Cooperation or competition: that is the question.

Some people think that a sense of competition in children should be encouraged. Others believe that children who are taught to cooperate rather than compete become more useful adults. 
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Parents always expect more from their children and in order to help them to be the best, parents may be inclined to promote different ways of education such as competition or cooperation. Both methods have their benefits and drawbacks.

It is undoubtedly clear that competition forces children to make more efforts in order to gain desirable things or marks, hence improves their skills and abilities. Competitive young people are very determined and strong-willed. However, the excess of competitiveness may bring harm to youth. For example, children with an excessive sense of competition aim only for a win. They cannot accept failure and that in turn may push them to lie or cheat.

However, youngsters with an inclination to cooperate very often become good team players in adulthood, who are able to solve problems and disagreements existing in a group or at a work place. They will easily lead a working team and drive it towards a stated target. There is no doubt that students who prefer cooperation usually yield to competitive ones in speed of task performance. However, the latter easily compensate for it in accuracy of performance and diversity of task answers.

To sum up, although both methods of child’s development have their advantages, as I see it, the best answer lays in moderation of competitiveness and cooperation. Thus, such a child will overlap disadvantages of one method with advantages of another.

Schools have severe problems with student behaviour.

                             Changes taking place in modern society have put forward a number of problems, one of which is the problem of educating the child with difficult behaviour. The urgency of it is that every year there has been an increase of juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. Hence there is the tendency to an increase of the number of children with deviant behaviour. This behaviour is characterized by a deviation from the accepted moral and in some cases law patterns. It includes antisocial, illegal and auto-aggressive (suicide and self destructive) actions.

 Reasons for deviations in behaviour occur as a result of socio-economic, political and environmental instability of society; changes of the level of value orientations of young people; adverse family relations; lack of parental control over the behaviour and the free time of their child; over-employment of adults; great number of divorce, etc. All this undermines the child’s confidence in him/her-self, a capacity for self-regulation and self-assertion in critical situations.  

The personality of the youngster is not formed in a vacuum and by itself, but in the surrounding social environment. The last is crucial to the process of education.

 The first manifestations of deviant behaviour are sometimes observed in the early school years and can be explained by:

·      the relatively low level of the intellectual development of the child,

·      “defects” in the process of identity formation,

·      a negative influence of family and community.

The older the child, the more reasons contributing to deviations in behaviour they have. This may be dependence of child on the requirements of groups and adopted value orientations in these groups as well as persistent school failure, which is manifested in absence school knowledge and cognitive interests.

 Systematic school failure is a serious cause of deviant behaviour. The growth of school failure leads to a complete lack of desire to learn. As a result, the student has a lot of spare time, which is nothing to fill with, because there are neither cognitive aspirations, nor the interested works and assignments.

An important group of factors of deviant behaviour are associated with the spreading of various kinds of social pathologies such as an increase in mental illness, impaired gene pool of the population, alcoholism, suicidal feelings, etc.

The  most important issues are concerned to the child’s family such as deprivation, family discord, educational incompetence of parents, criticism, punishment for nothing, bad language when interacting with family members, parents’ alcoholism and even the fact of belonging to a dysfunctional family itself.

No less important problems of the child are illness leading to gaps in learning, loneliness, obscurity by others and some emotional and intellectual characteristics of teenagers such as irritability, aggression, low emotional and volitional control. Their mass sprawling creates the illusion of a normal adolescent behaviour, at least the absence of something extraordinary, immoral. As a result, adolescent subculture appears with its “rules” which allows to do everything what they want. That leads to denying the norms established by adult society, imposing their ideas of normal behaviour, appearing of the youth system of values ​​with their bosses and priorities.

Student’s family plays a huge role in the mechanisms of social adaptation to all the living environment of the society. There is no such type of education in the family, which would definitely cause abnormal behaviour of the child or adolescent. But the families of children with behavioural problems are some of the features. Parents in these families are usually ” in little knowledge” of their children or not well aware of their feelings, pay them little time and attention, cannot control their behaviour, almost do not know about their friends and what they do in their spare time.

