Our children.

Now that I am a parent, I pay more attention to parenting news. And I have learned that a lot of parents are morons, or at least, misguided. Times have certainly changed since I was a child in the 1970's - and not always for the better.

On one hand, parents are becoming very involved in their children's lives, often making decisions for them (ie babying them) through college. On the other hand, parents have a lot more money and businesses are stepping up to get a share of that. One result is a lot of spoiled kids with very high impressions of their own importance and abilities - false impressions that wont mean much to tough competition from India and China. Another result is that kids are lazier and heavier than ever before.

But dont try to being any of this up. Bringing up parenting is as emotional as picking a side in the Israeli-Palestinian debate.

let them play a little!

I was stunned when I learned that K-6 schools were all dropping recess so students could focus on test scores (at the same time many schools are dropping memorization tasks because they are too boring). Recess? My best memories from grade school involve soccer and king of the hill. No way I could have focused all day without some exercise - and I am not alone.

This anti-recess movement also makes me think of the concern that boys are being treated unfairly in schools as the new non-physical curriculums favor girls (who are less physical and more verbal to begin with). Let the kids play and be kids. They are fat enough as it is.

Rethinking Recess

As More Schools Trim Breaks, New Research Points to Value Of Unstructured Playtime

By ANNE MARIE CHAKER

Wall Street Journal

October 10, 2006

Does recess deserve to get a reprieve?

Schools have been trimming fixed periods of unstructured playtime for years, citing mounting pressure from federal-testing requirements and concerns over playground accidents that can lead to lawsuits.

Now, national groups representing parents and pediatricians are stepping in to champion more playtime, as a growing body of research points to the benefits of the kind of free play that can't be found in gym class.

A report released yesterday by the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that recess can foster creativity and social skills, arguing that when play is undirected, kids become resourceful in figuring out conflict resolution, negotiation and even leadership -- which might not surface as naturally in an adult-structured atmosphere, when children are more likely to "acquiesce to adult rules and concerns." The report cites academic research and includes advice for pediatricians on how to promote and recommend "free child-centered play."

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 21% to 30% of children in grades one to six get 15 minutes or less of recess a day. Last spring, a survey of 25,000 PTA presidents showed that more than half think their daily recess is at risk because of a need to focus on academics or because of insufficient supervisory staff. The National PTA this year organized a Rescuing Recess campaign, which encourages kids to write letters to local and state school officials to support recess.

I have recently seen Bill Gates make several speeches to the effect that WA and the US are failing to provide adequate education for our children. I think that a lot of tech families overemphasis science training and underemphasizes literature, history and the arts but overall I agree with him.

The global economy does not mean things will get easier; it means they will get harder. Our kids need to be prepared. This touchy-feely math stuff is preposterous and it is high-time that we had national curriculum. We all pay the same taxes and get the same benefits; the idea of "local schools" is misguided.

This is a very good article on the debate about math, calculators and understanding.

New Report Urges Return to Basics In Teaching Math

Critics of 'Fuzzy' Methods Cheer Educators' Findings; Drills Without Calculators Taking Cues From Singapore

By JOHN HECHINGER

Wall Street Journal

September 12, 2006

The nation's math teachers, on the front lines of a 17-year curriculum war, are getting some new marching orders: Make sure students learn the basics.

In a report to be released today, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which represents 100,000 educators from prekindergarten through college, will give ammunition to traditionalists who believe schools should focus heavily and early on teaching such fundamentals as multiplication tables and long division.

The council's advice is striking because in 1989 it touched off the so-called math wars by promoting open-ended problem solving over drilling. Back then, it recommended that students as young as those in kindergarten use calculators in class.

Those recommendations horrified many educators, especially college math professors alarmed by a rising tide of freshmen needing remediation. The council's 1989 report influenced textbooks and led to what are commonly called "reform math" programs, which are used in school systems across the country.

The new approach puzzled many parents. For example, to solve a basic division problem, 120 divided by 40, students might cross off groups of circles to "discover" that the answer was three.

According to their report, "Curriculum Focal Points," which is subtitled "A Quest for Coherence," students, by second grade, should "develop quick recall of basic addition facts and related subtraction facts." By fourth grade, the report says, students should be fluent with "multiplication and division facts" and should start working with decimals and fractions. By fifth, they should know the "standard algorithm" for division -- in other words, long division -- and should start adding and subtracting decimals and fractions. By sixth grade, students should be moving on to multiplication and division of fractions and decimals. By seventh and eighth grades, they should use algebra to solve linear equations.

Unlike many countries, the U.S. has no nationally mandated curriculum, so the math council's guidance has significant influence. In recent years, states have developed their own standards, in part because of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires that schools make progress in raising students' scores on state achievement tests. Another math group, the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, created by President Bush, is preparing its own guidance for how best to teach the subject. It meets in Cambridge, Mass., this week.

And if "constructivist" math wasnt far out enough, now we have infant psychologists.

Sending the Baby To a Shrink

Expanding Field of Infant Mental Health Aims To Head Off Depression and Other Disorders

By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

Wall Street Journal

October 24, 2006

Jean M. Thomas, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist, recently saw a patient who was struggling with her emotions. She was agitated and couldn't stop crying. She was recovering from an eating problem and had trouble forming relationships.

She was 11 months old.

Therapists are increasingly moving their treatments from the couch to the crib. While the field of infant mental health -- which encompasses the study of children from birth through age three -- has been around for decades, new research on everything from brain development to maternal depression is giving it a boost. A widely used mental health and development diagnostic manual for infants was revised last year for the first time since 1994 to include two new subsets of depression, five new subsets of anxiety disorders (including separation anxiety and social anxiety disorders) and six new subsets of feeding behavior disorders (including sensory food aversions and infantile anorexia).