Pregnant women who perceive having had a well-balanced relationship with their parents during their childhood will experience fewer difficulties in the transition to motherhood, as opposed to women whose relationship with their parents was characterized by unresolved anger or rejection – reveals a new study conducted at the University of Haifa. The study also found that women who tend to deny negative experiences in early childhood relationships expected to experience a relationship with their future children characterized by less warmth compared to other women who participated in the study.

The research, which was conducted by Ora Gazit under the direction of Dr. Miri Scharf, examined 160 Jewish women in the last trimester of their first pregnancy who live with their husband or partner. The researchers examined the expectations, thoughts and emotions of the pregnant women regarding themselves as future mothers and their future relationships with their babies – based on two approaches related to identity building. The first focuses on the way people perceive their early childhood relationship with their parents and how this is reflected in their thoughts, perceptions and behavior during their lives. The second focuses on existing differences between people whose motivation is derived from an aspiration for success and those who are motivated by an aspiration to avoid failure.

The results of the study revealed that women whose early childhood relationships with their parents were characterized by rejection and unresolved conflicts, expected to experience a high measure of separation anxiety, thought their child would be more demanding of them and thought they would set a lot boundaries, compared to other women in the study.

Among women who described their early childhood relationships with their parents as being characterized by rejection but who had difficulty recalling many of the events representative of this relationship, the study found a majority had positive thoughts about their impending motherhood and towards their unborn child. However, in comparison to the remainder of the women in the study, they expected to develop a less warm and close relationship with their baby. The women who had a balanced view of their early relationship with their parents had the most optimal expectations towards their impending motherhood. They expected to feel a low level of separation anxiety from their child, thought childrearing would be easy and that their relationship would be characterized by warmth.

In addition, the study found that women who were characterized by wanting to advance and reach set goals were positive and more optimistic, in comparison to women who were characterized by abstention and concern with self-defense, security and responsibility. According to the researchers, women in the first group thought they would be more fulfilled in parenthood, saw themselves and their child in a more positive light, thought they would be more productive and warm as mothers and expected to have good communication with their child. “The results of the research show that there is great importance in evaluating thoughts, perceptions and feelings about parental identity during pregnancy. Such an evaluation will enable early identification of women who are concerned they will have difficulty contending with parental roles and offer them tools that will help them adapt better to the transition to motherhood,” summarized the researchers.

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/uoh-wwt022608.php

The early days of parenthood are filled with anxiety. Parents fret over whether their babies are eating enough, growing enough and sleeping enough. As the children get a little older, parents also worry if they are talking enough.

But how do you judge a child’s language skills? Infoture, a company based in Boulder, Colorado, aims to take the guesswork out of that question by selling a kind of verbal thermometer. The device, which costs $400, is called LENA (for “language environment analysis”), and here’s how it works. A voice recorder tucked into a child’s clothing records all the sounds in the environment. At the end of each day, special software evaluates both the amount of exposure the child has had to verbal stimulation as well as the child’s own utterances. Ultimately, the device generates percentile rankings that help assess a child’s language development, just as doctors provide such rankings for a child’s height, weight and head circumference.

Whatever its merits, LENA represents a radically new way of assessing language development. Doctors initially judge a child’s skills by asking parents about what a child can do. Kids with clear difficulties are referred to a speech pathologist for a more detailed evaluation. By contrast, Infoture would allow parents to monitor their kids more precisely and on their own. But is LENA necessary? Some linguists worry that the technology is more likely to raise false anxieties than to assuage genuine ones.

The man behind the vision, Infoture’s founder, Terrance Paul, has made a fortune selling software to assess children’s reading skills. His current venture was inspired by a well-known 1995 study that found that professional parents uttered more than three times as many words to their children as did parents who were on welfare. The children in the less talkative homes turned out to be less verbal and to have smaller vocabularies. Other studies have suggested that these gaps affect later professional success.

One way to close the language gap, Paul reasoned, would be to make early assessments of a child’s language world. Parents, he figured, could use the feedback to intervene and enrich their kids’ verbal environment as needed.

