Though many experts say bed-sharing with an infant is a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome, Cain and others say it’s a means to create and maintain a natural bond between the mom and infant, particularly if the mother is breastfeeding.

“I co-sleep because I want him to trust that I’m going to be there for him, taking care of him, all the time, (and know) he’ll never be alone,” she said. “That’s very important to me.” …

“Sleeping near the mother for breastfeeding is natural and intended,” said James McKenna, director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. “But there may be a problem with how it’s being practiced.

“I support the choice of parents to sleep safely with their infants, but I don’t recommend that mothers not breastfeeding bring their babies to bed to sleep,” he said…

A 2003 survey sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that bed-sharing increased from 5.5% to 12.8% between 1993 and 2000, with almost 50% of the nearly 8,500 participants saying their infants had slept with them in the previous two weeks.

“Having a crib in the house doesn’t mean that babies aren’t bed-sharing,” McKenna said.

McKenna said his studies have found that babies who sleep with their moms are “physiologically linked” to their parents because they breathe better during the night, wake almost simultaneously with their moms and are easily aroused because they never fall into deep sleep. In addition, a mom guards her baby by nearly cocooning the infant - placing the baby near her shoulder then turning her body toward the baby with her knees tucked. They have not observed the same patterns among bottle-feeding moms, he said.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=635769

… The notion of childhood is still commonly perceived as a period of innocence and naivety, with children still being considered too young to think critically and less knowledgeable about “adult concepts” such as politics, race, sexuality, and critical social and economic events…

Recent research on early childhood education by Robinson and Jones Dmaz (2006) showed little evidence on the part of educators in developing and fostering critical thinking among children. The two also found that the perception of children as naive and innocent beings is so prevalent that many childhood educators see no relevance and significance in discussing topics related to broader social, political and economic issues…

To combat these social ailments, early childhood education needs to be responsive by shifting the pedagogy paradigm from viewing children as innocent and “too young” individuals into individuals with the potential to be empowered as agents of change in the world where they live…

Early childhood education should not become an arena where children are conditioned to be uncritical passive recipients by always mimicking and adhering to certain doctrines. Instead they need to be positioned as risk takers by continuously challenging the existing doctrines they think misleading and lacking in a sound basis…

Source: Jakarta Post
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20070723.F04&irec=3

Five years after the concept was first proposed, the so-called $100 laptop is poised to go into mass production.

Hardware suppliers have been given the green light to ramp-up production of all of the components needed to build millions of the low-cost machines…

Getting the $100 laptop to this stage has been a turbulent journey for the organisation and its founder Nicholas Negroponte.

Since the idea was first put forward in 2002, the low-cost laptop has been both lauded and ridiculed.

Intel chairman Craig Barret famously described it as a “$100 gadget” whilst Microsoft founder Bill Gates questioned its design, particularly the lack of hard drive and its “tiny screen”.

Other critics asked whether there was a need for a laptop in countries which, they said, had more pressing needs such as sanitation, water and health care.

Professor Negroponte’s response has always been the same: “It’s an education project, not a laptop project.” …

Source: BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6908946.stm

Physiological Differences

Historically, boys excelled in math and science, and girls lagged. But much effort has been heaped on closing that gap nationally. Researchers and educators are now turning their attention to boys’ struggle to read.

If they don’t, the effect will be dramatic, some predict.

“It’s a man’s world - it’s not a boy’s world,” said William Pollack, a Harvard Medical School professor, author and director of the Centers for Men & Young Men. “We didn’t stop to notice over time that while girls did better with math and science, boys began to fall behind in reading.”

When that trend started is unclear because there is a lack of comparable data, Pollack and others said. What is clear: The situation is not improving.

Pollack offers these statistics:

•Boys learn to read an average of 12 to 15 months later than girls.

•Nationally the gap between girls’ and boys’ reading proficiency is 5 percentage points to 10 percentage points. In writing, it’s 10 percentage points to 15 percentage points.

•About three-quarters of special-education students are boys.

•Poor, black and Hispanic boys struggle the most with reading…

Educators have long recognized that boys and girls learn differently. And new brain research has convinced some that more consideration should be given to the findings.

