Home Schooling

I have been going back and forth over the idea of home-schooling my children. I know that I can't shield my kids from all of the potentially harmful things that society can teach, but I do believe that I can teach them better than a public school can. It may sound egotistical of me but if IQ is more genes than anything, my son will have a high one and I want to make sure that he has the right environment to cultivate that. If I do decide to home-school, I think I've convinced myself to take an approach that is a combination of Montessori and Vygotsky. In our class on Tuesday we read a quote: "Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself." I actuallly went home and pinned this up on my fridge because it speaks to the heart of how I want my son to learn and grow. I also think that there are times when a child needs a little assistance. I think that is the sole reason that we make such advancements with every new generation: We build upon the discoveries that past generations have made. We don't start over all by ourselves, we build off the past ideas and come up with some of our own. Montessori's idea was to let kids interests guide the directions that they took because she believed there was a crucial period that kids were cognitively ready and eager to learn something in particular and that if that stage was passed, we could not get it back. Vygotsky described there being a range of tasks that are too difficult for a child to learn by his/herself, but his idea was that they could learn it with guidance/assistance from older children or adults. Unlike Piaget, he believed that kids learn from the outside in. I believe it to be a combination of both. I think that kids do have stages where they are ready and eager to learn something, but I also believe that, if the stage comes and for some reason they experience a glitch and can't figure it all out by themselves, it would be essential to have somebody their to guide them to a full understanding of the task at hand. Whether or not I decide to home-school my son I will be teaching him at home using a combination of Montessori, Vygotsky, and a dash of my own ideas.

Bullying Study

I would love to do a study, or at least take part in one, that dives deeply into the world of the victims of bullying. I had never even considered the difference between behavioral and characterological in terms of how victims think about themselves before, during, and after an incident in which they have been bullied. Obviously, we need to learn far more about the differences in how they think and whether or not those differences are innate or learned, but I'm far more interested in studying different methods of intervention. There is no way that we will ever be able to stop every single case of bullying, but can we change the way they think about the experience? I get tingles thinking about making at least a minimal advancement in this area of our understanding because it may mean the difference between a life lived in shame and one lived in confidence. I think we could use any number of methods to find kids all over the country that have been bullied. I believe it to be essential that we find them early, like kindergarten, because they haven't completely formed their self-image. We could split the kids into different categories based on how they talk about their individual experiences of being bullied. Categories could be something like: all behavioral, some behavioral/some characterological, very little behavioral, all characterological, and very little characterological. That may not be all the possibilities but it is a start. Then we could divide the kids into sub-categories based on the method of interventions that we would like to try such as therapy(individual, group, and family), pairing them with kids that have had similar experiences or speak about the experience similarly, and individually coaching parents on different ways that they can deal with their child being bullied. Again, that doesn't cover it all, but it's a start. I would suggest that we follow, and maintain treatment methods, all the way through high school and then analyze how different everybody has become. Maybe this could give us a small hand in determining how to best help a child that is the victim of bullying and maybe change the outcome of their development through adolescence.

Animal Testing in Psychological Experiments

Lately it seems that animal testing is growing more and more controversial, but in terms of discovering how organisms function, I think its absolutely necessary. I've encountered several articles explaining how stem cells could be used in research, but they wouldn't be useful enough to understand all aspects psychology. Plant tissues have been considered for testing too, but that would hardly make sense: Plants have no brain or emotion, so whats to study? Besides, many laws and standards exist today to be sure that live animals involved in experimentation remain safe and healthy (for the most part). If we were to discontinue animal testing all together, we may as well just give up on discovering more about how brains work and why we do what we do, and that's just out of our nature.

Conformity

The experiment described in this video is similar to that done by Ash in the seventies, but its set up to seem like more of a real-life situation. A student walked to a room and passed a man on a ladder on the way. She was the only student in the room and heard what seemed like the man falling off of the ladder. She immediately ran to see if he was okay. In another situation, three students were in the room. Two were asked to ignore the sounds of the man falling of the ladder. As a result, the third student also ignored the sounds. This goes to show that humans jump on the band wagon to be like their peers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTb7RqhUArE

Spankings and Learned Agression

I came across this article on the CBS News website about the relevance between spankings and aggression and anxiety in children in different cultural settings. The studies showed that children receiving spankings in countries where physical punishments were frowned upon seemed to act more aggressively than children in other countries. 336 mothers were asked questions about both their physical and verbal disciplining habits, and their children were asked a series of questions to determine how aggressive they were. In Kenya, spankings were used both at home and in school, so children interpreted it as a normal thing. Children in Thailand, on the other hand, were raised in a non-violent Buddhist environment where spankings were rare, so they were more likely to see themselves as being "bad kids". In the United States, it was a bit more difficult to put a correlation on spanking-related aggression in kids.
Whether or not spankings actually take part in aggression and anxiety, this research wasn't necessarily the most effective method of getting information. The mothers and kids interviewed may not of been completely honest about their lifestyles. Also, other factors could lead to aggression and anxiety as well.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/14/health/webmd/main1042550.shtml

What Makes Teens Tick

Time Magazine had an article on Friday September 26, 2008. The article suggests that researchers are discovering more about how the brain develops by studies of teens and twin teens over a period of several years. Using MRI to basically watch the development of the brain the research suggests that raging hormones and environment may not be the only factors in a teens irrational or dumb decisions. Another factor may be in just how the brain develops it suggests that some parts of the brain are are over producing or flooding while the prefrontal lobe has just begun to develop indicating that the teen is unable or unequiped to use reasoning to prevent fron making those irrational decisions. There is little conclusive evidence to prove this but researchers are working on gaining the emprical evidence that may help in dealing with our teens. You can read more at www.time.com

Celeb's influence on young teens...

I have a friend who goes to Hastings every Tuesday afternoon to pick the new issues of her favorite magazines, to be honest I think is ridiculous! The media has gone too far with exposing celebrities personal lives. I all I have to say is who cares what they do? Children are easily influenced by what they see in the tabloids, that’s why I feel there should be more regulation on what paparazzi are allowed to print. Just because a person is famous does not mean that the entire world needs to know every detail of their life. The article Girls Gone Bad shows that famous women making the news and influencing young teens has been going on since the mid 20th century. Photographers make millions of dollars selling pictures of celeb’s behaving badly, but the reason is because PEOPLE BUY THEM! If parents are so concerned about their children being negatively influenced by these bad girls of Hollywood then they need to take a stand. Stop buying the tabloids, stop letting your kids watch Entertainment Tonight and E News, and stop giving so much attention to these girls getting into trouble. When these factors cannot be avoided take the time to explain to children the consequences of the actions, and help them understand that individualism is far more valued than being like the hot messes in Hollywood. Another good approach would be to put more of an emphasis on celebrities who are doing good things for society.