Comments on: How Should Someone With ADHD Or Asperger’s Learn Japanese?

By: Alexander

Alexander — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:41:00 +0000

If ADD was truly something gained, rather than born with… then cocaine wouldn’t calm me down.
Bam.

… Seriously, stimulants like coffee, Ritalin, or of course cocaine, calm me down…

By: Koichinist

Koichinist — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 02:22:00 +0000

I just found this. All I have to say is that I am a Montessori fan! But, Koichi, why did you leave the Montessori School?

By: koichi

koichi — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 03:50:00 +0000

Glad you enjoyed it! :D

By: zantilliayt

zantilliayt — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 03:34:00 +0000

This was incredibly interesting Koichi! I wasn’t going to post on these older articles but God that was a good one! I would have loved to have such a free experience as a child. The pressure of grades and meeting expectations of them is just too much; to be able to learn and move on as I understood the material instead of when the curriculum said I needed to would be fantastic as I struggle with math and have to breeze through things I don’t understand just to keep up with the class. You were lucky to have such an experience so young, it really does stay with you (actually that’s how my interest in Japan got started, a parent visit at kindergarten turned into a Japanese culture class, chopsticks and all).
An example. My final essay last year allowed you to pick your topic and I ran wild with “How the Brain Reacts to Horror in the Media”. I learned all kinds of things about the brain, fear responses and the reasons why Amnesia the Dark Descent makes you crap your pants. Just this month I was assigned to write an essay with a narrow topic and strict rubric worth a gigantic chunk of my grade thus far. I can’t think of a damn thing. -_- Anyway thanks for such an interesting post Koichi, I’m working my way through all of them right now. =)

By: Andy_Megara

Andy_Megara — Sun, 01 May 2011 22:54:00 +0000

“Kind of makes me want to start a private school or something.” I am seriously thinking about doing something like that in the long term. ^_^!

By: Andy_Megara

Andy_Megara — Sun, 01 May 2011 22:51:00 +0000

Yeah, I totally liked this post. I have similar thoughs about learning and how it should be a lot of fun for everyone. I have seen a problem and that is that not only the students are “programmed” to only care about grades, but also are the parents and even worst: the teachers as well!!!! For example, in college I got a good grade in a work I had to do, but the grade wasnt the highest, so I though there could be something to improve and to be learned. They didnt give me back the work I gave the teacher, and when I asked her for retroalimentation, she asked me ¿Didnt you like the grade you got? And I told her that wasn`t the case (I was fine with the grade I had gotten) that I just wanted to know my mistakes so I could enhance my understanding of the topic and improve. Then she looked me like in a lot of surprise and as if she wasn`t able to understand why a student would want to do such a thing without being interested in improving the grade. That actitude of her was very disappointing: I lost any respect I had for that teacher.

My native language is spanish, and even though I know I still have lots more to work on my english skills, I could improve my english a lot by having fun with things a like a lot: For example I couldnt find all the mangas (“japanese comics”) I wanted to read because they were not translated into spanish, but I could found them in english so I started to read mangas in english and it helped me a lot to improve my english reading skills without even noticing it (I was having lots of fun!!!!). When I started to read mangas in english a had a lot of intrinsic motivation, and it was very good because at the begginnig I got headache after reading around 4 pages, but some months after I was able to read two or three complete chapters without having headache, and now I can read a lot more (even newspapers and books) without headache and understanding most of it. So I know that intrinsic motivation rocks when it comes to learning, and not only learning but also life itself.

We should re-learn to enjoy what we do, that way we can have a life full of meaning and really worth linving. ^_^!