By Wendy Anders

Every year public school administrators in Costa Rica face a troubling school drop-out reality, both at the start of the school year and mid-year.

This year has been no different, reported Radio Monumental yesterday, with close to 20,000 kindergarten – university public education students failing to return after the two-week mid-year break that just ended.

According to Sonia Parrales, board member of the Guidance Counsellors Profesional Association, who was interviewed on the radio, schools need to do everything in their power to keep students in the classroom, from preventing bullying to making school an enjoyable experience.

She said that night schools are the most vulnerable to high desertion rates given the unique challenges faced by students who work during the day and attend classes in the evening.

Meanwhile in Spain, child neuropsychologist José Ramón Gamo, has been studying educational models to understand what motivates students, and the use of innovative teaching and classroom models for enhancing learning.

Yesterday he told the Spanish daily El País that through neuroimaging research he has found that “The brain needs to be excited in order to learn.”

Gamo’s over 20 years of research in Spanish classrooms has showed him that learning difficulties such as dyslexia or ADHD were not in most cases the cause of delayed learning, rather that teaching methods were responsible. Gamo has concluded that classes based on lectures and passive student roles were not effective, and is championing substituting interactive maps, short videos and other interactive graphical tools for the traditional classroom methods.

Gamo concluded by telling El Pais that “The brain is a social organ which learns by doing things with other people.”