175+ College Admissions Offices Promise Not to Penalize High School Students Who Get Suspended for Protesting Peacefully Against Gun Violence

in Current Affairs, Education | February 26th, 2018

Image by Lorie Shaull, via Flickr Com­mons

“Will my admis­sion get rescind­ed if I get sus­pend­ed for engag­ing in a school walk-out meant to bring atten­tion to the school shoot­ing issue?” That’s a ques­tion many high school stu­dents have posed to col­lege admis­sions offices around the coun­try, espe­cial­ly after some high school offi­cials threat­ened to sus­pend stu­dents tak­ing part in anti-gun demon­stra­tions.

Many lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties have since issued pol­i­cy state­ments and giv­en these stu­dents their bless­ing and sup­port. In a post called “In Sup­port of Stu­dent Protests,” Han­nah Mend­lowitz, from Yale’s Admis­sions Office, writes:

[W]e con­tin­ue to get the ques­tion: will Yale look unfa­vor­ably upon dis­ci­pline result­ing from peace­ful demon­stra­tions?

The answer is sim­ple: Of course not.

To the stu­dents who have reached out to us with these con­cerns, we have made clear that they should feel free to par­tic­i­pate in walk-out events to bring atten­tion to this issue with­out fear of reper­cus­sion. Yale will NOT be rescind­ing anyone’s admis­sion deci­sion for par­tic­i­pat­ing in peace­ful walk­outs for this or oth­er caus­es, regard­less of any high school’s dis­ci­pli­nary pol­i­cy. I, for one, will be cheer­ing these stu­dents on from New Haven.

And on the offi­cial Twit­ter feed for the Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, a tweet reads:

Appli­cants to Brown: Expect a social­ly con­scious, intel­lec­tu­al­ly inde­pen­dent cam­pus where free­dom of expres­sion is fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant. You can be assured that peace­ful, respon­si­ble protests against gun vio­lence will not neg­a­tive­ly impact deci­sions on admis­sion to Brown.

And that’s just the tip of the ice­berg. Below, find a list of 175+ uni­ver­si­ties that have grant­ed sim­i­lar assur­ances, along with links to their state­ments. The list comes from Alex Gar­cia, who is main­tain­ing a reg­u­lar­ly-updat­ed Google Doc. Access it online here.

Again, you can refer to this Google Doc for more updates.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Carl Sagan’s Syllabus & Final Exam for His Course on Critical Thinking (Cornell, 1986)

in Education, Science | January 29th, 2018

Though now more than twen­ty years gone, Carl Sagan, through his many books and his clas­sic tele­vi­sion series Cos­mos, con­tin­ues to teach us all he knew about life, the uni­verse, and every­thing. Three decades’ worth of stu­dents will also remem­ber learn­ing from him in per­son, in the lec­ture halls of Har­vard and Cor­nell where he kept up his pro­fes­so­r­i­al duties along­side the con­sid­er­able demands of his career as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. If you’ve ever learned any­thing from Sagan, whether from the man him­self or from his work, you know he did­n’t just want to teach human­i­ty about out­er space: he want­ed to teach human­i­ty how to think.

That goal became explic­it in Astron­o­my 490, also known as “Crit­i­cal Think­ing in Sci­ence and Non-Sci­ence Con­text,” which Sagan taught at Cor­nell in 1986. You can read its course mate­ri­als at the Library of Con­gress, whose Jen­nifer Harb­ster writes that they “include men­tion of the impor­tant bal­ance between open­ness to new ideas and skep­ti­cal engage­ment with those ideas in sci­ence,” a point that “ani­mates much of Carl Sagan’s work as an edu­ca­tor and sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor.”

The LoC offers the course’s intro­duc­tion and syl­labus, its final exam, and Sagan’s lec­ture notes, as well as the infor­ma­tion he assem­bled to design the course in the first place, which show just how wide a range of con­texts for crit­i­cal think­ing he had in mind.

