Danielsaurus

How to Bore the Children

Charles Eisenstein:

Here is how to make a child bored: first and foremost, keep him indoors so that the infinitude of nature, its endless variation and chaotic messiness is replaced by a finite, orderly, predictable realm. Second, through television and video games, habituate him to intense stimuli so that everything else seems boring by comparison. Third, eliminate as much as possible any unstructured time with other children, so that he loses his capacity for creative play and needs entertainment instead. Fourth, shorten his attention span with fast-paced programming, dumbed-down books, and frequent interruptions of his play. Fifth, hover over him whenever possible to stunt his self-trust and make him dependent on outside stimulation. Sixth, hurry him from activity to activity to create anxiety about time and eliminate the easy sense of timelessness native to the young.

A somewhat needlessly anti-media piece, but it makes for nice musing. Plus, it introduces a new phrase I think I really like: “the primal self-sufficiency of play.”

“Oh, Grow Up”?

John Boehner and Barack Obama engage in a very public battle over the timing of a speech, each side aiming thinly-veiled vitriol at the other, and the New York Times editorial board (rightly) decries it as political spectacle. But under what headline does the newspaper title and run the piece?

“Oh, grow up.”

The subtle, even unintentional implication here is that this type of petulant behavior is only and naturally the purview of children – whom you by definition incriminate when you suggest something isn’t “grown up.” I have known and worked with many children, my friend, and not one of them has been nearly as petty and arrogant as John Boehner. One simply does not just act like he does by virtue of being a child.

So, to the New York Times: instead of labeling this behavior as “childish” or ascribing it to those who need to “grow up” or “act their age,” let’s stop demeaning kids and label this behavior what it really is – plain immaturity. It’s as simple as that.

Maturity and age are two very separate, independent things.

Fixing Math Education in America

Two mathematicians, Sol Garfunkle and David Mumford, respond to the concern that America is faring poorly in our math education:

All this worry, however, is based on the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.

Today, American high schools offer a sequence of algebra, geometry, more algebra, pre-calculus and calculus (or a “reform” version in which these topics are interwoven). This has been codified by the Common Core State Standards, recently adopted by more than 40 states. This highly abstract curriculum is simply not the best way to prepare a vast majority of high school students for life. […]

In math, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move practically between everyday problems and mathematical formulations (as when we decide whether it is better to buy or lease a new car).

Garfunkle and Mumford (and really, they couldn’t be better named for two mathematicians) make an excellent argument against traditionalism in education, and the picture they later paint – of a holistically minded, culturally relevant math curriculum – just warms my heart. This is what school should be like.

McDonald’s Unveils New Senior Citizen PlayPlace

The Onion:

In an effort to accommodate an aging customer base and make the McDonald’s experience “super fun for seniors 65 to 95,” the fast-food chain unveiled its new Senior Citizen PlayPlaces Wednesday. “The ball pit has a special winch to lower seniors into and out of it,” said day-shift manager Will Earle, adding that the tunnel-maze has multiple exits in case seniors become disoriented or scared. “We have a slide wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs, and on Saturdays, Ronald himself stops by to make balloon animals and just talk to the old folks. They like talking to Ronald.” McDonald’s confirmed plans to open even more senior PlayPlaces by 2013, saying they provide a space in which children can enjoy a meal and still keep an eye on their elderly parents or grandparents.

Simply priceless.

Fred Rogers Center Launches New Curriculum Toolkit

Total academic nerdery on my part, especially as I’m currently developing a new course at the university about Children’s Media, but possibly also of interest to two of you:

The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College has announced the launch of the online Curriculum Toolkit as a new resource for college and university faculty that combines video footage from the Fred Rogers Archive with a variety of multimedia course materials. […]

The initial set of Curriculum Toolkit syllabi, collected from college and university faculty nationally, covers language development, creativity, music, and the role of play, among other relevant topics. The Curriculum Toolkit also provides a number of assignment ideas that include everything from puppet construction to assessing emotional development in children. A reference area includes research abstracts and links to other research in the field.

If nothing else, and even if you aren’t academic faculty, the videos and interviews the Center has collected here are just gold.

‘There Will Be Riots’

The signs were already there. 18-year-old Chavez Campbell from north London, for instance, saw them:

A week before it began, Campbell, in an interview with the Guardian about cuts to youth services, predicted what would happen. Asked what he thought the future held, he said, simply: “There’ll be riots.”

