lunes, 26 de septiembre de 2016

MercatorNet: How kids can benefit from boredom

MercatorNet: How kids can benefit from boredom

How kids can benefit from boredom



How kids can benefit from boredom

TV, the internet and smartphone can stifle imagination
Teresa Belton | Sep 26 2016 | comment 

From books, arts and sports classes to iPads and television, many parents do everything in their power to entertain and educate their children. But what would happen if children were just left to be bored from time to time? How would it affect their development?
I began to think about boredom and children when I was researching the influence of television on children’s storytelling in the 1990s. Surprised at the lack of imagination in many of the hundreds of stories I read by ten to 12 year-old children in five different Norfolk schools, I found that this might partly be an effect of TV viewing. Indeed, findings of earlier research has revealed that television does indeed reduce children’s imaginative capacities.
For instance, a large scale study carried out in Canada in the 1980s as television was gradually being extended across the country, compared children in three communities – one which had four TV channels, one with one channel and one with none. The researchers studied these communities on two occasions, just before one of the towns obtained television for the first time, and again two years later. The children in the no-TV town scored significantly higher than the others on “divergent thinking skills”, a measure of imaginativeness. This was until they, too, got TV – when their skills dropped to the same level as that of the other children.
The apparent stifling effect of watching TV on imagination is a concern, as imagination is important. Not only does it enrich personal experience, it is also necessary for empathy – imagining ourselves in someone else’s shoes – and is indispensable in creating change. The significance of boredom here is that children (indeed adults too) often fall back on television or – these days – a digital device, to keep boredom at bay.
Some years after my study, I began to notice certain creative professionals mentioning how important boredom was to their creativity, both in childhood and now. I interviewed some of them. One was writer and actress Meera Syal. She related how she had occupied school holidays staring out of the window at the rural landscape, and doing various things outside her “usual sphere”, like learning to bake cakes with the old lady next door. Boredom also made her write a diary, and it is to this that she attributes her writing career. “It’s very freeing, being creative for no other reason than that you freewheel and fill time,” she said.
Similarly, well-known neuroscientist Susan Greenfield said she had little to do as a child and spent much time drawing and writing stories. These became the precursors of her later work, the scientific study of human behaviour. She still chooses paper and pen over a laptop on a plane, and looks forward with relish to these constrained times.
Sporting, musical and other organised activities can certainly benefit a child’s physical, cognitive, cultural and social development. But children also need time to themselves – to switch off from the bombardment of the outside world, to daydream, pursue their own thoughts and occupations, and discover personal interests and gifts.
We don’t have to have a particular creative talent or intellectual bent to benefit from boredom. Just letting the mind wander from time to time is important, it seems, for everybody’s mental wellbeing and functioning. A study has even shown that, if we engage in some low-key, undemanding activity at same time, the wandering mind is more likely to come up with imaginative ideas and solutions to problems. So it’s good for children to be helped to learn to enjoy just pottering – and not to grow up with the expectation that they should be constantly on the go or entertained.
How to handle a bored child    
Parents often feel guilty if children complain of boredom. But it’s actually more constructive to see boredom as an opportunity rather than a deficit. Parents do have a role, but rushing in with a ready-made solutions is not helpful. Rather, children need the adults around them to understand that creating their own pastimes requires space, time and the possibility of making a mess (within limits – and to be cleared up afterwards by the children themselves).
They will need some materials too, but these need not be sophisticated – simple things are often more versatile. We’ve all heard of the toddler ignoring the expensive present and playing with the box it came in instead. For older children, a magnifying glass, some planks of wood, a basket of wool, and so on, might be the start of many happily occupied hours.
But to get the most benefit from times of potential boredom, indeed from life in general, children also need inner resources as well as material ones. Qualities such as curiosity, perseverance, playfulness, interest and confidence allow them to explore, create and develop powers of inventiveness, observation and concentration. These also help them to learn not to be deterred if something doesn’t work the first time, and try again. By encouraging the development of such capacities, parents offer children something of lifelong value.
If a child has run out of ideas, giving them some kind of challenge can prompt them to continue to amuse themselves imaginatively. This could range from asking them to find out what kind of food their toy dinosaurs enjoy in the garden to going off and creating a picture story with some friends and a digital camera.
Most parents would agree that they want to raise self-reliant individuals who can take initiatives and think for themselves. But filling a child’s time for them teaches nothing but dependence on external stimulus, whether material possessions or entertainment. Providing nurturing conditions and trusting children’s natural inclination to engage their minds is far more likely to produce independent, competent children, full of ideas.
In fact, there’s a lesson here for all of us. Switching off, doing nothing and letting the mind wander can be great for adults too – we should all try to do more of it.
Teresa Belton, Visiting Fellow at the School of Education & Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
MercatorNet

Long before same-sex marriage was topical, same-sex schooling was heatedly debated -- or as it is usually termed, single-sex schooling. The debate over whether boys do better in all-boys schools and girls do better in all-girls schools continues, though more vigorously in Australia and the UK than in the US, where single-sex schools are uncommon. An American expert who has spent her whole career fighting single-sex schools spoke recently in Melbourne. She presented data purporting to show that perceived advantages are "trivial and, in many cases, non-existent". 
Dr Andrew Mullins, a former headmaster of two schools in Sydney, contends that this is quite wrong. He says, "There is absolutely no consensus that a child, because he or she is educated in a single-sex school, is disadvantaged, and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary." It's a fascinating read.


Michael Cook 
Editor 
MERCATORNET



New Australian book on marriage hits censorship roadblock
By Michael Cook
Why are gay marriage supporters afraid to debate?
Read the full article
How kids can benefit from boredom
By Teresa Belton
TV, the internet and smartphone can stifle imagination
Read the full article
The real issue behind the single-sex education debate
By Andrew Mullins
There is no consensus that children are disadvantaged by studying in a single-sex school
Read the full article
Why your kids shouldn’t be your friends
By Tamara El-Rahi
Because you love them and want the best for them.
Read the full article
The declining institution of marriage in China
By Marcus Roberts
Further signs that China's longterm population prospects are not rosy.
Read the full article
Young adult novel meets social agenda
By Jennifer Minicus
Teens deserve better than what this book has to offer.
Read the full article
Hubris and hype in stem cell research
By Philippa Taylor
The recent news about 'motherless babies' was gobbled up by gullible media
Read the full article
The toxic fumes of democracy
By Michael Cook
Heated debate and stable democracy go hand in hand, even with same-sex marriage
Read the full article
Regensburg, Ratzinger, and our crisis of reason
By Samuel Gregg
Defending reason from fideism and 'feelings'.
Read the full article
The spy in your pocket
By Michael Cook
A philosopher describes how our privacy is threatened by the continuing encroachment of technology.
Read the full article
Pay no attention to the man behind the algorithm
By Heather Zeiger
Our digital gatekeepers fall short of their own hype.
Read the full article


MERCATORNET | New Media Foundation 
Suite 12A, Level 2, 5 George Street, North Strathfied NSW 2137, Australia 

Designed by elleston
New Media Foundation | Suite 12A, Level 2, 5 George St | North Strathfield NSW 2137 | AUSTRALIA | +61 2 8005 8605

MercatorNet: How kids can benefit from boredom

No hay comentarios:

Publicar un comentario