Course Description:

Our school systems face the challenge of keeping up with global standards for academic skills and knowledge base as new technology and globally based information become a bigger part of everyday living. The school curricula stretches to add many new topics and items to meet this need, often at the expense of eliminating or limiting seemingly less important elements like physical education, drama music and art. It is well documented that these elements are crucial to the growing of children’s brains and the complex connections of its different parts. Creativity, skilled performance and memory are readily compromised as these critical elements dwindle to marginal levels in our children’s’ education. This course will examine, developmentally, the growth of the brain in the context of its ability to handle school-based tasks. It will compare timelines expected by modern curricula to the brain’s readiness to tackle those tasks based on the neural architecture in place at that time. Specific suggestions for activities and elements of commercially available programs will be discussed. Short projects provided during the course will help to demonstrate in inter-relation of different parts of the brain and the impact of selection and modification of activities.