Brain-friendliness should be the number one priority of education.
In a way, the ability to focus is the most important and fundamental human ability, as it determines your ability to effectively use your other abilities.
If a school day leaves students feeling stressed out, distractible,
unmotivated, negatively worn out and bored with the world, and just
generally harms their cognitive or mental health, then the school is, in some very deep way, failing. Right?
(But obviously I'm not saying that everyone's attention should work the same way. Neurodiversity is a valuable thing.)
Two other "meta skills" that make it possible for you to use all your other skills effectively (that are usually missing from education) are JOY and RELAXATION.
ReplyDeleteAt least in creative work and in social situations, learning to relax or find joy seems to be absolutely essential. Personally, I suck at relaxing, so I mostly have to rely on joy (which is a fragile thing, too.) Joy makes it possible for me to access my intelligence. Without it, everything becomes awkward and insanely difficult, if not impossible to do.