Looking at his words again, he said: “I did see the riots coming and the government should have seen it coming, too. Jobs are hard to get and, when they do become available, youths don’t get the jobs. There is nothing to do, they are closing youth clubs so the streets are just crazy. They are full of people who have no ambitions, or have ambitions but can’t fulfil them.”

‘The Classroom is Obsolete’

A great piece by Prakash Nair, responding in Education Week to the never-ending call for “education reform”:

Lost in all this hand-wringing is the most visible symbol of a failed system: the classroom. Almost without exception, the reform efforts under way will preserve the classroom as our children’s primary place of learning deep into the 21st century. This is profoundly disturbing because staying with classroom-based schools could permanently sink our chances of rebuilding our economy and restoring our shrinking middle class to its glory days.

The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution.

Indeed, this is perhaps the most fundamental flaw of all education reform efforts in the past several decades, while at the same measure the most stubbornly – even vehemently – ignored. Go back and watch Waiting for Superman, for instance – the documentary widely heralded “to save public education.” You won’t find even a passing consideration in it of the most fundamental elemental of education: individual students and learners. Nor will you find any challenge to the past industrial-era mindset of education as a passive “conveyor belt”-like consumption of knowledge – in fact the documentary almost criminally perpetuates this destructive model, while ignoring a vast decades-old body of scientific research that proves that learning doesn’t happen this way.

Instead of considering this most basic element of education, Waiting for Superman – like so many education reform debates and efforts before it, and I’m sure many more to come – settles for skirting the issue and blowing around more hot air. It seems almost dogmatically fixated on the relatively superficial things in public education, like teachers’ unions and rubber rooms, student tracking and charter schools – incorrectly labeling these things as the root problems of (or, in some cases, solutions to) our system, without even stopping to consider whether it could be something more fundamental.

That’s the problem in the “education reform” world: We’re not lacking for magic answers, for solutions that we’re sure will “fix the system”. The thing is they’re useless, though, and will continue to be, so long as we avoid asking the right questions.

Evaluating Mary Poppins’ Job Performance

McSweeney’s:

While her communication skills are questionable, her judgment is completely unsound. In the past, she has neglected errands assigned to her, including hiring a piano tuner, purchasing gingerbread and shopping for fish, in favor of taking the children to visit one of her mentally incapacitated relatives, commonly referred to as “Uncle Albert.” This frivolous outing ended with my children being stricken with a similar illness, whose side effects include drinking tea on the ceiling. Similarly dangerous daytrips include horse racing and gallivanting on rooftops with dance crews of like-minded chimney sweeps. Worst of all, May Poppins deceived me into bringing my children into work at the bank with me.

Of Riots and Revolutions

With the riots that have broken out across England continuing for a fourth night in a row, Andrew Sullivan has culled together highlights from how the United Kingdom’s major press outlets are responding to them. It’s interesting to see the wide range of ways we as human beings process and characterize events like these, as well as the motivations of those behind them. Consider, for example, the difference in these two characterizations:

The Daily Mail:

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong. They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others. Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

Morning Star:

It is meaningless complaining that many teenagers show no respect without appreciating the reality that they too are often treated without respect.

Bill Watterson on Children and Parents

“Calvin and Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson, in a rare Q&A exchange that took place in 2005:

Q: What attributes do you wish were seen more commonly among children?

A: Good parents!

Typical for Bill Watterson: a quietly direct, even mousy, but unexpectedly truthful response. I was caught off guard by it at first, actually, thinking about how most people might answer the question. Of course Watterson would see it from the kids’ side, though; leave it him to recognize that many of the problems of children – and the deficiencies we like to find in them – actually have their roots in the failings and indifference of the adults around children instead.

Awesome Things Ahead for Dallas Clayton

The Hollywood Reporter:

Harper Collins signed self-publishing sensation Dallas Clayton to a three-book deal.

The Los Angeles-based Clayton self-published the children’s picture book An Awesome World! in 2009 after writing it for his then six-year-old son (with actress Shannyn Sossamon) Audio Science. An Awesome Book!, which Clayton says is about “dreaming big and never giving up,” evokes a brighter and softer Maurice Sendak with a hint of Shel Silverstein. […]

Under the deal Harper Collins will publish its own edition of An Awesome Book! in spring 2012. Clayton will also develop children’s content across multiple platforms, including television.

I’m a huge fan of Dallas (if you don’t know his work yourself, you really should!), and I can’t begin to say how excited I am that he’s been given this very well-deserved opportunity.

I’m thinking about making up road signs to mark the occasion: “Unimaginably Brilliant and Uncontained Awesomeness Ahead!” (What do you think?)