"Thinking is living and no thought is bred in an isolated cell in the brain." [1]
The implications for education of this propensity of the brain for encoding and receding its sensitivities are obvious. In order to make information meaningful we must allow pupils to encode in terms of their own sensitivities which are not necessarily ours. They must be given the opportunity to repeat the information given in such a way that it becomes encoded in a context which makes meaning for them. They must be encouraged to remake what we give them in their own image.
This is not as difficult as it sounds. As already noted, even young children who are deaf use signs differently from the way Washoe the chimpanzee uses signs. Human children spontaneously make propositions, their language is productive (Jakobsen, 1966) [76]. All neural tissue is spontaneously active, nerve cells beat out electrical signals on their own throughout life, much as does the tissue of the heart. In man this spontaneity becomes organized early on so that he produces propositions, makes sentences. And then he begins to play with these sentences, receding them into different forms and reasoning with them. Each new batch of teenagers attests to the human proclivity for productively receding what is given. Why not utilize this marvelous capacity to advantage in our educational effort?
To summarize briefly: man's brain is different in that it makes imperative the productive use of linguistic signs symbolically and linguistic symbols significantly. The flexibility derived from this difference is immense. Given the power of this flexibility man codes and recedes for fun and profit. Every artistic endeavor, every working accomplishment depends for its effectiveness not only on the information conveyed by the theme but on the variations on that theme. Human encounter is sustained not just by an exchange of information but by an infinite variety in familiar communication. Animals use signs and symbols only in special circumstances; man productively propositions all his encounters and he reasons about all his experiences. Thus man and only man shows this thrust to make meaningful his experiences and encounters: he intends, he holds on to his images.
But this is not all. By means of the motor mechanisms of his brain man hopefully and continuously sets and resets his sensitivities so that his images can become actualized in his environment both by virtue of his own behavior and that of socially contiguous others. Man's culture expresses these hopes, this active thrust toward meaning. For to be human is to be incapable of stagnation; to be human is to productively reset, reorganize, recode, and thus to give additional meaning to what is. In short, "to be human is to be a problem." [1].
Note
Many important aspects of the problem of the brain's coding processes are dealt with here altogether too briefly. But the present paper will serve as a prolegomenon to a more comprehensive study which will appear under the title Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology, to be published by Prentice-Hall in 1971 [9].
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