Something occurred to me the other day and I am now getting time to really ponder it. Why are most kids not critical thinkers, or any kind of thinkers? I thought one of the reasons was that because they are so busy playing video games, texting their friends, connecting on facebook, and basically living on or near their internet source, they simply were not engaging in the act of thought. I now think it has more to do with how this connection process keeps them from any sort of physical activity and therefore their brains are not so much on overload as simply on standby. We know that each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body, and that the hemisphere of the brain that needs to be functioning needs to be activated. So what activates the brain? Exercise! So I aks ya (to borrow a phrase from My Cousin Vinny), why aren't we asking our students to wake up their brains? How does demanding that they come in, sit down, and remain quiet while we "teach" get the lights to go on? We have always known that little children learn through play, we still know this but even our little ones are less active in play than they really need to be. It gets worse as they grow. This will be continued because it merits some deep thought and questioning and I have just begun.
Rosemary
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