Adverse family environment contributes to disrupt process of socialization of the student and leads to the accumulation of its deviant potential. Professionals such as teachers, social workers, psychologists, school doctors can adequately examine the conditions of the child and family  in order to organize the work with parents. For example, the interaction of these professionals aim to identify shared behavioural problems in a child or group of children, that in turn will help to forecast the possible development of students and the organization of work for the prevention and correction of deviant behaviour. The effectiveness of work of an integrated team of  these specialists at the school with children and adolescents who have behavioural problems are strongly dependent on the well-organized process of studying the individual child and his inner world.

Among the factors that explain the deviant behaviour of children and adolescents is the position of the child in the group. This may be a school team, class, interest groups, etc. The loss of comfort in a school community leads to the fact that the child seeks for a more comfortable group. Thus, the more likely we can predict that a violation of the child’s relationship in a group is a main cause to deviant behaviour.

The next factor to be taken into account when forecasting – is the effect of the group on a student. Such factor considers the child to be the leader of a particular group when he/she fully accepts the values ​​and objectives or is able to defend the views on things and events.

Although all the above factors are closely related, for a particular student, a particular factor may be dominant. Therefore, educational support for children and adolescents with behavioural problems aims to restore their normal social status, self-improvement through adequate study of psychological difficulties and challenges: motivational, behavioural, informational, emotional, and personal. Any measure is as effective as it takes into account the uniqueness and originality of the child. What counts is the individual approach, which means to identify the specific nature of the psychological difficulties of deviant child and effective teaching mechanisms that underlie children’s issues.

The most important task for cooperative work of teachers and parents is preventive work, which aim is to identify children and adolescents who are prone to deviant behaviour or having initial signs of deviant behaviour. In a broader sense, an individual approach should be applicable equally to all children, suggesting a good knowledge of the personality by each child’s teacher. An important step to increase the effectiveness of both general and individual preventive work is the development and implementation of activities that have a common goal – to control the process of socialization of children and adolescents and the elimination of antisocial influences.

The next way is re-education of a “difficult” child in schools, which aims to displace accumulated negative experiences by positive in the process of communication. Thought-out plan of educational work with “difficult” students largely determines success in their rehabilitation. In this respect, there are two aspects that are highly complementary. First, the event is designed for all “difficult” students at the school. Second is an individual work with each of the students. The first aspect is embodied in the school-wide level, and the second – in terms of class teachers and caregivers.

As a rule of thumb, an educational plan of correction must answer three questions:

·      what should be eliminated (negative factors of family and school education, negative personality traits);

·      a way to fix the problem (how to analyze school student, who changes the nature of the relationship);

·      Who is to do it and what to do (distribution of responsibilities among educators, psychologists ).

Response to the plan gives us a list of goals and objectives for a specific period, indicating the ways and means of achieving them.

The school-wide plan should include:

·      measures to identify “difficult” children,

·       measures to form culture of student conduct,

·      research on best practices and scientific advice on the problem rehabilitation of students with behavioural disorders.

 Plan of individual work with “difficult” students may include the following sections :

·      identify specific deficiencies and the objective difficulties of educating the child in family and school,

·       analysis of the moral and psychological features of his personality,

·      the positive identification of existing interests and hobbies,

·      a list of the ways and means of forming positive personality traits and the organization of social and valuable experience.

It is important that all of the planned activities constitute a system and continue to complement one another, being not accidental, not contrary to other educational activities. 

The most difficult task of the teacher is to find a key to understanding the “difficult” child or adolescent. One key that will make a system of adequate educational measures to work is to promote an environment in which a child would want to change their behaviour. In developing strategies for working with these children for teachers, it should be understood that for any student behaviour problems there are certain motives. Moreover, the same behaviour can be caused by different reasons. For example, the aggressive behaviour of a child in the school can be caused by a desire for power, the development of leadership qualities or as compensation to increased anxiety.

Respectively, the educational strategy in each case will be built individually, based on the understanding of the causes of the child’s behaviour. Thus, teachers need to find the motives of “difficult” child in other words they must understand them. Such strategy or stage clarifies the understanding of cause and effect of “difficult” student behaviour.

