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We have all witnessed the apparent ‘craziness’ of adolescence. Typically, the rebelliousness, risk-taking and contrary behaviour has been chalked up to raging hormones.
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Evidence is mounting that we arrive into the world with a genetically pre-set timetable for how we go about growing that remaining 60% of our brains – complete with sensitive or critical periods when specific parts of the brain are primed to grow and develop.
Read more About one hundred years ago, American psychologists, observing the chaotic and dysfunctional life of adolescents with no purposeful work to do and no role models to follow, started to define adolescence as a kind of disease brought on, they assumed, by the rapid development of sex hormones.
Read more We have all seen youth who can spend hours perfecting complicated skateboarding feats, learning new computer games or mastering animation techniques – it is impossible to stop them from learning. Yet these same teens may struggle with learning in a classroom setting. Part of the problem is that classroom learning is often abstract, disconnected from any real-life application or the natural context for using new information.
Read more It’s no secret when we look at the history of Western education that part of the purpose of secondary school was to make sure that adolescents learned the skills needed for the factory floor and the office desk – things like respecting authority, staying on task and an ability to follow instructions. Schools and learning activities were structured accordingly.
Read more Although many people have begun to understand the importance of the [[early years]] to human development, achievement and lifelong success, we have been slow to recognize the elephant in our midst—the adolescent learner. Dropout statistics, plummeting rates of school connectedness, declining academic performance and an increased dislike of school are [[signs of trouble]] underlining a disturbing pattern of disengagement as youth enter their teens. It seems that we may be [[getting it wrong]] for adolescents learners more than anyone in our schools.
Read more Society, going back to the stage of the diaspora out of Africa, needs both the impatience, and the energy, of adolescents to keep it vital. 21st Century Learning Initiative
Society as a whole (and certainly not simply schools on their own) has to rethink how to use the creative energy of adolescence to the overall good of the community. 21st Century Learning Initiative
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