Sweden Debuts Gender-Neutral Preschool
At best, a school model for the more-enlightened future, and at worst, an intriguing social experiment. Via Yahoo News:
At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.
From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.
Egalia doesn’t deny the biological differences between boys and girls — the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct. What matters is that children understand that their biological differences “don’t mean boys and girls have different interests and abilities.”
The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden’s efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward. Breaking down gender roles is…
Miss USA 2011 Contestants On Evolution
The fifteen semifinalists hoping to win the title of Miss USA 2011 each weigh in on the question, “Should evolution be taught in schools?” If you are wondering why our society is in a death spiral of decline, this is why.
Many Public Schools Begin Charging Students For Attending Class, Textbook Use, Teachers’ Materials
This is so sad: in school districts across the country, the concept of a free public education is fading into the past. The Wall Street Journal writes:
Public schools across the country, struggling with cuts in state funding, are shifting costs to students and their parents by imposing or boosting fees for everything from enrolling in honors English to riding the bus.
At high schools in several states, it can cost more than $200 just to walk in the door, thanks to registration fees, technology fees and unspecified “instructional fees.”
Though public schools have long charged for extras such as driver’s education and field trips, many are now asking parents to pay for supplies needed to take core classes—from biology-lab safety goggles to algebra workbooks to the printer ink used to run off grammar exercises in language arts. In some schools, each class comes with a price tag, to be paid at registration. Some…
Video: Are We Training Kids To Believe That Total Surveillance Is Normal?
Via TED Talks, Cory Doctorow discusses how parents’ and schools’ constant and total monitoring of kids’ internet usage and conversations trains young people to accept a complete lack of privacy, and total disclosure of their lives, as normal and good. Are today’s parents raising their children in a manner that plays into the hands of Big Brother?
Do Students Eat Like Prisoners?
Good Magazine looks at the similarity between prison meals and children’s school cafeteria food — both rich in starch-y/milk-y goodness, and costing around $2.65 per day to provide. It should also be pointed out that both children and prisoners are daily confined to small spaces and given little opportunity to burn off these massive calorie counts. I suppose school is intended to be practice for where the kids will eventually end up?
The Journal Of Universal Rejection
Rarely do ideas-put-into-action as brilliant as the Journal of Universal Rejection come along. The JofUR is a scholarly publication with an editorial board comprised of dozens of accomplished academics from across several continents. Subscriptions are available for £120 per year. The website explains every aspect of the journal in hilarious detail, but the guiding principle is as follows:
The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected. Despite that apparent drawback, here are a number of reasons you may choose to submit to the JofUR:
- You can send your manuscript here without suffering waves of anxiety regarding the eventual fate of your submission. You know with 100% certainty that it will not be accepted for publication.
- There are no page-fees.
- You may claim to have submitted to the most prestigious journal (judged by acceptance rate).
- The JofUR is one-of-a-kind.…
11-Year-Old Arrested In Colorado Over Violent Drawing
The Daily News brings you this latest piece of police state madness:
An 11-year-old boy was arrested, fingerprinted and handcuffed by police in Colorado all because of a stick-figure drawing he made in class. Now his parents say they are out thousands of dollars as a result of the arrest, which took place in October and led to the boy being put on probation.
“It was heart wrenching to see my… 11-year-old son walk out my front door in handcuffs,” said the child’s mother in a report Monday on Fox 31 News in Denver.
The boy, identified as “Tim” because the family did not want their names used, suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder and was told by his therapist to draw pictures when he feels himself get upset or agitated…
When Body Fat Affects Report Cards
If you were an elementary school student, which would upset you more: being picked on as the fat kid in class or having the teacher mention it on your report card? The Chicago Tribune reports:
Elmhurst students have long been checked on how long it takes to run a mile or whether they can do a pushup. But another physical fitness assessment tool has some parents fuming — one that aims at finding out whether their kids are too hefty.
A child’s “body mass index,” a computation of body fat based on height and weight, was one of six tests used at Hawthorne Elementary School to determine the physical fitness grade on a student’s progress report.
But that practice ended abruptly Tuesday after about 25 parents met with school officials to express their displeasure with how the BMI data were being used. One mother broke into tears as she described how it affected her…
South Korean Schools Introduce Egg-Shaped Robot Teachers
Each android teacher is equipped with a screen displaying the face of a human avatar, and is controlled remotely by an actual instructor in the Philippines. It’s a way of outsourcing a job (educating children) that one would have thought had to be done in person. The Daily Mail reports:
Pupils often assume their teachers don’t really exist outside the school gates, now robot classroom assistants could make this a reality. Almost 30 egg-shaped robots have started teaching English at primary schools in South Korea.
The 3.3ft high machines have a TV panel that displays a female Caucasian face and can wheel around the classroom while speaking to the students. The robots are also able to read books and dance to music moving their head and arms.
But despite appearances the robots, developed the Korea Institute of Science of Technology, are not autonomous beings. They are actually controlled remotely by English teachers living in…
EU Challenges Britain’s Fingerprinting Of Children In Schools
It’s nice to know that the classroom is preparing kids for the future. In one out of every seven British schools, pupils are compulsorily fingerprinted, with finger scanners being used in lunch rooms and libraries, the Telegraph reports:
The European Commission has demanded Britain justifies the widespread and routine fingerprinting of children in schools because of “significant concerns” that the policy breaks EU privacy laws.
The commissioner is also concerned that parents are not allowed legal redress after one man was told he could not challenge the compulsory fingerprinting, without his permission, of his daughter for a “unique pupil number”.