During the life adults develop certain stereotypes related to “difficult” children, a set of typical reactions to a particular student’s negative behaviour. Most often, when faced with challenging behaviour of children, many teachers have enough destructive feelings: anger, resentment, frustration, anxiety, fear, grief and so on which paralyze the creative approach to the selection of non-standard behaviour of educational strategies. It is important to recognize the feelings and not allow them to control the mind. The ability of the teacher to see themselves through the eyes of a child, to put yourself in his place, to think not only about their own feelings, but also about a child’s feelings – these steps are necessary in order to understand “difficult” student as he or she is. This is the second important emotional stage.

The third stage – the stage of educational influences on the “difficult” students – will have positive results only if the success of the first two was achieved. Teachers will be able to help a child if he/she feels and understands that adults feel and understand their problems and take it for what it is. If a child or adolescent will be open for communication and education, only then he will want to change his negative behaviour.

In conclusion, only individual appeal to the individual child’s interests and hobbies, taking into account the peculiarities of its development will help teachers find a way to the “difficult” children. It is well known that it is always easier to prevent than cure. The same principal may be applied to education. The best way to prevent is to assist in the implementation of the basic needs of the “difficult” child of love, security, attention, satisfaction. It is important to foster a strong-willed, moral, intellectual and spiritual qualities that sustain people. Self-determined individual with his own life-centre is unlikely to fall under the influence of negative norms and patterns of behaviour.

Media – Harm or benefit : Part 4.TV

TV has become an inherent part of any home, as well as the main means to reduce tension, mood, to get information, to keep abreast of events. It is so entrenched in the pattern of modern life, that its temporary absence lead to depression and nervous breakdowns. Watching television is a great way to escape from loneliness and many programs and reality shows in general create the illusion of communication. Television has become widespread addiction. TV can be turned on all day and work only as a background noise. Someone cannot sleep without it, another become accustomed to eating, looking at the screen.

TV is not only in each apartment. Director’s office, hospital room, halls and corridors of many enterprises are equipped with these devices. All the information, presented via TV, is seen as an undeniable fact, television is unquestionable authority. A projection of beautiful life on the blue screen, the dream of a bright future and the ideal relationship literally creates a vacuum or vice versa, a fluffy pink cloud in which a person feels happy and free.

Unfortunately, the dependence on a blue screen covered not only adults but also children. Doing household chores adults not suffer from the noise of the TV, they are used to filter the information, where a child is extremely hard to tear away from the screen. They are trying to see and hear everything that is broadcasted. As we know, the child absorbs everything like a “sponge”. Parents should not think that their baby, which is less than one year of age, playing nearby the working TV is completely oblivious to it. Always working TV in a room where there is a small child, is harmful to health. Ceaseless background noise leads to irritability of the child and is the main cause of poor sleep and the vagaries of small children.

The familiar phenomenon of our time is the child, frozen at the TV screen, looking keen onto the flashing images. TV becomes a usual pastime in the first place for our children, which before was used for its rightful outdoor games near home and on the street.Children have become hosts of many physical and psychological problems. Today many of them have no knowledge of children’s amusements, like the classics, flying kites, playing in the sandbox, etc.Not to mention the fact that the offer to buy tickets to the theatre nowadays usually is perceived by children with surprise. Why to travel somewhere else when there is a TV! Television effectively isolates children from the outside world.

 Many parents are familiar with this situation very well, hence most moms and dads believe that a child should be protected from the TV. Some people even use the TV as a means of influence on the child, “Do lessons – Look cartoons.” At the same time, almost all parents, as children themselves stuck to a blue screen, trying not to miss their favourite cartoons and programs. Hence there is a question: Is desire for TV so ingrained in our lives that is passed from generation to generation?

Of course not. Times change, so the TV contents change. But the specifics of the child’s perception remain unchanged. So, undoubtedly, the duty of the parents is to approach this problem sensibly and not shy away from it.

Here are some details of the impact of television on the child and man as a whole. The beneficial effect of the TV is the pleasant pastime for the child shared with other family members.

