How Does Learning Happen?

When I was in seventh grade I witnessed something that somewhat shocked me. I was walking down the hallway and a teacher was talking with a sixth grader about how to spell the word"cat." I had been reading since kindergarten, believe, and was reading biographies by second grade. It mystified me that this boy who I played football with after school could not spell cat.

My senior year in high school the dean of students, Mr. Griffith, whom I'd had in Civics in ninth grade and History in eleventh, asked if I would be willing to tutor a tenth grade student who was failing his math class. I was taking Calculus in the honors prograrn and it would be arranged for me to meet with this student during study hall. I can't recall if it was once a week or more than that, though I do remember that up till then he had failed every test or quiz since the beginning of the year.

When we met after the third week he was genuinely surprised to have gotten a D on a math test, his first passing grade. The following week he got a C. I was surprised at how quickly he was improving.

The next week, though, he didn't show up. For whatever the reason, we stopped meeting. Occasionally I've wondered if there were something going on in his home life. He seemed smart enough to "get it" with a little personalized attention, but I never found out what happened.

Several years later, a friend whose career involved teaching math recommended a book called The Seven Laws of Teaching. by John Milton Gregory. iPublished in 1884, t's not a new book with the latest research, success stories and modern anecdotes. Rather, it's a straightforward presentation of seven common sense principles of teaching which have stood the test of time.

In simple terms here's the essence of the book: know your subject, engage attention, speak in words the student understands, connect new ideas to things already understood, guide discovery, require expression, and reinforce through use. Gregory’s key insight is that teaching works best when it aligns with how people naturally learn.

Another memory comes to mind about public school and learning. My next door neighbor, Kenny K, was failing all his classes in fourth grade and the school wanted to hold him back. His mother went to the school and insisted that this was not the solution to his failing grades. I don't know if testing was done or if she was simply persuasive, but instead of being held back, he was placed in sixth grade, skipping fifth grade altogether. 

What happened? Kenny became an A student. He was no longer bored to tears by the pace of the class. 

When we homeschooled our children for a few years we worked hard to find the right curriculum and the right pace. We saw they had a hunger to learn that we called "learning rage." The time to throw logs on a fire is when the fire is hot.

How does learning happen? It isn't magic.

Learning happens when experience meets attention and gets reinforced over time. It isn’t a single event but a process—taking in new information, connecting it to what we already know, practicing it, and then using it in real situations.

Whether you are a teacher or leader of any kind, you will find the principles in Gregory's book to be helpful. Here are the "laws" as Gregory presents them.

1. The Law of the Teacher

The teacher must know the lesson thoroughly. You cannot teach what you do not understand.

2. The Law of the Learner

The learner must attend with interest. Without attention, there is no real learning.

3. The Law of the Language

The teacher and learner must use a common language—clear, understandable terms.

4. The Law of the Lesson

The new lesson must be connected to what the learner already knows.

5. The Law of the Teaching Process

Teaching is not telling—it is guiding the learner to think and discover.

6. The Law of the Learning Process

The learner must restate or express the idea in their own words to truly grasp it.

7. The Law of Review and Application

Knowledge must be reviewed, reinforced, and applied to become lasting.

Related Link
Writing Exercises: How to Teach Writing and Prepare Your Favorite Students for College, Life and Everything Else

What Is the Goal of Educaton, Learning or High Self Esteem?

Photo courtesy Pexels.com

A few years back I wrote here about The Coddling of the American Mind. In it, authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt address the question, "Are children today being raised too safe to succeed?" A corollary to this theme, that I've intuited but not scientifically studied, has to do with another area of fragility: bruised egos. The result is that our education system sends kids to college who are ill-prepared.

When our daughter was a senior in high school we attended a parent-teacher conference in which we witnessed (across the hall) one of the parents giving a blistering response to her daughter's grades. It's possible that school teachers have gotten tired of being raked over the coals for their honest assessment, and deal with it by letting it be someone else's problem.

So my attention was captured by a headline that read, "Inside the dizzying world of false student achievement." The article draws attention to Gallup Poll data that indicated more than half of America's students are performing below grade level standards. And yet, "almost nine in 10 parents said their child is at or above grade level in reading (88 percent) and math (89 percent)."

