ABSTRACT
A previous and very preliminary article in this area had two main objectives: the first to bring recent developments in neuroscience to the attention of historians of education; the second to examine how historians of education might contribute to this field.1 Three major conclusions were drawn. The first was that recent technological developments that enabled the working brain to be observed have substantial implications for the provision and practice of education. The second argued that historians of education could bring considerable perspectives to bear upon this new situation by drawing on images of palimpsest and kluge2 to show that “the human brain has evolved over millions of years via natural selection, a few thousand years as a result of education, and only a few decades since propelled by modern communications”.3 Finally, I suggested that at the beginning of the twenty-first century we are at a turning point not only in the history of education, but also in the history of the human brain. The internet and other screen-based devices are rapidly changing the generation, nature and ownership of knowledge. By changing the way that we
*Email: r.aldrich@ioe.ac.uk 1Richard Aldrich, “Neuroscience, Education and the Evolution of the Human Brain,” History of Education 42, 3 (2013): 396-410. 2See Gary Marcus, Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind (London: Faber & Faber, 2008). A palimpsest is an ancient manuscript that has been frequently written upon but with the earlier writing erased. Kluge is an engineering term for a clumsy patchwork device that is, however, effective. 3 409.
