The “Understanding the Young Adolescent’s Physical and Cognitive Growth” article presents an interesting quote:

More efficient processing takes time to develop in middle school students- they’re not yet adults. Young adolescents need meaningful, challenging learning experiences in order to develop and sustain cognitive growth process. Cognitive processing wont improve or develop as well if students are consistently taking notes or memorizing dates without opportunities to make genuine connections between content and their experiences (26).

This quote caught my attention and reminded me of a theory from a methodology class at NYU Madrid. I learned about the “Atlas Complex” theory in which there is emphasis on the student taking the active role in learning and the teacher simply is considered the facilitator of this process. I always strongly agreed with this theory and I am so happy to have come across this quote in the article supporting it even further. When students are only presented information and expected to simply memorize facts or fill in a bubble of a multiple choice prompt, it becomes a robotic process. In most cases, after this class if over, “knowledge” of memorized dates or facts is often forgotten. The “Atlas Complex” encourages student’s own curiosity and critical thinking skills, but furthermore, based on this quote, its appears that this process is actually necessary physiologically for students’ cognitive processing growth. Students must be given the opportunity in class in which they are able to develop their own output, make their own connections, and analyze works through “meaningful challenging learning experiences”. I so much appreciate seeing a similar viewpoint from the physiological perspective of cognitive development. As a future educator I hope to apply this practice in my classroom in order to provide more freedom to my students and assist them in developing and reaching their best cognitive functioning skills.