Children these days are working hard for a good cause--their future. Those that participate in preparations for SATs, ACTs and other standardized tests tend to do better on them then those who don't. Parents are not trying to overload their children; they are merely trying to provide a better future for them by attempting to send them into a good school, therefore promising a better job and a better future. Most people would agree that it is better to suffer now for the first couple decades of your life than later on in your life for several decades. Therefore, children nowadays should work hard in order to ensure that they have a bright future.
As depicted from the story, the children being described may be very hardworking and can only express themselves and have fun during downtime. However, there are still children that DO NOT work and study hard, therefore I disagree to the fact that we DO NOT need more downtime.
It is estimated that Americans get an average of about 6.7 hours of sleep in weekdays, which is not enough. The hours of sleep a person should get everyday though, is 8 hours. With inadequate sleep, people often lose control and concentration in the day time, have health issues, gain weight, and make people forgetful. People should be able to be “doing nothing” to be having enough time of rest. In the essay, it states that there are several psychological research that said that “doing nothing” is actually when creativity is at its best and when people actually do their best thinking. When “doing nothing”, people can both rest and boost his or her creativity and thinking. Almost everyday, students go home with so much homework to do and the average time that students sleep is later than 12 AM. All the time, when students are doing homework, they try to finish them quickly so that they can get some time to rest. But no matter how hard some people work, it feels like there is a pile of never ending work to do. With some time to rest and do nothing, people, or at least I, can concentrate more after the rest. Often, I can be more productive also. If anyone forces one to not be able to do nothing, it will be against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 24 states that everyone has the right to rest and relax , which includes limiting the the number of hours he or she has to work. This article specifically states that people should be able to have time to rest, which matches this essay/ short story’s main idea and thesis.
Though many parents like to make their children schedule full. I think some of the hard-working student would rather being busy than doing something bored. In addition, children can still explore themselves or their interests while they are in different kine of camping or activities. Furthermore, if you give children a period of downtime to do nothing they would definitely more want to play video games, skype with friends, or use Facebook. Therefore, children themselves may not want to have downtime.
In the essay, the author talked about how the students have no time between piano and dance and homework, but didn't talk about why. Maybe the student wanted to learn piano or dance himself. It is a personal interest. Also in the world today, it's very competitive. If you spend your time day dreaming other than working hard, it will be very hard to find a good job in the future.
The idea that children should be molded into what the parents wish for them to be during their adolescence is outrageous. While the adults are changing their children for what is arguably "their own good", all this studying for SAT's and ACT's and extracurricular courses and sports were not necessary for people who were rich and successful in their day, such as Andrew Carnegie or Franklin D Roosevelt. The amount of time people need to form their personality, the "doing nothing" time, is different for everybody. Any and everybody requires special time for themselves to fully develop, but if people press their personal opinion of the amount of time required, it would violate the UDHR, particularly with article 29, which states that your community must not force you to do things so that your personality can fully develop. If you are forced to work/play sports, how can you develop your personality without free time? With time to do nothing, I myself can fully develop my personality and see what suits my interests. However, with less and less free time, I do not get the "alone time" to reflect on me, my personality, my future, and my preferences.
In the essay, the author argued that the lacking of downtime made students less creative and have less imagination. I don't agree, because the time is used for extra curriculum and studying. Extra curriculum is not as tired and annoying as regular school work, so students will still be creative. Also, creativity is to create things base on what already exists, so students need to learn knowledge in order to create base on the knowledge they learn.
Although the author stated that ample psychological research suggested that human beings do their best thinking when they do nothing, the author didn't cite any credible sources or provide any citation. Readers could trust the author only when she provided credible sources so readers wouldn't suspect that it was merely the author's whim. Furthermore, children did volunteer to attend summer camps to learn and experience the world. They make new friends, understand the world, and learn techniques, such as basketball, skateboard, and surfing. The author was extremely pessimistic about attending summer camps and she didn't consider the children's own opinions. She was an adult and she couldn't understand the children as well as they understood themselves.
Most people in this world prefers doing nothing. The anxiety of wanting to do something when you're doing nothing is cause by centuries of reenforcement. People now are living hectic lives and don't have time to even think about doing nothing. Time spent on activities that were planned and scheduled don't help a person's mind to grow and develop creatively, because it's just following steps, but no thinking. This is why people say that students that only study and don't do anything else, and have no free time are robots. They are low on common sense, not much experience about life, and they are not good at socializing, because they don't spend time think about what others might think about. And that is not what a healthy child should be like.