Sagan col­lect­ed exam­ples of report­ing on and pub­lic per­cep­tion of phe­nom­e­na relat­ed to sports play­off series, car-loan inter­est rates, tobac­co indus­try-spon­sored tobac­co health-risk research, and the num­ber of heli­copters that crash in Los Ange­les. Harb­ster explains that “these notes illus­trate how he want­ed to use stu­dents’ every day expe­ri­ence with things like tele­vi­sion to prompt them to think more skep­ti­cal­ly about how claims are made and war­rant­ed in every­day life.” Though some of his exam­ples  (the lan­guage of cig­a­rette adver­tise­ments, for instance) may look dat­ed now, the course’s core prin­ci­ples have only grown more use­ful, and indeed nec­es­sary, with time — as Sagan, who wrote dark­ly of “the slow decay of sub­stan­tive con­tent in the enor­mous­ly influ­en­tial media,” sure­ly knew they would.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

32 Ani­mat­ed Videos by Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy Teach You the Essen­tials of Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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MIT’s New Master’s Program Admits Students Without College and High School Degrees … and Helps Solve the World’s Most Pressing Problems

in Economics, Education, MIT | January 26th, 2018


One of the cen­tral prob­lems of inequal­i­ty is that it per­pet­u­ates itself by nature. The inher­ent social cap­i­tal of those born in cer­tain places and class­es grants access to even more social cap­i­tal. Ques­tions of mer­it can seem mar­gin­al when the cre­den­tials required by elite insti­tu­tions prove inac­ces­si­ble to most peo­ple. In an admirable effort to break this cycle glob­al­ly, MIT is now admit­ting stu­dents to a grad­u­ate pro­gram in eco­nom­ics, with­out GRE scores, with­out let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, and with­out a col­lege degree.

Instead stu­dents begin with some­thing called a “Micro­Mas­ters” pro­gram, which is like “a method used in med­i­cine… ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­als,” reports WBUR. This entry­way removes many of the usu­al bar­ri­ers to access by allow­ing stu­dents to first “take rig­or­ous cours­es online for cred­it, and if they per­form well on exams, to apply for a master’s degree pro­gram on campus”—a degree in data, eco­nom­ics and devel­op­ment pol­i­cy (DEDP), which focus­es on meth­ods for reduc­ing glob­al inequal­i­ty.

 



 

Enroll­ment in the online Micro­Mas­ters cours­es began in Feb­ru­ary of last year (the next round starts on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2018), and the DEDP mas­ter’s pro­gram will start in 2019. “The world of devel­op­ment pol­i­cy has become more and more evi­dence-based over the past 10–15 years,” explains MIT pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics Ben Olken, who co-cre­at­ed the pro­gram with eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sors Esther Duflo and Abhi­jit Baner­jee. “Devel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­ers need to under­stand not just devel­op­ment issues, but how to ana­lyze them rig­or­ous­ly using data. This pro­gram is designed to help fill that gap.”

Duflo, co-founder of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Pover­ty Action Lab (J‑PAL), explains the inno­va­tion of Micro­Mas­ters’ rad­i­cal­ly open admis­sions. (For any­one with access to the inter­net, that is, still a huge bar­ri­er for mil­lions world­wide): “Any­body could do that. At this point, you don’t need to have gone to col­lege. For that mat­ter, you don’t need to have gone to high school.” Stu­dents who are accept­ed after their ini­tial online course work will move into a “blend­ed” pro­gram that com­bines their pri­or work with a semes­ter on MIT’s cam­pus.

Micro­Mas­ters cours­es are priced on a slid­ing scale (from $100 to $1,000), accord­ing to what stu­dents can afford, and costs are nowhere near what tra­di­tion­al stu­dents pay—after hav­ing already paid, or tak­en loans, for a four-year degree, var­i­ous test­ing reg­i­mens, admis­sions costs, liv­ing expens­es, etc. The cur­rent pro­gram might fea­si­bly be scaled up to include oth­er fields in the future. Thus far, over 8,000 stu­dents in the world have enrolled in the Micro­Mas­ters pro­gram. “In total,” Duflo says, “there are 182 coun­tries rep­re­sent­ed,” includ­ing ten per­cent from Chi­na, a large group from India, and “even some from the U.S.”

Stu­dents enrolled in these cours­es design their own eval­u­a­tions of ini­tia­tives around the globe that address dis­par­i­ties in health­care, edu­ca­tion, and oth­er areas. Co-designed by the Pover­ty Action Lab and the Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics, Micro­Mas­ters asks stu­dents to “grap­ple with some of the world’s most press­ing prob­lems,” includ­ing the prob­lem of access to high­er edu­ca­tion. You can view the require­ments and enroll at the MITx Micro­Mas­ters’ site. Read fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions and learn about the instruc­tors here. And here, lis­ten to WBUR’s short seg­ment on this fas­ci­nat­ing edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ment.

