I once saw a crazy video on the Internet, in which the children shouted together: I love learning, learning makes my mother happy, my mother happy and the whole family happy! While laughing, I was also thinking, is it important to study and make parents happy? Or is it more important to make children feel happy? If you kidnap a child with your own happiness, will the child really be happy? I think the answer is self-evident. Only when children enjoy the happiness in learning will they really fall in love with learning. How can we make the brain feel happy? And make children fall in love with learning? Let me briefly talk about how to make children fall in love with learning around dopamine.
First of all, understand the brain structure and look for the "source of happiness"
As we all know, the essence of education is to mold and develop the brain. In the primary school stage, the child's brain is still in the stage of rapid development and has strong plasticity. At this time, the protection and development of the brain is particularly important.
Let's first understand the division of labor in the brain:
The brain is divided into left and right hemispheres, and each hemisphere includes frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe and occipital lobe.
The left brain tends to be rational, focusing on cognitive functions such as logic, language and mathematics;
The right brain tends to be perceptual, focusing on functions such as art, emotion and spatial perception.
The left and right brains work together through the corpus callosum connection.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter released by a specific circuit in the prefrontal lobe of the brain. It can make the brain feel happy. When an action makes the brain secrete dopamine, the brain will clearly remember the whole process of the action and try to reproduce it. In order to secrete dopamine more effectively, that is to say, in order to get pleasure, nerve cells in the brain will change the connection mode of nerve circuits and produce new nerve circuits. Therefore, the action that produces pleasure has gradually become a habit. Repeat it two or three times, and you will be proficient in that action. This is the structure of learning. We often say "so-and-so, you have to get rid of this bad habit". But in fact, bad habits have not changed, but new neural circuits have been created to replace the original habits.
We often hear children say "I don't have the heart to study science", "I'm not good at reciting" and "I haven't read enough to write a good article". For things that humans are not good at, brain science explains it this way-from the perspective of the structure of the human brain, they think that what they are not good at or good at is only because they don't get the cycle of intensive learning caused by dopamine. The brain will accept the positive expectation and the feeling of being praised as a good thing, so people often say that "praise is very important for education." From this we know: First of all, reprimanding children will not only make them eager to learn, but will make their brains lose interest in learning.
There are such a group of pictures circulating on the Internet that parents help their children learn:
From slippers to sticks to tying hands, I wonder if we crazy parents have ever solved the problem of "seeking the psychological shadow area of children". It is hard to imagine a child studying under such intense pressure. Can he feel the happiness brought by learning? Does the brain produce "dopamine" that causes pleasure?
Second, understand "dopamine" and open the door to "happy learning"
Then, parents will ask, what can be done to make children secrete dopamine while studying, and then fall in love with learning?
There is also a story about Chairman Mao's "making cats fall in love with Chili peppers" circulating on the Internet, which may bring us some inspiration.
One day, Mao Zedong asked Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai a question: "How can you let the cat eat Chili?" (Ask parents to think first: If you were asked to answer, what would your answer be? )
Liu Shaoqi first said, "That's not easy. You let people catch the cat, put the pepper in the cat's mouth and poke it with chopsticks. " For this solution, the chairman waved his hand and said, "Everything should be voluntary." Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Zhou Enlai replied, "I will starve the cat for three days first, and then wrap the pepper with a piece of meat. If the cat is hungry, it will swallow it at once. " The chairman disapproves of this method: cheat once and don't even eat meat next time.
So, what is Chairman Mao's strategy? The chairman smiled and said, "It's easy. You can put pepper on the cat's ass. It feels very excited to lick its own peppers when it is hot. " After a long time, it got used to the taste of pepper and even fell in love with it.
Pepper is something that cats don't want to eat. How to eat it? The above three methods: pour the pepper, mix the pepper in the cat's favorite food, and wipe the pepper on the cat's ass. In education, there are actually three strategies: lower, middle and upper.
It's a bad idea to catch the cat by the neck and pour it down. Forcing children to do things, even if they do, is not voluntary and very painful. This method is also unsustainable. Once the pepper is not poured and the cat is released, the cat will never eat the pepper by itself again, and may run away. This is the fundamental reason why our children don't study without staring. If we keep forcing children to learn, once we let them go, they will definitely not learn by themselves. We can call this tough way of pouring peppers on cats "simple and rude" in education.
Mixing peppers with what cats like to eat, so that cats have to eat peppers in order to eat what they like, is an intermediate policy. This way belongs to the way of "coaxing children into doing things" in education. This way is much better than indoctrination, because it can save children a lot of pain. However, although the cat ate Chili, it was not voluntary. Some clever cats may eat food and leave pepper behind. This way of "coaxing children" can be used occasionally, but it cannot be used as our main educational means.
