Adapted Minds and Evolved Schools; a Review.

Review written by Edward Bennett

In his article, “Adapted Minds and Evolved Schools,” (Educational Psychologist, 01 October 2008, 196-202.), Dr. Frank C. Keil discusses the evolutionary mind of man and if and how the design of classroom instruction, curriculum, and plant operations may encourage this evolution.

Dr. Keil uses evolutionary theories, as presented by David C. Geary, in his discussion of the differentiation of folk studies to formalized classroom education. He begins by discussing the “evolution of cognition” (196) and how folk studies give humans a broad based understanding of the world that sets the stage for our future educational development. He then moves on to discuss the more formalized world of classroom education, and how, as we progress in our growth and transitions to adult hood, we seek higher specialization in certain topics, which lead to field experts, etc., in ways that may had not been seen in early human history. In Keil’s critique of Geary, he throws in warnings related to “Geary’s descriptions of these [folk education] domains and their implications for education. First, not all the phenomena in these domains are grasped easily and, second, there are many phenomena outside these domains for which we also seem to have specialized learning and reasoning systems” (196). He continues to deconstruct Geary’s thoughts on folk physics, folk biology, and folk psychology before delving deeper into context of formalized schooling to continue on where folk learning ends.

Throughout a good portion of the article, Dr. Keil discusses the inherent abilities of humans in comparison to lesser primates, such as apes, in infancy. The ability of the human child to formalize causal necessity in task manipulation is especially interesting when discussing the ability to fully utilize the ideas of folk education in a pre-school context. He suggests “human children will imitate all the operations including ones that have no apparent causal connection to getting the goal [in contrast to apes who imitate only what they perceive as necessary steps]. It was initially thought that the human children copied the irrelevant actions because they thought it was the social ‘game’ to play even though they knew full well that the operations were irrelevant (Horner & Whiten, 2005). Yet when various manipulations check for this possibility of simply following a social convention, it appears instead that young children, in contrast to apes, think that all steps are in fact causally necessary (Lyons et al., 2007)” (200). Using the research that has been completed on infant development and learning, educators can gain more necessary tools to fully appreciate the learning of their students. This ought not end in pre-school, either. Recognizing what areas of instruction folk sciences cover would more readily allow educators in certain aspects of society to develop their instruction to compliment what their students are learning from within the folk realm.

One other point he addresses relates to the objective of formal schooling, and that is: are we to use formal education to override folk studies, or to compliment it? He mentions that “Geary argues that humans have evolved a unique ability to inhibit the folk modular systems,” (197) but I question whether or not that was the intention of formalizing school. I see a definite advantage, especially in rural settings, in using the concept of folk domains as ladders on which to build formal educational practices. In lieu of opting for a one size fits all paradigm of elementary and secondary schooling, Geary’s theories on cognitive evolution can be used as starting points for further research on the idea of instructional design in the elementary and secondary settings. I see a correlation between the rural v. urban folk culture and what is appropriate design processes to be used in each respective academic setting.