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Teaching today has fallen into a predictable pattern of book learning, lectures, tests and essays. Younger children love school and learning, then when they hit second or third grade they start to think of learning and homework more as chores than adventures like they used to. The difference is that teaching styles change around these grades. The focus shifts from capturing a child’s imagination to putting them to the test.

The hands-on approach of early education could do a lot to improve the outlook of older students. This isn’t to say that high schoolers should get out the craft glue, glitter and macaroni they used in preschool, but what if they had more classes that involved video, audio, and getting up out of their chairs? The tendency to sleep through class, disrespect the teacher, and ignore the subject they are studying would decrease.

If you are a teacher, try the hands-on approach. The trouble with getting kids to learn has never been about what they are learning, only the way that it is taught, and it’s your job as the teacher to make your lessons engaging and interesting enough to hold students’ attention. While many schools believe that test scores will improve with more book learning, the opposite seems to be true — the more schools focus on memorization and book learning, the less informations tudents truly retain. Instead they simply memorize the answers long enough to pass the test.

Hands-on learning creates a mind-body connection through stimulation of the senses that imprints the information into the mind, allowing the student to remember the information better. Ultimately, isn’t long-term learning what we’re aiming for?