But how to build the ultimate baby monitor? The company’s engineers soon found that conventional speech-recognition software was not up to the task. The sounds a baby might encounter — a raspy grandparent, a TV commercial, a sibling’s chatter — were simply too varied to analyze successfully. The best solution, it seemed, was to eschew the identification of particular words and focus on a recording’s acoustic features. Modeling every conceivable sound in a household, they designed a system that distinguishes different voices from one another, gives a rough count of the number of words directed at a child and counts also the number of conversational “turns” that are taken as child and interlocutor exchange words. In future versions, the system may also include a measure called speech entropy, which represents the increasing complexity of a child’s speech as new consonants, words and phrases are added to its repertory.

On the basis of recordings from 314 families, Infoture engineers claim that the number of conversational turns and the entropy measure track closely with language ability as determined by speech professionals. Children with diagnosed language delays, for example, have lower entropy scores than children of a similar age who are developing normally. But the method has its critics. Tom Roeper, a linguist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, points out that measures of conversational turns and the like can’t reflect a child’s mastery of syntax. Learning to speak isn’t just about speaking frequently; it’s also about knowing how to put the right word in the right place.

If a device like LENA became popular, it might create new benchmarks for speech development. Mabel Rice, a speech pathologist at the University of Kansas, speculates that parents might direct repeated questions to their children in order to score more conversational turns. The focus on quantity could also reinforce cultural biases against quieter and perhaps more thoughtful kids; consider Albert Einstein, who was late to start talking. Even so, Rice says, pressure on parents to spend more time conversing with their children could have a positive effect. Partha Niyogi, a computer scientist at the University of Chicago and an adviser to Infoture, agrees. LENA, for him, is best understood as an early-warning system. “Suppose you are talking a lot to your child, but your child is talking very little,” he says. “It could be a sign of something wrong.”

Source: International Herald Tribune, France
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/25/news/24wwlnessayt.php

For many parents, raising a teen is an exercise in conflict management. And besides the usual battles over curfews, clothing choices and academic performance, some teens seem to seek out conflict with their parents more often than others.

For decades, researchers have tried to unravel the secrets behind parent-teen conflict. Now, child development experts are scrutinizing a new study that suggests the size of small, almond shaped structures in the center of the brain known as the amygdalae may hold the key to how aggressive teens behave toward their parents.

Scientists have already known that this area of the brain is heavily involved in emotional responses, and previous research has linked it to the fight-or-flight behaviors that typify our bodies’ responses to emergency situations.

But researchers at the University of Melbourne’s Orygen Research Center in Australia report that these areas of the brain may have a special link when it comes to teens who regularly fight with their parents.

The researchers looked at 137 teens and their parents who participated in a problem-solving task that was designed to cause conflict. After measuring the degree of fighting the teens experienced with their parents, the researchers had the adolescent volunteers undergo MRI brain scans to measure the size of their amygdalae.

What they found was that the larger their amygdalae, the more likely the kids were to fight with their folks.

“One of the things we found in our study was the children whose amygdalae were larger were more likely to spend a longer amount time being aggressive or angry with their parents during an interaction, so there was a relation to size of the amygdalae and how angry or aggressive the child was during the interaction,” says lead study author Nick Allen, associate professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Behavioral Science.

Tiny Brain Structures Not the Big Picture

But the findings, which were released Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are already brewing debate among child development experts.

In particular, some are concerned that the research could lead to a conclusion that it is the large amygdalae of aggressive teens that necessarily fuels conflict, when a number of other biological and social factors may be to blame.

“The problem with this kind of research is that it is correlational and only demonstrates an association,” says Merritt Schreiber of the UCLA National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

“Even though not explicitly said, the underlying tendency is to assume this means causation — in other words, that the structural changes cause aggression.”

Others agree. “It says nothing about cause at all or interaction among factors leading to the results, which is likely extremely complex,” says Daniel Kupper, assistant clinical professor of psychology and psychiatry at UCLA. “I’m not even certain there is much agreement as to what the size of the amygdala indicates, or how good the data is on normal amygdala size in adolescence.”

Still, some child development experts say that the findings make sense, given what’s already known about the amygdala.

“Amygdala overfunction creates a propensity to overreact to … stressors and difficulty in disengaging in conflicts,” says Kendall Johnson, a clinician in private practice in California and author of the books “Trauma in the Lives of Children” and “Dealing with Classroom Crisis.”