The article's author, Josiah Padley, asks, "Why are parents so disconnected from their children?"

One answer has to do with report cards. Even though test scores show that students are underperforming, report cards tell a different story. 79 percent are getting Bs or better. This has been a systemic trend for quite some time.

As I read this article I thought about a writer friend (I'll call her Anna here) who taught senior level English at UMD. Anna was frustrated. Her first teaching job was "Remedial English" which meant teaching freshman how to write a paper. After a couple years at UWS and UMD, she'd had it with that. These kids had gone through 12 years of schooling and hadn't learned how to write. How were accepted into college?

This prompted her to jump to teaching seniors, which Anna found equally exasperating. These seniors were so unready for the real world. She chose to jump ship altogether.

In today's schools, self-esteem often overshadows learning, prioritizing students' feelings over academic rigor. This shift stems from a well-intentioned desire to foster confidence but leads to inflated grades that don't reflect true mastery. 

Teachers, pressured to ensure students "feel" successful, may lower standards or offer lenient grading, diluting educational integrity. As a result, students receive better grades than their performance warrants, creating a false sense of achievement. This undermines critical thinking and resilience, leaving students unprepared for real-world challenges. Honest grading, while tougher, better equips students for growth, encouraging genuine learning over superficial validation. True self-esteem comes from overcoming challenges, not avoiding them.

Here is the article that prompted this blog post.

What Does It Mean To Be Educated?

According to Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), "No man can pass as educated who had heard only one side on questions as to which the public is divided." Are students learning to think today? Or are they only being spoon-fed a one-sided point of view? Or has education become only about grades and that piece of paper you get at the end? 

Norman Finkelstein, in his controversial I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It!, shared his convictions about what should happen in a classroom. What follows here is the 1915 inaugural statement of principles by the American Associaton of University Professors (AAUP). 

The university teacher, in giving instruction upon controversial matters, while he is under no obligation to hide his own opinion under a mountain of equivocal verbiage, should, if he is fit for his position, be a person of a fair and judicial mind; he should, in dealing with such subjects, set forth justly, with- out suppression or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators; he should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue; and he should, above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently.

The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.

Finkelstein then added this amplification.

A lectern is not a soapbox, a classroom is not a political rally, a professor should not serve as a conveyer belt for a party line. His responsibility is to stimulate, not to dictate. Plato said, "The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful." It is not the worst maxim, although I prefer a slightly amended, less authoritarian version: The object of education is to teach us to love to think while minds fully realized will probably agree on which objects of contemplation possess beauty.

It is fashionable nowadays on the political left to ridicule the notion of "balance" in the classroom. For example, Philosopher Akeel Bilgrami asserts that, although in the privacy of his study a professor must scrutinize all the evidence on all sides of a question, in the classroom he is only obliged to present the results of his prior deliberation.  

Does that really help students think for themselves? 

* * *

As Russell, and many others, have noted, "There are always good arguments on both sides of any real cause." The statement suggests that complex issues inherently have valid perspectives on opposing sides. It highlights the nuance of real-world problems, where competing values, priorities, or evidence create reasonable arguments for each stance. Acknowledging this fosters critical thinking and empathy, encouraging balanced discussions rather than polarized views, though it may complicate decision-making in contentious debates.

Has critical thinking, with empathy, become a lost art?

* * * 

Image at top is an AI collaboration based on one of my original paintings.

The Role of College Educators Is To Teach Students How To Think

"There are always good arguments on both sides of any real issue."  
—Bertrand Russell

Here is the 1915 inaugural statement of principles by the American Association of University Professors (A.A.U.P.) on page 405 of Norman Finkelstein's I'll Burn That Bride When I Get To It!

The university teacher, in giving instruction upon controversial matters, while he is under no obligation to hide his own opinion, under a mountain of equivocal verbiage, should, if he is fit for the position, be a person of a fair and judicial mind; he should, in dealing with such subjects, set forth, justly without suppression, or innuendo, the diverget opinions of other investigators; he should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue; and he should above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready-made conclusions, but to train them to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials, which they need, if they are to think intelligently.

