WORLD OF LEARNING

"Studies: overweight kids score lower on academic tests" ksl.com
"Trying to learn how learnnig works" USA Today
"Blended learning helps boost achievement" eSchool News
"Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood" Michael Chabon, The New York Review of Books

LARS'S LIBRARY: GOOD BOOKS ARE FOR EVERYBODY

Most people see the value in reading aloud to young children and letting them see adults reading. Research shows such activities are powerful aids in promoting the mastery of literacy skills.

As children move beyond the lower elementary grades, adults often let this kind of shared reading experience lapse. Adults read their “adult” books and kids read “children’s literature” or “young adult” novels.

I would like to make a case for a continuance of literary community with children as they grow, and propose that we go beyond reading to kids and read with them.

There are obvious and didactic reasons for such an argument. Being able to discuss a book with a young person will make the experience richer and deeper for that young person. But as someone who reads a great many children’s books, I can tell you that there is a less altruistic reason for shared reading.

You may find yourself enjoying children’s books as much as children do.

Anyway, isn’t the categorization of good literature rather arbitrary? Is To Kill a Mockingbird a children’s book? What about Huckleberry Finn? Tony Earley’s Jim the Boy was marketed to adults, and became a best-seller. Earley called it “a children’s book for adults.”

Two of the best books I read last year were the two volumes of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson. They were marketed to young adults, but one might call them adults’ books for children.

Octavian Nothing truly makes history come alive, giving a voice to African-Americans enslaved at a time when their owners were fighting for freedom in the American Revolution. It is complex, yet electrifying and involving—an epic saga that takes place during the birth of a nation and the age of enlightenment.

Powerful, gripping, and ultimately hopeful, this is an important work of literature.

Anderson is an astonishing writer, a master of language and character development. Categorizing The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing as a young adult novel doesn't acknowledge the broad audience it should reach.

This year, I read Terry Pratchett’s Nation, another work ostensibly for young people that is simply a marvelous read for anybody.

Nation is placed in an alternate Nineteenth Century that contains Darwin, but where science and faith come to an understanding. Where Europeans familiarly tramp across the globe, but colonialism and cultural imperialism are turned upside down and inside out.

If it sounds fascinating, it is. And like Anderson, Pratchett is a wonderful writer, with a style that is exquisite and amusing.

Recently, I saw a fantastic exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a retrospective of the creations of William Kentridge, consisting of large galleries filled with multiple screenings of that artist’s intriguing videos. One room served as an homage to George Méliès, an early silent-movie director, famous for the iconic image of a rocket ship landing in the eye of the man in the moon.

My appreciation for this installation was immensely increased by my readings of the ground-breaking The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, a marriage of novel and graphic novel, and the discussions I have had with children about the book. It’s an amazing work, and also an homage to Méliès.

I am lucky enough to have a job where I enrich children’s lives by reading with them. But reading children’s books has enriched my own life as well. I have received pleasure and knowledge equal to that of any other reading I do. You can, too.

WORLD OF LEARNING

"New Study Finds Differences in Way Autistic Children Learn" Digital Journal
"A Writing Problem is a Thinking Problem" Social Thinking: a blog by Michelle Garcia Winner
"A Fit Body Means a Fit Mind" Edutopia
"Culture, Not Biology, Underpins Math Gender Gap" Science Daily
"Did Mozart Really Have ADHD? History of Hyperactivity Off-base, Says Researcher" Science Daily

CONTROLLING EMOTION, CONTROLLING THOUGHT

One morning recently, I listened to a humorous report on NPR’s Morning Edition that asked, “Does Getting Angry Make You Angrier?”

Two things struck me immediately. The first was that, as funny as it was to hear about “Sarah’s Smash Shack,” a business that gives people an opportunity to work out their frustrations by breaking plates, this is behavior that we routinely discourage in children.

With good reason, we tell kids that acting on their emotions in a destructive manner is “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” The process of controlling your reactions and feelings when events are disappointing or frustrating is unformed in babies, and society inculcates self-regulation as they grow.

While there is undoubtedly value in recognizing the source of anger, if we don’t rein that anger in we are not setting the best example for young people, something I will try to remember the next time I’m driving and someone abruptly cuts in front of me.

In addition, we are not helping ourselves by indulging in anger. Indeed, the NPR report noted that “decades of research on cathartic anger—the theory that actively expressing your anger can reduce or relieve the feeling…very clearly shows the opposite is true.”

The second thing that struck me about this report was a connection I made to brain research done by such pioneers as Antonio Damasio. These studies are showing that what we think of as “reason” is, like all our thinking, based in the limbic system of our brains. Emotional thought is the driver of all thought.

Surely learning to regulate emotion is the key to what we need to be learners—the ability to focus and thus engage in deeper and more reflective thinking.

Something Sylvia Bunge, a psychology professor at Cal Berkeley, talked about during a lecture titled “How We Control Our Thoughts & Actions: Implications for the Classroom” at a Learning and the Brain Conference still sticks with me over a year later. When presented with questions where they had to pick one of two responses, the children who did better in her study were those who slowed down and took a moment to reflect before choosing.

This counterintuitive principle—for most of us doing better is doing it faster—is often difficult for children to understand. And it is rooted in controlling impulsive action prompted by emotion.
Getting kids to think about this and ways they can take charge of their feelings is one way to help them go further and regulate their thought processes. Controlling our own emotions and talking about how we are doing that is another way. As the NPR report put it, “The key is to speak out your anger without getting emotional about it.”

Read more about emotional intelligence in a recent Boston Globe article, "The other kind of smart." There's also a fantastic article in a recent New Yorker about self-control.

WORLD OF LEARNING

"Poor Attention In Kindergarten Predicts Lower High School Test Scores" Science Daily
"Schools taught not to teach 'i before e except after c' spelling rule" Times Online (Britain)
"Easiest real life tips for boosting reading skills" Robin Hansen, SF Examiner
"At Last, Facing Down Bullies (and Their Enablers) The New York Times
"Study links teen depression to bedtimes" USA Today
"Rising Above I.Q." The New York Times