Parents Blog

Prior learning gives your children a big head start in school education and improved results

We are going to let you into a little secret. This secret is a learning technique, a key to your children getting ahead and improving results in their school education and at the same time makes their learning so much easier.

After we have told you the secret we are also going to tell you how you can use this knowledge to help your children and give them one of the best chances you can for their education and learning. To explain, the first thing we are going to give you is the results of some brilliant research.

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If you don’t use your brain you could lose your mind

French neuro scientist Francois Dartigues has looked into the relationship between how intellectually challenging a job is and the likelihood of you becoming mentally impaired as you get older.

He concludes that if you don’t use your brain then its powers could diminish, so to help avoid this you need to keep your brain active.

One interesting observation he made was that retired farm workers were more than twice as likely as retired farm managers to become mentally impaired as they got older. The workers were considered to have had less intellectually challenging jobs than the managers and that this was the cause of the difference.

And what is the moral of the story?  Well, the way to keep mentally alert is to do things that challenge you intellectually, to keep your brain active.  How?

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Left brain, Right brain – Your learning resource in two halves?

It has been said by researchers such as Roger Perry that the human brain can be viewed as being in two halves with each providing its own defined learning resource to the individual.

The left side of the brain is thought to be the logical half processing information sequentially in parts. The right side of the brain is said to be the creative side processing in ‘wholes’.

This understanding has led to an industry of commentators who have categorised people as predominantly ‘left brained’ or ‘right brained’, often saying that one is better than the other, if you like that one learning resource is better than the other. Is this the correct view and how does the answer matter to you personally and as a parent?

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