Recently catching up with the excellent Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog I was fascinated to see the demolition job that the BBC current affairs show Newsnight did on Brain Gym.
Brain Gym is a programme that is used by a good number of UK primary schools, which is supposed to help children concentrate better, learn to read quicker etc.
Take a look at the Newsnight clips – I recommend just watching the first clip for a minute or so to get a feel for Brain Gym techniques (the report gets a bit tedious), then switch to the second one where Jeremy Paxman absolutely slaughters the befuddled Brain Gym founder.
Although I enjoyed watching Paxo giving this man a stuffing, it does raise two big concerns for me.
One is that our cash-strapped schools have wasted money on this twaddle. See Paxman tear the Brain Gym man apart for claiming in his teachers’ manual that processed foods contain no water. Be entertained as Mr Brain Gym tries to explain his system and ends up talking about channelling energy to the brain with massage – I’m surprised he didn’t get onto chakras.
The second concern I have is that bad feeling about Brain Gym activities could do damage to those who have useful things to teach about creativity and the brain. When not writing, I give seminars to organizations on creativity – there’s no pseudo science or massages. It’s pure practical problem solving techniques from about 50 years of psychological & business development that work for good, logical reasons. No dependence on channeling energies, or magically pure water. But it’s easy to be tarred with the same brush.
There was an observation in the first Newsnight clip that there were slight improvements in some aspects of children’s work from their Brain Gym activities. I would expect that. For years people have been encouraged to take a quick break after working on something for 45 minutes or so. To take five minutes exercise, or to use the brain in a different type of activity. It’s obvious and makes sense – otherwise your concentration drops off and you lose effectiveness. But that’s quite different from the sort of specific claims made by Brain Gym.
Let’s hope that our schools will learn the right lessons from these revelations.
Oh that’s fantastic. The BBC really should bring out a best of Paxman DVD.
It would have to include his interview of Anne Coulter. I don’t think he liked the book.
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and hagfish Howard.
I spotted Ben’s post the other day, watched a minute or so of the 1st clip and moved on. I hadn’t seen the second clip so thanks for this post Brian.
What twaddle as you say or “Utter P@sh” as we say in Scotland.
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@Matt. Best of Paxman DVD? Brilliant idea. I’ve had contact with Gavin Esler before so I could drop him a note.
But wait, someone’s already done it…… Well, a 6 min medley.