learning

Change can be a good thing

One of my twins is always looking for something new to learn online. For awhile, he was fascinated by a Massachusetts service dog project, where Great Danes are trained to provide support to those with balance and mobility impediments. He found this amazing service dog program through the website explore.org. It has live cams of animals all over the world. While we’re not traveling anywhere, my kid is bird watching, seeing service dogs, polar bears, and more. When we least expect it, he rushes up with his iPad and demands that I admire a nesting owl, or that his biologist dad identify an animal he’s never seen before.

This kind of intellectual curiosity is something I’m excited to see. Open-ended questioning about the world and how it works is a special kind of Jewish exploration. This intensity and enthusiasm is how we delve into studying Torah and Talmud, or how we engage with the world in general.

Passover is an obvious time to think about questions and how we approach and answer them. Our families have been telling the Exodus and “Once we were slaves and now we are free” story for thousands of years! Still, our questioning can’t just stick to the Four Questions and be done. Sometimes, even with good intentions, we get hung up on the rote narrative of the seder. We know we have to get through it. We start at the beginning and head to the end. It’s a yearly ritual routine, punctuated by matzah, lots of other foods, wine, and, in normal times, family and guests.

When we were first married, I once attended a smaller seder with some of my husband’s family. I was excited and nervous to engage over the Haggadah’s ideas – but it didn’t turn out as I expected. The family was committed to getting through the ritual traditionally and to the food part. They looked uncomfortable when I tried to talk about ideas or ask questions. In retrospect, I realized I knocked them off their game. There was a seder routine – and I wasn’t following theirs.

My other twin is also learning. He’s not into the animal live cams. Instead, he comes up with questions about school projects. He brainstorms and makes suggestions, even when they’re not welcome. The remote learning teacher suggested he limit his research on one social studies project to their “class time” online rather than do more research later.

Of course, the minute he logs off, I help him look up his questions and learn – whenever he wants. His teacher maybe wants to slow down the group learning, or avoid making more social studies lesson plans, but feeding intense curiosity with knowledge helps enthusiastic learners blossom. In my experience, putting somebody off when they want to learn more feels negative and does the opposite.

For many people, the pandemic has knocked them off their game. Losing regular routines may have felt negative. As people anticipate getting vaccinated, they talk more about which things they miss the most and long to do when things return to “normal.” For another view, I recently read a CBC news article that quoted David Eagleman, a neuroscientist.

Eagleman suggested that, in fact, the pandemic might be good for people’s brains, because the huge lifestyle changes we’ve experienced have forced us off our “path of least resistance.” We’ve been forced to be more flexible and innovate. This can be positive for our brain health. In some cases, forcing our brains to adapt may result in positive growth and changes in our work or home lives.

In a Jewish context though, when we consider our ritual routines, we must balance the comfort of what’s familiar with the opportunity to learn. Questioning and continuing to grow intellectually are valuable, particularly during Passover.

In the talmudic tractate of Pesachim, on page 105a, there’s a discussion about when to say certain blessings such as the Kiddush. Should we interrupt a meal in the middle to do Kiddush? Rav Hamnuna the Elder says, “You don’t need to do this, because Shabbat establishes itself.” In other words, our holidays, like Shabbat or Pesach, will happen whether we are ready or not. We must automatically rise to the obligations associated with them. So, yes, we do a lot of things by rote and habit.

Even so, the next page, Pesachim 106, teaches that there are times where leaders must do things extemporaneously, or work to learn more to figure out what to do. A good leader both continues with the routines and remains able to ask questions, be flexible and learn.

It’s too early for me to conclude whether our freeform research online this year has helped my twins become lifelong learners. (I hope so!) I don’t know if observing animals via live cam will result in a career like field biologist or even a hobby like bird-watching. Whatever they choose, creating a routine-based learning environment that encourages and cultivates questioning, improvisational thinking and flexibility may go a long way towards helping them succeed later on.

It’s true, as Rav Hamnuna the Elder explains, that holidays happen whether or not we’re ready for them. As Rabbi Sari Laufer explains on My Jewish Learning’s explanation of Pesachim 105, “Kiddush doesn’t make Shabbat begin, we make Kiddush because Shabbat has begun.” Yet, once our holidays begin, it’s our obligation to engage with them, to learn and to question.

“Due to the pandemic” is a phrase we’ve heard too often, usually in relation to cancelations or programs offered exclusively online. Perhaps we might add a positive “due to the pandemic” twist. We’re forced to be more flexible thinkers in our ritual routines, too. We can question why we always did them this way. In the end, we might be all the better for that brain jostling and chance for intellectual inquiry.

My family and I wish you a wonderful, thoughtful, questioning Passover, full of joy this year, however different it may be from your usual routines. Chag sameach.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

We always find ways to learn

All over the world, students will be continuing a different school experience, one that began soon after the pandemic. Some face a new academic year with entirely virtual learning. Others are going back into classrooms with many adjustments to allow (theoretically) for safer, virus-free learning. Still others face a hybrid approach, with small amounts of time at school but more time with parents, in daycare or even without any supervision at all as their parents work.