The teacher ought to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the students immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teachers own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to relate to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge in ripeness of judgment, to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. This is not the least service which a college or university may render those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.

To which Finkelstein adds: "A lectern is not a soapbox, a classroom is not a political rally, a professor should not serve as a conveyor belt for a party line. His responsibility is to stimulate, not dictate."

Top Issues That Americans Are Anxious About

Here is a list of top issues Americans are concerned about...

According to Pew Research, 2024: 

Inflation

Health care costs

Partisan cooperation

Drug addiction

Gun violence

Violent crime

Budget deficit

Moral values

* * * * 

According to a 2023 Chapman University Study:

Fears are ranked by the percentage of Americans surveyed who reported being ‘afraid’ or ‘very afraid.’

Top 10 Fears of 2023                                                    % of Very Afraid or Afraid

Corrupt government officials                                                      60.1%

Economic/financial collapse                                                        54.7%

Russia using nuclear weapons                                                    52.5%

The US becoming involved in another World War                       52.3%

People I love becoming seriously ill                                             50.6%

People I love dying                                                                       50.4%

Pollution of drinking water                                                           50.0%

Biological warfare                                                                         49.5%

Cyber-terrorism                                                                             49.3%

Not having enough money for the future                                      48.0%

* * * * 

What I find interesting in these two lists are the things not included.

Issues Not Noted Above

Education
Climate
Energy
Abortion
Immigration
A.I.
Jobs
Free Speech and Free Thought

* * * *

Obviously the answers can be impacted by the way questions are asked, but a few of my biggest concerns aren't even on those first two lists. In part, it's because the media directs its viewers/listeners to other concerns, their concerns. It's just one more way the the narrative and the public's perceptions are shaped.

Two of my biggest concerns are the Energy Grid (specifically the compromises being made that will eventually lead to unreliability, blackouts and brownouts as well as skyrocketing costs) and the increased clamping down on free speech. I don't have a good feelng about where we're heading as a nation. 

Then again, this world is not my home. 

Related:
Are You Protopian, Utopian or Dystopian?

Five Pictures of a Teacher and Why Teachers Still Matter in the Age of AI

Last night while painting in my studio, I did a little touch up--made the orange more vibrant--on one of my pieces from ten years ago, acrylic on canvas paper. I called it The Teacher. 

I proceeded to photograph it, then fed it digitally into an AI art program. By varying the prompts, I ended up with some very different images. Here are the ones I didn't discard, plus a few quotes about teaching, to inspire those considering this profession.

 

Let's start with this quote by C.S. Lewis: "The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."

"A teacher's job is to take a bunch of live wires
and see that they are well-grounded."
--D.D. Martin

"Students don't care how much you know
until they know how much you care."
--John C. Maxwell

"The best teachers are those who show you
where to look but don’t tell you what to see."

--Alexandra K. Trenfor

"Education is our passport to the future,
for tomorrow belongs to the people
who prepare for it today."

--Malcolm X

Here's the current status of the original:

Picture of the Day:

The Teacher

The AI compositions here are hybrids comprised of

my painting, a prompt and Dream by WOMBO

I've Invented a New Word (And Why You Should Care).

I've Invented a New Word for 2023: Herdwinked 

When I Google it, I come up blank, so it may be original. Should I patent it? I use it like this:

When a majority of people in a large group believe something that is not true, that has been promulgated by propaganda or mass media, they have been herdwinked. The new word combines "hoodwinked" with "herd think" to describe the process of mass formation psychosis. 

Related Words:

Herdwinked--  A Hoodwinked Herd of Sheeple 

Heardwink: When people hear propaganda and accept it as true.

Examples abound.

Nickname for Propaganda: Weapon of Mass Manipulation

* * * * *

Why should you care? You'll find my answer in this article here:

He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

An Approach to Teaching Your Children How to Write. Why Every Homeschooling Parent Should Buy This Book.

I believe writing well is one of the most important skills any homeschooling parent can teach their children.

