Re: Getting Our Kids Ready for the Competition – the Great Conversations and the 32,000,000 Missing Words! by Dick Jacobs Your piece creates a great framework for conversation but one point needs clarification: “Cognitive science tells us that if learning our reading fundamentals doesn’t start very early and the skills aren’t in place by age nine or ten, … Read more
From Science 2.0: Of 3,500 college applicants, more than a third couldn’t report their weight accurately. The heavier they were, the less accurate their estimates. “This misperception is important because the first step in dealing with a weight problem is knowing that you have one,” said Margarita Teran-Garcia, a University of Illinois professor of food science … Read more
Re: the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Article: “We Can’t Teach Students to Love Reading” by Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College. An important missing distinction: Most of the people who ‘love’ reading began loving it when they were children. In the past few decades there has been an unprecedented decline in how lovable reading is for most children … Read more
Re: Brain’s involvement in processing depends on language’s graphic symbols (3/29/2012) “Readers whose mother tongue is Arabic have more challenges reading in Arabic than native Hebrew or English speakers have reading their native languages, because the two halves of the brain divide the labor differently when the brain processes Arabic than when it processes Hebrew … Read more
Re: Stanford School of Medicine – March 21, 2012 – Imaging study reveals differences in brain function for children with math anxiety This study is important reading for anyone interested in understanding the emergence of neuroscience in support of unhealthy learning, maladaptive schema, and Mind-Shame. Absent from the article are two critical distinctions: 1) Math Anxiety is a form … Read more
Re: “U.S. Education Woes Threaten National Security, Report Says” Education Week 3-20-2012 Of course everything about the future ultimately depends on our children’s learning. Certainly the economy and how well it resources traditional national security activities is one dimension. But the bigger issue is how well our nation learns. We as a nation must learn … Read more
Re: New York Times: The Link Between Reading Level and Dropout Rates 3-19-2012 “Children who aren’t reading proficiently by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school, and according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 34 percent of America’s fourth graders read at grade level.” It’s always good to … Read more
Re Scientific American’s piece: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=mind-wandering-is-linked-to-your-wo-12-03-17 Working memory is but one of a number of variables to consider when it comes to staying engaged and not ‘drifting’ out. Another under-appreciated cause of mind wandering is the erosion of attention that accompanies skipping over things we don’t understand. Attention is constantly cycling in and out of coherence and … Read more
Re: “Tuning In to Dropping Out” in the Chronicle of Higher Education We could learn a lot more than we are about education through the lens of economics and economic models of thought. We’ve talked with Heckman, Hanushek, Rolnick and others about our general lack of appreciation for the ‘capital value’ of ‘healthy learning’ and … Read more
Re: Kids’ Cognition Is Changing—Education Will Have to Change With It (The Atlantic 2-29-12) Real educational reform must start with reforming the very mission of education. In the face of the ever increasing rate of techno-social-workplace changes taking place we have to stop assuming that ‘what we think children should learn is more important than … Read more