Saving Literacy

The Importance of Mark-Making to Child Development from a Neurobiological point of view

The program described in this book uses children's mark-making in a comprehensive training program designed to strenghthen attention, positive emotion, confidence and trust, autonomy, empathy, speech an literacy --- the special cognitive skills and brain states that characterize functional, effective human beings. This program is designed not only for children, but for their caregivers, too. It's a speech and literacy program for everyone!

An emphasis on scribbles and drawing as important brain-building behavior makes this book's Neuroconstructive theory of child development¹ and Scribbling/Drawing/Writing practice unique.

A child's brain builds itself in response to genetics, DNA codes, and the environment. One of the pre-determined ways a child’s brain naturally builds itself is by scribbling and drawing. Seemingly formless scribbles both indicate and organize a very special kind of brain activity called symbolic reasoning, or the ability to think using marks. This activity called scribbling prepares the child to “do ” mathematics, compose music, write books, create art, and conduct and record scientific experiments.

I coined the term "Neuroconstructive" in my 1990 dissertation. Neuroconstructive theory proposes that the infant's and child's

“The Thinking Brain,” from BRAIN, MIND AND BEHAVIOR, by Bloom, Lazerson, and Hofstadter; Copyright 1985 by Educational Broadcasting Corporation; Reprinted with permission of W.H. Freeman and Company, All rights reserved.

physical, emotional and mental life influence brain growth. Activities can be constructive or destructive. This book proposes that toddlers' scribbles are especially constructive, accessing and organizing special brain patterns for speech and literacy. These brain patterns are special in terms of potential shapes and layers and rates of vibration,² and are hidden far away from the noisy influence of the rest of the brain,deep inside the koniocortex (“konio ” means “dust ” in Greek; koniocortex is neurobiologist’s Walter J. Freeman’s term for describing the densest, least specialized, most synchronizing areas in the human brain).⁴ These special, scribbling brain patterns are necessary for symbolic thought. A child’s scribbles indicate readiness to work within this koniocortex, embarking on literacy, thinking with letters, numbers, words, symbols!

If the child engages in conversations, hears and watches books being read aloud, scribbles and draws and talks about scribblings and drawings,then,by age five or six,that child’s brain will be equipped to speak and read and write a range of symbols. The child will be able to turn a picture into a poem and a poem into a picture and a picture into a song or a string of mathematics.

The terms used to describe this kind of reading and writing - multiple literacies and translations across systems of representation¹ - mean that the child is born with the potential to think like - to be! - an artist and a writer, a mathematician and a musician, a scientist in everyday terms!

I believe that scribbling is a brain/body operation necessary to the physiology of human perception as that perception includes thinking with symbols. As scribbles circle their way into spirals, these distinctive marks map onto what are called phase portraits, ^1,2,3 or EEG ’s of brains which are recognizing something.² The more circular the shape of the EEG, the more orderly the thinking.² And so it occurs with children ’s scribbles.^1,5,6,7 They become increasingly orderly.

According to my Neuroconstructive theory, the marks we call scribbles operate as “primers, ” or “bumpers ” for creating highly attentive, or “aroused ” brain states, ^1,2,4,5,6 allowing children to think increasingly powerfully and efficiently,^1,3,4 using symbols. Neuroconstructive theory also proposes that scribbling and drawing help children control and re-direct emotions, making even transcendent brain states possible.^{5, 6, 7, 8} Sometimes, one of our poems or paintings or pieces of writing or musical compositions will fill us with such understanding,satisfaction and joy that we feel transported to a higher level of existence. This is what I call a transcendent brain state.

Brain scans of children scribbling and drawing will confirm the connections between mark-making, attention, intentional symbolic thinking, (including literacy), and emotional range and control. Supported by that brain research, parents and other caregivers will know that their hunches about the importance of scribbling and drawing are right: mark-making is a very specialmilestone in child development.

This book proposes three stages of scribbling and drawing - Early, Middle, and Mature or High Stages - as well as three major transformational mark-making stages, which can be used - in an open-ended manner -to chart a child’s progress as a symbolic thinker. This is the first time that these formal categories for scribbling have been proposed. One story in this book shows how the act of making a mark on paper calms a child, changing fear and tears into smiles. In another story, an autistic child regains the ability to scribble and to speak after losing both skills at about the age of three, suggesting that mark-making and speech in autistic children are connected.

Each Scribbling/Drawing/Writing exercise in this book includes a section called Field Notes where parents and caregivers are invited to record their observations about child development.

A list of research questions is included at the end of this book. An on-line location will be provided for parents and caregivers to share and discuss data from their Field Notes. Data from Field Notes may help to answer these research questions.

If scribbling and drawing are natural ways for children to learn to write and read and also to control impulsivity and mood, as I believe, then, parents and other caregivers need this information.

If literacy (as scribbling and drawing as well as reading and writing) is a strategy for diverting or preventing negative emotions through a flood of overriding positive brain chemicals,as I believe, this is important and useful information for caregivers, from parents to pediatricians to educators.

Until we re-establish scribbling and drawing as normal and necessary activities in early childhood, we cannot appreciate the importance of spontaneous mark-making to the development of the young human brain. This book ’s goal s to establish that importance.

Saving Literacy was written for professional caregivers. There is a companion book, HandMade Marks,written for parents of preschoolers to help little children develop their powers of attention, their range and control of emotions, their scope and use of language and literacy as the cognitive bedrock of their lives. HandMade Marks was also written for parents whose children are giving them some concern in regard to their development, attentionally, mentally or emotionally.

These two books provide the bridge between children's scribbles and drawing and brain
science.

Footnotes:

¹ Sheridan, S.R. 1990. "Drawing/Writing: a brain-based writing program designed to develop descriptive analytical and
inferential thinking skills at the elementary school level." MASS School of Education doctoral dissertation.

² Freeman, Walter J.; Broadhead, Peter, 1991. "The Physiology of Perception." Scientific America, Feb. 11, 1991. Vol. 264, (2) Pps. 78-85.

³ Churchland, Patricia Smith. 1986, Neurophilosophy, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

⁴ Freeman,Walter J.;March 2009."The Neurological Infrastructure of Natural Computing:Intentionality."Kozna,R.,Caulfield, H.J. Eds.), Singapore: World Scientific.

⁵Sheridan S.R.., 2002. "The Neurological Significance of Children’s Drawings: The Scribble Hypothesis." Journal of Visual Literacy; 22 (2):107-128.

⁶ Sheridan, S.R.., 2004. “Scribbles: The missing link in a bio-evolutionary theory of language with implications for human consciousness,” Toward a Science of Consciousness, Tucson, abstract #209.

⁷ Sheridan, S.R.., 2005. “A Theory of Marks and Mind: the effect of notional systems on hominid brain evolution and child development with an emphasis on exchanges between mothers and children,” Medical Hypotheses Journal, V64(2):417-427. This article is downloadable in on-site version at www.drawingwriting.com by permission by Elsevier. Hypertext link to Medical Hypotheses ScienceDirect Page at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03069877

⁸ Sheridan S.R.., 2006. "Glossolalia, Consciousness states, and the mind/body benefits of fluent spiritual speech: Extending the purpose of linguistic experience"Poster session, abstract 300, sixth Toward a science of Consciousness Conference. University of Tucson, Tucson Arizona.