The Courage to Grow

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Books of the Week

We have two related books to recommend this week:

• The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, by Madeline Levine, PhD. Our tendency is to focus on obviously disadvantaged kids coming from poor families. That can be a mistake, says author and practicing psychologist Madeline Levine, who works in affluent Marin County, California. Consumerism and focus on achievement can produce depressed, anxious, angry and bored teenagers who suffer from high rates of drug use, eating disorders,  and suicide. Sometimes, in fact, the seeming poor can have a far wealthier internal lives. Levine offers great suggestions for the advantaged to help them avoid common parenting pitfalls involving intrusiveness and autonomy.
• The Courage to Grow: How Acton Academy Turns Learning Upside Down, by Laura Sandefer.  The Acton Academies are private schools that were created to solve precisely the types of problems discussed in Levine’s Price of Privilege.  Laura Sandefer tells a personal story of her own children, and how and why she and her husband Jeff chose to develop a new system of schooling that focuses on the hero’s journey—and vaults students well above their standard grade level. (Incidentally, Jeff Sandefer, with his MBA from Harvard, was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top Entrepreneurship professors in the United States and by The Economist magazine as one of the top Business School professors in the world.) Acton Academies are spreading quickly worldwide, and it’s little wonder, because the schools embrace personal accountability even as they provide powerful learning opportunities for children. An honest, forthright, deeply thought-provoking book about what an education could and should be. (Audio version read by Laura Sandefer herself.)

How to Get a Low Cost Accredited Bachelor’s Degree Online

This magnificent article for Class Central by Manoel Cortes Mendez tells the story of how he got a bachelor’s degree in computer science online and at low cost through the the Open University (OU), a distinguished UK institution. Manoel notes: “Despite its unconventional mode of delivery, the OU is on paper a university like the others. More precisely, it’s a recognized body in the UK, which is British legalese for fully accredited. And it’s one of the few UK universities to also be regionally accredited in the US. So if after your OU degree, you want to pursue further studies in a brick university, you can. And this includes prestigious universities. For instance, one of my OU classmates went on to study a master’s degree in computer science at Oxford University.”

If you’re interested in low cost, high quality online degree programs, don’t miss this superb article!

So, You’re about to Submit a MOOC Quiz, and Your Internet Dies. What Do You Do?

Read this helpful article by Online Learning Success about how to cope with an unreliable internet, and be prepared!

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

As Learning How to Learners know, we’re keen fans of everything related to Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the “father of modern neuroscience.”  Here’s a swell article and video by Nasos Papadopoulos of Metalearn that will help you apply some of Ramón y Cajal’s key principles for success to your own life.

How can one control their nerves during public speaking or even an exam?

Barb’s answer to this question on Quora was so popular that it was also translated into French and republished on Slate FR.  

Are You Interested in Practical Creativity?

Building and creating beautiful objects like ceramics, glass, tapestry, kinetic sculpture, woodworked items, and bound books takes a special form of creativity—a more practical creativity.  Check out “The Practical Creative” podcast to learn more about these unique forms of expression.

Creating a “To-Do” List at Night May Help You Fall Asleep More Quickly

This nice Psychology Today blog post by Lydia Denworth describes recent research showing that: “In the study of 57 young adults, researchers from Baylor University and Emory University found that writing to-do lists, rather than writing about completed tasks, helped people fall asleep an average of nine minutes faster—in about 16 minutes versus 25.” [Hat tip: brandonrox10.]

The Problem with Learning Styles

Those of you who have been following the saga of lack of validation for learning styles theory won’t be surprised to read the following article about the latest findings: “‘Another nail in the coffin for learning styles’ – students did not benefit from studying according to their supposed learning style.”

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

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