Brain Gym faces a Perfect Storm!

I keep getting enquiries about Brain Gym, also known as Educational Kinesiology. Its scientific validity and effectiveness have been questioned for years, but it carried on regardless, spreading like wildfire in British schools and to a lesser extent, South African schools.

Then Dr Ben Goldacre, writing the column Bad Science for The Guardian, took a hand. His caustic questioning of Brain Gym triggered a torrent of derisive comment from scientists and the public about the Brain Gym organisation and its methods. It was exposed as a pseudoscientific educational technique with a nonsensical theory base and very little evidence of effectiveness. As the furore spread, the technique's originator, Dr Paul Dennison, was eventually forced to concede that it's unscientific.

Here is Dennison on British television being confronted about his technique:



I have this statement issued by Brain Gym UK, courtesy of Dr Aust's Spleen:

"The UK Educational Kinesiology Trust makes no claims to understand the neuroscience of Brain Gym®. The author has advised that the simple explanations in the Brain Gym Teachers Edition about how the movements work are hypothetical and based on advice from a neurobiologist at the time the books were written."

I've tried to collect important recent information on Brain Gym in this one post for anyone who may wish to learn more. Here follow some online resources that provide information on Brain Gym controversy, with one salient quote from each. I'll start with their official website, then progressing from academic articles to blog posts (the links marked with asterisks are the more scientific ones):

Brain Gym official website

"Educational Kinesiology (or Edu-K) is the study and application of natural movement experiences to facilitate learning."

The Wikipedia entry

"Its theoretical foundation and claimed results have been thoroughly discredited."

* Hyatt, K.J. 2007. Brain Gym: Building stronger brains or wishful thinking? Remedial and Special Education, Vol. 28, No. 2, 117-124.

"Educators are encouraged to become informed consumers of research and to avoid implementing programming for which there is neither a credible theoretical nor a sound research basis."

* Howard-Jones, P., Pollard, A., et al. 2006. Neuroscience and education: Issues and opportunities. London: The Economic and Social Research Council.

"The pseudo-scientific terms that are used to explain how this works, let alone the concepts they express, are unrecognisable within the domain of neuroscience."

* Sense about science: Brain Gym

"Brain Gym is a programme of teacher-led physical exercises which are claimed to improve the cognitive abilities of primary school children. These exercises are being taught with pseudoscientific explanations that undermine science teaching and mislead children about how their bodies work."

* Dr Steven Novella. Brain Gym: This is your mind on pseudoscience. Neurologica Blog

"Unfortunately, Edu-K is little more than pseudoscientific wishful thinking and an example of researchers who refused to abandon their (lucrative) claims simply because they are wrong."

Experts dismiss educational claims of Brain Gym programme

Two leading scientific societies and a charity that promotes scientific understanding have written to every local education authority in the the UK to warn that a programme of exercises being promoted to help child learning relies on "pseudoscientific explanations" and a "bizarre understanding" of how the body works.

Brain Gym claims to be withdrawn

"The creators of an educational exercise programme used in hundreds of schools in England have agreed to withdraw unsubstantiated scientific claims in their teaching materials. ... Paul Dennison, a Californian educator who created the programme, admitted that many claims in his teacher’s guide were based on his “hunches” and were not proper science."

Here are some of the Ben Goldacre's posts that sparked the controversy, in chronological order:

Work out your mind

"In an ideal world, we would be teaching children enough science in school that they were able to stand up to a teacher who was spouting this kind of rubbish."

Brain Gym - Name & Shame

"Because telling stories about fairies and monsters is fine, but lying to children about science is wrong. ... With Brain Gym, the same teacher who tells children that blood is pumped around the lungs and then the body by the heart, is also telling them that when they do “The Energizer” exercise (far too complicated to describe) then “this back and forward movement of the head increases the circulation to the frontal lobe for greater comprehension and rational thinking."

Banging your head repeatedly against the brick wall of teacher stupidity helps increase flow of blood to your frontal lobes

"Brain Gym continues to produce more email than almost any other subject: usually it is from teachers, eager to defend the practice, but also from children, astonished at the sheer stupidity of what they are being taught."

My own previous posts that touched somehow on Brain Gym were:

Badscience smites Brain Gym

Loyal dissent

Poor misled consultants

Not only teachers are gullible