The Phantastic Brain (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Jordynn Jack | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

From Sputnik-era anxieties to cursive mandates and recess, traces how neuroscience rhetoric has informed education policy and debates from the 1950s to the present.

Since 2000, US politicians have leveraged neuropolicy, or policy arguments informed by neuroscience, to influence education, from mandating cursive lessons to advocating for music and the arts. The Phantastic Brain is the first book-length analysis of neuropolicy from a rhetorical perspective. In it, Jordynn Jack examines neuropolicy from the 1950s to the present, arguing that neuropolicy works in part by promoting the act of imagining alternative futures and choosing among them: what Aristotle termed phantasia bouleutike. In this way, neuropolicy rhetoric builds audience perceptions of a nation "falling behind" and offers visions of a neuroscience-enabled future in which the brain functions as a space of possibility and growth.

Calling upon archival sources including policy reports, newspaper accounts, presidential speeches, and AI-generated brain images, Jack develops a theory and method for phantasia bouleutike and traces how neuroscience rhetoric informs debates surrounding growth mindsets, handwriting, recess, and the arts. In this rich contribution to scholarship on science rhetoric, policy rhetoric, science and technology studies, and critical neuroscience, Jack ultimately argues that we need more capacious models for educational policy that fully consider interactions of brain, child, and environment without pinning the future on individual brains and their performance.