“Girls’ left brain tends to develop more quickly than boys’ left brain,” said Diane Connell, a professor of New Hampshire’s Rivier College. “That enables girls in kindergarten and first grade to actually do the writing, fine motor skills, sit in their seats longer. They’re even able to hear better. They really do come to school more equipped to read and write.”

Boys’ right brains - responsible for spatial and visual motor skills - develop faster than girls’, so they do better in math, she said.

“It’s a serious crisis right now,” Connell said. “The boys are having the crisis now that girls had 25, 30 years ago.”

Boys prefer hands-on activities and are more selective about what they read than girls. Fluency is a problem for many boys because they don’t read enough, researchers said…

Source: Tampa Tribune
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGB1F0JNE4F.html

Too many needy children enter the first grade far behind their better-off peers in the race that is life. To narrow this gap, state and local policies should stress early childhood education…

Decades of study have led educators to this consensus: When aimed at kids from lower-income families, quality early childhood education boosts academic attainment, high school graduation rates, college attendance and future wages, and it reduces truancy, crime and teenage pregnancies.

Economists conclude that society gets a big return on its investment in such education. And biologists have chimed in, citing brain research that reinforces the value of early education - even prior to age 3, when four-fifths of a child’s brain is already developed…

The federal government should expand Head Start, which must stress education. The knock on the program is that some agencies that run it don’t put enough emphasis on academics. An expanded program won’t come close to meeting all the state’s needs, though, and besides, in America, education is traditionally a state responsibility…

Early childhood education is crucial for children from lower-income families, who otherwise tend to fall behind their better-off peers early and stay behind. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule: children who grow up in homes poor in money but rich in literacy.

Overall, though, the achievement gap is correlated to income. Children from middle-income families with well-educated parents know about 12,000 words in the third grade. Children from poor families with uneducated parents know about 4,000 words.

A newborn arrives with some 100 billion brain cells, or neurons, which connect with each other like wildfire during the early months. The more connections, the higher the brain voltage…

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=635858

Irvine has become a growing center of Chinese culture in Southern California. There are about 30,000 residents of Chinese descent here, city officials say. There are Chinese supermarkets, plays, operas, Buddhist temples and a cultural center that is one of the largest in the U.S. More Chinese Americans live in Irvine than any other city in the county.

The school, at the newly opened, $12-million, 44,000-square-foot South Coast Chinese Cultural Center, is the country’s largest site for the Startalk program. Funded by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Startalk aims to lure students into learning languages deemed critical to national security and the economy…

“In the U.S., foreign languages have always taken a back seat to other disciplines, and we want to change that,” said Betsy Hart, associate director of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland and head of Startalk. “This is a pilot year, and we are testing to see which models will be most effective.” …

The Irvine site was chosen after David Wu, who heads the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools, and representatives from the Chinese cultural center heard about the program and applied for a federal grant. They were awarded $193,000 and set about devising a one-month, intensive curriculum.

“This is the first time we have seen a federal grant program come along to teach Chinese,” said Tim Cheng, manager of the cultural center and vice chairman of the Irvine Community Services Commission. “We used to have to beg our kids to learn Chinese, and now it has become very popular.” …

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://tinyurl.com/35k9vy

Some 46 million African children — nearly half the school-age population — have never set foot in a classroom, according to the United Nations. There are signs of hope as more African countries eliminate public school tuition fees, but burdens ranging from extreme poverty to the cost of uniforms are keeping children out of class.

The consequences of a poorly educated population are dire, particularly for a continent desperately in need of foreign investment but with a literacy rate of less than 60%…

Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Ghana are among countries that have abolished fees to keep children in school — though for some governments, that has meant new strains on systems already short of capable teachers, classrooms and supplies. And even the smallest expenses for uniforms and books can hamper enrollment numbers, Kaara said…

In Kenya, primary school is free and President Mwai Kibaki has announced he will also waive the thrice-yearly $50 fee for secondary school starting in January. But David Siele of the Ministry of Education said a seemingly endless list of expenses — not just tuition — keeps children from advancing…

Uganda also offers free primary education, but fewer than half its children complete secondary school because they would have to pay fees of up to $100 per term, according to the Ministry of Education. Uganda’s average annual income is $300…