It’s a precarious time. Most of us haven’t experienced anything like this. Yet, there have been moments throughout history when the school rules changed. Imagine the European parents of the 1930s, faced with the Nazi rules, where their kids weren’t permitted to learn in the regular schools. There were families who left everything they knew to escape and start new lives anywhere they could go. There were parents who sent their children away to English boarding schools or on the Kindertransport, knowing that they themselves might not ever be able to leave Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia or Danzig.

Those who say children must go back to school because “school is better for them than the alternatives” make arguments like, “We don’t know what the effects of this absence from school will be.” When I hear this, I immediately think of the settler children, perhaps 150 years ago, on the prairies, who spent long winters in sod houses or log cabins. Jewish immigrant families arrived in the 1880s in Manitoba and many spent time in immigration sheds or shacks by the river – it’s unlikely those kids had formal schooling. Many immigrants taught their kids as they could. Schooling was intermittent at best.

Don’t get me wrong, for kids who are hungry, neglected or abused, school is a refuge. For refugees with traumatic pasts, interrupting school learning is not a good thing. However, many kids with stable, financially secure families are doing just fine while staying at home. It’s the safest choice.

Were all these people who lived in sod houses or who had lapses in their formal schooling permanently marred as adults? I don’t think so. I pondered all this recently as I celebrated finishing the Talmudic Tractate Shabbat – by myself. I started Daf Yomi in January of this year, and I’ve read my page online every day, often late at night. Aside from a few online exchanges, it’s all alone. I know this study is better done with a partner or chevruta (small group). This would be preferable. However, during the pandemic, at home with my family, I was lucky to squeeze in a solitary 20 minutes to study before bed. It’s been hard to listen to podcasts or chat online in a forum, and I certainly wasn’t regularly meeting with anyone in person.

I didn’t have any formal training in studying Jewish texts until I was a teenager in a summer camp program. I didn’t learn Talmud in an organized way until I was in graduate school. Yet, here I am, actively learning as an adult. Does interrupted or unconventional schooling mean less learning? I don’t think so.

In an informal survey of the online Jewish world, we’re finding learning opportunities all over the place. Whether it’s religious schools, congregational adult education, Jewish institutions for higher education, publications or more, we’re offered countless ways to listen, watch and discuss in online classrooms. My kids, age 9, were deluged with online Jewish opportunities, even outside of their bilingual Hebrew/English public school curriculum. My parents report that they are doing something interactive and learning with their congregation nearly every day.

Learning is happening in many traditional and hands-on ways. Often, it’s just having time for reading or making food from scratch. In some ways, the pandemic has motivated people of all ages to try new things. For many in the Jewish community, the pandemic has allowed us to jump into Jewish learning or to attend synagogue (virtually) more often. The need for stimulation while staying home has wakened many people’s intellectual curiosity.

For me, at least, and for my kids, school wasn’t usually the place to satisfy that curiosity. Sure, yes, we learn essential things at school. But the exploring of the outdoors and science, the building and construction with Lego, the art and design we see and draw and the music we listen to – our appetite for all this was never fully sated at school. Or, at least, not as of yet.

I have one twin who is desperate to get back to school to see his friends. He cannot wait. The other twin is not at all sure he wants to return to school ever. Given the situation we find ourselves in, each kid may get some of what he wants. A little school, and a little time at home.

I felt I didn’t need a fancy siyum (event to celebrate finishing the study of a talmudic tractate) or a seudah (celebratory meal). However, at the last moment, I signed up for a Zoom event hosted by My Jewish Learning online. Three distinguished teachers spoke, one taught the last few lines of the text, and another recited the Hadran, the special short prayer one says at the end. It says, “we will return.” We pray not to forget the tractate we’ve just studied.

I was moved by the Zoom siyum. More than 450 people attended! Although I listened while I answered kids’ questions and made salad for lunch, I still learned a lot.

I also realized that, as long as we’ve been studying Talmud, we’ve been hoping for a return, a review and a chance to learn in the future. We may sit in virtual classrooms, all alone, or in a real classroom, socially distanced, but we will return to learning – no matter what our age.

The pandemic is possibly the biggest event in our lives for some of us. To paraphrase what we say in the Hadran, we must remember that we’ll return to learning and that learning will return to us; that we will not forget you, learning, and the learning will not forget us, “not in this world, and not in the world to come.”

Wishing you a healthy and positive back-to-school learning experience – however differently we might experience it this year.

Sniffing helps us think

Subjects given problems to solve as they inhaled did better on tests. (image from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)

A shot of espresso, a piece of chocolate or a headstand – all of these have been recommended before taking a big test. The best advice, however, could be to take a deep breath. According to research conducted in the lab of Prof. Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s neurobiology department, people who inhaled when presented with a visuospatial task were better at completing it than those who exhaled in the same situation. The results of the study, which were published in Nature Human Behavior, suggest that the olfactory system may have shaped the evolution of brain function far beyond the basic function of smelling.

