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China bans kindergarten palm assessments

February 6, 2012 By

China has banned schools from reading kindergarteners’ palms — at parents’ expense — to predict academic potential.

Although many parents in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, eagerly brought their children to be tested, some later complained about the high cost and raised questions about the testing method, which test-givers said could reveal the children’s aptitude in music, mathematics and languages.

Three kindergartens in the province charged 1,200 yuan ($190) per person for the tests. That’s a lot of money for the average Chinese family. That palm reading could be a viable racket says something about parents’ anxiety for their children and willingness to invest in them. The one-child policy must ramp up the usual parental angst. If my kid has dull palms, should I defy the authorities and go for two?

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The Onion: Brain-dead teen to be euthanized

February 4, 2012 By

Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized, reports The Onion, in jest.

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Lego goes girly: Is it sexist?

January 25, 2012 By

Lego Friends — pitched to pastel-loving, beauty shop-visiting, fashion-designing, cafe-chilling girls — has annoyed feminists, who say it urges girls to obsess about appearance, reports the LA Times.

The new line, whose characters sport slim figures and stylish clothes, will contribute to gender stereotyping that promotes body dissatisfaction in girls, said Carolyn Costin, an eating disorders specialist and founder of the Monte Nido Treatment Center in Malibu.

. . . The toys send girls a message “that being pretty is more important than who you are or what you can do,” Costin said in a statement.

“We heard very clear requests from moms and girls for more details and interior building, a brighter color palette, a more realistic figure, role play opportunities and a story line that they would find interesting,” said Mads Nipper, executive vice president of  the Danish-owned Lego in a statement. Lego Friends isn’t the company’s only girl-friendly product, Nipper said.

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Study: NCLB ruined oral sex for teens

January 22, 2012 By

NCLB Blamed for Ruining Teen Oral Sex writes Jay Greene, after translating a scholarly article from “stupid BS” to English.

. . . this study appears to be claiming that an emphasis on individual academic achievement in school “crowds out” “the pleasure, choice, and mutuality” of teen fellatio and replaces it with an emphasis on “competence and skill usually associated with achievement and schooling.”

Greene provides the abstract of “It’s Like Doing Homework” – Academic Achievement Discourse in Adolescent Girls’ Fellatio Narratives published in the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy:

Young women’s narratives of their sexual experiences occur amid conflicting cultural discourses of risk, abstinence, and moral panic. Yet young women, as social actors, find ways to make meaning of their experiences through narrative. In this study, we focused on adolescent girls’ (N=98, age 12–17 years) narratives of their first experiences with oral sex. We document our unexpected findings of persistent discourses of performance which echo newly emergent academic achievement discourses. Burns and Torre (Feminism & Psychology 15 (1):21–26, 2005) argue that an extreme and high stakes focus on individual academic achievement in schools impoverishes young minds through the “hollowing” of their sexualities. We present evidence that such influence also works in the opposite direction, with an achievement orientation invading girls’ discourses of sexuality, “crowding out” possible narratives of pleasure, choice, and mutuality with narratives of competence and skill usually associated with achievement and schooling. We conclude with policy implications for the future development of “positive” sexuality narratives.

It’s nice to think that teen-age girls value competence and skill.

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Shame

January 13, 2012 By

When her 14-year-old son got a few hours of community service for his crimes, a Georgia mother decided shame was the way to get him to behave.

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‘Hands up and step away from the child’

December 22, 2011 By

As a second-grade teacher in New York City, Eli Kaplan was told never to hug a child, he writes for the Good Men Project. If a child hugs a male teacher, he’s supposed to put his hands up in the air to avoid touching the student. “Essentially, if a student gave me a hug, I was supposed to act like I was getting arrested.”

Female teachers can hug without fear, but males are presumed guilty of pedophilia till proven innocent, Kaplan writes.

To avoid all complications, I was taught to show no affection at all (other than words of encouragement, and the occasional smile or high-five).

Kaplan ignored the advice and “freely gave out and accepted hugs.”

. . . our society perpetuates the idea that an appropriate male should be cold and stiff (not that kind of stiff) around young, impressionable, and fragile children. To be a man who is too warm, affectionate, or loving, is un-male, strange, and suspicious.

The Jerry Sandusky scandal is going to make it even harder for male teachers to express affection for students without fear they’ll be accused of misconduct.

 

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‘Stop smiling’

December 5, 2011 By

“Stop smiling,” says the photographer in “School Portrait,” a short film made in England.

