How do you sharpen your mind and increase your cognitive abilities? Experts say that you should engage in manual work. Yes, you heard that right - physical work and breaking out into a sweat as you flex your muscles and do physical work can make you smarter.
The idea of physical labor helping in the development of a child's cognitive abilities has been the subject of a document from the International Bureau of Education published by UNESCO as reported via Core77. That controversial statement was made by the 19th-century Swedish educator Otto Salomon, who realized that classrooms are boring causing students to misbehave.
According to Salomon, contemporary elementary school is too theoretical where factual knowledge is being taught by repeating the lessons again and again. This results in boredom leading students to develop negative behavior and attitudes. He also said that this lack of physical activity in classrooms are the reasons why students resort to bullying, arrogance, and vanity.
Furthermore, he mentioned that children were naturally wired to be curious and physically active, which can only be met when manual, physical work becomes part of the curriculum.
He continued that the most effective way of learning is to learn it using their hands. As a result of these observations, he required his teachers in 1875 to learn handicrafts or slöjd in Swedish which, in turn, they can teach to their students. He said that those who do not learn any skill with their hands are only half-educated.
Also interesting about his system was that he mentioned was the appreciation of the actual aesthetics of these physical objects. He said that children as young as those in elementary age should be recipients of aesthetic education where they not only learn how to decorate them but to judge and decide for themselves whether something is well-designed or not.
Far more interesting are some of the things he wants the child to achieve by doing physical work. Some of them include training the child to become accurate, clean, and neat; developing self-reliance and independence; instilling an appreciation of work in general; and fostering the habits of attention, patience, industry, and perseverance.
