How To Make Your Kids Enjoy A Subject They Find Boring

Honestly sometimes it is very hard to get kids do their homework or study, especially if the subject you want to study is tagged boring by your kid.

Original Author : Achita Ahuja

Everything is such a case turns out into an all-out battle. The situation becomes adverse if your kid does not find anything interesting in studying and hates it totally. Instead of studying your kid will rather play video games, watching television or playing.I know, it is really hard sometimes to understand how to reach when your child hates studying a particular subject. It is even harder to figure out how to motivate children to study the subject your child hates. The world has become extremely competitive today and the best scorer in school will always have the advantage but how to convince your kid to study hard is the tough task. Children’s performance in school has more to do with their parent’s strictness than with their brain power or teachers interest of teaching. A recent study reports that parental effect on exam results is five times greater than any other factor. Education is important but some children can really cause pain in the nerve to study what they should be studying. It becomes essential in such a condition to help the child with poor studying interests. But what will you do in such a condition, be strict, try to maintain the discipline to make your child study but everything fails. This is because your kid has already considered a subject or studying itself as intrinsically boring. Now no matter you decide to do but to make your kid study a boring subject will fail every attempt of yours, no matter how hard you try. No matter your kid sits in front of the book fearing your anger still their brain won’t remember as they should. May be they require a master skill that involves learning something that is found dull by your kid. So the most important thing to do to make your kid study is make it interesting so that your kid removes the ‘boring’ tag applied on it and start making effort towards it. The biggest task for you lies in making the kid realizing that the boring subjects are not boring at all. It is just you need to make them figure out the right way to learn them and hence forth the new interests and opportunities opens up.

Boring is not just boring, it may be just a way out to dismiss a subject your kid finds difficult. As your kid is not able to do it and he has to sit longer for repeating same lessons just to finish his homework. Your kid starts calling it boring and starts running away from it. The difficulty might be conceptual as your kid is not able to see the true pictures that the subject represents.

One study of student boredom suggested that almost 60% of students find at least half their lectures boring, with about 30% claiming to find most or all of their lectures boring. Probably it is the way the teachers teach in the class that makes the subjects image in the mind of kid. This image of the subject is carried further. Thus one of the simplest and most ways to prevent boredom is to have fun yourself. If you are having a good time with kid during studying a boring subject the ideation of kid towards that particular subject will change and they will start finding interest in studying the same subject. The fact is affirmed by researches also which shows that if you can put your kids in a good mood, they will learn more too.

How to enhance knowledge and skills

We are all familiar with the refrain: Management finds employee performance to be slacking off while certain routine matters are flagging. What are the common responses to an issue and what are needed to provide or revive knowledge and skills within an organization? The typical answer, of course, is training. While effective, if designed and implemented right, one would think at some point whether training is the only solution, and how does it really impact on the business strategy.

Many companies, especially the more progressive ones, now look at learning solutions as an integral part of their business strategy. They adopt a broader perspective and approach for assessing and meeting their organizational requirements. Based on my experience with some of these organizations and their leaders, I have chosen three key principles, which I now put forward to other companies for consideration and, if deemed appropriate, apply them. They are:

Make the Learning & Development (L&D) group your internal business consultants

The L&D group is often looked at in an organization as just a provider of training and seminars. This calls for a change in mindset, from being a training provider to an internal consultant. As consultants, their value comes from them being able to understand the “business” of the company, including how it operates, its product and service offerings, its constituents, its business strategy, etc.

Thus, when a problem that is initially identified as a training issue is given to the L&D group, they should first find out what the business and performance requirements are, determine the issues and the root causes of such problems, and only then recommend the appropriate solution. In some cases, it may turn out to be outside the scope of L&D. This should be fine. But thinking only like trainers, on the other hand, would often limit them to the discussions they have with you and their solutions might just be too focused on the training needs. That will prevent them from seeing the bigger, truer picture.

So, how do you make them consultants? Make the L&D group your business partners, and encourage the group to ask questions; the right questions. Typically these questions are open-ended at first, so that they will encourage a broader discussion of the issue. Questions like, what keeps you awake at night, what is the problem you are trying to solve or what does success look like, may seem to be simple and trite, but it really opens up the discussion to explore the different areas that may be contributing to the needs or even beyond.

Provide a variety of learning solutions, not just training

Learning solutions, unlike training, provide a broader perspective that considers a wider array of learning approaches—experiential, social, and structured programs—typically referred to as the 70-20-10 Principle that were introduced by the Center for Creative Leadership, to enhance organizational competencies. In this model, training is just one of, but not the only, solution.

