Newsnight - Paxman KOs Brain Gym founder

Just watched Jeremy Paxman do his usual combative stuff interviewing the US founder behind Brain Gym - in the words of the Newsnight blog:

Brain Gym is a programme used in hundreds of schools across Britain - backed by the government. It’s a series of daily physical exercises that are supposed to aid learning - by stimulating the vital organs. Many teachers - and many pupils - are convinced it works. But scientists are worried - believing that it amounts to "pseudo-science" and is misleading young children about the workings of the human body.

The report showing kids and teachers actively using the techniques were more disturbing than heartening. While I believe more awareness of how we think and learn should be part of our curriculum, there should be more care applied to adopting programmes such as these which appear to be largely unproven. The one bit of evidence available showed a link between physical exercise and calmer more focused classes of kids. But this really isn't anything new. I wouldn't be surprised if you replaced these particular Brain Gym exercises ("brain buttons" and "energy yawns" were to examples) with any other set of similar physical activities and you'd get largely the same results.

The other claimed effects were viewed with high sceptism by Colin Blakemore, Neuroscientist at Oxford University. Mr Dennison, the founder, was not at all convincing. Neither were the kids who were interviewed in support of the techniques - they appeared to parroting back phrases that you could see they didn't really understand.

It would be a real shame - and a huge missed opportunity - if we end up confusing neuroscience with pseudoscience. It appears that our education system and much of the training world is still too ready to adopt programmes that lack strong scientific foundations. Let's hope this doesn't obscure some of the geniune progress being made in understanding how our brain works and learns.

Sense about Science will have something to say about this.

You can probably catch a re-run of Newsnight on BBC iPlayer - watch it and let me know if you'd be happy for your own kids' school offering this type of tuition.