What Can We Do In Two Hours?

This, information was shared at a symposium I attended back in 2007.  I am sure some of the numbers have changed with the further growth of social networking, touch pads and smartphones.

We have about 150,000 hours of living to expend between the ages of 1 and 18.

We sleep about 50,000 hours of that time.  We dream about two hours of the eight that we sleep each night. Sleeping and dreaming appear to be positively related to development and maintenance of long term memories.

We spend about 65,000 hours of our 100,000 waking hours involved in solitary activities, and in direct relationships with family and friends, and these play a major role in the maintenance of personal memories.

We spend about 35,000 of our waking hours with our larger culture in formal and informal metaphoric/symbolic activities --- about 12,000 hours in school, and twice as much with various forms of mass media: computers, television, films, music, sports and non-school print media.  Mass media and school thus play major roles in the development of cultural memories.

Thus, in an average developmental day between the ages of 1 and 18, a young person sleeps 8 hours, spends 10 hours with family/friends/self, 4 (probably more) with mass media, leaving only 2 hours for school.

Our society has an incredible expectation for those two hours.  

The You Tube video "A Vision of Students Today" is an eye opener, when it comes to understanding the mindset of the students we teach each day.