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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

How to improve education

I have been thinking a lot lately about what is ailing our education system and how to improve it. But before you jump in and yell "We need to get rid of the stupid teacher unions" let me say that there is more to it than that (although I must agree with you on that statement as well).

The first thing we must do as parents is put education above EVERYTHING ELSE in our kids lives.  I have seen parents who put there children in "select soccer teams" and then drive them 500 miles to a soccer tournament that lasts 2 days and pay gas, food and lodging to see their child play for a few hours.  But ask these same parents to spend a few hours a week working with their children and their education and you would have thought you asked them to accompany them on a trip to the moon.  You must ask yourself, "Is my child going to make a living out of soccer, baseball, football or any other sport?"   If you answer is NO, then you need to put education before any sport or after school activity they have.

The second thing you must do is show your child where the stand in regard to their global peers.  They need to see that the US is 20th in rankings for science and math.  They need to see that California is 40th in state-rankings for science and math.  Therefore being in "honor roll" means you are at the TOP of the BOTTOM of the BOTTOM.   They need to see that their global peers go to school on average 220 days a year while we in the US only go to school 180 days a year.  Compounding this with the fact that many of the countries have their students spend 6-7 hours a day in class verses in the US we only spend about 4-5 hours in class, and you see that we on average spend almost 400 hours per year LESS than other countries.   To put this way,  every 3 years our children spend in school the Indian children are getting 4 years of education so by 3rd grade, children in India are learning 4th grade math, by 6th grade they are learning 8th grade math and by 9th grade they are learning 12th grade (senior) math.   Get the picture?   We used to make fun of India and how they were the world's "call center", but given this trend, in 20 years the US will become the world's "call center" and India will become the predominate technology developer.  Therefore we as parents must be willing to supplement our children's education with "After School Education" (supplied by a professional or by our own energy) to give our children the same hours of education otherwise they will be mathematically eliminated from the job market.

The third thing you must do with your children is TEACH THEM HOW TO LEARN!   This seems odd, but it is very much true.  Imagine teaching a person to drive by sitting them in the car, handing them the keys and telling them, "Now drive safe!".   Would the person learn how to drive?  Probably over time they will and probably after lots and lots of accidents.  But they will of course develop many bad habits in the process such as not using their mirrors, blinkers or giving other drivers the right-of-way.  Learning how to drive this way would be ludicrous and dangerous at the same time.  But that is what we do to our kids when we send them to school and tell them "Now make sure you listen to the teacher and learn!".   We as parents need to show our children proper learning skills.  This includes reading for comprehension which is different than reading for pleasure.   Here in lies the other problem with our education system which teaches our children how to read books like "Harry Potter" (pleasure reading) but never teach them how to read articles on biology or history (informational reading).   Not that pleasure reading is bad, but as far as careers go, unless you plan on being a novel editor or proof-reader, there is very little use for pleasure reading to earn a living.  Informational reading requires the reader to extract dates, places, names, numbers, definitions and concepts whereas pleasure reading only requires the reader to extract names and plots (which is why kids today tend to read serial-novels like Harry Potter because after the first book the reader already knows the names and plot-lines and can read the follow-on books while in auto-pilot).

How do you read for learning? It's actually quite simple..

1) Read first and last paragraphs of the article.  This gives you a clue as to what the article is about.
2) Scan the article for all bold or italicized words.  These are often important words or definitions you must know to understand the article.  Look up in the dictionary any words you don't understand and write them down.
3) Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph.  This shows you overall what the article is going to discuss and gives you a "map" of the article for your mind to categorize the information it extracts.
4) Finally read the entire article from beginning to end.

This type of reading takes practice to perfect but like all things gets better with use.  (Note: it's important to use this method on ALL types of articles ... even BORING ones you find now enjoyment in at all).

Finally, help your children become familiar with difficult subjects.  Fear is often one of the biggest hindrances to learning as these become mental roadblocks.  To illustrate this I will use my experience with deer hunting.  I did not grow up hunting deer, but a friend of mine introduced me to it and showed me where he hunted on a camping trip.  He familiarized me with the hunting trail and made me feel less fearful about getting lost.  Over time I have become very familiar with the area and enjoy the hunting aspect all the more.   By showing children more difficult subjects earlier in life and encouraging them that over time they will understand these topics as well we take away the fear of learning and when the time comes to take them on, they will be old topics they saw long ago.   

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