A Retrospective on High School Reunions: The First Years Last Forever

September 20, 2010

“Ah, the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” With that quote in an email, a man I met in nursery school invited me to a reunion for a high school I didn’t attend. He wrote, “I know you didn’t go to high school with us, but some of us are trying to track down old friends we loved and cared about from our childhood and youth who were in that age group…Care to come along?”

And for me, the answer was yes!  The reunion was this past weekend and as we drive away from my childhood hometown, 550 miles from where we now live, I am flooded with memories, old and new.
Some people avoid reunions at all costs. We worry about being judged for our lack of accomplishments and there was some of that. But for many of us, being judged was of little consequence, several decades later. We are old enough not to care much any more.

The U.S. is #11th… It’s Time to Listen to the Children

September 14, 2010

Many people know by now that the United States has fallen to Number 11th in Newsweek’s list of the best countries in the world.  What is interesting is that the debate about why we are loosing our “oomph as a superpower” has focused in part on U.S. education. As always when we are faced with a crisis, we look for places to assign blame as well as to seek solutions. What’s also interesting in this debate is that we have moved beyond blaming teachers, schools, and unions. We are focusing on the children.

In the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson writes about the lack of student motivation. If students aren’t motivated, teachers and schools will fail. In an editorial in the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman writes that student apathy is rooted in deeper cultural values: a culture where all solutions must be painless and without sacrifice, where “far too many of us were happy to buy the dot-com and sub-prime crack for quick prosperity highs.”  Friedman calls for bringing back old-fashioned family values by teaching our children to postpone gratification, invest for the future, work hard, and meet high expectations.  

A decade’s worth of research on child development and neuroscience for my book, Mind in the Making has led me to a similar conclusion—that we must promote life skills in our children that teach them to have self control and to take on challenges, for example.  But I would argue that parents and teachers can not promote these values and skills in the same old ways. That has helped to create an apathy among students that is endemic.

Join Ellen Galinsky for a Webinar Presentation on September 15th

September 08, 2010

We are thrilled to announce that on September 15th, from  2-3 PM ET, Ellen Galinsky will be participating in Early Childhood Investigations: A Webinar Series sponsored by Robert-Leslie Publishing. Ellen will talk about  Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs, answer questions from  participants, and show video clips from recent experiments on children's learning. 

All participants will receive a special 20% discount on copies of Mind in the Making. This series of webinars is designed to spark engagement with the thought leaders and problem solvers in early care and education. We invite you to join us for a lively discussion! Please click here more information or to register for the webinar.

We Need Play-cations, Not Just Vacations

September 07, 2010

By Ellen Galinsky

It's Labor Day Weekend--the last weekend of summer before we plunge into fall. Hurricane Earl swept up the East Coast, missing us, but bringing cold biting winds that, even amid the bright sunlight, seemed a signal that summer--vacation season--is ebbing and it is back to work we go.

That is, if we ever left work. Work, as we all know, can be all-the-time, every-place. A special study on overwork by the Families and Work Institute (FWI) reveals that that one in three of all U.S. employees can be considered chronically overworked.

I know the facts about vacations from the FWI's nationally representative study, the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, and they tell an interesting story.

Fact 1: Not all us have access to a paid vacation: 79% of American employees receive paid vacation time from their employers.

Fact 2: On average, we are entitled to a little more than two weeks off (16 paid days). Half of the U.S. workforce receives fewer than 15 days.

Fact 3: Even when we are entitled to vacations, not everyone takes all of the days he or she has: 39% of us don't use our full vacations. Americans use an average of 13.5 days of vacation per year.

Fact 4: The longest amount of time we take off at one time averages nine days. One in four of us (24%) takes five days or fewer for his or her longest vacation, while 23% take more than 13 days.

Fact 5: Taking a longer vacation (13 consecutive days or more, including weekends or holidays) bodes well for our health. Those employees who take longer vacations are less likely to have minor health problems on a regular basis, depression, sleep problems or to feel stressed.

These are the facts, but they don't tell us much about what happens during vacations. Many of us work while on vacations. It seemed almost standard practice this summer to receive a bounce-message to an email I had sent that read: "I am on vacation and don't have access to email and voice mail," only to receive a response from that person within a few hours. Still others of us take work on vacations or plan vacations that can be viewed as an extension of our work.

The Brain Unplugged From Technology: Implications for Learning in Young Children

August 17, 2010

“Attention is the holy grail.”

These are the words of David Strayer, a professor of psychology who studies attention and the brain. And last month, he organized a week-long camping trip with four other neuroscientists to experience for themselves how unplugging from technology affected their own brains.

This is an issue that the scientists on this trip consider of the utmost importance. As Strayer says: “Everything you are conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on attention.”

As the scientists and an accompanying reporter, photographer, and outdoorsman rafted on the San Juan River in Southern Utah, hiked along canyons, and camped—far out of range from their BlackBerries, cell phones, and computers, they discussed the potential impact of technology on the brain. Does being bombarded by technology crowd out our working memories? Does it tax our abilities to process information? Does it impair our capacity to learn? They shared these and other thoughts with Matt Richtel, who wrote a front-page article about their journey for the New York Times on August 16th.