“Like firefighters rushing into a burning building while the rest of us run out, teens with biologically based overreactivity tend to be attracted to conflict, exacerbate it, and not be able to think their way out of it,” Johnson says. “Parents can learn to understand their children’s violent behavior as a symptom of an underlying dysfunction rather than a sign of poor character or an indictment of bad parenting.”

But Schreiber remains concerned that focusing too much on the size of one particular brain structure — and not enough on a multitude of other biological and social factors — would be tantamount to ignoring 40 years of research on other factors that could contribute to teen aggression. These factors, he says, include parenting practices and media influences.

“We have so much established knowledge of the tremendous significance of family function, environmental pressures and education on these behaviors that I choose to stay with these explanations.” (…)

Source: ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4340870&page=1

In the best-selling “Baby Einstein Language Nursery” DVD, images of colorful toys and bold patterns dance across the screen over a soundtrack of stimulating music and words spoken in seven languages.

The video is part of a growing industry aimed at parents who want their babies to excel intellectually from the very start.

But those parents might actually be better off if their kids didn’t watch any videos at all.

According to a recent study, the more baby videos a young child watched, the more slowly his or her language developed.

Published in August 2007, the study triggered an ongoing debate between its authors at the University of Washington and The Walt Disney Co, owner of the Baby Einstein brand.

Other researchers, meanwhile, are still arguing about how powerful and long-lasting the effects of video-watching are on babies, though there is general agreement that parents are better off interacting with their children than planting them in front of the television.

“Those (parents) who use DVDs as baby sitters are hardly ever successful (in parenting),” said Dr Victor Strasburger, a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico.

The study, which appeared in The Journal of Pediatrics, was based on telephone interviews of 1,008 parents and a test known as the Communicative Development Inventory, a standard measurement of language development in children eight to 16 months old.

The parents were asked to report their children’s typical amount of video exposure in each of six content media types, such as children’s movies, television and baby videos.

To measure their babies’ language abilities, the parents were also given a list of 80 simple words and asked how many their children could speak.

For babies between eight and 16 months, each hour per day of viewing videos was associated with a test score reduction equivalent to knowing about 10 fewer words on the list of 80, said Frederick Zimmerman, the lead author and an associate professor of health services at the University of Washington Child Health Institute.

Strong data

The study independently supported the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation of no television for children under age two.

Strasburger, who was a consultant to the academy, acknowledged that the group had little hard evidence when publicizing its recommendation in 1999.

As a result, he added, it was widely ignored. “Now, thanks to the Zimmerman study, there is finally some strong data that supports the recommendation,” Strasburger said.

Disney was not alone in questioning the quality of the study. Other researchers in the field argued that interviewing parents on the phone would not produce scientifically credible results.

It would have been far more convincing for scientists to actually observe the babies, instead of relying merely on parents’ memories, according to Deborah Linebarger, an expert on children’s media at the University of Pennsylvania.

Linebarger, however, thought the academy’s recommendation was too conservative. “There are better ways to proceed,” she said. “Instead of telling parents to avoid the media, wouldn’t it be great if we could teach them to use it as a tool?”

In their own studies, Linebarger and her colleagues have followed babies from six to 30 months of age, meeting them and their families every three months, to study the effect of various types of children’s television programs on early language development.

They found that certain educational programs, such as “Arthur and Friends” and “Dora the Explorer,” seemed to spur vocabulary expansion, while others, including “Sesame Street,” had the opposite effect.

“The programs that showed positive influences generally involved high levels of audience participation,” said Linebarger.

But that makes the findings for “Sesame Street” puzzling because it is also highly interactive, she said, adding that her research team is still looking for an explanation.

Meanwhile, the University of Washington group is seeking to improve its study by looking to see if infants who watched videos will continue to have language deficits throughout childhood. “We’ll also be looking at the risk of attentional problems and the contribution of television to obesity,” said Zimmerman.

As researchers wait for data from the next round of studies, Baby Einstein’s Website continues to portray the DVDs as a fun way for parents and infants to interact as they watch them together.

In reality, however, parents are more likely to be out of the room and to use the videos as baby sitters, according to the University of Wisconsin’s Joanne Cantor, an expert on the effects of mass media on children.

