Dr Naoise OReilly Newstalk The Right Hook Shane Coleman banning homework
Dr. Naoisé O’Reilly on Newstalk’s The Right Hook interviewed live in studio by Shane Coleman this evening renewing call for homework to be banned in schools.
What the film Boyhood tells us about the need for family mediation
It struck me watching the film Boyhood at the weekend that teenage boys are always telling me that everyone is on their case. When Mason in the film reaches 15 he asks his stepdad "can someone just give me a break for one day?" The irony is that a poor role model adult on his case is not lost on us. It's not what we say to teenagers that matters it's what we do. The role we show them.
It was incredible that someone took the time to spend 12 years filming a boy as he grew up from carefree child of 6 to young adult male at 18 off to college. Thank you Richard Linklater!
I'm not convinced that the endless drone of "responsibility" turns out better adults. I have so many different roles in my work but listening to teenagers woes is definitely top of the list and acting as translator back to schools, parents and other professionals. I've forgotten how many times parents have called me up "because they are sick of the rows over school work and homework"
I have long been an advocate for the abolishment of homework. It sometimes seems that schools and departments have forgotten there is an important family life to live. This film shows us the true dynamics of what matters in a child's life as they grow up.
It was very striking in Boyhood the image of a carefree child that is crushed into serious reality around 15. I see and hear stories everyday of happy go luck children that suddenly have the weight of the world on them. I have seen this in cases as young as 7. Students with dyslexia seem to hit that world of responsibility younger than most. At very young ages we are not "keeping up". I wish childhood went on for longer. Maybe while schools and the powers that be argue about how important homework is for life they could take a step back and look at how long we have to be responsible and grown up in contrast to how short a time we have as carefree children?
In the meantime I'm just the person who listens to all their stories, translates their fears and somehow finds an easier path through them for everyone.
This is a must see film for parents - see what really matters to the adults you turn out. Boyhood
Dr Naoisé O'Reilly
Expression Developist™
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Divergent Movie Demystified for Real World by Doctor’s Psychological Profiling
Divergent is making waves in popular culture with the release of part one of the hollywood movie trilogy inspired by Veronica Roth’s books. This follows the mammoth success of The Hunger Games starring academy award winning actress Jennifer Lawrence.
There are two main themes in Divergent. The first is that it is bad and possibly even fatal to fit into more than one aptitude. The second major theme relates to growing away from your parents.
In Divergent’s futuristic world it is seen as threatening to fit into more than one faction made up of five temperaments which are selfless, peaceful, honest, brave and knowledgeable. It is difficult to compare this directly to personality theory as it is generally regarded that there are in fact sixteen types of people in the real world.
However, this does compare to our four defined learning styles which are the ways that people take in information from the world. Our four categories of psychological profiling methods include auditory, visual, practical and kinesthetic.
All of the students we work with that do not fit in a box and struggle in school have what we call multiplicity. This means, like in Divergent, they have all four aptitudes. They are quite often overwhelmed by the amount of information they absorb from all environments. Multiplicity is what people commonly see as “clever” and “intelligent.” All of our ideas of cleverness and intelligence come from people who can absorb ideas quickly and have a multitude of interests. This is where we break away from the norm.
Multiplicity is drilled out of children in school by age fifteen. Only a very small percentage of the older students we meet have still retained their natural multiplicity. They are quite often seen as “freaks.” Some of them were very heavily medicated before working with us for just having too much energy or being too “distracted.”
In the film Divergent the main character takes an aptitude test at the age of sixteen. This is true to school life. There have been some pretty hilarious conversations within our team about what they were told at sixteen. The Senior D.N.A. Geneticist on our team was told at sixteen that he would never be any good a science.
This brings us to the second main theme in the film and the challenges the main character experiences when she realizes that she cannot follow her family. She does not easily fit into their faction and this is a real life experience for many of our students. Children really struggle when in their teenage years they appear to have nothing in common with their family and parents don’t understand them.
In many cases the students we work with have just simply skipped a generation in aptitudes and personality. It is quite often revealed that they are much more like their grandparents and great grandparents. A mother or father can feel that their children have nothing in common with them and this can also be the case in partnerships where there are children from different relationships.
We work with adult clients in the business world in their late thirties too who had struggled to find their path in life. Having attempted the career path of their parents they have not fitted in. They quite often do not feel any real support or understanding from home about who they really are.
The good news is that it is perfectly alright to be divergent and movies like this can only help to shine a positive light on psychological profiling and our ongoing research in the area of personality types and achievement. Anyone who works in personality theory does so because they have an overwhelming desire to help people find out who they really are and wish to help them to succeed.