Television informs children about different cultural events. Watching educational programs on television helps children complete their schooling, which affects the learning process extremely efficient. Quality television programs have a positive impact on the process of bringing up children – provide knowledge about important spiritual values, the lessons of history, etc. Watching programs helps children learn to understand the different genres of art. Especially in small towns television is the only way for children to see the best performances, see a concert of world celebrities. Documentary film, especially for kids, opens the world for a child.

But modern TV – it’s not only beautiful and funny melodrama concerts. Abundance of criminal transmissions, thieves and rapists make some confusion in the viewer consciousness. Many crime reports are seen as the next blockbuster and a person stops to think about the real danger to society. Ruthless and merciless stories do not disturb. People are used to all this, and have not notice that as resigned to the lawlessness.TV – is force! And any force can have both positive and negative effects.

Negative impact is that TV atrophies people creativity and increases passivity. The person does not want any mental and physical activities .Excessive pastime watching TV causes aggression and sudden violence in a person.

Watching movies and programs with the scenes of cruelty and violence have the most negative impact on the psyche of children and their future development. Constant watching TV significantly reduces motor activity of children and, therefore, causes obesity. Television is often the cause of children’s addiction to junk food – fast food. Moreover, this “food for snacking” actively advertised and promoted by many commercials.

The abundance of programs about sex and with sex scenes too early introduces children to the adult life. Such early practice adversely affects the mental development of children. Prolonged sitting in front of TV is often the cause of poor performance of the child in school. The kid just did not have time to teach and prepare their homework. Negative impact on children affected by a number of programs and commercials that focus on physical beauty is that this leads to the formation of abnormal values ​​in the child. In some cases, a feeling of inferiority and depression.

The child may develop a psychological dependence on television. To evoke or prolong a sense of relaxation that he feels while watching television, the child will seek more and more time in front of the TV.

 Bright flashing cartoon characters  facilitate the work of a child’s brain in thinking about the world. The same can be said about the commercials and TV shows, which are very concise and simplified idea. Children do not even have to absorb – it’s obvious and children choose and learn the easiest way. As the result – the child does not want to read, does not know how to occupy themselves and want nothing but watching TV.

On average, our children spend at the screen for 10-14 hours a week. This is the time which could be spent on full of motion games, reading, walking in the fresh air. The result of “sticking” to the screen is changing the child’s health for the worse. Nervous system of children suffer, eyes ruin, even metabolism worsen. The child becomes tearful, naughty, with bad eating and sleeping problems.

Professor of neurology at a university in Germany, Manfred Spitzer conducted statistical analyzes, which resulted in found a direct correlation between time spent watching television, and deaths due to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol. According to Spitzer, every year diseases acquired from overuse TV, kill about 20,000 Germans. And this is among one of the most tolerant nation in the developed world in term of television.

“As it turns out – the TV must be eliminated?” – A concerned mother would wonder on reading the text above. Ideally – yes, eliminate. However, one cannot deny that absolutely refuse to TV – too extreme. Also it is clear that this step requires some changes in the life course and not everybody is ready for this or even the modern man would never go to such extremes.  Therefore, the best option will be to find a compromise solution.

Meanwhile, according to experts of the National Institute of Health (St. Petersburg), a few simple rules will significantly reduce the possibility of health problems.

1. Do not allow your children to sit up at the screen more time than allotted by you. Cartoon ended – means it is over for watching TV.

The appearance of the bad habit in the child sit all the free time in front of TV depends on the attitude of the parents to watching of television. If the family are serious about the health of family members and watch a TV only when necessary, the problem of weaning the child away from continuous view TV will disappear by itself. To educate a child of a right attitude to television from a very early age, we should set up a particular rules in term of TV and not allow the child to be in the room where the TV works longer than the time set by experts.

This is the following: children under 2 years of age are allowed to watch TV no ​​more than 15 minutes, from 3 to 6 years old to 40 minutes, from 7 years and on – to 90 minutes a day with a break for 5-10 minutes.

2. Notice how far away is a baby from the monitor – ideally it should be no closer than five feet and no more than five when it comes to old TV with cathode-ray tube. And another rule acceptable for TV with LCD monitors says the safest distance for watching TV is 3-4 diagonals of TV. Otherwise, the children’s eyes is at a real risk of visual impairment, and most of all – forever.

