In the phoney war over spending cuts, perhaps we could do better to start small. Yes, education is in need of structural reform, and any effort by the government to loosen the grip of Whitehall on education ought to be welcomed by localists, but there is a limit to what structural reform can do. Politicians, with their eyes on sweeping narratives and grand alterations, might do better to actually follow the money, rather than assume that all spending is good spending and avoid looking beyond executive summaries. Large amounts of money can be lost through the cumulative effects of multiple low-cost decisions.
For example, take Brain Gym, a crank pseudoscience effort reported to cost the taxpayer around £130,000 in Scotland alone.
According to Ben Goldacre:
Brain Gym continues to produce more email than almost any other subject: usually it is from teachers, eager to defend the practice, but also from children, astonished at the sheer stupidity of what they are being taught.
As you will remember, Brain Gym is a set of perfectly good fun exercise break ideas for kids, which costs a packet and comes attached to a bizarre and entirely bogus pseudoscientific explanatory framework. They tell you to rub either side of your breast bone, in a special Brain Gym way called Brain Buttons: “This exercise stimulates the flow of oxygen-carrying blood through the carotid arteries to the brain to awaken it and increase concentration and relaxation. Brain buttons lie directly over and stimulate the carotid arteries.” Through your ribcage. Without using scissors.
They’re keen on drinking water. Fair enough. But why? “Processed foods,” says the Brain Gym manual, “do not contain water.” Is there water in soup? No. “All other liquids are processed in the body as food, and do not serve the body’s water needs.” This ridiculousness comes at very great cost, paid for by you, the taxpayer, in thousands of state schools. It is peddled directly to your children by their credulous and apparently moronic teachers.
If you like scandals, then this is one. The very same person who tells your child that blood is pumped around the lungs and then the body by the heart, is also telling them that when they do The Energizer exercise then “this back and forward movement of the head increases the circulation to the frontal lobe for greater comprehension and rational thinking”.
Sweeping percentage-point cuts filtering down from the top cannot provide the whole answer; outsiders need to challenge bad ideas lower down the system to make good savings.
Of course, to get that command of detail you’re going to have to decentralise power and turn the private citizen into a one-man, FOI-armed investigator.
Follow on Facebook
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
According to Wikipedia and other sources, Applied Kinesiology,the basis of Brain Gym does not stand up to scientific scrutiny…but neither does Homeopathy or Acupuncture.
For me the two basic brain gym exercises of lazy 8’s and cross-crawl are a skill-set, that most children have achieved comfortably by a certain age. We have received many children into school who have not achieved their developmental ‘milestones’ at the appropriate age and who have not received any intervention at all.
My experiences using just the two basic exrcises have demonstrated considerable improvement for hundreds of children in:-
attention, hand-eye co-ordination, non-verbal learning skills, organisational skills, written work and self-esteem.
It is particularly relevant for children with dyspraxia, dydlexia, down syndrome, asperger sydrome and adhd, and provides positive and effective intervention with great results. ( http://www.happinesspages.com/brain-gym-exercises.html)
I am not a brain gym instructor, but I witnessed very damaged children who learned to walk using brain re-patterning (via physical movemnt of the limbs and head by a team of dedicated team of volunteers B.I.B.I.C) If structured repetitive physical movement works at that level, then it enhances function for most kids.
It is not money wasted and will I believe bring better results than the proposed government initiative of 1-1 teaching. Been there, done that, it’s not cost effective.
Pauline, thank you for taking the time to post that response.
First, it is not entirely accurate to say that the claims of Brain Gym simply “do not stand up to scientific scrutiny”; many them (such as the ones I have quoted) are entirely false.
Many of the developmental skills you mention could be acquired from exercises other than those proposed by “Brain Gym”, and at far less cost. There is a vast difference in cost between “structured repetitive physical movement” (i.e. exercise), and the proprietary programme of “Brain Gym”. The former can cost virtually nothing, while the latter charges thousands of pounds. Brain Gym ought to have some very good reasons to justify its price, yet none of the ones it gives do so.
Like you say, you are not a brain gym instructor, yet you appear to work in a related field; surely that is evidence that alternatives exist to that massively expensive programme?