Comment by MandieD
1 year ago
“And some tools are simply more biological: a person in good physical health can think more clearly than a person for whom this is not true, for the simple reason of nutrient supply to the brain being more efficient in the former than the latter.”
Most important learning aid: easily-available, nutritious breakfast and lunch. Quit fooling around with school lunch accounts and debt, financial qualification for free or reduced-price meals; just feed the kids decent food.
Hungry, malnourished kids can’t begin to concentrate. Disadvantaged American kids aren’t (usually) short of total calories, but they are often short of good food available at the right times. Good meals at home require more money and/or time and thought. Little home economics programs throughout the school years would be both good academic opportunities (apply those fractions we’ve been working on, see what baking soda does when it meets an acid) and cultivate the thinking that makes cooking at home an easier routine as an adult.
Second-most important: physical activity that doesn’t feel like a punishment. This is trickier.
Re: food, I don't disagree, but how do we get decent food? It's hard enough to find decent food if you're an adult. For example: sugar is commonly used in the food industry to help make everything taste better, including savoury food! This is not yet something I have confirmed, but I suspect also that most food comes from farms that cannot provide nutritious vegetables, fruits, eggs, or milk due to exhausted soils and poorly fed (and cruelly kept) animals. In the second case: apart from the incredible cruelty, how nutritious do you think the milk of factory cows, or the eggs of factory chickens, if they themselves, are not healthy? Similarly, how do we know that plant produce that comes from farms that tend to grow only one type of crop still meets nutritional standards? Is anyone measuring? Would love to get some clarification on this.).
Re: physical activity. It might be easier than food because of the above concerns, because it is much more within our control?
We're helped out in part by the fact that physical exercise feels good.
The issue is that the way physical exercise is presented in school tends to be through competition and/or sports. From here, and due to other signals being received, it's not hard for kids to develop immense self-consciousness which makes it something they wish to avoid.
Kids also don't learn to combine meditation and physical exercise. Meditation to help manage the social anxiety, and to help manage the physical discomfort. Yoga is surprisingly simple (no equipment required) yet effective for maintaining flexibility, posture, and strength, while also being easily amenable to incorporating meditation.
For cardiac health: there is little science employed in helping a student gradually improve their physical capacity, in a gradual fashion. HIIT is some of the best we know of for time-efficient exercises that also naturally take into account personal limits. How do you know you've done enough HIIT for the day? You're panting hard. You've hit your goal, your body will do the rest. Tolerance for discomfort improves hand-in-hand with improvements to self-image, and increased cardiac fitness. Before the student knows it, it isn't "awful drudgery" to consider doing a "12 minute run". Because they've gradually prepared for it!
The physical activity has to be fun which is very individual so to each their own. This is usually done my forcing the kids to do all of them in school and hope something sticks for their rest life.