Education starts at home

Education starts at home

 

Some parents think that once their children are at school, they can relax and let the education system take control. But this is not the case at all. As research shows, parents have an even greater influence on their children's academic results than the school does. Most of a child's ability to communicate, to relate to teachers and peers and their attitude to learning, is formed from home. Parents can help give their children a head start, by beginning their education at home. Many parents don't realise how they can help their children at home. Things as simple as baking a cake with their children can help them with their education.

 

Measuring out ingredients for a cake is a simple form of maths. Another example of helping young children with their maths is simply planning a birthday party. They have to decide how many people to invite, how many invitations they will need, how much the stamps will cost, how many prizes, bags, cups, plates, and balloons need to be bought, and so on. Children often find that real life experiences help them to do their maths more easily.

 

Another way that parents can help their children with their maths, is to give them pocket money. It does not have to be a large amount and they may have to do chores to earn it. This not only teaches them about the value of money but they may need to use basic maths to work out how long they will have to save to buy the special toy that they want. This means that children are developing their money sense, as well as their math's skills. Reading to children at an early age can give them a head start when they start school. But parents should not stop reading to children when they do start going to school.

 

They still like to be read to and it can help to increase their sight vocabulary as well. Parents can also help their children with their reading skills by providing them with reading opportunities. Parents can read their children books, signs, magazines-or anything else that interests them. Teaching children the alphabet whilst they are young, can also help them with their spelling and reading. Providing children with the right equipment can help with their education. Giving them a quiet place where they can work, read and do homework, with a good reading light and a comfortable chair and desk, are just some of these things.

 

Parents can also help their children by providing them with some reference books and any other relevant learning material they might need. There are many ways that parents can help their children with their oral communication skills. Some of these include letting their child answer the phone and order food and participate in family conversation and informal conversation with neighbours so that they can experience all different situations where different types of speech are used.

 

It is important to encourage good speech and parents should do this by using correct speech themselves and helping their children when they say something incorrectly. Parents can help with society and environment in a number of different ways. For sample, they can show their children how the scale and legends on a road map help you to determine your route. Parents can also help their children with finding information for assignments but they have to make sure that they do not do the assignments for them.

 

Science is everywhere around us and helping children with this subject can be very easy for parents. Pointing out flora and fauna in the garden for example is giving children a head start in their education. The fridge, TV, air-conditioner and computer are all related to science in one way or another and teaching young children about these things and of course many others, can help to develop their scientific minds.

 

Health starts from an early age and teaching children basic things at home can help them when they start to go to school. Parents can teach their children about food, exercise and rest and this will help them with health, as these things are related to it. Parents can also teach their children the importance of safety rules, hand washing, and caring for teeth, all of which are increasing their knowledge of the topic. So if parents want their children to do well at school, they must be prepared to help educate their children at home.

Computers in education

Computers in education

There is quite a debate on whether or not computers have positively effected education. Some proponents of computers in school argue the fact that computers are vast in the supply of resources as well as the fact that computers dominate society and will continue to do so. Opponents of computers in education take the position of experiencing things actually and not just on a computer screen, a reality versus virtual reality argument. In addition to this, there is the aspect of time involved with using a computer as opposed to interaction with actual living things. Computers have in many ways enhanced education but it has also weakened other skills taught in school as well.

The first skill lost is obvious with the use of word processing programs today. Of course they are convenient for typing papers because of the neatness and uniformity they provide as opposed to handwriting. Computers also make it easy to fix mistakes without using white out or scratching out words. However, it is discouraging children to learn how to spell correctly, use correct grammar, and in some word processing programs use more vibrant and exciting words.

With spell check students don't need to know how to spell words correctly because the computer will fix the words for them. With grammar check students are given the correct ways to fix their grammatical errors without even noticing them for themselves. And in certain programs equipped with the Thesaurus, children's unique thoughts are enhanced without doing it themselves. Whatever happened to the do-it-yourself dictionary, grammar book, and thesaurus, and not to mention proofreading.

Some say that computers promote literacy because of all of the text present on web sites and everything else on the computer, which is okay, but what good is reading if students don't know about sentence structure, how to notice errors, or what certain words mean because the computer has done all of this for them already.

Computers provide for a vast world of resources which is very helpful in education. Teachers can go onto the internet to find added information on a topic and find useful fun activities for lessons. The internet can be used for students to find information and do research for projects and assignments as well. The danger behind this is the fact that students can also find term papers and other assignments on the computer done by other people and use them as their own works without the teacher knowing. This is not only deceitful, but the students learn absolutely nothing.

One area where I think computers greatly impact education beneficially is the use of computers as teaching tools by the teacher. Teachers can construct powerPoint presentations in order to provide their students with necessary information. Teachers can use different software programs to show geography, science, history, and math, among other things, and help their students learn visually. However, the argument presented by Clifford stoll is one in which he feels that experiencing the real thing is far more beneficial as opposed to being shown on a computer screen.

With computers in school there are a couple of problems. Obviously computers can be used as a learning tool with software to aid in learning, but there are some problems with this. In poorer school districts computers cannot be afforded, it is unfair for one school to have a ratio of five students to one computer and then an entire school have only twenty computers for the entire student body. Another problem facing schools is where they are putting these computers. According to stoll, libraries, art rooms, shop classes, and music rooms have been replaced by computer labs.

