Blame it on the Amygdalae!

‘When is the next Blog, Sir?’ a boy asked me at school last week.

‘Don’t put me under pressure,’ I replied.  ‘It is usually when the mood takes me.  Perhaps if you do an Afrikaans or English essay every week, I will do a blog every week as well.’

He didn’t think that was a good idea.

Since I have acquired a fancy mobile phone, I have developed the habit of reading News24 on my phone in bed before tackling the new day.  On reading the news this morning (Friday 27 April), I felt a definite blog coming on….

I was motivated by a report by a DA spokesmen, Helen Lamoela, who commenting on the recent rape of a pre-teen girl, said:  We need to interrogate the concept of masculinity and re-frame the role of boys and men so that they can become model men, fathers, husbands, brothers and uncles.

One of the (understandable) tragedies of our current South African education system is the fixation on Matric Results and the resultant judging of schools by a once-off set of exams.  In an endeavour to ‘raise standards’ in schools, the pressure from above to conform to this charade is immense.  Schools’ reputations can be made or broken by their ability to insist on their pupils being able to memorise – or to regurgitate a syllabus.  So now we have about 65% of the pupils (that is, of those who actually write the matric exam) who have mastered - to some degree - the art of answering exam questions.

Some years ago, I taught James Taylor in my 1995 matric Latin class.  He was one of the more able academic students I have taught in my career.  To my intense displeasure at the time – as he was clearly an A++ student – he insisted on not learning his setwork which we had spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting in our classes.  ‘I want to treat it as unseen in the final exam,’ he explained to my intense incredulity, ‘it is more of a challenge that way…’

If I remember correctly, he just missed his Subject Distinction for Latin, but no matter, as he went on to soar at UCT and I have no doubt that he is soaring in whatever area of life has the privilege of his acute and perceptive mind.

Are we in schools, as Helen Lamoela implies above, producing enquiring minds, curious individuals, caring people?  Is the system not forcing teachers to concentrate on right brain activities?  Or is the education system, as Steve Jobs is reported as saying in his superb biography, producing accomplished users of apps, but not enough designers and inventors of apps?

Now that is a challenge for those of us in education.

All of us involved in the education of boys know the challenges which those walnut-like amygdalae play in the development of young men.  That prefrontal cortex controlling the emotions plays havoc with the decision making of adolescent boys. Current studies of the brain show that the connections between the amygdala and the cognitive brain are not fully developed until the age of 23 in men…..How many parents of teenage boys over the ages have not prayed for that process to be accelerated?

The Saturday Evening Post: April 1911

There is not a teacher anywhere who has not had some version of this situation where two boys end up in front of them with tear-stained faces and bruised and bloody cheeks.  ‘And now?’ you say.

‘He tripped me,’ one of them will say eventually, ‘so I hit him.’

‘Why?’ you ask. ‘Aren’t you two meant to be friends?’

‘Oh, yes,’ they both hasten to assure you with alacrity.

 Experienced teachers will then know better than to ask why the fight occurred.  Those undeveloped communication wires connecting the brain with the amygdala will take the blame....  And so begins the long process of counselling with these two boys.

The location of the Amygdalae

Aren’t principals of girls’ schools lucky, Mrs Harding?  According to the experts, you don’t have amygdala problems at WGHS.  That is why I continue to maintain vociferously that Headmasters of Boys’ Schools deserve to be paid more!

Research is showing that it IS possible to hasten that process of developing the communication wiring.  Reading; debating;  learning a music instrument; travel; different and varied experiences; undertaking service activities  -  all of these promote the type of sensitive and empathetic men that Helen Lamoela is so keen that this country turns out.

Of course, research is also showing that development of the adolescent male brain is retarded by alcohol, nicotine, drug usage etc  -  but that is the subject of a separate blog.  However, could that explain the actions of those men who raped a pre-teen girl?

Where better to enhance these skills than in schools?  And so, Mr President, why is it not a key feature of government policy to ensure quality teachers are coming into the system?  Teachers who realise that there is more to a successful school than regurgitating syllabi?  Teachers who realise the Big Picture in that they are helping to develop those ‘model men’ mentioned above which are so badly wanted?  Teachers who understand that they have the potential to forge a genuine Rainbow Nation? Teachers who who instinctively know that ongoing threats do not work  and understand that the amygdalae of teenage boys are easily fired up by emotional situations?

Let’s get our priorities right in this country.  Make no mistake about it – there will be more Malema’s, more corruption, more rapes of pre-teen girls until the realisation hits home that producing ‘model men’ begins firstly in the home.  After that, we at schools,  with quality teachers, can build on that foundation so that we can play our role in taking this new democracy of ours, 18 years old today, to claim its place proudly among the community of nations.

What parent of a teenage boy does not recognise this statement from a medical journal: Teenage boys possess a notoriously short fuse in their amygdala activation:  they tend to activate a primal stress response in social situations that would probably be more satisfactorily resolved if they counted to 10 before responding….

Perhaps every male in this country should carry that note around with them!

In the meantime, my advice to parents regarding their teenage sons?   That 23^rd birthday is not that far away…  Keep up that flailing sense of humour  -  and blame his behaviour  on his amygdalae!