Find more Micro­Mas­ters sub­jects in our col­lec­tion: Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

MIT Is Dig­i­tiz­ing a Huge Archive of Noam Chomsky’s Lec­tures, Papers and Oth­er Doc­u­ments & Will Put Them Online

Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming: A Free Course from MIT 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Take 7 Free Courses From the Museum of Modern Art (aka MoMA)

in Art, Education, MOOCs, Museums | January 22nd, 2018

If you would like to know more about mod­ern art, but have dif­fi­cul­ty wrap­ping your head around the Futur­ists, Neo-Impres­sion­ists, Abstract Expres­sion­ists, and the myr­i­ad oth­er ‑ists and ‑isms  of this vast sub­ject, per­haps you should unteth­er your­self from time­lines.

Mod­ern Art & Ideas, a free online course from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (aka MoMA), shifts the focus away from peri­od and move­ment, instead group­ing works accord­ing to four themes: Places & Spaces, Art & Iden­ti­ty, Trans­form­ing Every­day Objects, and Art & Soci­ety.

It’s an approach that’s worked well for MoMA’s Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment. (Anoth­er upcom­ing online class, Art & Ideas: Teach­ing with Themes, is rec­om­mend­ed for pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tors look­ing to devel­op the ped­a­gog­i­cal skills the depart­ment employs to get vis­i­tors to engage with the art.)

The course, which begins today, is taught by Lisa Maz­zo­la, Assis­tant Direc­tor of the museum’s School and Teacher Pro­grams and a vet­er­an of their pre­vi­ous for­ays into Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es.

An ear­ly les­son on how artists cap­ture envi­ron­ments con­sid­ers three works: Vin­cent van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night (1889), Piet Mondrian’s Broad­way Boo­gie Woo­gie (1942–43), and Gor­don Matta-Clark’s Bin­go. Vin­tage pho­tos and footage con­spire with peri­od music to whisk stu­dents to the set­tings that inspired these works—a bucol­ic French men­tal hos­pi­tal, New York City’s bustling, WWII-era Times Square, and a derelict house in down on its luck Nia­gara Falls.

Reg­u­lar read­ers of Open Cul­ture are like­ly to have a han­dle on some of the ways art stars Fri­da Kahlo and Andy Warhol explored iden­ti­ty, the course’s third week theme, but what about Glenn Ligon, a liv­ing African Amer­i­can con­cep­tu­al artist?

Ligon may not have the renown or tote bag appeal of his lesson­mates, but his 1993 series, Run­aways, is pow­er­ful enough to hold its own against Kahlo’s Self-Por­trait with Cropped Hair and Warhol’s Gold Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

In fact, teach­ers look­ing to expand their Black His­to­ry Month cur­ricu­lum could spark some live­ly dis­cus­sions by show­ing stu­dents the extreme­ly accu­rate fac­sim­i­les of 19th-cen­tu­ry run­away slave ads fea­tur­ing phys­i­cal descrip­tions of Ligon, solicit­ed from friends who’d been told they were sup­ply­ing details for a hypo­thet­i­cal Miss­ing Per­son poster.

Ligon’s series is also a good start­ing place for dis­cussing con­cep­tu­al art with a friend who thinks  con­cep­tu­al art is best defined as White Cow in a Snow­storm.

Offered on Cours­era, the 5‑week course requires approx­i­mate­ly 2 hours of study and one quiz per week. Enroll here, or browse MoMAs oth­er cur­rent offer­ings also on Cours­era.

Note: To take the cours­es for free, selec­tion the Audit (as opposed to paid) option dur­ing the enroll­ment process.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tree of Mod­ern Art: Ele­gant Draw­ing Visu­al­izes the Devel­op­ment of Mod­ern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 75,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

What to Say When You Don’t Under­stand Con­tem­po­rary Art? A New Short Film, “Mas­ter­piece,” Has Help­ful Sug­ges­tions

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Nine Tips from Bill Murray & Cellist Jan Vogler on How to Study Intensely and Optimize Your Learning

in Education, Life, Music | November 20th, 2017

Pho­to by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Would you take study tips from Bill Mur­ray? After high school, he did spend some time as a pre-med­ical stu­dent at Reg­is Uni­ver­si­ty in Den­ver — before drop­ping out to return to his home­town of Chica­go and get his start in com­e­dy with the famed improv group Sec­ond City. Still, Reg­is did even­tu­al­ly award him an hon­orary Doc­tor of Human­i­ties a decade ago, and you have to admit that the fame-and-for­tune path worked out for him. In fact, it worked out and then some: see­ing the mas­sive suc­cess of Ghost­busters (and the temp­ta­tions there­of) loom­ing in 1984, Mur­ray decid­ed to make his return to school, this time to study phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, and French — and at the Sor­bonne, no less.