Computers may be informational, but they cannot teach you how to play an instrument, cut a piece of wood, or give you the supplies to paint a picture. And this human interaction being lost by replacing these experiences is effecting the student's creativity.

Another big question when computers are discussed is funding for these tools. Stoll adds "money spent on computers means money not spent on something else," and some schools really push for extra computers, but what about another teacher to lower class size, or new text books, or something else that could be more beneficial. According to www.realworld.org " the best teacher has always been a person not a machine." This can be reaffirmed by stoll "time on the computer inevitably means time taken away from real interaction with teachers and other students"

Computers have been a serious convenience in our lives in many ways. In relation to education they have made it easier to write essays and term papers. Students can make mistakes and correct them easily with their personal computer. However, sometimes these mistakes are corrected without the student using their knowledge. Computers have opened up a new world with the internet, enabling information and activities to be easily accessible, but it has also donestudents work for them allowing them to cheat and be lazy.

Computer labs have replaced rooms once used for art, music, and shop classes and in some cases even libraries. Computers also have programs available in order to reinforce learning like math games, geography and history games, science games and software to show scientific events like plants growing, but these programs are no replacement for the actual human interaction and discussion provided by a teacher and other students. Computers have impacted education both positively and at the same time negatively, but there is one thing that is for certain: Computers should be used as a learning supplement, not a learning substitute.

Quality of our education

Quality of our education

I feel we as a country we can't really complain about the quality of our education. We have it real good. People from many other countries often travel here to get higher education. But there are some things that could be changed. We need to use our advancements in technology to our advantage. Also, more specialized teachers would improve the quality of learning. And in high school the thing I felt was the biggest problem was class size it was too hard to listen to a teacher and focus on the material with a class of over twenty-five.

Technology is what makes the world go. We need to use this to our advantage to make our education better. There are many ways to make this possible. We could use the internet to broadcast interactive classes. This way you have the best possible teachers to teach everyone all over the country and even the world.

In doing this the level of education will rise, because the teachers will be the best in their field. Right now technology is already making it easier to learn. We have so many resources over the computer and internet. This is just going to continue to grow as far as our advancements in technology grow. Right now in many schools there are teachers that have gone to school and learned how to teach. Many of the teachers may not be the best in their field.

For example in music someone who has studied music all their life would most likely make a better teacher then someone who went to school to be a music teacher. But in many cases will not get a job as a teacher because they do not have that teaching background. The same goes for art classes. If we had the best artists and musicians teaching our classes the children would learn more.

The biggest issue in schools today I feel is class size. Schools are getting over crowed and the classes are getting to big. It is making it harder to learn and each student gets less personal attention from the teacher. When a teacher has one on one interaction with the student the student will probably learn more and retain more of the information. With smaller class sizes the teacher can monitor all the students easier.

Then if one student is having a problem with a specific topic the teacher can stop and focus on that issue with the student. In turn bettering education as a whole. In many high schools the average class size is about twenty-five. This is either because there are not enough teachers or not enough classrooms. This is a big issue because it is harder to learn in a large class than it is in a smaller class with about fifteen students in it.

The importance of education

The importance of education



According to Bacon "Reading maketh a full man; writing an exact man and conference a ready man.' And if someone asks what reading, writing and conference make together, anyone would say that they stand for education. In other words, we can say that education makes anyone complete, Accurate and worldly wise. It means that noone is complete without education.

 

Thus we can confidently say that education is necessary for the all-round development of the personality of a human-being. He cannot hope for success, name, fame and prosperity in life without it. Even a nation would be devoid of any progress, if its citizens fail to have the benefits of education. H.L. Wayland has correctly said,"Universal suffrage, without universal education, would be a curse." For the success of any democracy, education is a must. Imagine a country with illiterate ministers voted to power by illiterate people !

 

Unfortunately, there are many people who downgrade the value of education and say that it has never benefited anyone. But this is not correct. Knowledge is too far advanced today for a man to gain without its specialized branch. Trade, industry, agriculture, medicine, the I.T. and all other areas have become so complex that no one can take up any job without being educated.

 

An educated man will never find himself stranded in the midst of any difficulty. His brain, developed by serious-thinking during his academic years, will unfailingly arrive at some solution to the problem that besets him. This is what education prepares us for. And most of all, education gives us not only the mental but also physical strength necessary to face any challenges of life with dignity.

 

An illiterate person simply gropes in the dark, leaving result to chance or fate. He is ultimately dependent on others. Farmers in India, in olden times, who could not read or write, were cheated out of their land and willingly suffered exploitation and injustice only because they had no education. They were deprived of their rights by unscrupulous landlords, moneylenders and middlemen who made them put their thumb impressions to false documents of possession. Women in India had been suppressed, dominated and ill-treated only because they had no education. But now with their having been educated to a certain extent, the old situation has started changing quite fast.

 

Now they have come out in the open to fight for their rights. They are now not dependent on others, nor do they silently submit to whatever cruelty is meted out to them. Education liberates a man's mind from wrong thinking, ignorance, superstitions and prejudices. It frees him from evil influences and vices. It equips him with knowledge and skill which would enable him to make a good living, culminating in his being an ideal citizen.

 

With the spread of education, gone are the days of bonded labour, economic slavery, pangs on account of being an untouchable and being misled by black magic. Thus it can be boldly claimed that education has awakened the masses all over the world.