A.V. Squad Rocks!
If you pay much attention to media trends (Especially Oprah Winfry and Bill Gates who is king of the geeks) you’ll notice a growing fervor concerning the state of education in America. They site falling test scores and dropping graduation rates as proof of their claims.
Their solution…
- more time in the class room
- more classes in general
- better textbooks
- better teacher training programs
- raise performance standards
Unfortunately they are wrong.
In my opinion Jean Piaget (the late) was not a great psychologist. However, hid he did have phenomenal powers of observation.
What did he observe?
People increase their knowledge base and comprehension (ie learn) when they touch and manipulate tactile items.
Frank Wilson is the neurologist who wrote the book, “The Hand, How Its Use Shapes the Brain.” He said, “Humans were designed to build their brains by using their hands.”
Sounds a lot like Piaget doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, inactivity is creating mass brain power atrophy in America.
A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children spend less than 1.5 hours a day doing physical activity.
What is the result of a person who grows up with such a limited physical activity base?
In an interview with a Meridith Corporation magazine reporter an MIT professor spoke about engineering students who didn’t know which way to turn a screw to tighten it (Hello! Righty tighty, lefty loosey).
Take steps to protect your intellectual prowess and boos your brain power with the following activities.
- Do your own small repairs. Get comfortable with your tool kit.
- Buy an erector set. Sorting, assembly and following detailed project directions is excellent mental exercise.
- Build a bird or dog house but just look at pictures and come up with your own design specs. Better start with scrap on this one.
- Take up a musical instrument. You don’t have to be talented. The process is the important part.
Reg Adkins writes on behavior and the human experience at (elementaltruths.blogspot.com).
Tags: 
Loading ...
Comments
ChrisBrogan says on August 11th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Spot on, Reg. I was talking with a technical colleague and he mentioned that he dropped out of regular high school to go to vocational school, because he felt like they’d teach him more. I think Digg’s Kevin Rose did the same thing.
Education that brings in more skills and hands on methods is the way to roll it.
akl68 says on August 11th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
1. Hands-on should always help cement the learning process, however, sometimes it is useful to learn concepts too. I find that understanding concepts (which is often an intangible thing) and seeing the ‘big’ picture helps me troubleshoot issues quicker.
2. IMHO, we need to pay our teachers better. Pay them well, get better teachers, raise morale, improve teaching, students learn better, etc.
Steve says on August 12th, 2006 at 2:12 am
Sounds very interesting. There was a UK documentary a while back that followed a group of underachieving, troublesome kids who agreed to go to an experimental summer school where a group of teachers worked with them in a very different way.
The teachers helped the kids identify what their strengths were and worked with them out from those assumptions. They identified a range of different intelligences, some kids were more physically intelligent while others were musically intelligent or verbally intelligent. The thing was that many of these kids had never been told that they were intelligent in any way before. So when they could focus on their strengths it made a huge difference to their own self esteem.
There was a lot more to the documentary - the kids were *really* troublesome, but that was the part that this article made me think of. In vocational schooling there is a possibility for certain students to work with the strengths which are ignored and devalued in a more traditional school. Both are needed of course as not everyone fits into a vocational style of teaching either.
I’m also curious as to why Reg left his original spelling mistake in the article, crossed out. Is that a test of our powers of observation or is there a point? (I’m not criticising, just curious!)
kdbrown says on August 12th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Reg should also have crossed out site and put in cite in the first paragraph! Anybody have a good single sentence that uses site, cite and sight, all correctly?
And is it just me or does something like this throw other people off the point of the posting?
Reg says on August 12th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Ok, I’m busted. I did want to play with some of the options on WordPress (strike through).The use of site instead of cite was a typographical on my part. In the future, I shall use my sight to very the correct use when I cite a site.
Reg says on August 12th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Oh shoot! VERIFY!