So how do you apply the 70-20-10 Principle? Consider ways by which your organization can enhance the learning experience. You can implement on-the-job programs through secondment, cross-team postings, or individual swaps/exchanges. These assignments can even extend to clients or external organizations. You can also cascade a coaching and mentoring process where constant feedback and knowledge sharing is done across all levels. It’s about building a culture and structure where your employees seek and are able to learn by application and from others, through programs or ad-hoc opportunities.

Align the learning strategy with the business strategy

Learning can be strategic as well as tactical. A major difference between the two is that strategic learning focuses on supporting the organization’s vision and strategy, while tactical learning focuses on addressing performance gaps. Strategic learning is long-term and tied up to organizational metrics while tactical learning is short-term and measured through team or individual performance indicators, typically around productivity, quality, and timeliness. Training done across the organization is not necessarily strategic unless it is aligned with organizational outcomes and goals.

So what do you do to start aligning your learning programs into strategy? A useful first approach is auditing your learning initiatives. Determine which of those initiatives support your strategy and which address specific team or individual performance needs. It’s a simple method to see where the gaps are, but it really challenges you to evaluate whether the effort and resources are being channeled to where they make the most impact and sense.

As we strive to direct our organization forward, there has to be a deliberate effort to realign our learning perspective and paradigms. Positioning L&D closer to the business core, and providing a wider range of learning experiences, will help increase organizational effectiveness, improve employees’ morale as well as the company’s chance of success.

Mon San Jose is a director with the knowledge management group of P&A Grant Thornton, a leading audit, tax, advisory, and outsourcing firm in the Philippines, with 21 partners and over 700 staff members.

Source | http://www.manilatimes.net/how-to-enhance-knowledge-and-skills/284380/

How to prevent students from cheating

To stop rampant cheating, states need to fix the quality of their educational institutions

 

Fifty-seven students and 14 teachers were booked in mass cheating incidents in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura and Agra last week. Pictures and videos showed friends and relatives of the students scaling walls and passing chits through windows at the examination centres. Students were caught blatantly copying from each other.

According to newspaper reports, an organised network helps students write examinations in return for money. Invigilators were booked; so was the chief superintendent of a centre. On learning of the incident, the deputy district collector visited an examination centre in Mathura. How ineffective the authorities in the state are is evident from the fact that he was attacked and his vehicle was damaged as locals pelted stones.

The whole incident is a repeat of what happened in Bihar last year when photographs of mass cheating and relatives scaling high walls to help students with chits made international headlines.

Despite the worldwide ridicule, the state government failed to take stern action against the students. Although the government holds the right to debar students from taking examinations for up to three years, jailing or charging a fine, no action of this sort was taken. The government, on its part, claimed that it had expelled several students. But most suspect that the punishment was primarily on paper. If the authorities concerned had taken stern action a year ago, we might not have seen a repeat in UP.

Shifting the blame from the state to the parents, Bihar's education minister expressed the state's helplessness - he was quoted as saying, "What can the government do to stop cheating if the parents and relatives are not ready to cooperate? Should the government give orders to shoot them?"

Shooting may be an extreme punishment, but there's no reason why the culprits should get off scot-free. I have a couple of suggestions.

Let all institutions financially supported by the central government and various other state universities refuse or place a ban on students from Uttar Pradeshand Bihar till such time that the state governments are able to get their act together and prove the sanctity of the examination system. There is no reason why a student from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh board should be placed on an equal footing with a student from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Kerala or any other state where such incidents are rarely found. On what basis can the results of the student from one of these states be treated on a par with the other state boards?

If this is the scale of cheating as has been reported, one shudders to think how much goes unnoticed or unreported. If teachers and invigilators have to be brought to book and parents and relatives are in cahoots, the problem may be more endemic than we think (evidence that it is came from a recent Army recruitment examination - again in Bihar - where examinees were stripped down to their underwear before being permitted to sit for it).

If for any reason a total ban is not a ready option, let's start with a 10 per cent penalty on the final results. So, if student scores 90 per cent marks in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, let him be treated on par with a student from other states with 80 per cent: a 10 per cent penalty for the lawlessness of the state machinery and a student and parent body that seems devoid of basic morals. There's no reason why Delhi or any other university cannot issue a decree stating that in light of these incidents it cannot continue to treat these students as they were treated in the past because that amounts to penalising the rest, the ones who do not employ unfair means.

This may not fully stop the menace, but it will be a powerful check since one of the main reasons students - encouraged and abetted by parents - cheat is that they are looking to get out of the state at any cost and study in institutions outside of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Higher education institutions in these states are pathetic, and parents and students are willing to do anything - including cheating - to escape them.

So to answer the minister's question, the state government can start by trying to improve the quality of its own educational institutions.