Fired Up

Campus Report ^ | October 2, 2009 | Allie Winegar Duzett

[bs9021]

Fired Up

by: Alllie Winegar Duzett, October 02, 2009

Rafe Esquith is a one-in-a-million teacher: he truly believes that each of his students can be extraordinary, with proper coaching. His 2009 book, Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World, highlights specific things parents can do to help their children get the most out of their education—and their lives.

To Esquith, there are a few things every child needs to be extraordinary: an understanding and appreciation of time; the ability to concentrate; and humility. The beauty of Esquith’s methods is that they are rooted in the belief that each child has the ability to develop these necessary traits.

“The arts must be a part of every child’s life,” Esquith argues, adding that when children learn to use an instrument, they develop understandings of time—how to count it, and how much it matters. They learn how to play well with others, in a literal sense; as Esquith puts it, “Young musicians learn not only to keep time on their own, but to keep time with others when playing in a group.” And when they practice, they benefit from immediate feedback; students know what they’re trying to play, and when they play it wrong they know immediately. When children know what’s wrong immediately, they are able to fix it right away. This helps a child develop crucial concentration skills, he argues.

Esquith also adds his voice to the thousands of others out there pressuring parents to turn off the television sets and get library cards instead....

[GeronL]

Best things you can do for your kids.

Throw away the TV

Homeschool

Teach morals and the reasons behind them

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

As far as educational techniques go, first and foremost, children need to be taught how to extend their attention span. And this involves “un-learning” something they have been trained to do since infancy.

To explain, children are taught from the very beginning that it is essential that they are “situationally aware”, by this I mean that they neither get so focused or so unfocused that they walk off a cliff. The way they do this is by being taught to “talk to themselves” in their heads, the “internal dialogue.”

However, when they get older, it is important that they learn to both focus and unfocus their attention more, so they can either concentrate on what they are doing, or relax and let their mind pleasantly wander. Otherwise, by the time they are a teenager, they sound stupid, like a surf bum, and can neither study, do tests, or communicate well, because of the distraction of their internal dialogue.

While the truth of the matter is that learning to shut off your internal dialogue for a while, so you can focus on what you are doing, is done with practice, the mind is so very capable of keeping up the dialogue that to do so is a struggle.

The part of the brain that creates the internal dialogue is responsible for attention in general, so the way to get it to shut up is to overwhelm the attention with information faster than the brain can process.

This can be done by going on long walks with your eyes unfocused. Normally, when we look at things, we look from tiny point to tiny point, which uses a minimum of attention. But when we unfocus our eyes, the whole 180 degree tableau in front of us is of equal importance, which takes a lot of attention just to navigate.

But this is just a technique. There are a lot of them, all to accomplish the same goal. But the advantages of doing so are many, such as doing better on tests solely because you can concentrate without being distracted every few seconds.