3. Never let your child watch TV in the dark or even in the dim light! The high contrast between the bright screen and the lack of light around causes a noticeable eye tension, even in adults. Leave any lighting – top or side that will not interfere with your eyes and reflect on the screen.

4. Modern LCD monitors emit electromagnetic radiation to a much lesser degree than the old cathode-ray tubes. Therefore, if your TV is out of date, keep the baby from harmful radiation. This screen TV should be at eye level or slightly lower.

5. A place to sit in front of the TV should be comfortable. It is not difficult to put a chair with a back or a cosy armchair. If the child is uncomfortable, it will take the most unimaginable poses. However, the main thing is not to sit at too acute angle to the screen.

6. But the most unacceptable – is to watch a movie or program while eating. Distracted by what is happening on the screen, experiencing different emotions caused by what is seen, you deprive yourself of proper digestion and stand on a direct path to a stomach ulcer.

To be easier for baby to accept the rules of communication with the TV, give them a good example. After all, these rules apply not only to the children. Accustomed to limit TV for themselves, too, you agree to show your children that life cannot be less interesting than viewing a movie. And after watching a hilarious comedy, turn off the TV and go for a walk as a family.

 This, of course, is not about not to watch TV. In fact, to eliminate from the most popular media, we cease to be in the thick of things and we risk being marginalized in the social, political and cultural life. And as well, coming home at night to relieve stress by watching a favourite TV show or interesting movie. The main thing – it is not to forget the old immutable truth that everything is good in moderation.

Media – Harm or benefit : Part 3.Radio,internet radio.

Radio is an integral part of our daily life. As alarm clock it wakes us in the morning. At breakfast, we hear the morning news. Radio entertains and informs us when we go to work or school or when we are engaged in gardening. Even sitting in an office or working at a factory, we always listen to music, broadcasted on local radio stations. Featuring a unique combination of skills, radio has become an indispensable companion to a life of millions of people.
Traditional radio audience is teenagers. In an average week, 90% of people all around the world listen to the radio at least once, more than 80% – every day. The average adult listens to the radio for 3 hours every day.
Listeners of the radio are divided into four main segments: radio fans of specific stations, fans of radio as a whole , music fans and listeners of the news. Fans of specific radio stations are the largest segment (46%). They prefer one or two stations, and spend up to 8 hours a day or more listening to those. Most of the fans of the radio stations are women aged 25 to 44 years. Fans of the radio as a whole make 34% of listeners. They listen to four or five different radio stations a week, with no specific preference. Most of them are under the age of 35, although this segment includes a large number of women aged 55 and older. 11% of people listen to only music on the radio and they mostly are men aged 25 – 45 years old and people who are establishing relationships. Finally, a part of the radio station is chosen by group of people who manage its need for news and information. They are almost always more than 35 years old and prefer one or two stations, listening to which for short periods of time.

