French Kids Don’t Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman

Title:

 French Kids Don’t Throw Food

Author:

Pamela Druckerman

How do the French manage to raise well-behaved children, and have a life?

This is the secret Pamela Druckerman will reveal in her book French Kids Don’t Throw Food.

A New Yorker married to an English husband, and raising kids in Paris, Druckerman discovered that French mothers do things differently and often better.

When Druckerman was in Paris, both she and her husband went through hell when dining in the restaurant with their little baby. All they wished was to quickly finish their meal and leave. What caught their attention was that French parents with little kids do not go through the same situation.

Here were what they seen in France.

At the restaurant:

“The French children all around us don’t look cowed. They’re cheerful, chatty and curious. Their parents are affectionate and attentive. There just seems to be an invisible, civilizing force at their tables – and, I’m starting to suspect, in their lives – that’s absent from ours.”

At the playground:

“I’ve never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum.”

At home:

“Why don’t my French friends need to end a phone call hurriedly because their kids are demanding something? Why haven’t their living rooms been taken over by teepes and toy kitchens, the way ours has?”

“Why so many French babies start sleeping through the night at two or three months old?”

“Why French kids don’t require constant attention from adults, and that they seem capable of hearing the word ‘no’ without collapsing?”

Druckerman found that French parents are very concerned about their children but not to the point of panicking over their children’s well-being. This makes them better at establishing boundaries and at the same time giving their kids some autonomy.

In her book, Druckerman reveals more stories on what she has discovered in parenting à la francaise.

Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Michael Winterhoff Talks on Education Concept in Germany

It is quite alarming that many young people in Germany do not fulfil the pre-requisites for vocational training. According to child and adolescent psychiatrist, Michael Winterhoff, many of the young people in Germany today not only lack the basic competences in German and maths, but also lacking in social competences such as work ethic, punctuality and structure.

These young people do not share the same passion in the workplace as they do for computer games. Winterhoff believes that it all goes back to early childhood education, to between ages three to six when our abilities start to evolve.

As children are seen, led and guided as children for at least 15 years, their maturity develops at a slower pace. Adults tend to explain and demonstrate a skill to their children instead of letting them to explore and try it out themselves.

In school, teachers are receding into the background, assuming the role of mentor or coach. Students in the primary school are left to teach themselves how to read, write and do maths, with the senior levels teaching the junior levels.

Winterhoff sees this as detrimental towards children’s psychology as they often attend school just to gain their mothers’ approval and do things they do not like just for their teachers’ sake.

Often, many parents hold on to the motto “even if nobody out there loves me, my child at least should do so” when they themselves faced with growing loss of orientation and recognition. This thinking has put a negative impact on the growing children as these children feel that adults are bigger and stronger than they are.

Given the general uncertainty and anxiety about the society’s future, parents start to merge with their children’s minds and develop false reactions that hinder emotional development. Hence, according to Winterhoff, they end up in a cycle of egocentric, inability to cope with life, lacking in independence and unemployability. In fact, this is a global phenomenon seen in all wealthy countries.

South Korean Teachers: What Can We Learn from Them?

The education approach in South Korea is very different from the one in Finland. While Finland gives their students a lot of freedom in learning, South Korea emphasizes on intense schooling.

Let’s see the approaches South Korean teachers take in teaching and learning.

Get parents involved	Teachers and parents in South Korea maintain a positive relationship. Teachers often update their students’ parents on their kids’ performance and what they are learning in order to keep the parents engaged.
Use technology	Technology, such as computers, the internet, LCD screens and smart boards, is compulsory in all classrooms. Besides aiding in the teaching process, technology enables the sharing of more knowledge and tailoring the lessons to the students’ learning style. In fact, technology helps students to learn faster and develop deeper foundation skills.
Do their best every day	South Korean teachers go extra mile and perform better than expected. They are so committed to do their best every moment.
Inspire their students to do their best	With committed teachers, students will feel inspired and highly motivated to give their best too.
Always be willing to learn	South Korean teachers often go for courses on education and teaching. They are willing to impose new teaching techniques and try their best to keep their teaching fresh and interesting.

