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• Helping Children Learn to Pay Attention

  by Jane M. Healy

  When I talk with parents or teachers these days, I can be sure that one of their first questions will have to do with getting kids to pay attention and for good reason. Attention and its partner, self-regulation, are the foundations of learning, but these so-called "executive skills" are an increasing problem in our multitasking society. More and more children each year are diagnosed with "attention deficit disorder," and teachers describe increasing difficulties with students' self-control and concentration causing problems with everything from math tests to social relationships to motivation for learning. Are we in the midst of an inattention "epidemic?" What can parents do to help forestall problems or to deal with them once they arise? Fortunately, new brain research on the neural mechanisms underlying attention sheds some light on these questions. While basic attention abilities may be inborn, the good news is that many attention skills can be learned. These core abilities are rooted in the physiology of the brain, but home and school environments have a great deal to do with how a child learns to use his particular attention mechanisms.
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• The Teaching of Science in Today's Political Climate

  by Leon Botstein, President, Bard College

  The issue of women and science is curious in that the controversy surrounding the question of why, relatively and historically speaking, fewer women end up in scientific careers than men has reached center stage because of the widely quoted comments of a male economist who is the current president of Harvard University. By all accounts, he engaged in some speculations concerning the causes for the gender discrepancy. Although I am not a scientist, it is my assumption that most, if not all, current claims about the biology of intelligence, much less the genetics of talent and intelligence, are indefensible. As yet we have no useful definition, biologically speaking, of intelligence sufficient to match discrete variables in behavior and ability with genetics. There are possible exceptions, such as the possession of perfect pitch, but having perfect pitch does not make one musical. Intelligence is still poorly understood, and the social science surrounding it, which informs most of our intelligence testing, is woefully inadequate and out of date. In my view, the attempt to link gender and career or gender and certain kinds of expressed ability is not politically incorrect; it is inappropriate because it makes no sense. The question is poorly framed. Its language is so vague, in scientific terms, as to defy analysis. We just do not know enough. A bad question cannot have a good answer.
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