“At the end of the day,” Cantor said, “if you can hold your baby on your lap and read her a story, why leave her on a couch watching videos?” (…)

Source: Shanghai Daily, China
http://tinyurl.com/3cbbzg

The No Child Left Behind law has led many elementary schools to spend more time on reading and math and less on social studies, science, art and recess, a report released last week finds.

The Center on Education Policy’s survey of 349 school systems across the country bolsters anecdotal evidence that the 2002 federal law’s goal of having every child proficient in reading and math by 2014 has forced schools to focus on those subjects, sometimes squeezing out other lessons.

“This accountability movement is having a significant impact,” said Jack Jennings, president and chief executive of the center, based in the District. “School people are feeling the pressure to do better and raise scores. But they are stuck with the amount of time they have.”

Curriculum narrowing, as the phenomenon is known, has become a key issue in the debate over revamping the law. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has said he plans to introduce a bill this spring to reauthorize the law with changes.

“It certainly puts the question before Congress. Is there a price being paid for raising kids’ math and reading scores?” Jennings said.

Concerns that too many students might be missing important science and history lessons or the creativity of art and music have led many educators to lobby for a broader yardstick of school success. Some proposals would give more weight to achievement in science, social studies and physical education.

But the Bush administration and some civil rights groups warn against weakening the law, which is credited with revealing pockets of struggling students. They say all students need strong reading and math skills.

The report, which builds on a survey released in July, finds that about 62 percent of school systems have added time for math or English instruction in elementary grades since 2002. The systems added, on average, three hours of math or reading each week.

Most of those systems reported “substantial cuts” in time for other subjects or activities, including social studies, art and music, science, physical education, recess and lunch, according to the study. Among the systems that added time for math and reading and trimmed other areas, more than half cut at least an hour and 15 minutes a week from science.

The survey, completed in 2006 and 2007, represents systems nationwide, urban and rural, large and small. The systems were not identified.

Maryland State Schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said there is an increased emphasis on reading and math, but state schools also have content standards in science, social studies, arts and physical education. She said teachers increasingly are combining lessons in different subjects — for example, reading and history.

“I do think our school systems are focusing on reading and math, and it’s not just because of No Child Left Behind and the testing,” Grasmick said. “Teachers feel mastery in reading and math are foundational to a student’s success in other subject areas. A student who can’t read will have difficulty with history and with science.” (…)

Source: Washington Post, United States
http://tinyurl.com/2uf27f

A recent Kansas City Star editorial noted that one in four college freshmen require at least one remedial course in college.

Poor math skills are a particular problem at the college level. While high schools can address this issue by offering a more rigorous curriculum, parents must do their part by encouraging their children to take four years of college prep math in high school.

To get a bachelor’s degree in any discipline, your child will need to complete at least college algebra with a grade of C or better.

College advisers, however, routinely work with students whose last math course was completed sophomore or junior year in high school. These students say they intend to get a four-year college degree. They are surprised and irritated to find out they have to take the math in college they chose not to take in high school.

The fact is there is no way your child will be ready to succeed in college algebra with two or three years of high school math, especially if that math is consumer math or algebra prep.

Students with only two years of high school math will be required to take at least one remedial math courses to build up to a course that will count as an elective toward a four-year degree. College algebra is after that. (…)

Source: Kansas City Star, MO
http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/501472.html

Gifted pupils in Wales are being let down by a system which puts too much emphasis on vocational skills, education leaders warned last night.

As the Assembly Government focuses on getting basic skills up to scratch, pupils at the other end are being left unchallenged, it is claimed.

Education is about more than getting work and some special talent may be going wasted or unseen, Dr Philip Dixon, director of teachers’ and lecturers’ union ATL Cymru said.

NUT Cymru education officer Dr Heledd Hayes said high-fliers had been virtually forgotten in the Webb Review on the future of education for 14 to 19-year-olds in Wales.

Educational standards for the highest achievers in this country lag behind England, which introduced a Gifted and Talented Strategy five years ago.

The strategy includes each school keeping lists of pupils with special gifts and talents, bringing in students to run extra learning programmes, running summer camps at universities and changing the primary school curriculum for those that need it.