Source: USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-07-21-africaschild_N.htm

Well, it’s over. With The Deathly Hallows, J K Rowling brings the most successful series of children’s books ever to a definitive ending, tying up loose threads, revealing secret agendas and hidden histories, explaining motivations and culminating in a cataclysmic showdown between Good and Evil. But if readers are expecting an emotional wallop, I fear they may be disappointed. For all its epic swagger and portentous tone, the overall effect is rather like being pelted with softly boiled eggs…

Rowling has taken care to develop characters that might have been - or indeed, previously have been - stereotypes. There is room for generosity, not only towards Harry’s Muggle tormentors but to the misguided villains, the Malfoys. There are also moments of weakness for the heroic, and heroism from the weak. If part of growing up is seeing the world in shades of grey, then the Deathly Hallows succeeds, despite its black and white moral universe…

Fans will indubitably be delighted by the Deathly Hallows, and sceptics will find incontrovertible proof to sustain their position. For critics of a more psychological persuasion, the importance of motherhood in the Potter-verse takes a place tellingly centre-stage…

Source: Scotland on Sunday
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=3&id=1141342007

In the race for entry to the state’s academically selective high schools, children from Asian backgrounds are at the front of the pack. Next year’s entrants got news of their success recently, and it is a sure bet the extraordinary dominance of those with Chinese-Hong Kong parentage will continue. In some selective high schools more than 80 per cent of entrants have an Asian heritage.

It is fascinating to consider what accounts for this academic success, and why children from Anglo cultures perform on average less well.

Ironically, self-esteem may explain the performance gap - but it is the higher self-esteem imbued into most children from a Western culture that may be their undoing.

The self-esteem movement for the past 30 years has dominated parenting styles and classroom teaching in the West. It is a movement that did not catch on in the East where humility is still a virtue and self-congratulatory behaviour discouraged…

The movement undermined old beliefs that competition was good for children. It led to bewildering changes in school report cards - “F” for failed disappeared because it was bad for self-esteem - and in the more extreme manifestations, led to changes in school sports programs. Everyone got ribbons for “participation”.

It was a kinder, gentler approach to children, but now some experts are recanting. They contend that too much praise, or praise of the wrong sort, can backfire and end up denying children the tools they will need to experience real success…

Seminal work on the effect of praise has been carried out by a Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dweck. It has shown there is good and bad praise. Praising children for effort was much more effective in improving academic performance than praising children for being smart. Children felt more empowered, were prepared to try hard and take risks, when imbued with the idea that intelligence is not innate but can be developed by hard work…

When the NSW Education Department warns parents off the use of coaching colleges as a gateway to selective schools, it is sending the message that intelligence is innate and hard work won’t help. That’s nonsense, and Asian parents know that…

Source: Brisbane Times
http://tinyurl.com/3dmz76

Phil Beadle is the controversial Teacher of the Year who swears a lot, abhors poor grammar and despises private education. He tells Cassandra Jardine how parents can help their children shine at school.

On the sofa of Phil Beadle’s terraced house in Catford, south London, lies a Teach your Child to Read book for five to sixes. Next to it is a half-used sheet of silver stars. When his five-year-old son, Len, returns from school, he will sit down with him and work through another page or two. “He hasn’t made a fantastic start at school,” Beadle admits. “This happens to many middle kids.”

Pushing aside a pile of ironing so we can sit at the table, Beadle explains that, if he sounds a trifle anxious, it’s because his eldest son, Bas, got off to more of a flying start educationally. He thinks he knows why. A few years ago he was more in touch with what he jokingly calls his “inner Nazi”, so he insisted that the boy practise reading every single day, whether he liked it or not. The result? “Aged nine, he has a near adult reading age.” …

… Despite traces of scepticism, Beadle, 42, is a fervent believer in parental involvement in education, partly because his mother taught him to read before he started school. “I can still recall the teacher’s look of astonishment, along with my own sense of pride, on my first day at school,” he says. Appropriately, then, it is to Olive Bridget Beadle, the woman who believed her son was special, that Phil has dedicated his entertaining and practical book on how parents can help children shine at school…

Source: Telegraph.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/2mx9s8