For doing nothing is something: (FACT) Like how your brain process and organize information obtained/learned during the day in your sleep, these time when you do nothing is also needed to process, digest and review over what you learned in the day. (EMOTIONAL) When students go to too many after school classes and non stop academic work without time to do nothing, they will accumulate stress and become grumpy and emotional, which is bad for the students. (ETHICAL) Many people believe that practice makes perfect, which is also a well known dogma, which is why these doing-nothing time is needed even more!Students especially, need these blank out time to practice their creativity which they will need throughout their lives, including in poetry writing in english class. So why not a good 15 minutes each day to practice creativity AND RELAX, then stay up all night before an english poem is due?
Dr. Romina Barros and her colleagues at Albert Eingstan College of Medicine in New York reported that the subjects of more then 10000 children examined exhibited the tendency to do better in school if given a 15 minutes break as opposed to those who were not given breaks. If one were to broaden this concept, he or she will see that if recesses were this vital to a child’s well-being, it is vital for adults to give children free time and space whenever they could. Children needed more play and less work! Through play, children can find their inner philosopher rather then being told by others the rights or wrongs! Also, it is important to note that the yearn for freedom is a primitive instinct of all human beings. Suppressing such primitive urges whose existence gave birth to important qualities within a person such as creativity and problem solving skills would simply create many suppressed and unhappy children. Is this what society wants? For children to be born without the right to be their own person? For children to be forcefully molded into the “ ideal” children that a parent THOUGHT was best but in reality might not have been?
Though it is tough for the parents to make their children so busy, parents are doing this for the good of the children. Facts have shown that American kids are way too free and untrained compare to Asians. American kids can't endure the hardship, because they are used to the comfortable life. On the other hands, Asian children are trained by their parents in a very young age. That is why Asians children are more competitive than American kids in many ways. This is one of the reason why president Obama talks about using the Asian education on American kids. Personally, I believe that success doesn't just come. You need to earn it yourself by your own hard work. Making yourself busier won't do any harm.
As parents literally schedule an event that is "good" for their children, students now are getting extremely over-scheduled. As these children gets overly scheduled, they don't get the downtime, or that period of time to "do nothing" that they should be getting. Believe it or not, when children are in that period where they do nothing, that's actually when the deep and creative thinking happens in their brains. Since most parents nowadays believed that when kids are "doing nothing", their just simply wasting their time. As of why children should get downtime, it is true that imagination itself can't take you into MIT or Harvard, but imagination is still an essential part of a human mind. Without it, we are literally robots, which follows schedules and do tasks. As this habit of over-scheduling gets passed on and on, the society would soon become less and less imaginative, therefore decreasing the rates of inventions. It would also lead to a dull and old society.
Today's children and teenagers seem to be busier than twenty years ago, not only because more things that they have to learn but also because today's parents' stereotype of "don't let your kids lose at the starting point"; however, in reality, it's more likely to say "kids who win at the starting point die at the ending point". Parents nowadays do not only expect their kids to beat the other kids around but also expect them to go beyond all the other kids in the world. However, what they don't notice for a long time is that the schedule they make for their children, which supposedly develop kids' creativity and make your kids smarter, actually kill all the brian cells that produces creativity in kids' brains, and decimate all the smartness and wisdom the kids originally have. According to a scientific research by the British scientists, kids tend to have the most creativity, and they seem to have the most idea and creativity when they are daydreaming or even "doing nothing". Although kids' imagination won't bring them to colleges like Harvard or Princeton, well, who cares, Steve Jobs is still one of the greatest inventors with the most creativity in his brain, and he doesn't even have a college degree (so does Bill Gates). If you are that kind of parents, stop plan useless schedules for your children or go get a Nokia instead of any apple products.
Children nowadays have learned how to compete with others, they get good grades by going to cram schools day and night, studying without resting, and try to schedule their time "wisely" by squeezing in piano classes or dance classes or soccer practices. It seems like the only thing they can do is to study, however, gaining knowledge only from the textbooks does not always tell us how to deal with the problems in our daily life. What about the children's own dreams? They won't find it in a textbook! Children have the right to take a rest, have a time to walk out of their rooms, books away, and feel the world around them. Studying is sometimes just a huge inflow of knowledge, but doing nothing is when we start to digest.
What the author means by doing nothing is actually giving you time to think and reflect. Make an example of our basketball team, we video down every game we play with other schools and we watch it, find out mistakes, then discuss. If all you do is work, work, and more work, you're just going to make the same mistakes. Second, what most people lack now is the mind to think and creativity. Why do people want to steal ideas? Because all they do is work, but not to stop and think. Doing "nothing" is an important virtue of a successful person nowadays, it is something that cannot be missed.
