Who: All Students
What: Visiting scholar, Shirley Brice Heath, shares her recent research
When: Friday, March 19, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Where: MG 100, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Moving the human eye and mind: Visual, musical and literary arts in grounding cognition

Shirley Brice Heath

Economically advanced nations currently reflect a curious twist in reasoning. In spite of strong historical support for parallel economic and aesthetic development in the history of modern Western nations, education systems in many nations today are reducing art, music, and literature in their curricula. Teachers of the humanities and arts hold less prestige than their counterparts in the sciences and mathematics. The inextricable links between the development of science and advances in aesthetic creativity go unnoticed in current arguments for denying opportunities to learn creativity, work across media and modes, and develop expertise in visual perception and renderings of imagination in sketches, drawings, and models. Technological advances make imperative the “reading,” embodying, and creating of images to such an extent that neuroscientists now see these ways of learning as grounding cognition. This lecture considers these research findings in terms of implications for human learning across the life span.