer much smaller classes.

Of course, like any disruptive innovation, they don’t offer the same performance as the traditional offering right now, but continue to improve in other areas. Here, as the article points out, you lose out on the vast array of student activities and sports and lack a student community.

I’ll continue to write about disruptions in higher education, as the freer market leads to many more in this space, but we’d love to hear from others about what disruptions they are seeing in this space and how they might play out.

- Michael Horn

Dear Editor,

In his July 29, 2008 column, “The Biggest Issue,” David Brooks points to a dire problem threatening the United States’ future: lack of educational progress.

The regression that he writes about afflicts many countries as they reach prosperity. As we recount in Disrupting Class, when countries reach prosperity, the extrinsic motivation for students and educators to tackle the hard subjects like science and engineering dissipates. The New York Times reported on this exact trend in its May 17, 2008 article, “High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers.”

To bring students back into the fold and into subjects like engineering, we must allow students to learn these subjects in ways that are intrinsically motivating. One way to do this is to customize the learning to the way each student learns best—something that computer-based or online learning has great potential to do.

Brooks is right that early childhood learning is vital. The problem, however, with many early childhood programs is that unless they employ an individual surrogate parent who has the instinct and aptitude to engage in hundreds of hours of face-to-face so-called “language dancing” for each child, the programs will not work and the result will be more wasted dollars.

Sincerely,

Clayton M. Christensen
Michael B. Horn
Curtis W. Johnson

We did also have a letter published in the Washington Post today. You can read it here.