The Plasticity of Human Intelligence

Brain Plasticity

Natural Laws of Children

Living with a Child is Participating in the Specialization of its Brain

Given this continuous synaptic pruning operating on the basis of frequency of experience, if a child is most frequently exposed to coarse, slangy vocabulary, even if it occasionally has the opportunity to hear people speaking more elevated language, its brain will reinforce the tracks left by the slangy talk. Regardless of whether you are a parent, preschool teacher, classroom assistant, brother, sister, uncle, or cousin, being with a child regularly means participating directly in its brain specialization. How you are on a daily basis—the way you talk, react, what you do with the child or around it—will literally participate in the wiring of its brain.

Thus our responsibility is immense. A day will come when we will hardly be able to keep from laughing at seeing our children behaving just the way we do—talking the way we do, moving or reacting the way we do. It’s often a rather funny moment; it could also be a shocking or even unpleasant one, because our children reflect us like a mirror—they reflect the gestures or the attitudes we have taught them without realizing it, just by being around them. We think they are imitating us, but it would be more precise to say that they are manifesting on the outside what they have encoded on the inside. So we have to acknowledge, whether we like it or not, that a host of little things we do that we are hardly aware of structure the inclinations and actions of our children, directly and without a filter. Our attitudes lay the groundwork for theirs. This is something that needs to be said, repeated, and clearly understood. And having seen it, adults must behave accordingly, at home as well as in school.

So what is our daily behavior like, with all its quirks and mechanical reactions? Is it consistent with the behavior and attitudes we would like to see blossoming in our children? Whether we are parents or teachers, let’s start with asking ourselves that. Guiding children requires awareness of ourselves, conscious attention to our own gestures and attitudes. If we want to see children expressing themselves properly and easily, with considerate and harmonious gestures and movements, and showing empathy, bringing this about is not complicated—the first step is behaving that way ourselves.

We have to acknowledge, whether we like it or not, that a host of little things we do that we are hardly aware of structure the inclinations and actions of our children, directly and without a filter.

So setting high standards for children means setting high standards for ourselves. This was the golden rule we applied at Gennevilliers; and—I won’t hide it—it was the most difficult rule to respect amid the hurly-burly of a class of more than twenty-five children. Nevertheless, when you know that a child has such powerfully absorbent brain mechanisms that are structuring themselves on the basis of everything the child is perceiving, and when you stop to think that you are spending an average of six hours a day in a class with that child, it’s not a matter of choice, it’s a responsibility. The way we act, speak, and react has to be exemplary.

The Gennevilliers Experiment

In our preschool class at Gennevilliers, first we set very high standards regarding the level of language circulating in the class. As I have already pointed out, a good level of language seems to go hand in hand with good results in the development of intelligence. But before even beginning to think of raising the children’s language level, Anna and I had to pay very close attention to our own language. We made a point of speaking correctly and logically, with very precise and appropriate vocabulary, and we made an effort to use logical and complex sentences. So for example, if a child asked, “Is it going to snow?” we never said, “Don’t think so” and moved on to something else, but rather we’d say, “I don’t think so. I listened to the weather report on the radio this morning, and the announcer said it was not going to snow but that it was going to be very cold. Look at the sky—it’s not cloudy enough to snow.” We made an effort never to speak in vague, general terms, but always to be precise. We didn’t say, “This afternoon after canteen, it’s swimming"; we said, “This afternoon, after you’ve had lunch at the cafeteria, we are going to go swimming.” We also tried to use a precise word rather than fillers like “thing,” “stuff,” or “whatchamacallit.” Even if it required an effort, we always took the time to think when the right word did not come to us immediately, and we explained to the children, “Wait a minute. I’m looking for the right word so I can tell you what I’m thinking.” We always used the right word, even when that word might have seemed complicated to the children.

