ENDANGERED MINDS ANALYSIS
Synopsis
Jane Healy wrote this book regarding the effects of technology on our young children and the minds. Basically put she feels that teachers across the board keep saying that their students seem to rush through assignments, or they want the answers given to them and they just have a tough time thinking on their own. Dr. Healy also states that students are receiving watered-down information from their teachers because the educators are so frustrated with repeating the lesson plans and going over information again and again only to have the students still say they just don’t get it.
The frustration lies within the classroom as Dr. Healy states over and over again. She interviewed several truly committed teachers and the same answer became clear. Technology is taking something away from these kids and the now factor, just give them the answer as has been replaced with actually thinking things through and the need to find the answer for themselves has disappeared.
Chapter 1
In this chapter Dr. Jane Healy shows how school test scores are dropping, yet IQ are slightly higher than ever before! This to me says it all, what is she saying exactly? It seems to be a contradiction in that students are having trouble learning yet IQ scores are higher than ever? I had to ask myself in the very first chapter of this book, does this make any sense at all? Over and over again in the very beginning of the book I am thinking that Dr. Healy really has not done her homework regarding this subject because the information is not well interpreted and it is one big contradiction.
Chapter 2
Neural plasticity is explained and the chapter goes into explaining how rats are raised in an enriched environment and begin to show heavier and larger sized brains than rats raised in impoverished environments (not sure how you enrich a rat’s environment – maybe pipe in classical music, leave little books around the...