Chapter five discusses the need for balance between the three domains: affective, psychomotor, and cognitive.  Each domain is vital to the teaching in a classroom.  The affective domain allows the students to bring a part of themselves into the classroom, the psychomotor establishes the physical abilities to do classroom work, and the cognitive establishes the need for knowledge.  Overall, less focus is placed on the psychomotor and the most emphasis is placed on the cognitive domain.  Teachers often focus on the cognitive domain because it is based on the retaining of knowledge.
    To begin, I thought the affective domain was important to the classroom.  Teachers need to see the attitude and values of students in order to determine what might be the best way to motivate a student to learn.  Students bring their attitude and their values into class and they exhibit them by their behaviors with time.  Receiving is the lowest level of the affective domain because it begins with simply keeping an open mind.  Some students are difficult to get to keep an open mind and this level might require some work, but if the student makes it past the first level they might begin to exhibit some interest.  It is this response of interest that shows the affective domain.  Over time it is possible that the student might fight the value in the information and even possibly take it one step further to take it as their own point of view.  At the last level of the affective domain, the attitude becomes a part of the character and is exhibited regularly.
    The psychomotor domain is often unrecognized in the classroom and it deserves more attention.  From birth reflexes form and they are the earliest sign of the psychomotor development.  During the first year of life the basic fundamental movements form as the child learns, but it is not much past this level that learning must be taught.  A stimulating environment helps create movements.  Children who want toys or see their parents turn the TV off might teach the child to do the same actions.  It is up to our education system to train and develop skills.  There are many students with talent or who need to learn how to develop skills, but little emphasis is placed on these activities.  By the time a student reaches middle school, the students are considered talented or not in their psychomotor skills.  Should we stop educating those that have fewer abilities?  Each person communicates through his or her movements nonverbally as well and these are something that as a teacher we need to be aware of.  A student may come to class with a frown on his/her face and probably won't learn anything, but if a teacher stops to listen it makes a world of difference.
    The last domain and most recognized domain is the cognitive domain.  80 to 90% of the time is spent in the lowest level of the cognitive domain and that is the knowledge level.  The knowledge level focuses on recall and recognition.  This level also includes memorization of the material.  As a teacher, I find it disgusting that we spend so much time on this level.  I plan to go back and look at my teaching this past year and examine the level I have been teaching at.  It is important that we teach students synthesis, analysis, comprehension, and evaluation.  At the synthesis level, the student will combine two elements to make it into a creative unique product with specific criteria.  Synthesis is wonderful for art classes and science.  A student in almost any subject could analyze the material by breaking it down into pieces. More time needs to be placed on emphasizing analysis in the curriculum.  Comprehension is important with any subject, but it appears to be more recognized in reading.  Reading teachers are not the only ones that need to thing about comprehension.  Restating information, interpreting information, or translating information to determine the nature of the problem or create and answer proves comprehension.  Evaluation often receives a great deal of attention in the cognitive domain.  Sometimes I find that we spend too much time focusing on evaluating and not enough time focusing on the student and the learning process.  All teachers are probably familiar with evaluation.  Evaluation requires judgment and criteria from which to base this judgment.
    It is my opinion that there needs to be more emphasis on the affective and psychomotor domains and less emphasis on cognition in order to balance out learning.  Higher levels need to be expressed and focused on and less time needs to be spent at the lower levels of learning. As a nation we teach at a lower level than other countries and it is time we spent the time necessary to achieve our full potential.  I believe "You get what you expect" out of students.