Learning in Everyday Life

Parents and teachers tell children to “Concentrate!” all the time. But who explains to them what this actually means? How is this done?

The term concentration, or to concentrate, originally comes from the Latin origin “concentrare”, (com- „together“ + centrum „center“) and meant „to bring or come to a common center“. In other words a sense of „mental focus“, for example when children concentrate on playing a game. 

This (intrinsically natural) activity only becomes strenuous when the object that we are supposed to concentrate on, is considered uninteresting. The brain becomes bored and begins searching for other stimulation. Thoughts begin to wander and concentration decreases.   

However, in order to learn new things concentration is less important than attention. To achieve attention a person is fascinated by something and wants to learn from it.  
Concentration refers to ‘aggregation’, meaning that focus is drawn to one center. 
Perception of the outside world becomes limited. 
Learning also requires a degree of attention. This presumes the student has a keen interest on the material that is to be learned. 
On the other hand, concentration is essential for practicing and repetition of detailed sequences.   
Learning processes depend on both concentration and attention. Therefore, children should be given enough time to complete a task and thus, learn to concentrate.
   
As parents, you will be familiar with the following situation: all of a sudden the house becomes silent, the child doesn’t make a sound. When you find the child, he or she is playing and being completely immersed in the activity.   

Unfortunately, we are often just relieved that they didn’t get into mischief (a paradigm of parents that equals a learning process for the child). We start talking to the child and thereby distract it from the activity and disturb its concentration. Or we start screaming across the hallway to the child in their room, until they reply. After this exchange, the child may leave the room because the learning process has been interrupted. If this or similar disruptions occur frequently, a child cannot learn to pay full attention on an activity and to work with focus. The child misses out on intensive learning experiences. 

These opportunities would provide a general sense of independence and self-reliance. Later in life the child might be labeled as nervous or hyperactive.