The Spo­ti­fy playlist below offers brief selec­tions of spo­ken-word wis­dom relat­ed to study­ing and learn­ing in gen­er­al, part of the fruit of a project by Mur­ray and Ger­man cel­list Jan Vogler. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.)

They recent­ly made an album togeth­er called New Worlds, where the sounds of Vogler’s clas­si­cal trio accom­pa­ny Mur­ray’s voice, singing and read­ing clas­sic works of Amer­i­can music and lit­er­a­ture from Mark Twain to Van Mor­ri­son. They also record­ed this selec­tion of mem­o­ries, gal­va­niz­ing mes­sages, and “intense study tips” briefly sum­ma­rized as fol­lows: “Don’t cram,” “Con­cen­trate,” “One prob­lem,” “Sleep on it,” “Take a bath,” “Focus on oth­ers,” “More is more,” “Take a break,” and “Build a rou­tine.”

Lis­ten to the playlist and you can hear Mur­ray expand on these sug­ges­tions, some of which will res­onate with mate­r­i­al we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: the psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non that has us do our best think­ing in the show­er (or indeed the bath), for instance, or the intel­lec­tu­al foun­da­tions of Mur­ray’s comedic per­sona. If you find his advice use­ful, you might also look to the exam­ple he sets with how he runs his career, famous­ly tak­ing risks on untest­ed ideas or col­lab­o­ra­tors (includ­ing a cer­tain Wes Ander­son) and going to great lengths (up to and includ­ing replac­ing his agent with a voice­mail box) to avoid get­ting caught in the gears of his indus­try. Whether study­ing a sub­ject or becom­ing the most beloved com­ic actor of your gen­er­a­tion, in oth­er words, you’ve got to find a path that works for you and you alone. As one track of Mur­ray and Vogler’s help­ful playlist puts it, “Good luck.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How a Liberal Arts Education Helped Derek Black, the Godson of David Duke, Break with the White Nationalist Movement

in Education, Life | August 24th, 2017

Image of Ron Paul, Don Black, Derek Black (right), via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A native of West Palm Beach, Flori­da, Derek Black grew up in one of the most promi­nent white nation­al­ist fam­i­lies in the Unit­ed States. He’s the son of Don Black, a for­mer grand wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan. And he’s the god­son of David Duke, “the most rec­og­niz­able fig­ure of the Amer­i­can rad­i­cal right, a neo-Nazi, long­time Klan leader and now inter­na­tion­al spokesman for Holo­caust denial” (per the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter). In short, Derek Black had every rea­son to grow up a racist, and remain a racist from cra­dle to grave. But things did­n’t turn out that way.

Below, you can hear Black explain how, as a young adult, he broke with white nation­al­ism, leav­ing behind his fam­i­ly, friends and com­mu­ni­ty. What laid the ground­work for that break? Going to a small lib­er­al arts col­lege, encoun­ter­ing new ideas, and meet­ing dif­fer­ent peo­ple. In this record­ed inter­view, he tells Michael Bar­baro of The New York Times:

In 2010, I moved across the state and start­ed col­lege at this lit­tle lib­er­al arts col­lege in Flori­da, which was about three and a half hours from home and it was the first time that I had lived away from home. Nobody knew who I was and I did not vol­un­teer who I was or any­thing about my back­ground, I made friends, hung out with peo­ple and played my gui­tar on my bal­cony in my dorm. It was nice to come back from class and be able to talk about his­to­ry or phi­los­o­phy or what­ev­er oth­er sub­ject and be around oth­er peo­ple.…