Finnish Teachers: What Can We Learn from Them?

Besides its exceptional education approach, schools in Finland are filled with exceptional teachers too.

Let’s see the approaches Finnish teachers take in teaching and learning.

Ask for help	Finnish teachers accept that they are not perfect. With its system that encourages cooperation instead of competition, the teachers and students help each other to succeed. Finnish teachers often reach out to their colleagues, administrators and even their students’ mother for help when faced with challenging student or class.
Get outside	Finnish teachers often organize their class sessions out of the classroom such as to the riversides, city centres, forests and marshlands. They fully utilize the natural resources available during their excursion to enhance their lessons. A single resource such as a rock can teach us anything from spelling to math to science.
Get to know their students	Finnish teachers spend a lot of time and energy in getting to know their students. As they are often assigned to teach the same students for years, they have more opportunities to understand their students better. With this, they are able to tailor their lessons to the students’ learning style.
Implement more play time	Although Finland students spend a lot of their time playing, they still excel in academic. The long recess enables them to recharge and increase their focus when they are back to the class lesson.
Think outside the textbook	Finnish teachers are given the autonomy to implement different kinds of methods and materials to assist them in getting their students to learn.
Keep learning yourself	Finnish teachers show great passion for their job and in learning. This in turn influences their students to learn too as the students find the lesson interesting and inspiring.

Education System of Finland & South Korea

Both Finland and South Korea are well-known for their exceptional schools. However, these countries share very little similarities. In fact, there is a huge contrast in their differences. Yet, both are the leaders in world’s education.

What are the similarities?

What are the differences?

	FINLAND	SOUTH KOREA
Study Time (Average school day)	5 hours with very little homework	9am-5pm with additional classes at night
Testing	Only ONE standardized test in academic study	Tons of standardized tests with massive, high-pressure college entrance exam
Academic Pressure	Care very little about grades	It’s all about the marks and good grades.
Use of Technology	Spend most of the time in the real world, out-of-classroom activities	Integrated technology in classrooms
Recess	Believe in giving  the kids a lot of playtime with 75 minutes of recess a day	No real recess. Only 10 minutes break to shuffle between classes.

There is no “one size that fits all”. What matter most are the teachers’ passion in teaching and learning, and the society’s way of thinking as a whole.

Eastern Culture and Western Culture in Learning

Jim Stigler, a professor of psychology at UCLA, sums up the difference in learning approach between the East and the West in this way:

“For the most part in American culture, intellectual struggle in schoolchildren is seen as an indicator of weakness, while in Eastern cultures it is not only tolerated but is often used to measure emotional strength.”

He witnessed how Japanese classroom was conducted, whereby the teacher called upon a weaker student to draw three-dimensional cubes on the board. The kid struggled in making it look right and in the end, he succeeded and received applause from his classmates. This is the opposite of the American classrooms whereby the best kid is usually given the opportunity to share in front of the whole class.

On the other hand, Jin Li, a professor at Brown University, had in the past decade studied the learning beliefs of Taiwanese and Americans. Here is what she has found:

Americans: “The idea of intelligence is believed in the West as a cause. She (the mother) is telling him (the son) that there is something in him, in his mind, that enables him to do what he does.”

Asians: “It resides in what they do, but not who they are, what they’re born with.”

Li shared a conversation between a mother and her son who had won first place in a piano competition, that it was his effort and the persistence he put into practicing the piano that led him to the achievement.

The West looks at struggle as a weakness while the East looks at it as a strength. By viewing it as a strength, we are more willing to put in effort and accept that it is a part of the challenges that we need to face in learning.

Read original article here

How Important Is Freedom of Expression in Children?

Does writing for being graded put a barrier to our freedom of expression and learning?

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Here’s a summary of what Katrina Schwartz shared in How Visual Thinking Improves Writing:

When teachers from Oak Knoll Elementary School in Menlo Park, Calif. asked their students to keep a notebook that combines words and drawings – taking inspiration from the popular children’s book series Amelia’s Notebook, - here is the insight they have found.

