Light and Learning
Dateline: August 3, 2002
by Ann Zeise
I came across a fascinating study about the affect of light
and learning.
LIGHT:
AN ELEMENT IN THE ERGONOMICS OF LEARNING
Malillumination vs. Posillumination
"Malillumination" is to "light" as "malnutrition"
is to "food".
By Laurence D. Martel, Ph.D.
President National Academy of Integrative Learning, Inc.
Hilton Head Island, S. C.
If you want to see an immediate improvement in attitude in
your family, replace pink and cool white fluorescent lighting
with full spectrum light bulbs inside your home, and spend more
time outside near if not in sunlight. (Sunburn doesn't help learning!)
Many homeschool parents report an almost immediate "cure"
for ADD when they bring their children home to study. Could it
be the lighting? Fluorescent lights can cause bodily stress,
hyper-activity, attention problems and other distress that leads
to poor learning performance. They can be a cause of depression
and even tooth decay! Under full-spectrum lighting, blood pressure
drops and aggressive behavior is reduced. In one study, several
children labeled learning disabled overcame their problems within
one month of changing their lighting to full-spectrum.
My point being, if you have fluorescent lights currently in
the room where your children tend to hang out most and where
they study, you should experiment with changing to full-spectrum
lights.
So often it is little things like this that are so easy to
change in our households that can make a big difference in how
well learning happens. Things done so our children get more sleep,
better food, less illness, and more sunlight are so easily accomplished
even under the tightest budgets.
Often people wonder how in the world homeschooling parents
with little formal education turn out these beautifully educated
and non-agressive children. Could it just be their choice of
light bulbs?
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