“No, stop smiling, we’re going to do something different today,” the photographer says as the first student sits down. “It’s called a reality check. I want you to repeat after me: university tuition fees.”

After the student says it back, frowning, he keeps the ball rolling.

“Banking crisis means I’ll never afford a home,” he says.

These reality checks keep coming, with topics ranging from divorce rates, to climate change to how hard the young students will have to work.

There’s no such thing as “pocket money,” the photographer says. You have to work for a living.

School Portrait (2011) from Michael Berliner on Vimeo.

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Building blocks are hot in NYC schools

November 30, 2011 By

Wooden building blocks are the hot new fad in New York City’s elite schools, reports the New York Times. The story starts  with “block consultant” Jean Schreiber leading a workshop for parents who want to know how to help their children play with blocks.  Schools advertise their “block labs” and “centers.”

Eva Moskowitz, the former city councilwoman who runs a fast-growing network of charter schools, said her schools had created a “religion around blocks,” and she proudly advertises their fully outfitted block labs alongside the chess program and daily science classes. The International School of Brooklyn is developing a program using blocks to reinforce foreign-language acquisition. And Avenues, the for-profit school scheduled to open next year in Greenwich Village, is devoting a large section of its kindergarten floor to a block center.

It costs about $1,000 to outfit a classroom with a set of blocks, which typically include 5.5-inch-long rectangles as well as pillars, columns, triangles, curves and longer rectangles.

Playing with blocks is supposed to help children learn math concepts, develop language skills and “build the 21st-century skills essential to success in corporate America,” such as not hitting your colleague when he takes the last pillar.

While teachers say children need time for unstructured play, building with blocks is often linked to the curriculum.

At the 92nd Street Y preschool, teachers videotape students doing block work so they can review their process. And at the Packer Collegiate Institute, the Brooklyn Heights private school where educators have recently recommitted themselves to blocks by hosting workshops for teachers and moving block corners to more centralized locations, students often use classroom computers to search for images or watch videos that help them visualize something to build.

They can’t just let the kids play?

My sister and I used to play with blocks, even though our mother had no formal training in encouraging block play. (She was taking care of our baby brother in another room.) My sister figured out how to build a dome ceiling with rectangular blocks. When we got bored, we’d knock it all down and play something else.

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Thankful

November 24, 2011 By

We’re celebrating Thanksgiving in Maryland with my husband’s three children, son-in-law and future son-in-law plus the grandkids, toddler Julia and baby Lily.  Last year, their mother, four months pregnant, was in the hospital suffering — and I do mean suffering — with ulcerative colitis. We’re very thankful to have a healthy, happy Lily with us and nobody in the hospital.

I’ve been watching Little Einsteins with Julia. Every episode features a bit of classical music, a “mission” in a rocket ship and information about things like the difference between adagio, moderato, allegro and presto. I’m not sure this is information toddlers need, but Julia, who’s 2 1/2, enjoys it. Her obsession with Elmo seems to be over.

Julia talks quite a bit and has a large fund of knowledge for someone who hasn’t mastered the potty. I started telling her Goldilocks and the Three Bears as part of a discussion on whether her ‘toni (rigatoni) was too hot. She began telling it to me. No cultural literacy problems here.

I am “Nana Joanne.”

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Let kids play — even if it’s not ‘educational’

November 20, 2011 By

Children need time to play, even if it’s not educational, argues Alfie Kohn on The Answer Sheet. Play isn’t “children’s work.” It’s just play. And it’s good.

“Play” is being “sneakily redefined,” Kohn writes.

 “Most of the activities set up in ‘choice time’ or ‘center time’ [in early-childhood classrooms] and described as play by some teachers, are in fact teacher-directed and involve little or no free play, imagination, or creativity,” as the Alliance for Childhood’s Ed Miller put it.[2]

. . . The point of play is that it has no point. I didn’t know whether to laugh or shudder when I read this sentence in a national magazine: “Kids need careful adult guidance and instruction before they are able to play in a productive way.” But I will admit that I, too, sometimes catch myself trying to justify play in terms of its usefulness.

It’s a mistake to defend play time by arguing that “play teaches academic skills, advances language development, promotes perspective taking, conflict resolution, the capacity for planning, and so on,” Kohn writes. Play is fun. Get out of the way and let kids do it.

I’m usually not a Kohn fan, but I think he’s got a point here.

 

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