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How we can help students regain lost brainpower
EVERY SECOND, OUR BRAINS PROCESS ABOUT ELEVEN MILLION BITS OF INFORMATION.
We have conscious control over about fifty or so of those bits.
Let's call this bandwidth.
It can also be thought of as available cognitive capacity. Bandwidth isn't an indication of how smart someone is but of how much brainpower a person has available to bring to a task-learning in a classroom, for example.
Now, imagine students entering a classroom with some of that bandwidth already taken up. How much is left for learning? Bandwidth can be lost to many things both positive and negative, from the excitement of getting an A on a paper to the nervousness before a first date. Most of these sources of bandwidth depletion are temporary and naturally wax and wane. But other damaging societal sources persist, and these continuing sources of bandwidth depletion may well be a hidden crisis point on our campuses. Preserving and restoring cognitive capacity lost to a sense of uncertainty-which might be related to an aspect of identity or a feeling of not belonging-is an often-overlooked aspect of our educational imperative. Yet it is one that is well within our power to effectively address.
Several years ago, I read a book called Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives, in which the authors explain how scarcity steals cognitive capacity. The authors, behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir, call this the "bandwidth tax" of poverty. When people are worried about money because they live in persistent economic insecurity, Mullainathan and Shafir contend, the part of their brains focused on their lack of money is not available for making good choices, caring for themselves and their families, or taking advantage of opportunities such as job training. In short, worrying about what is scarce in their lives takes up much of their mental bandwidth, hampering their efforts to better their situations.
I've worked in public higher education for twenty-five years, so when I read this, I naturally thought about the scarcity college students who grew up in poverty might be experiencing. I wondered whether this bandwidth tax could explain why, according to the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity...