Friday, March 19, 2010
LARS'S LIBRARY: YA BOOKS FOR ALL
The YA label, already not too specific in that it is used for books for fifth graders as well for high school seniors, apparently is also attracting adult readers...which is great! What is clear is that the genre is successful. See Susan Carpenter's "Young adult lit comes of age" in the L.A. Times and Flavorwire's "The 10 Best Young Adult Books for Grown-ups."
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
WORLD OF LEARNING
"Game On? Video-Game Ownership May Interfere With Young Boys' Academic Functioning" ScienceDaily 3/11/10
"Researchers Find Early Autism Signs in Some Kids" Science News 3/12/10
"Making the Case for Social Media in Education" Betty Ray Blog/Edutopia 3/11/10
"National Academic Standards Call for Higher Bar in Special Education" Disablitiy Scoop 3/11/10
"Researchers Find Early Autism Signs in Some Kids" Science News 3/12/10
"Making the Case for Social Media in Education" Betty Ray Blog/Edutopia 3/11/10
"National Academic Standards Call for Higher Bar in Special Education" Disablitiy Scoop 3/11/10
Sunday, March 7, 2010
WORLD OF LEARNING: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, DEPRESSION AND DRUGS PART TWO
"Depression's Upside" Jonah Lehrer/New York Times 2/25/10
I had missed this one, so am grateful my sister directed me to it. It dovetails nicely with the articles by Sharon Begley and Louis Menand cited in a previous post on depression. Lehrer (author of How We Decide, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, and the blog "The Frontal Cortex") offers a balanced consideration of a controversial theory put forth by evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews and psychiatrist Andy Thompson in the July 2009 issue of Psychological Review. Perhaps, they propose, depression serves the purpose of making us think more deeply and analytically. The danger is that such "rumination" can veer into obsession and major depression. Since we are focusing on what made us depressed, we can enter a harmfully recursive pattern which overloads our brains. But there is an intuitive logical connection between depression and thoughtful, even creative, use of language. When neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen interviewed participants in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop about their mental history, Lehrer notes, "Eighty percent of the writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression."
I had missed this one, so am grateful my sister directed me to it. It dovetails nicely with the articles by Sharon Begley and Louis Menand cited in a previous post on depression. Lehrer (author of How We Decide, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, and the blog "The Frontal Cortex") offers a balanced consideration of a controversial theory put forth by evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews and psychiatrist Andy Thompson in the July 2009 issue of Psychological Review. Perhaps, they propose, depression serves the purpose of making us think more deeply and analytically. The danger is that such "rumination" can veer into obsession and major depression. Since we are focusing on what made us depressed, we can enter a harmfully recursive pattern which overloads our brains. But there is an intuitive logical connection between depression and thoughtful, even creative, use of language. When neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen interviewed participants in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop about their mental history, Lehrer notes, "Eighty percent of the writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression."
Friday, March 5, 2010
WORLD OF LEARNING: WHAT MAKES A GREAT TEACHER? PART TWO
"Building a Better Teacher" Elizabeth Green/New York Times 3/2/10
Essential reading along with "What Makes a Great Teacher?" The Atlantic January/February 2010, on which I commented earlier. Like the Atlantic article, this one includes wonderful videos that show good teachers in the classroom and what they do. Not just theoretical, but practical.
Green quotes a professor from the school of education at Michigan State, Deborah Loewenberg Ball, who says, "Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think." This brought to mind my recent post that connected John Medina's hypothesis of the essential quality of a good teacher--a heightened awareness of what others are thinking, or theory of mind--to All Kinds of Minds' CEO Mary-Dean Barringer suggesting training teachers "to understand, identify, and address learning variation" in Education Week.
And it also made me think about a reference Robert Brooks made at the recent Learning and the Brain Conference in San Francisco to Julius Segal and his emphasis on the importance of the "charismatic adult."
Essential reading along with "What Makes a Great Teacher?" The Atlantic January/February 2010, on which I commented earlier. Like the Atlantic article, this one includes wonderful videos that show good teachers in the classroom and what they do. Not just theoretical, but practical.
Green quotes a professor from the school of education at Michigan State, Deborah Loewenberg Ball, who says, "Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think." This brought to mind my recent post that connected John Medina's hypothesis of the essential quality of a good teacher--a heightened awareness of what others are thinking, or theory of mind--to All Kinds of Minds' CEO Mary-Dean Barringer suggesting training teachers "to understand, identify, and address learning variation" in Education Week.
And it also made me think about a reference Robert Brooks made at the recent Learning and the Brain Conference in San Francisco to Julius Segal and his emphasis on the importance of the "charismatic adult."
Thursday, March 4, 2010
WORLD OF LEARNING: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, DEPRESSION AND DRUGS
"The Depressing News About Antidepressants" Sharon Begley/Newsweek 1/29/10
"Head Case: Can psychiatry be a science?" Louis Menand/The New Yorker 3/1/10
I did not link to these articles on my web site, because I know the connection to learning and the brain might be considered tenuous, and I don't want to be perceived as an anti-drug. I'm all for looking at what works without preconceptions. I think. That indecisive note is there because I worry about the power of drug companies, and have no doubt that the pharmaceutical industry is at least as concerned with profit as it is with health.
The Learning and the Brain Conference I attended a few weeks ago was titled "Using Brain Research to Raise IQ and Achievement," and I thought one of the themes underlying that topic was that on the way to performance from ability and knowledge (or inherited and acquired characteristics--nature and nurture), many factors can interfere.
Sam Goldstein discussed attention and self-regulation. Linda Lantieri made a connection between problems with self-regulation and emotional intelligence. And Stephen Hinshaw focused on alexithymia, an inability to express inner emotions, and girls with that condition at risk due to anxiety and depression.
Now I'll take a somewhat shaky leap from that to the Begley and Menand articles, because more and more kids as well as adults are medicated with antidepressants. I believe we should be thinking about education and the issues raised in these pieces. We have to evaluate psychopharmacology in the social context of businesses and profit motives, in addition to effectiveness.
We can argue with Irving Kirsch's (The Emperor's New Drugs) findings that antidepressants are no better, and perhaps worse, than placebos, but we should be aware of those findings. And we should really examine what we mean by emotional intelligence, and mental health. Surely optimal brain performance is improved by optimal mental health.
"Mental disorders," Menand writes, "sit at the intersection of three distinct fields." These are biology, psychology and morality. We cannot ignore, and should not censor, the possibilities for better mental health that biological research offers. But we can't forget that it can't offer all the answers. There are good reasons to take pills, but there are good reasons not to, and better reasons to look at a range of possibilities. The questions we have about our emotional states of mind are too complex and profound to be reduced only to chemical cause and effect.
"Questions like these," Menand tells us, "are the reason we have literature and philosophy. No science will ever answer them."
"Head Case: Can psychiatry be a science?" Louis Menand/The New Yorker 3/1/10
I did not link to these articles on my web site, because I know the connection to learning and the brain might be considered tenuous, and I don't want to be perceived as an anti-drug. I'm all for looking at what works without preconceptions. I think. That indecisive note is there because I worry about the power of drug companies, and have no doubt that the pharmaceutical industry is at least as concerned with profit as it is with health.
The Learning and the Brain Conference I attended a few weeks ago was titled "Using Brain Research to Raise IQ and Achievement," and I thought one of the themes underlying that topic was that on the way to performance from ability and knowledge (or inherited and acquired characteristics--nature and nurture), many factors can interfere.
Sam Goldstein discussed attention and self-regulation. Linda Lantieri made a connection between problems with self-regulation and emotional intelligence. And Stephen Hinshaw focused on alexithymia, an inability to express inner emotions, and girls with that condition at risk due to anxiety and depression.
Now I'll take a somewhat shaky leap from that to the Begley and Menand articles, because more and more kids as well as adults are medicated with antidepressants. I believe we should be thinking about education and the issues raised in these pieces. We have to evaluate psychopharmacology in the social context of businesses and profit motives, in addition to effectiveness.
We can argue with Irving Kirsch's (The Emperor's New Drugs) findings that antidepressants are no better, and perhaps worse, than placebos, but we should be aware of those findings. And we should really examine what we mean by emotional intelligence, and mental health. Surely optimal brain performance is improved by optimal mental health.
"Mental disorders," Menand writes, "sit at the intersection of three distinct fields." These are biology, psychology and morality. We cannot ignore, and should not censor, the possibilities for better mental health that biological research offers. But we can't forget that it can't offer all the answers. There are good reasons to take pills, but there are good reasons not to, and better reasons to look at a range of possibilities. The questions we have about our emotional states of mind are too complex and profound to be reduced only to chemical cause and effect.
"Questions like these," Menand tells us, "are the reason we have literature and philosophy. No science will ever answer them."
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
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