By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn Monitoring, structuring, and protecting reduce children’s activity and health. Most of my writing about children’s free play has been about the mental health benefits (e.g. here), but in this essay I’m concerned with the physical health benefits. Children are designed, by nature, to play often in physically vigorous ways. That […]
TIM SMITS FOR SPECTRUM Originally published on Spectrum The Research on Autism and Development (RAD) Laboratory is located in a Tetris-like maze of brown wooden buildings, not far from the main campus of the University of California, San Diego. The lab itself is a nondescript warren of small beige rooms. But everything […]
Students’ sense of belonging at school is linked to how well they do at school. Shutterstock A report released today by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), the managers of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Australia, explores Australian students’ sense of belonging. This has been shown to play a big part in […]
By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn Psychiatric emergencies and youth suicides rise sharply with the school year. I am not in the mood today – bored teenager boy sitting by the wall We get very upset by school shootings, as well we should. Every such instance is a national tragedy. We […]
Encourage children to think about where they are in space: if they’re looking at a map of the zoo, ask them where they are in relation to the kangaroos or lions. Shutterstock Educators and researchers agree early literacy experiences are important for children’s cognitive and language development. For the past […]
By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn What does research really tell us about the brain effects of video gaming? “IT’S DIGITAL HEROIN: HOW SCREENS TURN KIDS INTO PSYCHOTIC JUNKIES.” That’s the dramatic headline screaming across a New York Post article, by a Dr. Nicholas Kardaras (2016), which many readers sent to me shortly […]
Currently, only 10% of teachers in primary education are male. Shutterstock Australia is facing a crisis within primary education: there will not be enough teachers to educate the booming population of children coming through. A report commissioned by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) predicts we will need 443 more primary classes and […]
By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn Every summer we hear from educators about the “summer slide” in academic learning (e.g. here and here). The claim is that children lose much of what they gained from school during the summer break, so time is lost catching up in the fall. Some even […]
By PATRICK FARENGA / GWS A homeschooling father and a journalist teamed up to write about the current state of homeschooling in America based on published scholarly research. Their effort provides an interesting snapshot about what is going on with politics, educators, researchers, and parents who are interested in homeschooling in […]
Students are more reluctant to seek help from teachers than from friends or parents. from www.shutterstock.com In Australia approximately one student in five is bullied at school every few weeks or more often. Many of these students suffer serious emotional and psychological harm, such as persistent anxiety, depression and suicidal […]