In fact the children adored erudite and sophisticated words, like planisphere, South America, Europe, cube, cone, cylinder, spathiphyllum, crassula, rubber plant, gardenia (the last few, rather than just saying “plant” all the time), disk (rather than just “circle,” referring to a circular thing), moccasins, sandals, boots, pumps (rather than just “shoes”), mare (rather than “female horse”), foal (rather than “baby horse”), and so on. We always looked for the most precise possible word. All this vocabulary excited and stimulated the intelligence of these children in the prime of their development, and they took delight in getting the words right.

Our demands concerning language were great and nonnegotiable. We expected the children to take the time to express themselves with precision throughout the day.

We had a map puzzle with pieces representing the continents of our planet that the children could take out and put back in. Each continent was a different color. For example, Asia was yellow. Sometimes the younger children said to the older ones, “I live on the red continent.” The older ones would correct this immediately, disturbed by this lack of precision, “The red continent is Europe; it’s not the ‘red continent,’ you live in Europe.”

Our demands concerning language were great and nonnegotiable. We expected the children to take the time to express themselves with precision throughout the day. We took whatever time was necessary to help them do this, whether it was asking permission to go the bathroom or explaining to a classmate the principles of the decimal system. Fluency and quality of expression were really the main priorities in this class, and the children knew that. They took the trouble to help classmates who were having trouble expressing themselves, allowing them the time to formulate what they were trying to say and supplying them with the vocabulary they were lacking.

This vigilance regarding language was very important, because the general level of the children’s language was quite low. My experience the previous year in a preschool in an exclusive upper-class area (Neuilly-sur-Seine) made the enormous gap between the richness of the language of the children from Neuilly and the poverty of the vocabulary of the Gennevilliers children all too clear. In Neuilly, most of the five-year-old children already spoke in an elevated manner. They tended to speak in grammatically correct sentences, and some of them even occasionally slipped in a well-chosen English word. It was impressive. Their choice of words was extremely precise. Thus it was a shock for me the following year in Gennevilliers when I encountered the opposite situation. The children there filled in their sentences with expressions like “that there,” “thingy,” “stuff like that,” and so on. One of them might nonchalantly say to me, “Hey Céline, I’m going to go take a piss.” At the age of three they couldn’t see anything wrong with saying in a clipped, aggressive tone, “Céline, Yassin’s a goddamn pain in the ass!” Or, “What kinda crap they givin’ us for lunch today?” A problem might be expressed as, “At home, my dad keeps yelling his fuckin’ head off at us all the time!” or “My brother puked last night.” And when I showed my discomfort with this colorful vocabulary, the children hadn’t the slightest idea what bothered me about it. For them, this way of talking was completely normal. So it was no simple matter to undo the language that had been drilled into these children (and which in some cases they continued to have repeated at home every day). Nevertheless, we were successful. We got the job done by speaking extremely properly all the time, and by kindly but firmly encouraging them, without creating any sense of blame, to adopt a more appropriate tone in class and to use more appropriate words, which we suggested if they didn’t know them. With the more surly and recalcitrant children, I wouldn’t hesitate to say firmly, “No, I won’t have that. I will not have you speaking that way in class. Can you find a different way of expressing that?” If the child replied no, I would suggest another way, which the child then repeated.

After a few months, most of the children had changed their tone. They would never know the victory that was hiding, the following year, behind a remark like, “Céline, Victor is bothering me. I’ve already told him several times, but he won’t listen. He just keeps doing it. Would you kindly tell him to stop?”

Aware of the power of brain plasticity, and because the children were constantly talking among themselves, I was very firm about the language level of the older children, whom the little ones automatically emulated. I did not hesitate to interrupt a conversation between the children to ask one of them to reformulate what they were saying more correctly and more elegantly. In this way the children also began to realize that their oral language was of primary importance for us. We spoke correctly among ourselves, we took the time to speak to the children correctly, and we permited them to speak correctly too.

