Learning Is a Full-Body Activity

What makes life rich, interesting - and indeed viable - are things happening in our bodies: sensations and perceptions, thoughts, feelings and emotions, making and doing things, interacting and exploring. If you pause for a moment and tune in, you might notice this directly.

We aren’t like computers: we have fluctuating needs and built-in values. We don’t just understand what we hear, we are touched and moved by it. We don’t figure jokes out, we ‘get’ them with our lungs and facial expressions. We don’t just ‘know’ or ‘not know’ things; we have physical inklings, promptings and hunches. Learning isn’t deadpan: we get frustrated, confused, rapt, horrified or gripped by the unknown. We make mistakes, pick ourselves up and have another go.

Everywhere our bodies are vital to our lives – yet in many traditional classrooms, they are treated as if they were irrelevant, or at best, secondary. Wanting, moving, sensing and feeling are largely disregarded and often treated as unwelcome distractions from the ‘real business’ of learning. Sit down. No talking. Don’t fidget. Stop doodling. What did I just say? Many of us - teachers, parents and students alike - can feel the tension in these moments.

Remember. Reason. Describe. Explain. Calculate. Repeat. Why take and establish such a narrow view of how to deal with life?

School was designed on the basis of old assumptions about the mind, and especially about such keystone concepts as intelligence, learning, thinking and knowledge. Since the time of Plato these ideas have been shaped by the segregation of ‘mind’ from ‘body’, the ascription of intelligence and reason only to ‘mind’, and the ensuing idea that what is of the body is necessarily inferior and untrustworthy. The less body, the more abstract reasoning, the better. Hence the pecking order of school subjects with Maths at the top and Dance, Drama, Physical Exercise and Making Things (Carpentry, Cookery) at the bottom. Teachers have come to assume that their job is to grow kids out of Lego and into Correct Spelling and Algebra as fast as they can. Serious Learning is signalled by how dull and disembodied it is.

Finally, science has come to rescue us from this gloomy image. What’s called ‘embodied cognition’ or ‘embodiment science’ is showing how misguided, sterile and unnecessary this model of the mind is. Plato’s and Descartes’ views of human nature are fatally flawed and they have led to a dysfunctional system of education. Society needs some intellectuals. Academics have their place. But societies need proud electricians, empathic and rested care workers and expressive dancers just as much (if not more so). Hairdressers need to think and plan just as philosophers need to heed their gut reactions. Traditional school works well for youngsters who are naturally bookish and sedentary and are good at controlling their nerves come the exams. It works badly for those who do not fit this template and who learn at school that they are bad at learning and not very ‘bright’. School is (partly) responsible for the large number of kids who leave listless, lacking self-esteem and often angry.

Mind and body are not separate and antagonistic: they are joined at the hip. Our organ of intelligence is the unified bodymind. We all need to be good at sensing, feeling, moving, intuiting and real-world learning as well as good at reading critically and thinking analytically. We all need to be playing with the full deck of our evolved faculties, and school could and should be the place where these natural resources are nurtured, sharpened and strengthened. Currently it mostly isn’t – but it could be redesigned and repurposed as an apprenticeship in real-world competence and self-confidence.

In Bodies of Learning we spell out the new (or is it old?) conceptions of human nature and potential towards which the science is pointing. We point out many pioneering schools that are already coming round to this new view (but too few and too slowly). We explain the reflex animosity and resistance many still seem to feel towards ‘progressive education’. And we offer a wide range of practical suggestions as to how educators can – right now – re-embody their classrooms and approach to teaching.  In our work with teachers and school leaders, we’ve learned that even small shifts towards sensing, movement and interaction can begin to change the experience of learning for everyone involved.

You can pre-order Bodies of Learning here.