The most important advantage is the flexibility of radio coverage. The same radio station may be listened in different parts of the country and speak to people at any time of day. People do not need any cutting-edge technologies for that purpose, but only radio receiver, which currently is a part of the majority of the advanced gadgets. Especially that radio receiver itself is very small in shape. Hence radio is an ideal means of entertaining people while travelling to or from work. The negative side of this may be that the excessive use of headphones can cause hearing loss. The best option – output sound to the speakers, but then others will have to listen to radio with you. Hence the only way to get off this situation is a moderate use of headsets.
The next advantage is that it creates musical background and usually does not distracts from work. However, this mainly depends on type of the radio station and genres of songs. The stations broadcasting, for example, rock music may be quite disturbing, especially if they are listened to in a high tone. In addition scientists do not recommend listening to radio while performing highly exact jobs, such as operations, or studying for exams. They explain that in these cases a brain needs all its capacity for work, and music alternating with dj’s talks may exploit part of it, that in turn leads to decreasing in speed and accuracy of performing.
For long time one of the most popular advantages, after informational, was educational. Even now there are many radio stations which broadcast educational programs in physics, biology, medicine etc. Chiefly, they are student or university radio stations which introduce people with the basics and advances in sciences. Others carry the weight of culture, not only in a form of concerts, literary programs, performances of radio theatre(radio plays and operas), but also in the form of lectures, special programs about the history of culture, the arts, the science and literature, biographies of great scientists, the history of scientific discovery, the life of the great scientists, engineers, inventors. Also there are radio programs for students about astronomy, the study of the universe, about space and space exploration. Young students learn the skills of observation of celestial bodies and constellations, became acquainted with the achievements of science in the study of the universe. Programs for young nature lovers tell about the habits of animals, wild plants, and learn to recognize them.
Now radio stations of children’s topics become more and more popular, because they take into account age-specific and routine of small listeners. For example, “The Kids radio” in Russia broadcasts for all age categories: morning block is addressed to preschool, day programs – for children older than seven years, late at night – the block for both parents and children over 10 years old, at night – music for sleep.
Another advantage as for education as for entertainment is space of coverage. People in the different parts of the world can listen to the same radio station. Hence, this may be very helpful for language learners, who might get a possibility to improve their listening skills from native carrier of language. Moreover, people can easy get access to different culture through the radio, listening to the local news, types of songs, directions of music of another country. However, for this purpose you need more powerful radio receiver, than we usually have on hand.
Despite its huge advantages, radio traditionally had a number of serious drawbacks: it is only the audio. You can listen to the radio, but you cannot see it. This fact limits the effectiveness of perception of information and particularly remembering it. It is well known fact that people more rely on their sight than on hearing and vision memory of an ordinary person is better developed evolutionary.

Internet radio.

With development of technologies it has long been possible to listen to radio on the Internet. The minimum speed of the network, which does not occur stops and crash is about 64 kbit / s, which was available even in provincial towns 5-6 years ago in a mode without limit. Advantages of Internet broadcasting is that the user can select from the mass of radio stations, including foreign ones. For each musical direction, there are a variety of radio stations, and their number far exceeds even the number of television channels of satellite TV. And internet radio allows you to put in a free broadcast songs little known but talented musicians. The user can listen to music that never will be scrolled to the telephone – is an important factor for lovers of exotic melodies.
If we compare the number of available stations in some provincial town, where it at best is a little more than a dozen, and the number of them on the Internet, then the comparison is not in favour of the first. Hundreds and thousands of stations broadcast around the world managed from small amateurs by a single person, to the numbers of the domestic and international broadcasting, such as the “Russian Radio” and “Europe +”.
However, there are a few drawbacks of internet radio. For example, to listen to radio stations from around the world a person will need to download and install on a computer one of the specific programs, the best and most of which are paid. They are inexpensive, only 10-20 euro per year, but these costs seem too high at a time when conventional radio is free at all. To find a good program that would allow listening to the radio for free via the Internet is problematic, though possible. Free programs usually contain advertising.
Advantage of Internet radio is also the fact that there is no need to download the favourite songs to your computer and the interface of this programs itself allows you to see song titles, artists.
Now on the Internet you can find hundreds of free Internet radio channels and in different languages. Hence, internet users have virtually unlimited opportunities to listen to radio programs from around the world.

Behavior

There is a lot of dispute by parents who pay close attention to their children.Some hold the view that parents should be responsible for teaching their offspring how to become an excellent members of society.Others think that children must be taught at school by strict teachers experienced in these questions.

It is widely known that the first teachers of primary schools have a direct influence on young students with their behavior and words,if parents are excellent themselves.Otherwise,bad influences will emerge in the children’s behavior because they unconsciously imitate their parents and their improper conduct.Especially they have an influence on kids on rudeness toward neighbors as well as our careless lies to children when we endeavor to avoid performing our parental duties,such as playing after work or helping with their homework.Moreover,children learn very fast that they can manipulate their parents,who buy them what they want despite the unimportance and unnecessary native of these purchases.

On the other hand there is a wide range of pupils of different backgrounds in the school.Communicating with their mates children can learn the skill of living with different people.However,young students may be easily misled by the incorrect behavior of their peers and many teachers are always busy and rarely pay attention to each individual pupil.

I don’t have any solution to this problem,because each situation I have mentioned above has both advantages and disadvantages.But I suppose that a combination of both,teaching by parents at home and by teachers in schools,can help to our next generations to be good citizens.