The instructor in my high school English class was rather dry. She would drone on about difference between past and subjunctive verbs, and participles and gerunds. However, she was a well-read and well-traveled person. On the side wall she had tacked up a poster of the London subway system, brought back as a souvenir. It had exotic named stations like Piccadilly Circus and Knights Bridge that seemed far more interesting than dissecting English grammar. So, when my eyes started to glaze over, I would stare at the poster and try to absorb the feeling of what it would be like to travel in London.

The real difficulty with applying education on the latest brain research is knowing exactly how to manipulate the environment outside the student in order to affect what occurs on the inside. Proponents of brain-based learning have done scant studies on what kind of manipulation actually works…