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The Montessori Schools Embracing Kid-Tracking Devices
Schools spend billions of dollars on technology with promises of personalized learning and building 21st-century skills. Wildflower Schools, a network of small, teacher-led Montessori schools founded in 2014, has a more radical idea: use sensors to track kids’ every movement—where they go, what they work with, who they interact with, and how long they engage with materials in the classroom. It may sound creepy, and perhaps something that might make Maria Montessori roll over in her grave. But its backers say it’s an effort to make Montessori, an educational philosophy with passionate global backing, even more Montessori. ...
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How to avoid the traps that produce loneliness and isolation
“Hell is other people,” wrote the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1944 play “No Exit.” Sartre was wrong. Hell is the lack of other people, and according to the health-insurance company Cigna, loneliness and social isolation are rampant in the United States today. About half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone, Cigna found in a 2018 study of more than 20,000 U.S. adults. Barely more than half say they have meaningful daily in-person social interactions. … You might ask why there is a sudden research interest in this topic. The answer: Researchers are discovering that loneliness harms both mental and physical health.
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Happy People Don’t Ignore The World’s Problems, They Act To Solve Them
A team of psychologists led by Kostadin Kushlev of Georgetown University examined the idea that individual happiness may act as an impediment to solving the world’s problems. “As nations across the globe become more interested in human happiness, some have expressed concerns about the downsides of being happier,” state Kushlev and his team of collaborators. “What if in our rush to make everyone happy, people became complacent about the plight of their local communities, society, and the world?” The data, however, do not support this line of reasoning.
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The Visual Language of Comic Books Can Improve Brain Function
Here’s a tradition that has persisted for generations: Kids huddle outside the doors of their local comic book shops—clutching their weekly allowance, babysitting money, loose change scavenged from between sofa cushions—just itching to get their hands on the latest issue of Superman, The Amazing Spiderman, or Teen Titans. And accompanying this tradition are the unenlightened parents who roll their eyes at the stacks of glossy paperbacks avalanching to the floor, sighing “Well, at least they’re reading something.” ... Traditional text is limited to presenting the same information sequentially.
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Start Fresh: 6 Tips For Emotional Well-Being In 2020
As a college student, Katy Milkman played tennis and loved going to the gym. But when she started graduate school, her exercise routine started to flunk. ... What got her back to regular workouts was something she calls "temptation bundling." She resolved to indulge in her love of wizard-lit only while at the gym, by listening to audiobooks with earbuds. Milkman, now a professor at the Wharton School of Business who specializes in human decision-making, says that when it comes to making a behavioral change, the trick is to pair the thing you dread with something you love.
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The Fourth Commandment Of Highly Effective Leadership: Counter Your Negative Thoughts
Professor Martin Seligman is known as the father of positive psychology. In his popular TED Talk, he argues that most psychologists are fixated on finding what’s “wrong” with people, while he insists on finding what’s “right." His theory, and the theories of so many positive psychologists, are based on a study he conducted with a large group of children who were at risk of depression. In his book, Learned Optimism, Seligman shares how he taught the children to control their negative or pessimistic thinking using Dr. Aaron Beck’s cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) model.