Dr. Ofer Perl, who led the research as a graduate student in Sobel’s lab, explained that smell is the most ancient sense. “Even plants and bacteria can ‘smell’ molecules in their environment and react,” said Perl. “But all terrestrial mammals smell by taking air in through their nasal passages and passing signals through nerves into the brain.”

Some theories suggest that this ancient sense set the pattern for the development of other parts of the brain. That is, each additional sense evolved using the template that had previously been set out by the earlier ones. From there, the idea arose that inhalation, in and of itself, might prepare the brain for taking in new information – in essence, synchronizing the two processes.

Indeed, studies from the 1940s on have found that the areas of the brain that are involved in processing smell – and thus in inhalation – are connected with those that create new memories. But the new study started with the hypothesis that parts of the brain involved in higher cognitive functioning may also have evolved along the same basic template, even if these have no ties whatsoever to the sense of smell.

“In other mammals, the sense of smell, inhalation and information processing go together,” said Sobel. “Our hypothesis stated that it is not just the olfactory system, but the entire brain that gets ready for processing new information upon inhalation. We think of this as the ‘sniffing brain.’”

To test their hypothesis, the researchers designed an experiment in which they could measure the airflow through the nostrils of subjects and, at the same time, present them with test problems to solve. These included math problems, spatial visualization problems (in which they had to decide if a drawing of a three-dimensional figure could exist in reality) and verbal tests (in which they had to decide whether the words presented on the screen were real). The subjects were asked to click on a button twice – once when they had answered a question and once when they were ready for the next question. The researchers noted that, as the subjects went through the problems, they took in air just before pressing the button for the question.

The experiment was designed so the researchers could ensure the subjects were not aware that their inhalations were being monitored, and they ruled out a scenario in which the button pushing itself was reason for inhaling, rather than preparation for the task.

Next, the researchers changed the format around, giving subjects only the spatial problems to solve, but half were presented as the test-takers inhaled, half as they exhaled. Inhalation turned out to be significantly tied to successful completion of the test problems. During the experiment, the researchers measured the subjects’ electric brain activity with EEG and here, too, they found differences between inhaling and exhaling, especially in connectivity between different parts of the brain. This was true during rest periods as well as in problem-solving, with greater connectivity linked to inhaling. Moreover, the larger the gap between the two levels of connectivity, the more inhaling appeared to help the subjects solve problems.

“One might think that the brain associates inhaling with oxygenation and thus prepares itself to better focus on test questions, but the time frame does not fit,” said Sobel. “It happens within 200 milliseconds – long before oxygen gets from the lungs to the brain. Our results show that it is not only the olfactory system that is sensitive to inhalation and exhalation – it is the entire brain. We think that we could generalize, and say that the brain works better with inhalation.”

The findings could help explain, among other things, why the world seems fuzzy when our noses are stuffed. Sobel points out that the very word “inspiration” means both to breathe in and to move the intellect or emotions. And those who practise meditation know that the breath is key to controlling emotions and thoughts. This, though, is important empirical support for these intuitions, and it shows that our sense of smell, in some way, most likely provided the prototype for the evolution of the rest of our brain.

The scientists think their findings may, among other things, lead to research into methods to help children and adults with attention and learning disorders improve their skills through controlled nasal breathing.

Sobel’s research is supported by the Azrieli National Institute for Human Brain Imaging and Research; the Norman and Helen Asher Centre for Human Brain Imaging; the Nadia Jaglom Laboratory for the Research in the Neurobiology of Olfaction; the Fondation Adelis; the Rob and Cheryl McEwen Fund for Brain Research; and the European Research Council. Sobel is the incumbent of the Sara and Michael Sela Professorial Chair of Neurobiology.

For the latest Weizmann Institute news, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il.

Reading aloud aids learning

An important tip from Israeli experts: children recall information better when they repeat the material aloud. This is the conclusion of a study conducted at Israel’s Ariel University by Prof. Michal Ichet from the department of communication disorders in collaboration with Prof. Yaniv Mama from the department of psychology and behavioral sciences.

They found that when children hear new information and then repeat it loudly and clearly, this significantly improves their ability to remember the words, compared with their memory of words spoken by someone else.

This simple “listen and repeat” method can be used to help even pre-reading students learn and memorize information – including facts, vocabulary and foreign languages – more effectively.

The study was conducted in Hebrew but is applicable to any other language of instruction, say the researchers.

“I personally have always thought that repeating something aloud helps me commit it to memory. Now we’ve found that the research that supports this theory is indisputable,” Ichet said.

The learning is not as effective if the children hear the words spoken by someone else or if they repeat the words to themselves quietly or silently.

Previous studies on the “listen and repeat” technique have focused mostly on adults who have the ability to read and write. The increase in an adult’s capacity to remember information using this method is about 20%. In the 5-year-olds tested by Ichet and Mama, the increase was as high as 35%. They theorize that repeating words aloud creates a pathway in the brain. These words then receive “preferential status” when being set into memory and thus become more familiar.

The researchers suggest that teachers, parents and caregivers take this tip to heart in order to improve young children’s mastery of new information.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.