Not only is the system upside-down, but by failing to recognize the significance of informal learning outside of school, it is inside-out as well. John Abbott
0 Comments
Get rid of that machine model of the brain. It’s wrong! The brain is a biological system, not a machine. Currently we’re putting children with biologically shaped brains into machine-oriented schools. The two just don’t mix. We bog the school down in a curriculum that is not biologically feasible. Robert Sylwester
Deep down many children became deeply frustrated, with so much of their latent predispositions just untapped by the daily routine of instruction. The daily challenge of making sense of their environment had been replaced by a dull recognition of waiting to be told what to do and how to do it. John Abbott, Terence Ryan
We must ask deeper questions about the very institutions of schooling than have so far been raised in the school reform movement with its short-term panaceas of more accountability, site-based management, standardized tests, prescribed curricula, and longer hours for teachers and students. We have to be much smarter than this and accept that we are dealing with a deep systemic crisis. John Abbott, Terence Ryan
What we need most to improve the quality of our learning is more contact with adults other than parents and teachers. We know what our parents think, because we’ve heard it every day for years. We’re slightly suspicious of what teachers say because they’re actually paid to say that. What we want to know is what do other adults think… and we don’t meet very many of those. A group of teenagers in the UK, as quoted by John Abbott
Those neurological changes in the young brain as it transforms itself mean that adolescents have evolved to be apprentice-like learners, not pupils sitting at desks and waiting instruction. Youngsters who are empowered as adolescents to take charge of their own futures will make better citizens for the future. John Abbott
Adolescence appears to be a deep-seated biological adaptation that makes it essential for the young to go off...to prove themselves, so as to start a life of their own. As such, it is adolescence that drives human development. It is adolescence which forces individuals in every generation to think beyond their own self-imposed limitations.. John Abbott
As we learn more about the brain and how it naturally learns, it is essential to devise learning environments that go with the grain of the brain. John Abbott, Terence Ryan
|
Categories
All
Archives
August 2015
|