The results quickly became visible at home. Feedback came to us from the parents after only a few months of class: “My son is the only one in the house who talks without swearing,” and “He’s precise about the words he uses and gets mad when we don’t pay attention to how we talk.” We will see later that correct and precise oral expression is not only a key to integration in society, but even more important, it is a means of developing a complex, logical, rich, and structured way of thinking. These children not only spoke in a logically sound and precise manner, they also thought in a logically sound and precise manner. By making the effort to express themselves clearly and follow a thought to its conclusion, the children had to retain content in their memory long enough to organize it logically enough to be understood. They had to control their frustration at not being able to find the right words. They had to concentrate fully on what they were saying and to correct themselves if the person they were talking to did not understand what they were trying to get across. In other words, just by encouraging and helping the children to take the time to express themselves clearly and precisely, we were not only enabling them to develop important cultural and linguistic skills, but we were also fostering the development of essential cognitive functions, functions that are often more predictive than IQ scores for academic, professional, and emotional success as well as success in relationships. These essential cognitive functions working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility—are called executive functions. We will talk more about them later. For the moment, let us simply note that getting the children to develop rich, structured, and precise oral language is conducive to good cognitive development.

This meant we also paid close attention every day to the way we handled our teaching materials. We knew that everything children observe is liable to be retained in an engram—that is, to leave an imprint in their neural networks

Learning by Example and Peer-to-Peer Learning

We were also mindful of our own behavior in the class. Since we were trying to create a calm and peaceful atmosphere, we moved quietly and spoke softly. Even when a child was talking much too loud, calling out from one end of the classroom to the other, we did not shout at them from where we were standing, saying something like, “Stop shouting, you’re disturbing everybody!” Obviously by doing that, we would be teaching them to shout and would ourselves have increased the level of disorder in the class. Instead, we approached the child calmly and without haste, and we reminded her in composed and quiet tones that she was speaking a bit too loud.

However, if a large part of the group was getting excited and creating general disorder in the class, a firm call to order to the whole group sometimes proved necessary. In the first months of the first year, the children had not yet reached the stage of behaving autonomously, so this situation frequently occurred. At that point we brought the children together in a circle in the classroom and practiced attention and relaxation exercises. We also sometimes went out to the playground at a moment like that. But in all cases, we avoided exhibiting behaviors ourselves that we did not want to see develop among the children.

This meant we also paid close attention every day to the way we handled our teaching materials. We knew that everything children observe is liable to be retained in an engram—that is, to leave an imprint in their neural networks. So, for example, when we were rolling up a mat that had not been put away, and if at that moment we were being observed by a child or two, we were careful to do it with precise and clear movements that they would be able to retain and emulate. In this way, they too were soon able to do an orderly job of rolling up a mat.

During this creative period, we took care throughout the day to present a wide variety of activities in different fields: geography, music, reading, writing, math, drawing, painting, and so on. These activities were presented in a precise, clear manner and in a way that was stimulating for the children. We truly took a great deal of pleasure in sharing all this culture with them. We were really happy to be offering them access to all these topics. Our enthusiasm galvanized the children’s motivation. We made our presentations either individually or to very small groups of two or three children so as to be able to adapt them to the level and interests of each child, and we then counted on the knowledge we presented spreading rapidly through the group by means of free interactions among the children. This happened because the children were acting autonomously and were not all the same age; the older ones liked showing the little ones what they knew, and in this way they were able to consolidate and refine their own knowledge. As for the little ones, they very quickly absorbed what the older ones transmitted to them.

No teacher can compete with the ease with which knowledge is transmitted among children of different ages. The fascination exercised by a child of five on a child of three is extraordinary, just as is the older child’s spontaneous enthusiasm for helping his or her classmates in need. Knowledge circulated among the children with amazing speed. The enthusiasm aroused by their social interaction turned out to be the royal road to learning. This road was kept open by the fact that the children were autonomous, independent, from morning until school was out; they could communicate freely with each other throughout the day. They had many exchanges with each other and taught each other all kinds of things. Carrying on this way, they joyfully made the culture and language their own, and with astonishing speed.

