For a while, we were part of a homeschool co-op, where the organizer — a parent to two darling girls who happily sat through lessons — would discipline fidgety boys like my Peter by withholding their recess breaks. During a group activity, I overheard another parent say “Peter, don’t work ahead.” We didn’t sign up for that co-op the next year.
“We’ve been around for a couple hundred thousand years, reading only for the last five thousand years, and compulsory education has only been in place for one hundred fifty years or so. Some kids are going to be thinking, ‘Why is my teacher asking me to do this? My brain doesn’t work this way,’ ” says Stephen Hinshaw, a psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Heidi Tringali, an occupational therapist in Charlotte, North Carolina, offers a hypothesis built on shorter-term influences: Many of the nonconforming children she treats may need wiggle cushions and weighted balls because they’ve grown up strapped into the five-point harnesses of strollers and car seats, planted in front of screens, and put to sleep at night flat on their backs, all of which leaves them craving action, sensation, and attention when they’re finally let loose. “Every child in the school system right now has been impacted. Of course they’re all licking their friends and bouncing off the walls.” New Republic.
6 thoughts on “Self-Regulation: American Schools Are Failing Nonconformist Kids”
More work is the way to go. Kids who bother other kids, and who are bright, are usually bored with the lesson or have completed the assignment. More challenge is the best solution.
I student taught in a 4th Grade classroom and when I walked in I noticed a number that said “Recess: 46” I asked what the number meant and the students said that is how many recesses the class had lost for being disruptive. Face palm.
In fairness, the punishment was probably for disrupting other students rather than just fidgeting, but giving him more work would have been a better solution.
I’ve thought about this off and on ever since you first mentioned it to me at the Fall workshop. Taking away recess for fidgeting makes no sense no matter how it’s looked at — and it seems to me to be directly related to the working ahead component. Because it bothered me so much (I think the recess removal is exceptionally cruel), I started to think about why the teacher would do either of these things…and it dawns on me that with something as individual as learning, everyone really does need an individual plan — so school as it is socioculturally erected ( come together in groups and sit still to absorb knowledge) fails by default to truly produce learning (evolved mechanism in an environment of constant movement and change). (Thank you, John Medina). I wonder what a reasonable compromise would be in the situation you discuss — and it dawns on me that there is no need for a compromise! She should have given him recess and let him work ahead! Instead, she punishes him not once but TWICE — and attempts to distinguish the very thing education is supposed to support! Silly. Silly silly silly.
“We’ve been around for a couple hundred thousand years, reading only for the last five thousand years, and compulsory education has only been in place for one hundred fifty years or so. Some kids are going to be thinking, ‘Why is my teacher asking me to do this? My brain doesn’t work this way,’ ” says Stephen Hinshaw, a psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Heidi Tringali, an occupational therapist in Charlotte, North Carolina, offers a hypothesis built on shorter-term influences: Many of the nonconforming children she treats may need wiggle cushions and weighted balls because they’ve grown up strapped into the five-point harnesses of strollers and car seats, planted in front of screens, and put to sleep at night flat on their backs, all of which leaves them craving action, sensation, and attention when they’re finally let loose. “Every child in the school system right now has been impacted. Of course they’re all licking their friends and bouncing off the walls.” New Republic.
More work is the way to go. Kids who bother other kids, and who are bright, are usually bored with the lesson or have completed the assignment. More challenge is the best solution.
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I student taught in a 4th Grade classroom and when I walked in I noticed a number that said “Recess: 46” I asked what the number meant and the students said that is how many recesses the class had lost for being disruptive. Face palm.
In fairness, the punishment was probably for disrupting other students rather than just fidgeting, but giving him more work would have been a better solution.
Extinguish* not distinguish
I’ve thought about this off and on ever since you first mentioned it to me at the Fall workshop. Taking away recess for fidgeting makes no sense no matter how it’s looked at — and it seems to me to be directly related to the working ahead component. Because it bothered me so much (I think the recess removal is exceptionally cruel), I started to think about why the teacher would do either of these things…and it dawns on me that with something as individual as learning, everyone really does need an individual plan — so school as it is socioculturally erected ( come together in groups and sit still to absorb knowledge) fails by default to truly produce learning (evolved mechanism in an environment of constant movement and change). (Thank you, John Medina). I wonder what a reasonable compromise would be in the situation you discuss — and it dawns on me that there is no need for a compromise! She should have given him recess and let him work ahead! Instead, she punishes him not once but TWICE — and attempts to distinguish the very thing education is supposed to support! Silly. Silly silly silly.