Many otherwise successful countries (USA, Great Britain, New Zealand) are struggling with educating their children. That’s despite access to fabulous resources such as free schooling, the latest computer technologies, free libraries, learning tools and experienced teachers.
Why?
According to teachers who worked both in developing and in developed countries, it’s all a matter of the environment’s attitude to education. People in Korea or Thailand, just to name a few, have a lot of respect for the school system, and teachers are respected as “the other set of parents away from home”. Education is expensive there, with at least a third of the family’s income being swallowed by schooling costs, and children are appropriately mindful not to waste the hard-earned opportunity they are given.
In contrast, children in developed countries often assume it’s their right not only to have a wonderful free school nearby, but also to get educated by osmosis and without the least bit of effort on their part. If they fail, it’s the teachers’ fault for not teaching well, or the parents’ fault for not choosing the right school, or the school’s fault for... the excuses just get more creative. The result is lack of academic progress and slack discipline at school (see the news box about new measures schools are forced to adopt).
It's time we stopped passing the blame. We are blessed and privileged to have brilliant education assets at our disposal, and all we need to do is change our attitude to learning.
Learning should not be a chore.
Learning should be fun!
The human brain wants to learn: it evolved (or was designed, whichever theory you wish to follow) that way. All you need to do, is get the children’s attitude right, their learning environment optimal to their unique learning style needs and learning tools suitable to multi-sensory stimulation. If you look at the elements in the Learning Style Pyramid, you will see that Motivation, Responsibility, Conformity and Persistence are some of the Attitudes that determine a child’s success at school and their individual learning style.
Your child’s learning style is the way
in which they understand
and remember new concepts.
To analyse your child’s learning style, have a look at this free online demo.
1 comment:
Thank you Yvonne for thyis blog post. I am a teacher and an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Master Practitioner and what you say is spot on re education today. I am an Australian living with my family in new Zealand and am about to start the school year as a part time teacher at a boys high school. What you say is important re learning style and I shall be finding out the learning styles of my students first thing this term. One criteria that I believe is important for a teacher is to assess whether or not a child is teachable (open to new learnings, co-operative with the teaching, can focus for some time, will complete essential learning tasks, will learn from teacher/peers, gets excited with new learnings) These are simple yet essential traits that can be developed alongside parent support. Thanks for this post again, itnis spot on!
Darryl Shute
Haelan Enterprises
107b Queenspark Drive
Parklands
Christchurch
New Zealand
PH: (03) 383 7355
Post a Comment