The written word has changed the world more than almost any other human activity. Truth is passed on from one generation to the next through the written word. Political movements may begin with a fire in the breast, but it is the written word that distributes this fire far and wide. The American Revolution was successful in large part because of the printing press and the printed word.

Learning how to communicate by means of the written word is an essential component of any successful career. Children who write well will obtain more career opportunities and find more open doors than those who neglect this vital skill. But good writing is more than simply writing technically correct sentences with proper verb tense and punctuation. Good writing is writing that engages readers. 

Writing Exercises was originally written with homeschoolers in mind, but its essential principles have universal application. The subtitle is How to Teach Writing and Prepare Your Favorite Students for College, Life and Everything Else.

The book's aim is to arm parents and teachers with a philosophical approach to teaching writing skills along with exercises to help implement it. The three goals of this method and the accompanying exercises are:

• To build students' confidence as writers.
• To improve students' creative thinking through creative writing prompts. 
• To provide useful strategies for teaching invaluable writing skills.
• To make sure that whatever career your child pursues, he or she is not left behind.

The book also addresses practical matters such as research skills, attribution and handwriting matters. Equally important is the matter of grading the work. Motivation is a key feature of both the exercises themselves and the grading approach.

Writing Exercises is currently available at the largest store in the world, Amazon.com, where 38% of all internet commerce takes place.  

FAQ

Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

Q: What age or grade level is this book written for?

A: I think students from 7th to 9th grade will benefit most, though the principles apply to any student learning to write. The goal is to instill a love of writing, not to make children hate it. 

Q: Is the book in bookstores?

A: No, but you can find it here on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/82m8kvs2

I have deliberately given it a low price to make it easy to purchase. If you apply the principles here to your homeschooling efforts, you will be rewarded 100-fold.

Q: How did you come to write this book?
A: My wife Susie and I homeschooled our children when it became apparent that public schools were coming up short with regards to meeting their educational needs. Because I'm a professional writer I took on the task of teaching writing. (I also wrote all their tests, which enabled me to stay in touch with what they were learning as well as the progress they were making.) After the children had grown, Susie encouraged me to create a book so that others would benefit from the exercises and grading approach I'd created.

If you have additional questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or email me at ennyman3@gmail.com

Finding Algebra After a Series of False Starts and Dead Ends

One of the items on my "to do" list is yellow weed digger. Our crab apple tree died last year. I chopped it down this spring. As it turns out, as many as 50 or more shoots are springing up where crab apples rotted and left their seeds in the yard. The yellow weed digger is an implement for uprooting and discarding these shoots. 

Because of the draught this past six weeks the ground had become hard, almost like concrete. Now that we've had a few days of rain I can make time to uproot those shoots in order to have a more normal-looking yard. 

Ideas are a little like all these new shoots. They seem to pop up on their own. Though they must come from somewhere it's hard to explain where or why. Being an avid reader with wide interests may be a contributing factor. My subconscious is constantly being fertilized. 

Here is a list of ideas that have been germinating this summer, producing a myriad quantity of false starts and incomplete or undeveloped blog posts. 

Why Punctuality Matters

Where Did Algebra Come From?

Capers 

The EV Dilemma 

Jurassic Park

The PC Police and 1984 (Thoughts about freedom)

A Strategy for Standing Out from the Crowd

The Future of Education

The Board Game Market

* * * 

The word Algebra comes from an Arabic word, Al-Jabr, which means the reunion of broken parts.

Dylan has written more than once about the brokenness in our world, most directly in the song Everything Is Broken, which appeared on Oh Mercy. What kind of algebra would it take to reunite our multitude of broken parts, broken lives, broken dreams? I do not believe politicians can solve this problem. To achieve a more satisfying solution we need to look for something more transcendent involving faith, hope and love. 

Bibliography of Criticism of Public Schools and Colleges

One of the books on my bookshelf is a little volume from 1922 called Free Thought and Official Propaganda by Bertrand Russell. It is an first printing of the Crowley Memorial Lecture that Mr. Russell gave on 24 March 1922 at the South Place Institute. 

