Violence, Children and Education

My good friend Ed Bulak provided me with a piece regarding children who grow up with higher levels of violence in their lives. To determine just how violence affects kids MRI scans are performed and they indicate that 'Kids who grow up with higher levels of violence have weaker real-time neural connections and interaction in parts of the brain involved in awareness, judgment, and ethical and emotional processing.'

This work has been undertaken by Immordino-Yang and her studies are leading to a 'growing field called the neuroscience of poverty.' Yang's work is 'based on correlations between brain patterns and particular environments, the research points to a disturbing conclusion: Poverty and the conditions that often accompany it—violence, excessive noise, chaos at home, pollution, malnutrition, abuse and parents without jobs—can affect the interactions, formation and pruning of connections in the young brain.'

The physical harm that violence brings to an individual and family is certainly gut wrenching. The attendant harm cause by violence, loud noise, environmental chaos and other factors seems sure to cause enormous harm to young people. And this harm most certainly makes it that much more difficult to learn.

Just one more handicap that must be overcome in violence ridden areas of this country.

Dick