I had a friend on cam­pus who I had got­ten to know dur­ing my first semes­ter when nobody knew who I was, he was an obser­vant Jew who had Shab­bat din­ners pret­ty reg­u­lar­ly when­ev­er he was in town on Fri­day night and he would invite peo­ple of athe­ists and all sorts of dif­fer­ent reli­gions. It was just a nice din­ner. And so he actu­al­ly invit­ed me to one of the Shab­bats, and I knew him, and so I brought wine…

He had read my posts on Storm­front [a white nation­al­ist web­site cre­at­ed by Don Black] going back years — even the stuff when I was a teenag­er — and he doubt­ed that he was going to con­vince me of any­thing, he just want­ed to let me see a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty thing so that if I was going to keep say­ing these anti-Semit­ic things that at least I had seen real Jews.

It was ulti­mate­ly in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with a per­son I met at the Shab­bat din­ners … we would talk about things. Not only white nation­al­ism, but even­tu­al­ly white nation­al­ism. And I would say, “This is what I believe about I.Q. dif­fer­ences, I have 12 dif­fer­ent stud­ies that have been pub­lished over the years, here’s the jour­nal that’s put this stuff togeth­er, I believe that this is true, that race pre­dicts I.Q. and that there were I.Q. dif­fer­ences in races.” And they would come back with 150 more recent, more well researched stud­ies and explain to me how sta­tis­tics works and we would go back and forth until I would come to the end of that argu­ment and I’d say, Yes that makes sense, that does not hold togeth­er and I’ll remove that from my ide­o­log­i­cal tool­box but every­thing else is still there. And we did that over a year or two on one thing after anoth­er until I got to a point where I didn’t believe it any­more.

As you stream the inter­view below, spend some time think­ing about the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of a lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion. Yes, more than an expe­di­ent busi­ness degree, it can change hearts and save lives.

Also pay atten­tion to Black­’s final thoughts on what Trump’s response to the Char­lottesville dra­ma did for the White nation­al­ist move­ment: “I think Tues­day was the most impor­tant moment in the his­to­ry of the mod­ern white nation­al­ist move­ment.” Trump “said there were good peo­ple in the white nation­al­ist ral­ly and he sal­vaged their mes­sage.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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What’s a Scientifically-Proven Way to Improve Your Ability to Learn? Get Out and Exercise

in Education, Health | August 23rd, 2017

Wiki­me­dia Com­mons Image by the U.S. Navy

The ben­e­fit, nay neces­si­ty, of phys­i­cal exer­cise is unde­ni­able. The med­ical com­mu­ni­ty has iden­ti­fied seden­tary lifestyles as an epi­dem­ic, some­times called “sit­ting dis­ease” (or as peo­ple like to say, “sit­ting is the new smok­ing”). Pro­longed sit­ting has been estab­lished as a cause of all sorts of chron­ic ill­ness­es includ­ing heart dis­ease, dia­betes, and even cer­tain can­cers. Com­bine this prob­lem with the steady stream of processed foods in more and more diets and we have a full-blown pub­lic health cri­sis on our hands that requires some seri­ous inter­ven­tion on the part of doc­tors, dieti­cians, phys­i­cal ther­a­pists, and sci­en­tists.

And as more and more researchers are find­ing out, a poor diet and lack of exer­cise can also have seri­ous­ly harm­ful effects on the brain. Con­verse­ly, as a recent Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia study shows, exer­cise boosts brain func­tion; it “enhances learn­ing and mem­o­ry, improves exec­u­tive func­tion” and “coun­ter­acts… men­tal decline.” To put the the­o­ry of enhanced learn­ing to the test, researchers have con­duct­ed sev­er­al exper­i­ments and found that phys­i­cal activ­i­ty can improve the abil­i­ty to learn new things at near­ly any age.

Stud­ies have “found cor­re­la­tions between children’s aer­o­bic fit­ness and their brain struc­ture,” reports The New York Times, and kids who exer­cise before math and read­ing tests show con­sis­tent­ly high­er scores than their seden­tary peers. Like­wise, a study con­duct­ed with col­lege stu­dents in Ire­land found that par­tic­i­pants per­formed sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter on mem­o­ry tests after 30 min­utes of cycling. One like­ly expla­na­tion is that exer­cise increas­es the pro­duc­tion of BDNF (Brain-Derived Neu­rotrop­ic Fac­tor), a pro­tein that pro­motes nerve health. And in a new paper pub­lished by researchers from Italy, Chi­na, and Thai­land, we find that that exer­cise can specif­i­cal­ly improve the abil­i­ty to learn new lan­guages.

