Welcome FlowerChild

This little 6-year old girl from New Zealand has an amazing talent. And it must be great to know at a very young age what your strengths are and to be able to practice and develop your talents. There are not many young people who have the same opportunities. Often school, homework, parents’ wishes, TV, games, and other obligations drive children away from their first and inner passion. As a result later as adults they feel they do not lead a fulfilling live, they are dissatisfied and suffer from depressions or will finally get a burnout. To find out what the inner passion of a person is we need to change the school systems and make parents and teachers aware that it is not important how much children learn, but how they can find out what drives them from the inside. I hope that very soon there will be new systems installed that make our children people with strong inner desires.

A study published in the Journal of Chinese Medicine has found that including a Qigong exercise program helped calm and energize students, as well as improve health and reduce aggression. Teachers, school administrators and parents all desire to create an optimal learning environment for young students. In seeking a solution to this goal a unique approach was to conduct a study of using Qigong in three elementary schools and one high school.  Claudia Witt, MD, and associates from the Institute for Social Epidemiology, Epidemiology and Health Economics at the University of Berlin, did a study on 140 students to determine the result of a six-month program of Qi gong movement instruction for the students’ health and behavior.

The teachers were first instructed for eight weeks in the Qigong movements. Then they spent 15 to 25 minutes twice per week instructing students before or after regular lessons. At the end of the six months, researchers conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the teachers. The teachers were first asked, “Have you noticed any changes in your students during the qigong project?”  

The teachers reported various positive effects, including that the students seemed much calmer, less agitated or aggressive, and more able to concentrate in class. Additionally, several teachers reported that students who had previously been absent due to frequent illnesses were in class more often. 

In the Netherlands every year around 50.000 children between 12 and 16 years old drop out of school without returning. Some of them just stop school because they prefer to work, but a large group has very poor future chances and a potential risk to end up in criminal circuits. In many other countries there are similar dangers. The education for these children needs to be adapted. Outside school they are not supported and treated as a valuable individual with talents. Their only chance to have a happy future is school. Teachers for this group are not only teachers, but also mentors, psychologists and even a bit father and mother. These teachers need to be trained to become professionals who really care for this group. “Students are more likely to succeed when they feel connected to school” is also the conclusion of the experts. “Increasing the number of students connected to school is likely to impact critical accountability measures, such as: academic performance, incidents of fighting, bullying or vandalism, absenteeism [and] school completion rates.”

The teachers have the “golden key” in the battle against criminality!

The French president Nicolas Sarkozy has a rescue plan for the national newspapers, who have serious financial problems since years already. He is going to fund a free subscription for every 18-year old in France. Sarkozy is convinced that young people get used to reading the paper and will automatically renew the subscription later in life. Very ambitious and also generous, but I doubt that this rescue plan for the written press is going to work. Young people are already more and more learning about the news via Internet and mobile phones. Paper news is old fashioned. Sarkozy can better invest in more modern ways of spreading news among young people. Waste of tax payers money.

In the Journal of Neuroscience I found information about the functioning of the brain with young children compared to adults. The front part of the brain is the part where learning takes place. Children and adults were asked to answer questions while they were inside a brain scanner. The brain activity with young children was much higher when they got positive feedback. With adults this was opposite. Their brain activity was stimulated with negative feedback. The turning point is at the age of twelve. This means that children under 12 do not change their behaviour rapidly telling them that something is wrong. Saying ‘no’, of ‘that’s wrong’ does not have an immediate effect. Positive stimulation on the other hand works much better. Teachers and parents can profit from this by showing children how to find the right answer and the right behaviour.