In many schools, when using the canteen or library, children, as young as four, place their thumbs on a scanner and lunch money is deducted from their account or they are registered as borrowing a book.
Research carried out by Dr Emmeline Taylor, at Salford University, found earlier this year that 3,500 schools in the…
As More Bullying Victims Commit Suicide, Right-Wing Groups Decry Anti-Bullying Policies As ‘Gay Agenda’ Ploy
As a sort of follow up to my post yesterday, from Think Progress:
Many states across the country are taking laudable steps to enact measures that bolster administrators’ ability to protect students who face such harassment. However, despite the evidence supporting the need, right-wing lawmakers and activists insist that anti-bullying measures are nothing more than insidious tools of the “homosexual agenda”:
- The American Family Association of Michigan has spent years decrying a proposed anti-bullying measure as “a Trojan Horse to sneak [homosexual activists'] special rights agenda into law” and to “legitimize homosexual behavior” which is “a practice scientifically proven to result in a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, illegal drug use, promiscuity, life-threatening disease, and premature death.” The bill “died in 2008 in the state Senate because senators could not agree” on whether to address bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the measure.
- In Minnesota, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer said he would not…
The Culling is Here: Is Abuse a Form of Social Control?
Amidst the recent spate of news stories about bullied youth committing suicide (at least nine in September), ScienceDaily reports:
Loners and antisocial kids who reject other children are often bullied at school — an accepted form of punishment from peers as they establish social order. Such peer victimization may be an extreme group response to control renegades, according to a new study from Concordia University published in the Journal of Early Adolescence.
“For groups to survive, they need to keep their members under control,” says author William M. Bukowski, a professor at the Concordia Department of Psychology and director of its Centre for Research in Human Development. “Withdrawn individuals threaten the strong social fabric of a group, so kids are victimized when they are too strong or too antisocial. Victimization is a reaction to anyone who threatens group harmony.”
Bukowski notes that the word victimization is related to the word for sacrifice and…
How To Improve Your Study Habits
Turns out everything we thought we knew about studying is wrong … the New York Times reports on cognitive science research that reveals how to improve study habits, whether you’re in grade school or a post-graduate:
…In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.
The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.
For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.
“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them…
School Enlists All Ninth Grade Freshmen In JROTC
From The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina:
Welcome to high school. Now drop and give me 50.
The entire freshman class at Carvers Bay High School has been automatically enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, a military-sponsored program that trains high school students in military discipline and concepts. Principal Richard Neal, a Navy veteran, said the school’s Marine Corps JROTC class is fulfilling the student’s physical education requirement and is part of the school’s Ninth Grade Academy.
But Charles Holloway, the parent of a freshman student at Carvers Bay, said he did not want his son in that program and when he asked that his son be taken out, his son was put in a class by himself. Holloway said he feels his son was being punished for not wanting to take part in that class…
[continues at The Sun News]
SHCOOL: North Carolina Road Marking
It sums up the state of our education system very succinctly, doesn’t it? You know, a picture is worth a thousand words and all that… (via BBC News):
Beepers to Protect Children From Sexual Predators
South Korea has taken steps toward keeping their children safe from sexual predators. Each child was given a beeper with a GPS device installed. After atrocious attacks on minors, the government has decided to equip children with these beepers in order to warn police of any danger. The beepers will also activate surveillance cameras. An interesting use of technology as police protection, but how do you remind your child to remember his/her rape beeper every morning? The Himalayan Times reports:
Some 1,200 elementary school children in Anyang City, south of Seoul, will receive the beepers in a test run from October.
Authorities will then consider adopting the system nationwide, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security said.
Each child will be able to use their matchbox-sized beeper, fitted with GPS (global positioning device) technology, to activate any nearby cameras and alert parents and police via mobile phone.
The government has strengthened monitoring of elementary schools…
Wave Of Deadly Knife Attacks On Children Continues In China
Scariest-trend-ever alert: madmen going on knife and hammer rampages in Chinese schools. The Economist reports:
ALL month schools in China have been on what the state-controlled press calls a “red alert” for possible attacks on pupils by intruders. In one city police have orders to shoot perpetrators on sight.
In the latest reported incident, on May 12th, seven children were hacked to death at a rural kindergarten in the northern province of Shaanxi. Eleven other children were injured. It was one of half a dozen such cases at schools across China in less than two months.
Assailants were often said to be lone, deranged, men venting their frustrations on the weak.
Texas City Reinstates Corporal Punishment In Public Schools
If there’s one thing Texans love besides barbecue, it’s paddling their kids. From the Washington Post:
“There are times when maybe a good crack might not be a bad idea,” said Robert Pippin, a custom home builder who sports a goatee and cowboy boots. His son graduated from Temple schools several years ago.
Corporal punishment remains legal in 20 states, mostly in the South, but its use is diminishing. Ohio ended it last year, and a movement for a federal ban is afoot. Most school districts across the country banned paddling of students long ago. Texas sat that trend out.
But even by Texas standards, Temple is unusual. The city, a compact railroad hub of 60,000 people, banned the practice and then revived it at the demand of parents who longed for the orderly schools of yesteryear. Since paddling was brought back to the city’s 14 schools by a unanimous board vote in…
John Taylor Gatto – The Underground History of American Education
In this clip the former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year reviews the epigraphs from the chapters of his book, The Underground History of American Education. I’ve been reading the book (a heavy 388 pg. textbook), and find his writing much more exciting than his speaking.