Children these days are working hard for a good cause--their future. Those that participate in preparations for SATs, ACTs and other standardized tests tend to do better on them then those who don't. Parents are not trying to overload their children; they are merely trying to provide a better future for them by attempting to send them into a good school, therefore promising a better job and a better future. Most people would agree that it is better to suffer now for the first couple decades of your life than later on in your life for several decades. Therefore, children nowadays should work hard in order to ensure that they have a bright future.
ReplyDeleteAs depicted from the story, the children being described may be very hardworking and can only express themselves and have fun during downtime. However, there are still children that DO NOT work and study hard, therefore I disagree to the fact that we DO NOT need more downtime.
ReplyDeleteIt is estimated that Americans get an average of about 6.7 hours of sleep in weekdays, which is not enough. The hours of sleep a person should get everyday though, is 8 hours. With inadequate sleep, people often lose control and concentration in the day time, have health issues, gain weight, and make people forgetful. People should be able to be “doing nothing” to be having enough time of rest. In the essay, it states that there are several psychological research that said that “doing nothing” is actually when creativity is at its best and when people actually do their best thinking. When “doing nothing”, people can both rest and boost his or her creativity and thinking. Almost everyday, students go home with so much homework to do and the average time that students sleep is later than 12 AM. All the time, when students are doing homework, they try to finish them quickly so that they can get some time to rest. But no matter how hard some people work, it feels like there is a pile of never ending work to do. With some time to rest and do nothing, people, or at least I, can concentrate more after the rest. Often, I can be more productive also. If anyone forces one to not be able to do nothing, it will be against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 24 states that everyone has the right to rest and relax , which includes limiting the the number of hours he or she has to work. This article specifically states that people should be able to have time to rest, which matches this essay/ short story’s main idea and thesis.
ReplyDeleteThough many parents like to make their children schedule full. I think some of the hard-working student would rather being busy than doing something bored. In addition, children can still explore themselves or their interests while they are in different kine of camping or activities. Furthermore, if you give children a period of downtime to do nothing they would definitely more want to play video games, skype with friends, or use Facebook. Therefore, children themselves may not want to have downtime.
ReplyDeleteIn the essay, the author talked about how the students have no time between piano and dance and homework, but didn't talk about why. Maybe the student wanted to learn piano or dance himself. It is a personal interest. Also in the world today, it's very competitive. If you spend your time day dreaming other than working hard, it will be very hard to find a good job in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that children should be molded into what the parents wish for them to be during their adolescence is outrageous. While the adults are changing their children for what is arguably "their own good", all this studying for SAT's and ACT's and extracurricular courses and sports were not necessary for people who were rich and successful in their day, such as Andrew Carnegie or Franklin D Roosevelt. The amount of time people need to form their personality, the "doing nothing" time, is different for everybody. Any and everybody requires special time for themselves to fully develop, but if people press their personal opinion of the amount of time required, it would violate the UDHR, particularly with article 29, which states that your community must not force you to do things so that your personality can fully develop. If you are forced to work/play sports, how can you develop your personality without free time? With time to do nothing, I myself can fully develop my personality and see what suits my interests. However, with less and less free time, I do not get the "alone time" to reflect on me, my personality, my future, and my preferences.
ReplyDeleteIn the essay, the author argued that the lacking of downtime made students less creative and have less imagination. I don't agree, because the time is used for extra curriculum and studying. Extra curriculum is not as tired and annoying as regular school work, so students will still be creative. Also, creativity is to create things base on what already exists, so students need to learn knowledge in order to create base on the knowledge they learn.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the author stated that ample psychological research suggested that human beings do their best thinking when they do nothing, the author didn't cite any credible sources or provide any citation. Readers could trust the author only when she provided credible sources so readers wouldn't suspect that it was merely the author's whim. Furthermore, children did volunteer to attend summer camps to learn and experience the world. They make new friends, understand the world, and learn techniques, such as basketball, skateboard, and surfing. The author was extremely pessimistic about attending summer camps and she didn't consider the children's own opinions. She was an adult and she couldn't understand the children as well as they understood themselves.
ReplyDeleteMost people in this world prefers doing nothing. The anxiety of wanting to do something when you're doing nothing is cause by centuries of reenforcement. People now are living hectic lives and don't have time to even think about doing nothing. Time spent on activities that were planned and scheduled don't help a person's mind to grow and develop creatively, because it's just following steps, but no thinking. This is why people say that students that only study and don't do anything else, and have no free time are robots. They are low on common sense, not much experience about life, and they are not good at socializing, because they don't spend time think about what others might think about. And that is not what a healthy child should be like.
