At age thirteen, I frequently found myself sitting in classrooms bored beyond comprehension. Instead of the usual student’s blank thoughts and stares I began to study the facial expressions of my peers. I got extremely good at it. I could sense the smallest twinge of emotion after endless winter months of my "studies". I noticed things other kids neglected to see. When my teacher would call on the "popular" guy next to me and he wouldn't know how to do a problem, he'd confidently crack a joke about the class. What the rest of the class failed to notice, masked by their laughter, were the veins in his neck tightening and the quiver in his Jaw: he was mortified. As a student my teachers always criticized me for not looking at the board, or lacking focus, which, in turn, discouraged my potential.
What many people fail to notice is often due to their extraversion and failure to perceive the less apparent stimuli. We often overlook the introverted people in our big world, and more often than not they probably have something great hidden beneath the surface. As a country we must stop pushing these people past there breaking points, because we might also be breaking some important ideas.
Quiet, is exactly what these people are. Introverts to the core, which also adds to the struggle of taking away the comfortability: these people don’t have the guts to stand up for what they want. Susan Cain does an outstanding job of explaining every facet of introversion and extroversion in her recent book: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. Not only does she back up her ideas with credible sources, she also manages to cover all aspects of today’s society. She compliments the extroverts and makes a clear display of their importance and leadership in the world while taking the side of the introverts by giving a voice to the people who chose not to speak. Extroverts indeed give society a much needed form of leadership and form of constant communication which is necessary for the worlds function, while still executing a flawless argument for the introverts. Silent but lethal, these introverts are the people who create a steady push for society; they possess patience and persistence that extroverts lack. Cain consistently keeps her readers on their toes, filling their brains with new ideas and views on both sides of the spectrum.
There are indeed problems with extraversion, and according to Cain they most often occur in children’s schooling and seem to be quite “over-cooked”.
“According to a 2002 nationwide survey of more than 1,200 fourth and eighth-grade teachers, 55 percent of fourth-grade teachers prefer cooperative learning, compared to only 26 percent who favor teacher-directed formats... Among younger teachers, small-group learning is even more popular, suggesting that the trend will continue for some time to come” (Cain 231).
In the current school system teachers frequently fall back on the typical teaching strategies. For example, literature groups and including participation grade on assignments. The literature groups, while allowing more opinions and ideas, can make introverted children uncomfortable. Not only that, but these introverted children can and often do have a better idea of what’s going on in the book anyway. Participation grades fault in a similar area. I think that teachers fail to see the benefits of individual learning techniques because a majority of students are extroverts and learn well that way. Individual learning guarantees a certain level of comprehension before a new idea can be introduced, Cain touched on the same idea:
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