One of the brain-related issues of special interest to educators is the place of “enrichment” in early education
. Science writer Janet Hopson and anatomist Marian Diamond have written about research conducted since the 1960s establishing that rats allowed to play with toys and other rats have thicker, heavier brains than rats kept in isolation. The extra weight and thickness is mostly because their brains have formed more connections among neurons. The rats that live in the enriched environment can run different kinds of mazes with greater ease than rats that live in the impoverished environment. The rats that sit and watch other rats in the enriched environment have fewer measurable changes than rats that actually participate. Researchers have found that the growth of rat’s brains in response to experience (and the apparent shrinkage from the lack of it) occurs not just in the weeks following birth, but at all ages. » Read more: Enrichment in Early Childhood
Archive for December, 2009
Enrichment in Early Childhood
December 15th, 2009The Importance Of Quality Education
December 15th, 2009The basic tenant of education encompasses more than just the teaching of what we know to our young. As well as passing on essential skills like language and the basic functions of living, education passes on the culture of a society. These are the intangible patterns of behavior that distinguish each group of people as a unique set. Education is designed to show how the information learned can be used to make judgment decisions and thereby construct new ways of combining that information into a basis of wisdom.
Education of the young begins at infancy with the teaching of basic activity. Most early education involved physical activity and coordination. With time, language skills are added and the beginnings of socialization take place as the toddler is instructed on what is considered proper behavior for their society. This early, at-home, education may include not only the practical aspects of life but religious or spiritual instruction as well. » Read more: The Importance Of Quality Education
An Early Focus on Students’ True Interests
December 15th, 2009One of the most productive projects that our worldwide education system could embark on in satisfying both its individual citizens’ and international educational interests simultaneously is to restructure our education systems to focus on students’ desires as early as possible, starting at the junior high school level and certainly no later than the freshman high school year.
Having attended college, being the son of a 30-year career public schoolteacher, and having served as a substitute teacher myself for a number of years, I feel that I have firsthand experience to support my point.
While there are private lower education schools and institutions, i.e., Magnet schools, generally, these types of educational facilities are tuition based, thus, making their educational benefits unreachable to most students. » Read more: An Early Focus on Students’ True Interests
