>> Writing is neither an easy skill nor a quickly-learned skill for students to learn. What's worse, it isn't a skill that just any ol' mommy-track teacher can teach, because the teacher must be able to actually write a good essay herself before she can teach the skill to someone else. What's worst of all, is that I think it's a skill that MUST be learned while a child is growing up if that child is to master it. <<
Depends on what you mean by "writing." Functional writing is not hard, except for people with certain disabilities such as dyslexia. That includes things like writing a letter, making a blog post, narrating your vacation -- the everyday stuff people do with words. Writing a short, simple essay is a little more of a stretch. Writing for entertainment is considerably more challenging; not everyone has the talent for it. Technical or academic writing styles have a much higher skill demand.
A decent teacher should be able to introduce the basics of writing and identify things like: Does this paragraph have a topic sentence and at least two supporting sentences? That's not particularly hard. However, it does take more time than grading bubble-tests. So if you want students who can write, then you need to make time for teaching and grading that.
>> I completely agree that kids badly need physical activity. What most people don't seem to understand is that kids badly need it at least every two hours all day long. I think we'd be able to cut out a lot of behavior problems if we gave our kids more chances to work off their excess energy. <<
Exactly. Young primates are biologically programmed to learn. They typically do this by mimicking adults. Another way is through exploring a rich and varied environment. They have not evolved to sit still for 8 hours a day. Putting them in an impoverished environment with only one adult and forcing them through dull activities is tedious and minimally effective -- and it can destroy the intrinsic joy of learning. So then they only perform as forced, and when that force goes away, a significant number of them just ... sort of stop doing anything, because the gears are stripped. That's not a good result.
Yes...
Depends on what you mean by "writing." Functional writing is not hard, except for people with certain disabilities such as dyslexia. That includes things like writing a letter, making a blog post, narrating your vacation -- the everyday stuff people do with words. Writing a short, simple essay is a little more of a stretch. Writing for entertainment is considerably more challenging; not everyone has the talent for it. Technical or academic writing styles have a much higher skill demand.
A decent teacher should be able to introduce the basics of writing and identify things like: Does this paragraph have a topic sentence and at least two supporting sentences? That's not particularly hard. However, it does take more time than grading bubble-tests. So if you want students who can write, then you need to make time for teaching and grading that.
>> I completely agree that kids badly need physical activity. What most people don't seem to understand is that kids badly need it at least every two hours all day long. I think we'd be able to cut out a lot of behavior problems if we gave our kids more chances to work off their excess energy. <<
Exactly. Young primates are biologically programmed to learn. They typically do this by mimicking adults. Another way is through exploring a rich and varied environment. They have not evolved to sit still for 8 hours a day. Putting them in an impoverished environment with only one adult and forcing them through dull activities is tedious and minimally effective -- and it can destroy the intrinsic joy of learning. So then they only perform as forced, and when that force goes away, a significant number of them just ... sort of stop doing anything, because the gears are stripped. That's not a good result.