New Yorker has an article on psychological studies about kids and patience

"psychologists have focussed on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life. Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control"

New Yorker has an article on psychological studies about kids and patience. How delayed gratification (teaching patience strategies) correlate with success in life for kids. This is probably pretty obvious to most of us. But, now psychological studies are showing how important Patience is (not as willpower, but practices of strategies).

Secret: out of sight, out of mind, and having focusing techniques, and being able to distance from sensory input. Reminds me of Chan meditation and other Buddhist practices. Implications for western education?

(This is a rush, breaking post. Apologies for any mistakes. Clean up with be done later.)

link

principles of teaching and ZZZZzzzzz

Here's funny and observant blog post from a teacher in a low-income school in Chicago.

The sleeping student body phenomenon would be oft repeated in my literature class for years to come. “The Scarlet Letter”? Snoozers. “The Catcher in the Rye”? Can’t relate zzzzzz! “The Old Man and the Sea”? Counting sheep. “1984″? Like eating ribs before bed. And don’t even get me started on the whole of British literature. Dickens, Shakespeare? Imagine a roomful of students simultaneously entering REM.

I think this post really illustrates the need for seeing and teaching to the conditions of the student. If one can't do that, they are not really reaching the student.

Lamentations of the decline of American culture

Harold Bloom, Yale literature professor and cultural critic, laments the state of the Country.

"I am 77 years old and I have never seen this country in such a bad state. It is madness. What we are seeing is the fall of the Roman Empire, only now it is the fall of America, the glory of our Empire. This war is what Parthia was to Rome....

In this kind of climate, nobody is interested in the critical voice. You ask about the role of the intellectual in America today and I have to say: What role? What intellectuals? There is no room for them in the simplified and dumbed down world of today's media. We used to play a role, and there are still a few left, but we are a dying breed. Nobody seems to be interested in nuance anymore."

How do we educate the future generation to be better participants in democracy? Is it possible to roll back the anti-intellectualism brought around in the 60s? Food for thought.