Robert Nunley: Taking time to slow down and learn
by Laurie Whitten
Robert Nunley
trange sounds from a synthesizer
flip down the stairs of room 410 into
the room 410.
A small silver-haired man pads up the stairs to his office and kicks off his shoes.
"This music was composed by Steve Helpline, who earned a Ph.D. with a thesis on the influence of music and the learning process," Robert Nunley says as he settles comfortably cross-legged on a blue cushion.
He sighs and he leans back against the wall. "Has kind of an Eastern sound,
A professor of geography who also teaches the application of microcomputers to geographic studies, Nunley, 55, listens to Helpine's music for a reason. When used in the classroom, Nunley says the music becomes a psychological technique that can help students become great learners.
"The only thing I really teach students is how to learn, he says." And there are many other words.
"For effective learning to occur, the brain must be slowed down to 40 or 50 cycles per second. How do we to do this is to play music with a slow, regular tempo — the brain begins to entrain on the beat and pulse slower."
The pulsing of the brain also can be slowed by dimming the fluorescent lights of the classroom, Nunley explains. Fluorescent lights pulse about 60 cycles a second and cause the brain to speed up to match the pulsations. Dimming the light helps the brain to relax and retain more information.
"It's true that we operate on only five to 10 percent of our mental capabilities," he says. "We all have the potential to listen to Chopin and sit down and play what we've just heard. There's no reason why we can speak to 10 in 12 languages.
"But the problem is that we tell ourselves it's not normal for our brains to do things like a human brain weighs three pounds. A human brain over two percent of our body weight."
"A horse, for example, has a brain no bigger than this," he says as he pushes his arm forward.
"A horse's biological function is obviously not to learn," he says. "Not with us, I convinced we learn to play duet and flute, and a strand to know how bright we really are."
Nunley who grew up in Huntington, W Va., decided to pursue his doctorate in geography at the University of Michigan after serving in the Army during the early 1950s. He previously had earned a bachelor's degree in international commerce and a master's degree in geography at Marshall University in Huntington.
In 1962 he came to teach at Kansas and on March 9, 1963, he married his wife. Ann. Together they raised four children on a farm in McLouth, where he and Annie still
"I love this part of the country," he says. "You get 200-some days of nice sunny weather here. And northeast Kansas is on the edge of some really pretty
I'm convinced we learn to play dumb at a very early age. We're afraid to know how bright we really are.'
woodlands, I'm very comfortable here."
Nunley's day begins early — up at a*m, for an hour of playing either the classical guitar or the tambourine, an instrument, India, and then an hour of meditation.
"I snake up on the day real easy," he says. "After I meditate, I walk two miles, then feed my two horses. Everything I do has a purpose, and that is to avoid work at all costs. I think you get more work done playing, anyway"
After 27 years of teaching at KU, Nunley says he has noticed striking differences among each class of students. Because of her own experiences, she is able to teach a course the same way twice.
Nki Nielsenbeldt a dünnes,
neues Lehrer, who is about anything
during his introduction to geography class.
The answer is A.
"He was always doing these unpredictable things in front of the class." Nettie shuddered, "You're down because he said you're in a better learning mode when you re drowsy."
"He also loved to illustrate examples for us. One day he was talking about a person's territory, like how close you can get to someone before he gets uncomfortable. He walked up to me and got really close, and I had to push him away."
Paul Stark, Kansas City, Kan., senior,
says Nurley once had guitar and guitar
accompanied by the class.
"He was giving us an example of how songs get started, and he got the whole class singing with him." Stark says "That what made him a good teacher, covered the material that was in the book, you really knew it. You was done it."
Nunley says the one thing he notices about students each year is that they love to play dumb.
"Students play dumb because it pays off," he says. "They wouldn't do it if it didn't. The reward is approval from teachers or friends."
"Think back to sixth or seventh grade. If you knew more than your teacher, she didn't say, 'That's fantastic,' did she? Or what if the high school hero wasn't the quarterback of the football team, but the person who could speak the most languages? What would happen to language study then?"
Momentarily frustrated, Nunley pops two small green pills into his mouth. He chews vigorously, then bites a white wafer-like pill in half.
Ever eat some Kansas wheat?" he
asks. "this is how I get my energy. It doesn't taste very good, so I chase it with a chewable vitamin C tablet." He pauses. "I wear a necklace of metal jewelry tied around his neck."
"But you know, it's not exactly popular to be too dumb," he says. "If a girl is an airhead, people say, 'Man, she's got nothing but a body because her brain is melted. Something in our culture encounters girls not to be smarter than males."
Sam Wallace, who has been Nunley's teaching assistant in both his introductory geography and microcomputer courses, says Nunley tries to involve each student in his lectures no matter how large the class is.
"He almost never lectures from behind a desk," Wallace says. "A lot of the time, he sits in a chair in front of the desk, or sits on top of it. His lectures are very informal, and he uses lots of examples that involve the students."
Wallace says that Nunley plays Help's pine music every 15 minutes in his microcomputers course to keep students relaxed.
"The music in the background is kind of New Age, kind of like elevator music," he says. "Every 15 minutes it stops, and everyone gets a chance to get up and stretch. It's a good idea. I think it keeps everyone awake at 8:30 in the morning."
KANSAN/Profiles/April 12, 1989
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