Peterborough, Ontario (PRWEB) April 25, 2006 --
Finding Education's Missing Links
by Bill Allin
"We're the ones who have to look after the unaddressed social and emotional needs of children before we can teach to their intellectual needs." The high school vice principal knew what her students had missed in their lives, knew how much that deficit affected their learning.
She spends most of her time dealing with the consequences of underdeveloped social and emotional learning, very little actually teaching to them. Schools call these discipline problems, not learning opportunities.
As any teacher will attest, all students suffer when the learning stream grinds to a halt to attend to "discipline problems." Children learn slowly and some become disruptive when they have emotional or social problems they can't deal with.
Today's children, in all parts of the world, grow up in homes where many parents don't know what their kids need beyond shelter, food, clothing and "love." Some "quality time" maybe. Toys, if they can be afforded.
Most parents try their best to provide for the needs of their children. They buy expensive shoes, clothing, books, vehicles and give them money.
Parents don't know what else their children need. They follow the examples of their own parents and what they have learned from neighbors and family friends. They learn the job of parenting as they live it.
Many have no idea why their teenage children rebel, take drugs or alcohol, drive much faster than is safe, refuse to talk to them, pierce or tattoo themselves or dress like hookers or devil worshippers.
Parenting, like any endeavor based on skill and knowledge, requires learning. It's is the only critically important life project where young adults begin with little more than their own life experience.
For many parents, the old adage holds that "If it was good enough for my parents, it's good enough for me." They forget that were growing up they wished their parents would do things differently.
Human nature's rule is: No one does anything differently unless they're taught something different. History teaches us that the only way for everyone to do something differently is for the new way to be taught to youngsters.
Children develop in four fundamental streams: intellectual, physical, social and emotional/psychological. Schools address intellectual development and touch on physical development. Parents help by enrolling their kids in sports or other athletic activities.
On a community-wide basis, no one addresses the social or emotional development of children in an organized fashion. We have prisons filled with social misfits. We have mental hospitals filled with people who could not cope emotionally with the rigors of their lives and many more at home taking Prozac or sleeping pills to get them through the day or night.
Our communities overflow with broken people who couldn't cope with the conditions of their lives or its problems and turned to illegal or harmful alternatives. Their lives never improve with these new turns, but at least they feel they have tried something. Some give a quick thrill or high.
School systems are ideally set up to teach to the social and emotional development of children. They are also equipped to teach new parents what they need to know to assist with these developmental streams before the children get to school and in their early school years. However these are not on their curricula.
In Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, sociologist Bill Allin provides a framework around which education-based programs for parents and teachers could be built. He provides appendices that amount to course material for primary school teachers and new parents.
Surprisingly, it wouldn't cost a fortune to implement such programs because most of the necessary infrastructure exists already. The programs would not be controversial because they would teach what everyone agrees needs to be taught to children—how to make and keep friends, what to do if you have a problem you don't know what to do with, what to expect in the coming years of school and personal life, how to cope with problems that arise from them.
Hiring more police, building more prisons and providing more help for those with psychological or emotional problems has not solved our personal or community problems. Problems in almost every community worsen each year.
Instead of trying to fix broken people, we need to teach children how to prevent themselves from breaking. They can grow strong, straight and healthy if they have the necessary skills and knowledge.
Bill Allin says the only way to accomplish that is by giving a new direction to our education systems. "Solutions to many of our problems are available. We need to teach ourselves how to find them and to implement them."
About Bill Allin:
Sociologist Bill Allin is the author of 'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems' (The Writers' Collective, 2005).
He taught primary, junior and intermediate classes of all socio-economic categories for nearly two decades, then adults for another two decades. As a result of his close work with kids and his unique personal background, he gained an unusual perspective on children's needs, social skills and coping mechanisms that other professionals have overlooked.
He was a feral child, learning to read and write as an adult. He holds a Master of Education degree from the Ontario Institute of Education, University of Toronto.
Learn more about the unique TIA approach to solving community problems and avoiding personal ones at the book's web site: http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl
Contact Bill Allin:
(705) 657 – 9468
R. R. #1 Buckhorn
Ontario K0L1J0 CANADA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/turningitaround
http://builder.blog-city.com
Press Contact: Bill Allin
Company Name:
Email: tiahome@sympatico.ca
Phone: 705 - 657 - 9468
Website: http://billallin.com
AndhraNews.net News for April 25, 2006
