Professional Conveyor-belt Burnout

Our oldest daughter, Sam, was home from college this past week, taking a break in-between Spring and Summer semesters. She is really working hard to get through school quickly and efficiently. We are so proud of her for her hard work and dedication to her chosen path. Sam chose a Professional Conveyor-belt education because she feels her mission is to "Heal the Sick". Her desire is to become a Pharmacist, which in today's society, requires a Professional Conveyor-belt education.

This choice is a good one for her.

Yet, I found this last time she was home that her Love of Learning was is serious jeopardy. She normally asks for a suggested book to read while she is here. This time, when I offered a new book, she said, "No, I need a break from reading and studying. My brain is fried."

I pondered about this for a few days. Yes, we do all need breaks sometimes, even from studying the things that we love. But, I wondered if this was actually a matter of Professional Conveyor-belt Burnout. I know I experienced it myself while attending NAU for Early Childhood Education. I reached a point where even things I LOVED became a burden.

What do I do with burnout?

There are some natural responses to burnout that our bodies and minds naturally gravitate to.

One, is to take a break. The question is...what kind of break? Modern society might say, "Go to a Movie." or "Do something fun!" The natural tendency seems to be to entertain oneself when you face burnout. While this can be fun, it may actually cause burnout to last longer or not be faced at all.

Another way is to re-evaluate. Some questions to ask might be;

• When did burnout begin?
• What was happening when I began to feel burnout?
• Did I recognize it right away or deny it?
• What can I do differently?
• Is burnout related to not taking care of myself or taking on too much (not following the Six Month No)?
• How does this affect my Compass?
• What do I need to adjust to not face burnout again?

When we take the time to re-evaluate the reasons for our feelings of burnout, we begin to THINK of possibilities rather than react with a knee-jerk reaction. Once we re-evaluate, we can make the corrections needed to avoid burnout again and hopefully see the path that got us there.

Sometimes there are outside forces that contribute to burnout. These are often beyond our control. It may be wise to discuss the outside forces with a trusted friend, parent, spouse, or sibling. Counseling may even be in order if an ongoing problem persists in unbalancing us. Adjusting our Compass to accommodate these uncontrollable outside forces may be in order. Saying No to more things, or Yes to the right things could bring better balance to our lives. Bringing balance to our lives will do more to correct burnout than to throw ourselves into entertainment pursuits.

 

Educate to Innovate Initiative

Recently President Obama said in the State of the Union Address that he wants to focus on "educating for innovation" because we need to compete in a global world. (See the White House webpage here.) The website says this will be done through:

"five major public-private partnerships are harnessing the power of media, interactive games, hands-on learning, and community volunteers to reach millions of students over the next four years, inspiring them to be the next generation of inventors and innovators."

The part that bothers me the most about this statement is "media and interactive games".  From the list of contributors on the website, it seems like video games to me.

Several years ago before I started educating my children at home, I worked in a computer lab at the local elementary school where my children attended. I oversaw a set of educational games that were engineered to teach the children for the state's mandatory testing. The school district was shown all kinds of charts and predictions on how much the children's test scores would improve with this system. The school district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase this system for all of the schools and built additional computer labs in each school, then employed teachers like myself to implement and oversee the system.

I had access to two years worth of records on the student's test scores and I can firmly say that across the board absolutely NO improvement was made. A handful of individuals had improved scores, but as a whole it was a huge failure. In fact, the school lost some of the funding used for state testing after the second year. In other words, their test scores went down, not up. The school's test score rating in the state was lowered and they lost funding based on these results.

So what does that tell us? Could it be that entertaining educational products do not work?

In a 2003 study done about improving test scores using an ILS (Integrated learning System a.k.a technology driven, game like teaching) the following was reported:

"Controlled studies of ILS effects on reading achievement carried out over a period of three decades suggest, therefore, that ILSs do not usually make meaningful contributions to reading improvement in elementary schools."

However, if you do a search over the web you'll find countless websites telling us that educational video games do improve test scores. So what should we believe?

First of all, if you spend all your time teaching to the test then test scores will most likely improve. But what effect does that have on education for the individual? It might mean they know everything that their classmates know, but for how long? What cements that knowledge in place long-term?

Second, what do test scores matter in the world anyway? Does a student who does well in science and math always become an innovator? Does a student who aces the math section on the SATs always become an inventor?

I am a firm believer that we are what we eat. I also believe that we are what we read. If I spend all my time reading Comic Books, then I will only understand short sentences with very little plot. My focus will be minimal in understanding how the world works. I'll remain at a childish state of knowledge.

If I study Jane Eyre, Shakespeare, Socrates, Euclid, Einstein...all the great classics, I will be able to understand good vs. evil, philosophy, science, history, etc. My ability to discuss things of value will greatly improve and I'll know what the great minds of our world knew. I will grow to a mature state of knowledge.

I will become what I read.

The question is...what do people who focus on media and video games become?

Professional Conveyor Belt

The Professional Conveyor Belt is an extension of the Conveyor Belt. Typically this is college, where products of the schools turn into specialist or experts in a field of study. In the Conveyor Belt, students were taught what to think. In the Professional Conveyor Belt, students are taught WHEN to think.
This type of education is also important to society. After all, we want our pediatrician to have studied specific things; anatomy, pharmacology, etc. We want our attorney to have studied law. We want our surgeon to have had the classes and field experience necessary to successfully complete a surgery. Without these experts our society would suffer.
Leadership Education is the third type of education. The type of education that our founding fathers had, with a mentor who showed them the way.