#FunAtSchool #fun #learning #work #reading
Some educators say children will learn better if you make school more fun.
Others say that learning the basics, like math, isn’t always fun. Even math experts say that.
Maureen Downey, education columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, tackled this debate in her January 30, 2024, column.
Think about your days at school. Were they fun? Were they work? Were they a combination of both?
Excluding recess and volunteer extracurricular activities, did you have fun at school?
Chances are, if you went to a Catholic school, it was all work. Rigor is the best friend of most Catholic educators. Not that kids had NO fun at Catholic schools, but work, and the feeling of work, were the main motivators.
Many students, and people in general, read for pleasure. Some educators want to make reading seem like work. It’s doubtful that would encourage young students to read more.
There are those who wish to separate work from pleasure. But, wouldn’t you want young students to grow up learning to love, or, at least, like their work?
In today’s world, work is often as much a social activity as a job. Creating pleasant work environments helps attract and keep good, productive people.
Part of the purpose of schools is to train children to be good employees as adults. If learning in school were more fun, wouldn’t you likely be teaching children to be happier employees?
Of course, students must master the basics. They must also learn history, art, music and other creative pursuits. After all, encouraging creativity is the goal of many of today’s workplaces. Creative students ask more questions, and you really want students, and adults, to ask more questions. Then, as a result, find more correct answers.
Realistically, school can’t be all play and no work. But, just as employers strive to make their workplaces more enjoyable, thereby more productive, teachers try to find that perfect mix of work, fun and learning in school.
Getting students to want to learn is, or should be, as much of a goal for teachers as learning itself.
Curiosity is as commendable a characteristic in a student as ambition. What good employer would not want curious and ambitious employees?
In addition to curiosity and ambition, we all want students to have good humor – not necessarily be funny, but more to be able to take setbacks with a smile and humility.
No employer wants a bunch of angry and disgruntled employees.
In past decades, these characteristics were thought to come naturally to kids and, later, adults.
But curiosity, creativity, ambition, good humor and many other desirable personal traits can be learned – and taught.
Often, to do so, teachers must possess, or have learned those same traits and apply them appropriately to their lesson plans.
Sometimes, that involves making school more fun. Like putting medicine on a sugar cube, it may involve disguising work amid that fun.
It’s up to teachers, and their administrators, to encourage students not only to learn, but also to want to learn.
Peter
Tag Archives: learning
WHY ASIAN PARENTS HAVE THEIR KIDS’ BACKS IN SCHOOL
Why do students of East Asian descent do so well in school? Because parents are the primary educators.
So concludes Maureen Downey, education columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her column on the subject was published July 31, 2017.
While American parents are concerned with how engaging their child’s teacher is, how much homework their child will have and whether their child will be able to balance school and other activities, such as band or soccer, in East Asian countries, parents are worried about one thing: whether their child will learn, Downey writes.
The Asian children’s success will depend not only on their own effort, but that of their parents, she writes.
That difference may explain the performance gap between American students and those from East Asian countries, Downey writes.
According to a research scholar on East Asian education, this lagging performance by American students will not change unless we upend two beliefs: teachers are responsible for student achievement and parents play a supportive, rather than primary, role in their child’s education, Downey writes.
Cornelius N. Grove, author and researcher on East Asian education, has challenged the assumption that school performance is determined by innate aptitude, Downey writes. He says children bring – or don’t bring, in the case of some U.S. students – a receptiveness to learning and a moral and cultural imperative to excel, Downey writes.
Students who fail an algebra test here might say, “I’m just not good at math,” Downey quotes Grove. East Asian students use failure to figure out what they don’t know and redirect their study plan, Downey quotes Grove.
One could argue that while education is important, so are other things in life. The balance American parents look for in their children is a worthy endeavor. We want children to have a life, to do things that kids do, to enjoy growing up and not be put in a pressure cooker.
On the other hand, some parents can be too loosey-goosey, fret about the child’s self-esteem, etc.
Those old enough may remember when parents sent kids to school, let them figure out what to do, perhaps had one or two conferences a year with teachers and that was it. Some parents were disinclined, or perhaps even incapable, of helping with homework.
Still, “we have masses of young people (In the U.S) who aren’t able to do simple math, who have trouble reading a sentence,” Downey quotes Grove.
Yet, she quotes him, “we are not short of entrepreneurs in this country.” If your child is an entrepreneur, and is looking for something to apply that trait that could earn him potentially a lot of money, there are many vehicles out there that may fit him or her. To check out one of the best, message me.
The bottom line is that parents have to find the happy medium in which their child can excel in school, and still be a kid. The parents have to devote a higher priority on education, and not leave everything up to teachers and schools.
The children have to want to learn. A parent who cultivates a child’s desire to learn is parenting at its best. So let your kids be kids, let them do what they enjoy, yet still have focus on education. Perhaps the parents can take a leading role in increasing school performance of American children.
Peter
WHAT WE LEARN IN HIGH SCHOOL
“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”
Paul Simon lyric from “Kodachrome”
#HighSchool #learning #education
What did you learn in high school that you use today?
Perhaps you use some household math. Perhaps, if you took vocational courses, you use what you learned in auto mechanics, machine shop etc.
Most of us, though, would be hard pressed to think of much that we use today from our high school learning.
As it turns out, high schools were designed more than a century ago to produce efficient workers who could follow instructions, according to Ted Dintersmith, venture-capitalist-turned reformer.
“Henry Ford did not need creative, bold innovative assembly-line workers,” Dintersmith said.
Maureen Downey, education columnist for The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, took on the topic of high schools in a January 2016 column. She interviewed Dintersmith as part of it.
Now that the U.S. economy has changed from manufacturing to innovation, have high schools changed with it? Downey asks.
Downey points out that most of us believed that basic jobs, such as truck driving and delivery services, were immune to change as technology advanced. But Google’s self-driving car and Amazon Prime Air delivery drones are changing that.
So that begs the question: will high schools change the way they educate to conform to the changing economy, and the changing technological requirements?
Today, a high school education is not good enough, in many cases, to land a good-paying job. Even some who graduate college are finding they cannot parlay their brainpower into an economically exhilarating career.
So will high schools become irrelevant? Will some college curriculums become an expensive luxury?
Let’s break down the concept of education. Throughout most of our years in school, we learn “things.” We were expected to spit back those “things” on tests, to get our grades. Now, with technology, the “things” we were taught are available at our fingertips. What we really need to know is how to take those “things,” turn them first into ideas and then into action. In other words, gather your “things,” go forth and innovate.
It’s tough to put a finger on those jobs that will never go away. Perhaps some of you have had jobs you thought would never go away, but have. Were you replaced by a machine? Did what you do become irrelevant to the company as technology changed? Or, more likely, did the company just find it too expensive to keep you, so it figured out a way to do without you?
All those “things” you learned help you in trivia games, but they don’t move you forward in a changing world.
Let’s look further into colleges. We are starting to hear that the liberal arts is virtually useless in terms of finding one a job. We are hearing that the STEM programs (science, technology, engineering and math) are the only really employable fields to get into. But we all know that not everyone is cut out for those fields. So what is a person who wants to study the arts to do?
There are many ways to earn money while one pursues his artistic passion. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may find a way to work full time on your passion, and part time on your fortune.
We will always need people to do basic jobs. But those jobs hardly create lucrative careers. Are you learning to think the way innovators do? Or, are you just learning “things,” or how to follow orders?
Schools will eventually have to catch up with the rest of the world. In the meantime, if your school isn’t doing what you think is right for you, use your time outside of school to make things right by you.
Peter