ReplyDeleteFor doing nothing is something:
ReplyDelete(FACT)
Like how your brain process and organize information obtained/learned during the day in your sleep, these time when you do nothing is also needed to process, digest and review over what you learned in the day. (EMOTIONAL) When students go to too many after school classes and non stop academic work without time to do nothing, they will accumulate stress and become grumpy and emotional, which is bad for the students. (ETHICAL) Many people believe that practice makes perfect, which is also a well known dogma, which is why these doing-nothing time is needed even more!Students especially, need these blank out time to practice their creativity which they will need throughout their lives, including in poetry writing in english class. So why not a good 15 minutes each day to practice creativity AND RELAX, then stay up all night before an english poem is due?
Dr. Romina Barros and her colleagues at Albert Eingstan College of Medicine in New York reported that the subjects of more then 10000 children examined exhibited the tendency to do better in school if given a 15 minutes break as opposed to those who were not given breaks. If one were to broaden this concept, he or she will see that if recesses were this vital to a child’s well-being, it is vital for adults to give children free time and space whenever they could. Children needed more play and less work! Through play, children can find their inner philosopher rather then being told by others the rights or wrongs! Also, it is important to note that the yearn for freedom is a primitive instinct of all human beings. Suppressing such primitive urges whose existence gave birth to important qualities within a person such as creativity and problem solving skills would simply create many suppressed and unhappy children. Is this what society wants? For children to be born without the right to be their own person? For children to be forcefully molded into the “ ideal” children that a parent THOUGHT was best but in reality might not have been?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThough it is tough for the parents to make their children so busy, parents are doing this for the good of the
ReplyDeletechildren. Facts have shown that American kids are way too free and untrained compare to Asians. American kids can't endure the hardship, because they are used to the
comfortable life. On the other hands, Asian children are trained by their parents in a very young age. That is why Asians children are more competitive than American kids in many ways. This is one of the reason why president Obama talks about using the Asian education on American kids. Personally, I believe that success doesn't just come. You need to earn it yourself by your own hard work. Making yourself busier won't do any harm.
As parents literally schedule an event that is "good" for their children, students now are getting extremely over-scheduled. As these children gets overly scheduled, they don't get the downtime, or that period of time to "do nothing" that they should be getting. Believe it or not, when children are in that period where they do nothing, that's actually when the deep and creative thinking happens in their brains. Since most parents nowadays believed that when kids are "doing nothing", their just simply wasting their time. As of why children should get downtime, it is true that imagination itself can't take you into MIT or Harvard, but imagination is still an essential part of a human mind. Without it, we are literally robots, which follows schedules and do tasks. As this habit of over-scheduling gets passed on and on, the society would soon become less and less imaginative, therefore decreasing the rates of inventions. It would also lead to a dull and old society.
ReplyDeleteToday's children and teenagers seem to be busier than twenty years ago, not only because more things that they have to learn but also because today's parents' stereotype of "don't let your kids lose at the starting point"; however, in reality, it's more likely to say "kids who win at the starting point die at the ending point". Parents nowadays do not only expect their kids to beat the other kids around but also expect them to go beyond all the other kids in the world. However, what they don't notice for a long time is that the schedule they make for their children, which supposedly develop kids' creativity and make your kids smarter, actually kill all the brian cells that produces creativity in kids' brains, and decimate all the smartness and wisdom the kids originally have. According to a scientific research by the British scientists, kids tend to have the most creativity, and they seem to have the most idea and creativity when they are daydreaming or even "doing nothing". Although kids' imagination won't bring them to colleges like Harvard or Princeton, well, who cares, Steve Jobs is still one of the greatest inventors with the most creativity in his brain, and he doesn't even have a college degree (so does Bill Gates). If you are that kind of parents, stop plan useless schedules for your children or go get a Nokia instead of any apple products.
ReplyDeleteChildren nowadays have learned how to compete with others, they get good grades by going to cram schools day and night, studying without resting, and try to schedule their time "wisely" by squeezing in piano classes or dance classes or soccer practices. It seems like the only thing they can do is to study, however, gaining knowledge only from the textbooks does not always tell us how to deal with the problems in our daily life. What about the children's own dreams? They won't find it in a textbook! Children have the right to take a rest, have a time to walk out of their rooms, books away, and feel the world around them. Studying is sometimes just a huge inflow of knowledge, but doing nothing is when we start to digest.
ReplyDeleteWhat the author means by doing nothing is actually giving you time to think and reflect. Make an example of our basketball team, we video down every game we play with other schools and we watch it, find out mistakes, then discuss. If all you do is work, work, and more work, you're just going to make the same mistakes. Second, what most people lack now is the mind to think and creativity. Why do people want to steal ideas? Because all they do is work, but not to stop and think. Doing "nothing" is an important virtue of a successful person nowadays, it is something that cannot be missed.
ReplyDelete