Colloquium: Blog 3

Mireya Vazquez
Sep 2, 2018 · 3 min read

“In the era of test-centric education reform and growing fear of liability, many districts considered recess a waste of potential academic time or too risky.”

Before I believed it was just common knowledge that children needed a time for physical activity for at least an hour a day. This quote is actually eye opening to me because my school district did the complete opposite. In Lee county teachers are required to take their students out to recess once a day (even if they have a physical education class that same day). It absolutely blows my mind how people dedicate their lives to “teach” kids but they have no idea what that kid is experiencing or how their brain is working. And they don’t want to 5 minutes of their time to research it. It took me less than 3 minutes to find an article by Naiman A. Khan and Charles H. Hillman from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, stating (in the first collumn) “Higher-fit preadolescent children exhibit greater attention, faster information processing speed, and achieve higher scores on standardized achievement tests, relative to their lower-fit counterparts.” WHY ARE WE WITHHOLDING NATURES PUREST FORM OF BRAIN STIMULANT FROM CHILDREN THAT WE ARE EXPECTING TO LEARN AT GREAT SPEED AND EXHIB GREATER ATTENTION?

http://www.cookcountypublichealth.org/healthy-hotspot/places-where-we-learn/healthy-active-schools

“Directed-Attention Fatigue occurs becaause neural inhibitory mechanisms become fatigued by blocking competing stimuli”

The Colloquium reader tells us that directed attention fatigue is marked by impulsivity, behavior, agitation, irritation, and inability to concentrate. So again, why is such precious and effective information not being used to help our youth learn in a more effective way? To a certain extent school systems are playing a big part in making children “trouble makers”. Behaviors at school are often presumed to be connected to problems at home but if you put a child in a classroom for 7 hours 5 days a week that child is likely to show impulsivity, behavior, agitation, irritation, and inability to concentrate. We are not only punishing kids when we send them to stand in a corner or call their parents, we are punishing them by restraining them to a desk in front of a white board and limiting them of mental breaks.

“If, as a growing body of evidence recommends, ‘Contact with nature is as important to children as good nutrition and adequate sleep, then current trends in children’s access to nature need to be addressed’.”

This is just another example of what spending 2 minutes on good looking up ‘adequate sleep and nutrition for kids’ will get you, a whole world of information. So why is the world turning their back on the years of clinical studies and all of the side effects of toxic pill we are giving children who aren’t meeting their expectation? Our society cannot and will not be working at its fullest capacity if we don’t start leading these young children into a healthier and more sustainable life style. Because this isn’t just about behavior or learning, its about mental health, and heart disease and all the other things that are RIGHT IN FRONT OF US but the education system as a whole does not want to walk to the walk when they come talking about improving the quality of education they’ll be providing out children.

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