I was prompted to review the book because of the widespread influence of "cancel culture" that has been occurring in public discourse. It's interesting that Mr. Russell recognized early on, more than two decades before Orwell's 1984 made waves, that there is a tendency to pressure people to conform to certain ideas. The pressure comes in a variety of forms, and it is unhealthy. 

That, however, is not the subject of this blog post. On the empty page that precedes the title page of this little book someone penned a list with the heading Bibliography of Criticism of Public Schools and Colleges. 

The other night I searched online to see if I could find any of these volumes. The answer is that most are quite hard to find or too expensive to consider purchasing in order to quench my curiosity. Nevertheless, I did take notes, did a little cut and paste work so that others, if interested, could get a feel for some of the attitudes toward public education about a century ago.

Here's what I found.

The Goose-Step
Upton Sinclair (1923)
It is an investigation into the consequences of plutocratic capitalist control of American colleges and universities. Sinclair writes, “Our educational system is not a public service, but an instrument of special privilege; its purpose is not to further the welfare of mankind, but merely to keep America capitalist."

"I talked with another professor at Chicago, who does not want his name used. I asked him what he thought about the status of his profession, and he gave the best description of academic freedom in America that I have yet come upon. He said, 'We are good cows; we stand quietly in our stanchions, and give down our milk at regular hours. We are free, because we have no desire to do anything but what we are told we ought to do. And we die of premature senility.'" (p. 247)

University Control
J.M. Cattell (1913)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

https://books.google.com/books/about/University_Control.html?id=FJTewwEACAAJ

Cattell remains famous for his contributions in intelligence testing, as well as his work on individual differences in perception and reaction times.

Like many eminent scientists and scholars of the time, Cattell's thought was influenced by belief in eugenics, defined as the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population, usually referring to human populations."^[6] Cattell's belief in eugenics was heavily influenced by the research of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution motivated Cattell's emphasis on studying “the psychology of individual differences”.

Free Thought and Official Propaganda
Bertrand Russell

Of this I plan to write at least one or two future blog posts on aspects of the book.

The Goslings
Upton Sinclair
https://www.amazon.com/Goslings-Study-American-Schools/dp/1162796359

Cicero Brian wrote: Socialist Upton Sinclair penned this withering critique of government (a.k.a. "public") schools in the early 1920s. He realized, as Hitler, the Jesuits, and any else interested in controlling or influencing a society does, that schools are where the young clay is molded. Perhaps the best review of it was written by the great the libertarian intellect H.L. Mencken in the April, 1924 issue of The American Mercury (url: [...]). He recommended the book heartily, noting that it "presents an engrossing, instructive, and, if allowance be made for the author's indignation, highly amusing record of chicanery and imbecility--a vast chronicle of wasted money, peanut politics and false pretenses," but pointing out a serious flaw, "an erroneous assumption" from which "springs... a great deal of false reasoning and vain indignation." (Read about that flaw from Mencken himself.)

Many people, including yours truly, have long researched and warned about the conspiracy that has long gripped the American education system; among them, John Taylor Gatto is arguably the single most valuable. Named NY City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and NY State Teacher of the Year in 1991, he gradually realized that our schools were doing more harm than good. Having the ear of the top education officials in the nation because he rubbed elbows with them, he initially assumed his ideas for improving the schools would be welcome. When he found out that they weren't, Gatto quickly realized that our schools were not, as he had naively assumed, broken; they were working as designed. He quit teaching in 1991 and has been waging guerrilla warfare on gov't schooling ever since. 

Humanizing Education
Samuel Schmalheusen

https://www.nytimes.com/1927/11/06/archives/indicting-education-humanizing-education-by-samuel-d-schmalhausen.html

Summary of review: https://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ijp.008.0441a

The Law of the Jungle Chap IX ff
Coburn Allen

https://gulokywymyzuku.hotseattleseahawksjerseys.com/law-of-the-jungle-book-26675jm.php

The Higher Learning in America
Thorsten Veblen (1926)

Probably the best-known fact about The Higher Learning in America by Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) is that the author’s original subtitle for it was “A Study in Total Depravity.” By the time the book finally appeared in print in 1918, the wording had been changed to “A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men,” which gives the reader a clearer sense of the contents, albeit at a considerable loss in piquancy.