“They’re not used to being given permission to write about whatever they want,” Karen Clancy, a teacher from Oak Knoll Elementary School in Menlo Park, Calif. said.

Once her students knew that they were given the freedom of expression to write and draw without being graded, they have asked for more time to write.

Samples of Amelia’s Notebook

According to the author of Amelia’s Notebook, Marissa Moss, “writing without fear of consequences is key to developing a writer’s voice.” Moss also pointed out that developing a distinct voice in children is one of the hardest things to teach.

“If you’re perfect you are guaranteed to not write a thing. It’s like driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the break,” Moss said, whose books combine the power of words and drawings to express Amelia’s ideas about the world.

Since this notebook project – Lifebook Journals – has been initiated, the teachers at Oak Knoll have seen a dramatic improvement in the students’ choice of word, voice and sentence fluency, and their motivation to write.

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Besides developing a voice in children, freedom of expression helps to develop critical thinking skills and a love for reading too.

On the other hand, cutting out the freedom of expression in children will hinder the development of their distinct voice. Over time, they may grow into a person with low confidence and fear, which is not a good thing for their social and soul development.

Hence, we ought to give our children the freedom of expression so as they will be able to experience a positive development of their body, mind, social and soul.

Inquiry-based Learning vs. Standardized Content

Which is more effective in aiding the learning process and preparing the young ones for their future? Inquiry-based learning? Or standardized content?

In recent years, there is much discussion among educators on the relevant of standardized content in today’s world, whether it still functions as well as during the old times and whether it encourages critical thinking skills.

Given the rise in the focus on grades instead of knowledge and skills gained, it makes one ponder whether the children are well-prepared to face the challenging world that requires critical and innovative thinking.

As standardized information and testings may put a barrier to innovative teaching and addressing students’ needs, how can we address this learning process? How can we make use of the inquiry-based process to the benefits of our children?

As Thom Markham (speaker, writer, psychologist, school redesign consultant, and the author of the Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators) suggests, a teacher can help to move the dialogue forward by focusing on project-based learning, which is the most effective learning method of inquiry-based learning at the moment.

Here is a diagram on inquiry-based learning created by educators in Australia.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/the-inquiry-process/

Based on the above graph, inquiry-based learning shows some resemblance to theme-based learning (thematic approach). Both the approaches – inquiry-based and thematic – can be integrated to assist in effective learning in children.

Thematic Approach: What about Plant?

In thematic approach, children learn new knowledge through theme-based activities. The children will reap more benefits from this approach as they learn in whole rather than in bits and pieces.

Here is an example how the thematic approach is applied to learning about plant.

1. Select a topic
2. Have a brainstorm session with the children to collect ideas and interests of children

  

3. List key questions

4. Explore

5. Observe and investigate

6. Record using a pie-chart

7. Planting

 

   

8. Record plant growth

 

9. Harvest & consumption

Further reading:

• Thematic Approach to Teaching & Learning

World Education: Thematic Approach to Teaching & Learning

Integrating the curriculum with a theme - this is what thematic approach is all about.

Instead of delivering the curriculum from A to Z and directly from the book, thematic approach allows teachers to teach creatively and encourages fun learning and activities in class.

Why thematic approach to teaching and learning?

• Learning will become more natural, less fragmented and more easily integrated into life.

• Children will enjoy the fun of learning, involve more actively, develop learning skills at a faster pace, have more confident, be self-motivated and show less discipline problems.

• When children enjoy what they are learning, it will be easier for them to absorb the new knowledge and skills.

Developing a theme

Developing thematic activities

For example, to deliver the concept of “home sweet home”, teachers can arrange activities such as:

• Drawing an art piece using different medium (colour pencil, crayon etc) and colours
• Making a little book with drawing and words
• Making a house out of cardboard and other materials
• Collecting pictures of house and pasting them on a cardboard
• Role-playing

These activities will create the opportunities for children to discover their best learning approach and allow creativity to flow naturally in them.