Education Site Suggests: Start Early, Teach More

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) December 9, 2011 -- “This country,” according to education reformer Bruce Price, “is being harmed by dumbed-down classrooms. Many schools seem to think of themselves as baby-sitting services. Knowledge is a dirty word. No wonder all our statistics and test scores are in decline.”

Here’s a much better way to treat kids: Stop wasting their time. Teach them something.

Improve-Education.org, founded by Price in 2005, has added a big new article full of suggestions for revving up young minds. The title is “60: Smart Content Makes Kids Smarter.”

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Education Site Suggests: Start Early, Teach More

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http://www.Improve-Education.org

“These ideas are for kindergarten and elementary school,” Price explains. “This is a time when children are eager to learn. They are often said to be like sponges. So, along with the regular curriculum, teachers (and parents as well) can stir in a new idea each day or so. Eventually these new ideas will connect to each other, and reinforce all the other material.”

Home schoolers, who routinely teach in this way, will also find the article useful and fun.

“I believe,” Price says, “that we underestimate what children can learn. One of the problems is that schools insist on ignoring subjects altogether or, almost as bad, devoting a whole week to a new subject. Too little or too much. That’s not the way to do it. You want to create curiosity and momentum. Entice kids with small bits of fascinating information. Ideally, they will ask questions, go on the Internet, find a book on the subject, or start a project.”

The immediate goal is to plant seeds and to start conversations. The broader goal is to give children a more sophisticated grasp of the world around them. Every object in their environment has a story to tell. How was it invented or discovered? Who designed it? Are there new ideas here or ideas invented before the Egyptians built the pyramids? How does a factory make this thing?

“It seems to me,” Price says, “we take too much for granted. We let the children walk unseeing through this amazing world we live in. We don’t take them beneath the surface or behind the scenes.”

Parents and teachers should take a quick look at #60 on Improve-Education.org. They’ll find plenty of ideas for future use.

The article presents about 30 topics divided into three sections: Get Them Thinking; More Thinking; and Advanced Thinking. In every case, the starting point is something ordinary that the child sees almost every day but is not usually invited to examine deeply. Here are some examples:

DIAGRAMS AND SIMPLE MAPS
GAMES AND RULES
RIDDLES AND PUZZLES
GEARS AND CLOCKS
DICE AND PROBABILITY
BY FOOT, SAILING SHIP, HORSE, TRAIN, CAR, OR PLANE
EASY AESOP’S FABLES
LOCKS AND KEYS
CIRCUITS AND ELECTRICITY 
MONEY AND STAMPS
THE ANIMAL OF THE WEEK BLITZKRIEG  
MACHINES AND MOTORS
WHAT IS BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS, ETC.
CLOTH AND WEAVING 
MOLDS AND CASTING
PLATE GLASS AND PAPER
SODA POP
MUSIC
DRAWING TECHNIQUES
PROGRAMMING
THE AIRPLANE WING  

The article is a quick inventory, with quick tips on launching a topic. Ideally, the same topics would be revisited again and again, next month and next grade, with more information on each pass.

Improve-Education.org is now in its seventh year and contains more than 120,000 words. The site’s 60+ articles are almost half a college education. (The site is especially interested in the bogus methods and theories that have done so much to undermine American public schools. In particular, the site has many articles about reading. A good place to start is “42: Reading Resources,” which explains why Whole Word never worked, and phonics is necessary.)

This new article “60: Smart Content Makes Kids Smarter” is basically an indictment of the biggest sin in many public schools--the tendency to non-teach and under-educate. The article argues that teaching something is better than teaching nothing, that starting anywhere is better than not starting at all.

Bruce Price can be contacted at Word-Wise Education, 757-455-5020. He is a lively interview.


ARTICLE LINK; http://www.improve-education.org/id88.html
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More information can be found online at http://www.Improve-Education.org

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