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/04/15/review-thorstein-veblen-higher-learning-america-first-annotated-edition

What’s Wrong with American Education
David Snedden (1927)

https://web.stanford.edu/~dlabaree/publications/How_Dewey_Lost.pdf

Many of the battles in education today are the same ones faced a century ago. 

The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams

The Education of Henry Adams is an autobiography that records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams (1838–1918), in his later years, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also a sharp critique of 19th-century educational theory and practice. In 1907, Adams began privately circulating copies of a limited edition printed at his own expense. Commercial publication of the book had to await its author's 1918 death, whereupon it won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize. The Modern Library placed it first in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century.

What Is and What Might Be
Edmond Holmes (1911)

http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/holmes/

The Standardization of Error
Vilhjalmur Stefansson

This thin tome is a seminal work on how we humans tend to cloud up topics of interest with utterly innane 'facts,' and how the folks who do so are like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand, a behavior *never* observed in Nature.

Nonetheless, the allusion has progressed to an extremely useful rhetorical 'shorthand" of sorts, that far transcends its untruthful beginnings. A VERY good read, which will take you years to fully 'grok.'

Fads & Fallacies in Present Day Education
H. E. Bucholtz

https://www.questia.com/library/594271/fads-and-fallacies-in-present-day-education

Impediments to Sustained Attention

Several decades ago, while walking quietly through an old growth deciduous forest in Pennsylvania, I stopped to contemplate a chirping sparrow which was flitting from branch to branch in a young elm tree. The little bird hopped from this branch to that, chirped a few times and flitted to another.

This hopping about captured my attention so that I stood there quietly observing for the longest time. For some reason, and I know not why, it entered my head that my own thought life was like this little bird, flitting from this topic to that, bouncing about almost aimlessly, momentarily intent on this idea then leaping to another intense interest, ever flitting here and there, from this thought to another unrelated branch of thought.

What was the meaning of this? This was long before I'd ever heard the concept of ADHD, attention deficit disorder. And, the pattern has not really diminished all that much.

This Appalachian mountain memory was brought to mind by a lecture on Optimizing Brain Fitness by Professor Richard Restak in which he lists a set of impediments to sustained attention. These impediments, he stated, were:
1) Boredom
2) Emotional blunting or burn out
3) Sensory overload
4) Multitasking

The word that leapt from this list for me was multitasking, though each of the other items contribute to our inability to maintain focused attention for a sustained period of time. Prof. Restak says we are not really multitasking when we multitask, because our mind doesn't really do two things at once. We are flitting back and forth between the two.

Have you ever been to a party where you get introduced to new people but later can't recall their names? Once again it's a matter of focus. Our minds may be focused on "managing the room." Or we're distracted by everything else going on. If it is a business meeting, someone may hand you their card and later, if you wrote a note on the back, you will remember who the person was. That act of writing a note required a moment of focus.

In this lecture he also talked bout how to learn new material. Rote memorization is possible for short term quizzes, but long-term value is created when we involve ourselves more deeply in the information, by writing a paper about the topic for example.

"The most important principle for improving your memory is focusing your attention on what you are trying to learn." This is why disruptive behavior in a classroom is such a problem. It distracts other students and interferes with their ability to focus.

This morning I posted a story in response to a California decision to forbid suspensions in K thru 8th grade. In School Daze: Whats's Going On I took a walk down memory lane to my own grade school experiences in which I can't recall a single suspension taking place throughout my elementary school years in the 1950s and early 60s. Were there any students suspended for bad behavior in junior high when I moved to New Jersey? My memory may be faulty but in those days students listened to the teacher, obeyed when told to spit out their gum, and showed respect.

On one occasion my 5th grade teacher asked me (told me) to not put my pen in my mouth, which I did quite frequently evidently. I liked the taste of the metal, I think. At least that is what I said in the 500 word essay I had to write (as punishment) explaining why I kept putting my pen in my mouth.

As I look back over the meandering direction this blog post has taken, it's apparent I've lost my focus. And rather than drag you with me any further, let's turn the page.

Till next.

Extra Credit: What was your experience in elementary school? When and where?