Beyond Culture

In this chapter, Hall laments the institutionalization of learning among cultures that originated in Europe and proposes a reformulation of education around the human nervous system. Accepting that people are primates, adjusting school size, and recognizing the uniqueness of ethnic cultures are paramount to bettering Western educational systems.

Hall draws upon the work of neurophysiologists, emphasizing that the brain is an organ, but the mind is what one does with it. This mind “is actually internalized culture” (192), according to physician P. D. Maclean’s research showing that social hierarchies and emotions are primitive brain functions, integrated yet derived from different challenges. Hall delves into brain holography (three-dimensional imaging), explaining that because the brain is situational, it can handle the acquisition of “new programs” without disrupting its original ones. For this reason, education should dispense with the compartmentalization of knowledge and noncontextual subjects.

The structures and expectations of Western education fail students in various ways. Empirical and scientific studies have known that a working group’s ideal size is between eight and 12 people; this size maximizes efficiency and talents and facilitates strong communication. Larger groups compromise participation and engagement, and leadership isn’t natural. Larger groups hinder education; Sherwood Washburn showed that young primates devote much of their time to play, which “performs important adaptive and survival functions” (204).