Posts
Some of you may be familiar with the work of Sheila Ostrander, Lynn Schroeder and Nancy Ostrander and their 1979 book entitled Super Learning. Greatly simplified Baroque Music was played while teaching ordinary students. Baroque Music is calming; usually at a tempo of 60 beats per minute. This music was written between 1600 and 1750. This was known as the Baroque Period. During the Super Learning Study this music was played to students in a controlled environment and after about each 8 beats, information was inserted. Different tonalities and voice inflections were used to keep the information engaging and fresh. The results were staggering. These children learned faster, retained more and developed a lifelong love of learning. There is much more to this system and I assure you, young or old, it is worth checking into. You can find a ton of information as well as downloads on the official Super Learning site here: http://www.superlearning.com/
I bring this up because it seems kids are not advancing intellectually or academically as fast as they should or as fast as technology. Why is this?
We have more tools and resources for students than ever before. Why the obsession with Facebook, Twitter and video games? Where is all this narcissism coming from? What about the sense of self entitlement? I’ll give you my opinion. School is boring. Besides for the addition of the computer in the classroom, what has changed?
School still looks and smells like school. The air is still stale and most teachers are still uninspired and uninspiring. The teaching methods and text books are outdated and obsolete as they were decades ago. And with such low pay, why should a teacher be excited to teach?
In addition our society teaches our kids that nothing matters except for self. I have never seen so many selfish kids. When I grew up I was taught to share. I am not ancient either; I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. Not too long ago. As a matter of fact my dad would punish me if I was not polite and did not share. I played nice in the sand box, even if the boys weren’t and I made friends easily. We can go all over the place with this topic from the collapse of the family to too much information being pumped into growing minds but I think the bottom line is kids are not learning core values at home or at school. It is two pronged, a double whammy.
In conclusion I think if you have kid captive at school for 5 or 6 hours you the educator should take some responsibility for instilling core values. Instead of saying it’s not my job. For too many years educators have been using the old cliché “education starts at home”. Give me a break. Guess where these kids are learning to offload and skirt responsibly?
From the very people charged with educating them.
This guest post is contributed by Maria Rainier, she writes on the topic of http://www.onlinedegrees.org online education.
Take a closer look at onlinedegrees' blog
Many thanks to Maria Rainier.
Enjoy your reading!
