Just watched some of our videos for tonight

Hey guys, these videos and reading are extremely interesting. I watch the first one and thought about how our schools really are like factories (which makes sense if education as we know it was created in the industrial age) just putting out students to not able to succeed in live and struggle to find a job (and they wonder why we have a low unemployment). I do think that a divergent type of thinking is needed in order to grow our students and it should start at a young age. We can see from studies that it would work and students grow and develop their skills (as long as the instruction is there like a KIPP schools). Ok I am done with my rant.

Behavioral Development

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVA09ZntyJY&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1k-YzQuoA0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwCNwnbbCJg

Hopefully none of these videos were offensive to anyone. if they were i am sorry.

So i just read/skimmed a lot on information from our reading about teens and depressions,suicides, unintentional injuries (which is why i posted a few dangerous stunts that teens do) and other things. I found it interesting that unintentional injuries were so high. I never saw that when i was growing up and my parents never saw stunts or anything like we have today. I wondered why teens might do these. There are the obvious reasons, fame, attention, friends, etc. but i want to go a little deeper and discuss tv or movies. Today we have shows and movies like jackass that exploit that stunt mentality and make it fun and fame-driven. Movies have many cool stunts but i think that it is less of a problem. I hear many teens talk about how crazy they can be and take it to the next level. Where did this come from? I never wanted to take it to the next level (unless of course it was sports or girls) but to put myself in physical harm that i could DIE from? I mean that is literally crazy. I would like you guys to view this article i found it extremely helpful and meaningful personally.

http://www.connectwithkids.com/tipsheet/2008/377_mar19/thisweek/080319_theory.shtml

Video

Check this out!!!! Kinda cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ONSCBxTnA

Social Development of Adolescents

These readings were pretty self explanatory, meaning i did not see anything that really jumped out at me. For example, i know that adolescents enjoy their peers more and like to have their approval and i can see by the way they act around females that sexual misuse will happen and sexually transmitted diseases occur. Also i knew gangs were prevalent and what the causes including family substitute, belonging etc. may be for that type of activity. I guess the one thing that interested me in these readings was the moral aspects. It is not that i did not know that morals exist within teens because obviously they know right from wrong. Many things they do wrong are to gain attention from peers or the opposite sex. What was interesting was the theories. I did read one blogger who exclaimed that it was like reading an intro to philosophy class. I have to disagree about this point only because i have taken couple philosophy courses and did not have the same reactions. I mean yes we did discuss morality and the moral compass but not in the adolescent mind. I found it interesting that adolescents are very moral and concerned with how the world is working because that it not what my experience was growing up. I was mostly concerned with my own well-being. These were just my own personal observations.

Self-esteem

In my experience, self esteem has been a struggle for me. It was not an academic issue becuase i felt very competent in my academics, which means i had a great self-concept of myself. However, my environment was not particularly a nice one. I was kinda bullied in school and at home as well. I developed later as a child but my maturity and cognitive skills developed before anyone in my class. I had a hard time. It maded me recluse and fall back into myself whichin itself was bad becuase of my self-esteem. In the end i turned out ok but it made me more empathetic towards things like bullying and self-esteem. I wanted to pose a question....Is being sympathetic to bullying students a good or bad thing? Does it set that student apart? Does the student want that help if the help does not help? What would the best approach to dealing with bullying?

(ok thats 3 questions but all the same)

Cognitive Development

I have just finished our reading for my Human Development class and have some thoughts and reflections.

First, I have written a couple research papers on classical education, its methods, and if it is worth using. Within the classical education model elementary are given the foundations of education then their mental capabilities change to become more logical, using reason in middle school. In high school, the students can debate and develop their own ideas about the foundations they learned. This is very much like what was discussed in the readings and how students cognitive abilities change. If you would like more information about classical education heres a great website!  www.welltrainedmind.com/classical-education

Second there was a part in the readings where they talked about suicide being more of a problem in students that did not get proper development cognitively or that their visible strengths are suppressed. I found this extremely interesting because i always thought suicide was more a social and behavior disability or peer pressure that creates bad situations for teens. I never thought it could be because cognitive development. However i can see if peers bullying someone who has a cognitive learning disability being made fun of and killing themselves. I was wondering what others thought about this?