Thus we created favorable environmental conditions, conditions that provided rich and positive sustenance to the still immature intelligence of these children. Our language, our behavior, our way of moving and reacting, and the knowledge provided by all the activities we presented spread in an extremely powerful and effective way among the children.

So this was the main principle on which the experiment of Gennevilliers was based: since it is the environment that directs, specializes, and determines the development of latent potential from preschool and even before that, we had to place our main focus on environmental factors. We kept careful watch on our behavior, our language, our actions and reactions, and setting very high standards, we did it with a great deal of rigor and determination. We wanted to give these children the very best. So we created conditions that allowed their eyes, ears, and hands to be nourished by interesting and challenging language and activity during their three preschool years.

The Critical Period of the First Two Years

Experts in child development have a very clear message for us today: the first two years of life are truly crucial. It is during this period that children form the basic elements of their intelligence. By its second birthday, a baby already has behind it a great number of linguistic, social, cognitive, sensory, and motor achievements, which it will later rely on in the application of its intelligence. And in making these acquisitions, the child’s brain has passed through significant and decisive stages of specialization where radical pruning has occurred. Certain connections have been heavily reinforced, and others have been fully eliminated. This kind of pruning occurs, for example, in the development of linguistic skills. We know that at nine months, the baby is still capable of hearing all the sounds of all the languages in the world. But three months later, at twelve months, it hears only the sounds existing in its own language. Its brain has become specialized in the sounds of its environment. The baby no longer hears the sounds of all languages; it has become a specialist in its own language.

Adults are not less intelligent than children; they are more specialized—in their language, their culture, their thinking, and their social behavior.

After having accumulated a very large quantity of impressions of the world, the human brain does some housekeeping. We should not forget that growing up entails going from 1,000 trillion synaptic connections to 300 trillion. Thus growing up means losing two-thirds of one’s possibilities and reinforcing the third that are most used. Growing up means specializing. Adults are not less intelligent than children; they are more specialized—in their language, their culture, their thinking, and their social behavior. We might find it shocking that this happens so early, but nonetheless, when a human being reaches two years of age, its brain has already had time not only to store an extraordinary amount of experiences but also to select out the most frequent ones. The experts speak of a critical period after which certain primary foundations have already been established and become more and more difficult to reshape.

The experiment with the children from the Bucharest orphanages shows this clearly. After the discovery of their extreme situation, the children were placed in welcoming foster families especially prepared to deal with the needs of these children. Researchers compared the development of the children placed in these families before the age of two with that of other orphans who also received the same kind of foster care, but after the age of two. Their results showed unequivocally that the children who had been placed in foster care before the age of two displayed little or no cognitive and social differences when compared with children of the same age who had been raised by their biological parents: at the age of eight, the electrical activity in their brains was normal. A rich and nourishing environment before the end of the period of major plasticity at age two is determinative and leads to resilience. At this point the brain still has the resources to reorganize and repair itself.

As for the children placed in care after age two, by age eight they were still suffering serious consequences. As we have already said, after the age of two, the brain has already laid its foundations, and reshaping it becomes more difficult. To be sure, the brain evolves and creates new connections throughout life, so it is never “too late.” But as pointed out by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard, “It is easier and less costly to form strong brain circuits during the early years than it is to intervene or ‘fix’ them later.” If brain architecture is to be established on strong foundations, the earlier the better. It is therefore of primary importance to give special attention to this period—that is, to the period before the child’s brain becomes too specialized.

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Céline AlvarezCéline Alvarez is a researcher whose book The Natural Laws of Children (Les lois naturelles de l’enfant) has been a bestseller in France and throughout Europe. Her website has received nearly two million visitors, and her practices are being applied by teachers and parents around the world. Learn more.

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