It is the best policy to put pepper on the cat's ass and let the cat lick it. Because, once the cat's ass is smeared with pepper, the cat will willingly, actively and painstakingly eat it. The reason why cats take the initiative to eat Chili peppers is that they will feel worse if they don't eat them, and they will feel more comfortable if they eat them. What will happen over time? Cats have developed the habit of eating peppers, and even take the initiative to find peppers to eat ... This way is used in education, which is what we call "dopamine" secreted by the brain to cause "enhanced learning cycle".
Not long ago, a child in my class made a little gesture in English class. When I talked to her after class, she complained to me: Teacher, I like English very much, but my father forces me to write words and recite texts every day, and I can't remember them. He kept asking me to write and recite! I am not interested in English! It can be seen that repeating what you already know does not make your brain happy. Therefore, coercion is useless, it will only be counterproductive. It is very important to gain successful experience through spontaneous action.
In addition, the brain only produces a large amount of dopamine after experiencing certain hardships and desperately completing things that were not sure. This is what we often say, "One jump is enough". We need to help children set reasonable learning goals and put some pressure on their brains, because if the pressure is easy to overcome, it will have no effect. If the pressure is too great to reach the goal, children will give up easily. If your current strength is 100, it is more appropriate to put pressure on yourself, such as 120 or 130, which exceeds your general endurance.
Third, parents and children grow up together and embark on a "happy learning journey"
Case: A teacher in a primary school in Edmonton, Canada arranged a jigsaw puzzle. Children bring their own works, and teachers will share their achievements with them.
The teacher browsed the children's works with admiring eyes, and then asked everyone to talk about the experience and feelings of the puzzle.
Student 1: when I do a puzzle, I look at the picture on the package first, and I have an outline in my heart. Then I put the outer frame together, and then I spell it from the outside to the inside. This method is faster.
Teacher: Good. Knowing a problem starts with the general situation and then goes to know the details, just like when we are facing a strange city, it is much faster to walk with a map than to walk around the streets.
Student 2: I couldn't spell it well after a long time, so I asked my parents and grandma to help me finish the puzzle.
Teacher: Good. This is a kind of teamwork. Remember: when you encounter problems that are difficult to solve, you can ask others for help and work together.
Student 3: My happiest moment is when I put the last piece into the puzzle.
Teacher: Good. It is a very pleasant feeling to enjoy success.
Student 4: I have a lot of messy pictures in front of me. I can't find their pattern at all. I have tried many times, but I can't spell out these patterns. I was impatient and bored, so I put them away and never opened them again
Teacher: Good. Sometimes giving up is also an option. Everyone has his own strong points, so you must have another strong point.
Student 5: I can't spell anymore. Looking at the remaining 200 pictures, I don't want to spell any more. However, I think the picture on the wrapping paper is very nice.
Teacher: Good. No one can succeed in everything. You didn't spell it yourself, but you know how to appreciate the achievements of others, which is also an excellent quality.
Student 6: I am bored when I spell. Sometimes when I just finished spelling this piece, I accidentally bumped into another piece, and the picture became messy again.
Teacher: Good. Every picture you spell is in harmony with the surrounding pictures, which shows that success is inseparable from the environmental factors around you. Just like you kids have to get along. Harmony is bliss.
What do you think after reading it? )
We can see that the best thing a teacher can do is to guide children to find the positive side of things and praise their good forms and details. This also reminds us that praise for children should be specific to good behavior.
Therefore, whether in study or life, when children's brains receive these positive and happy information, they will produce a lot of "dopamine" to promote children to maintain good behaviors and habits.
All the problems encountered in children's growth are the best opportunities to cultivate children, and the best education should be that parents grow up with their children. So, as parents, should we also try our best to stimulate the "dopamine" in the body and strengthen our good behavior at the same time, so as to realize the good wishes of parents to study hard and their children to make progress every day?
A doctor of psychology said: "Parents often can't help getting angry in front of their children. Compared with a quiet family, children are stronger, prone to depression when getting along with others, and perform worse in school. Anger will destroy children's ability to adapt to society. " Therefore, when a child is young, don't treat his immaturity and weakness as a weakness, and use his ignorance and ignorance to overdraw his growing years. When children grow up, the inner shadow area and the detours that they can't go back are the prices they can't afford.
There is no end to learning. I can grow up with my children and understand their hearts better. You know, family education is not for the wife alone, nor for the husband alone, but for two people to twist into a rope and let the beloved children dance happily under the rope. We who are not good enough and children who are not good enough don't have to be harsh on each other. But we need to sow a positive seed in love, and watch it sprout, blossom and bear fruit patiently in the sun from winter to spring. After many years, no matter whether this fruit is a basket or a fruit, it is fortunate. This is an educational achievement handed down from generation to generation by a family. (Gong from Kairui Primary School, Zhangdian District, Zibo)