The study test­ed 40 col­lege-age Chi­nese stu­dents who are learn­ing Eng­lish. One group remained seden­tary, while anoth­er rode exer­cise bikes at a mod­er­ate pace both before and dur­ing study ses­sions. The stu­dents who biked per­formed bet­ter on 8 sep­a­rate vocab­u­lary tests and were bet­ter able to rec­og­nize cor­rect Eng­lish sen­tences. These results are sim­i­lar to those of a recent Ger­man study which found that a group of young women rid­ing exer­cise bikes, at slow and mod­er­ate paces, per­formed much bet­ter on vocab­u­lary tests than anoth­er group who didn’t exer­cise.

Though The New York Times points to a dif­fer­ent study with con­trast­ing results, the evi­dence seems large­ly on the side of exer­cise-enhances-learn­ing pro­po­nents. “In recent years,” the Times notes, “a wealth of stud­ies in both ani­mals and peo­ple have shown that we learn dif­fer­ent­ly if we also exer­cise.” You’ll find many of those stud­ies sum­ma­rized at the BBC, The Guardian, and else­where, along with sev­er­al pos­si­ble expla­na­tions for the phe­nom­e­non. Psy­chol­o­gist Justin Rhodes notes that “aer­o­bic exer­cise can actu­al­ly reverse hip­pocam­pal shrink­age,” increas­ing gray mat­ter in an area of the brain asso­ci­at­ed with mem­o­ry and emo­tion. His con­tention is backed by recent research on mice and humans.

In any case, although it appears that more vig­or­ous exer­cis­es like cycling and run­ning cre­ate the most improve­ment, tak­ing a brisk walk before a class or study ses­sion can also help with reten­tion and alert­ness. What­ev­er kind of exer­cise one does, a sim­ple “take-home mes­sage,” says one researcher, “may be that instruc­tion should be flanked by phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. Sit­ting for hours and hours with­out mov­ing is not the best way to learn.” Hav­ing trou­ble get­ting moti­vat­ed to run or bike before you study for that math test or start a new lan­guage course? Take some advice from Har­vard Med­ical School on how to start slow­ly, find some­thing you like doing, and turn every­day activ­i­ties into exer­cise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Sit­ting Is The New Smok­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Expla­na­tion

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

Hear Aer­o­bic Exer­cise: When Sovi­et Musi­cians Record­ed Elec­tron­ic Music for a Sub­ver­sive Home Fit­ness Record (1984)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Illustrated Guide to a PhD: 12 Simple Pictures That Will Put the Daunting Degree into Perspective

in Education | June 20th, 2017

Matthew Might, a com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah, writes: “Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. stu­dents what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pic­tures.” In his Illus­trat­ed Guide to the PhD, Pro­fes­sor Might cre­ates a visu­al nar­ra­tive that puts the daunt­ing degree into per­spec­tive. Any­one who has already pur­sued a Ph.D. will see the wis­dom in it. (Or at least I did.) And young, aspir­ing aca­d­e­mics would be wise to pay it heed.

You can see a con­densed ver­sion of the the illus­trat­ed guide above. Or fol­low it in a larg­er for­mat below.

Imag­ine a cir­cle that con­tains all of human knowl­edge:

By the time you fin­ish ele­men­tary school, you know a lit­tle:

By the time you fin­ish high school, you know a bit more:

With a bach­e­lor’s degree, you gain a spe­cial­ty:

A mas­ter’s degree deep­ens that spe­cial­ty:

Read­ing research papers takes you to the edge of human knowl­edge:

Once you’re at the bound­ary, you focus:

You push at the bound­ary for a few years:

Until one day, the bound­ary gives way:

And, that dent you’ve made is called a Ph.D.:

Of course, the world looks dif­fer­ent to you now:

So, don’t for­get the big­ger pic­ture:

Keep push­ing.

You can find Mat­t’s Illus­trat­ed Guide host­ed on his web site. This guide/reality check is pub­lished under a Cre­ative Com­mons License. You can also buy a print ver­sion for $6.50. The mon­ey goes to char­i­ty.

This guide first appeared on our site in 2012. But, with all of the wis­dom it packs into a small space, it seemed worth bring­ing back.

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