No such system exists in Wales, which, once renowned for its very high quality top-end academic education has now lost that reputation, education Professor David Reynolds said.

Dr Hayes warned, “It seems to be lost in Webb what education is for.

“The impression given by Webb is that work needs to be done to help people get work locally.

“We do need this but we also need to encourage those who want to go to Oxford and Cambridge or become astrophysicists.”

Ms Hayes said the NUT was concerned that under Webb’s proposals funding for teenagers’ skills training would be given to newly formed consortia of local authorities and local businesses

“Our concern is that local businesses will want money for training but we want to make sure that it is education we are providing not training.”

Dr Dixon said more must be done for those with special academic or creative talents including sport, music, drama and art.

“We have got to do more for the gifted,” he said “We have got to look over the border where they have a scheme for the gifted and talented.

“As we look at the needs of basic skills we have to make sure we are not ignoring the needs of others.

“Gifted youngsters have special needs. We have to have an education system where everyone does the best they can. If someone wants to be a carpenter and they can’t get on a course that’s a failure; equally, if someone who should but can’t be an astrophysicist then that’s also a failure.

“Webb is too narrowly focused on getting a job for employers’ needs.”

Prof Reynolds said the Assembly Government should not be criticised for paying attention to the needs of those without basic skills as they had been ignored.

But the pendulum may now have swung too far the other way.

Prof Reynolds said, “Historically Wales would work best with the education of the able. The grammar schools and the high proportion of pupils going to them and the sixth forms were the jewels in the crown of Welsh education.

“What happened in the last 10 or 20 years was the feeling that we over concentrated on the very able and had to do something at the lower end.”

He said Wales’s poor rankings in last year’s international tests of 15-year-olds indicated the best may not be doing as well as they could. “The Pisa international test results from Wales suggest the unions are right and that there is now a problem at the top end.”

An Assembly Government spokesman said, “14-19 Learning Pathways has been based on the experience and expertise of practitioners in Wales with regard to what works best for young people of all abilities, from the most able learners, those in the middle, and those learners who face significant challenges.

“The Learning Coach function of 14-19, a key aspect of learner support, recognises the need to tailor support to the needs of learners so they have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. A central theme within the policy is the development of wider learner choice ensuring that more academically gifted young people have access to a greater range of academically challenging courses and programmes.”

Source: ic Wales, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/2ltocf

After 20 years replete with good salaries, benefits and vacation time, Jocelyn Sussman of Glencoe decided being home in the morning to get her three kids off to school was worth more than what corporate America had to offer.

Sussman, who has a masters in finance and worked for powerhouse companies like American Airlines, Ariel Communications and Discover Credit decided she needed more flexibility.

“Once you become a parent your priorities change,” said Sussman. “I could work. I could have a nanny drive my kids everywhere and make them every meal. But your kids are only young once and it’s really important to be a part of their life. I wanted to be the one helping them with their homework.”

The biggest reason for this trend is simple, most experts agree: More time working means less time with the kids.

Karen Steede Terry, author of Full-Time Woman, Part-Time Career: Launching a Flexible Business Plan That Fits Your Life, said the move away from preferring full-time work comes in part from shifting social norms and employment opportunities in previous decades.

“There was a trend for women working in the 1970s and 1980s. Women wanted to ‘have it all’ — work and a family,” Terry said. “As the corporate world got more demanding and required more hours and wanted you to work on weekends, women moved to wanting more part-time work.”

Flex time

Mothers across the north suburbs seem to be keeping in line with this national trend. But so-called part-time work comes in many forms, and often amounts to more than 40 hours a week.

“Flexible is a more accurate definition of those of us who work quote-unquote part-time,” said Becky Fitzgerald, a former national account sales executive with International Textile Group who now works from her Winnetka home as an independent consultant.

Fitzgerald was thrown into part-time status when her company was sold. She qualified for the Trade Assistance Act, which enabled her to take a series of Microsoft classes, bringing her up to speed on computer technology. The transitional time allowed her to evaluate her next professional step, and because of her experiences and new technology training she was able to successfully work independently outside the corporate world. (…)

Money matters

Of course, the costs of spending less time at work can add up, and some mothers simply don’t have a part-time option. In addition to decreased income, single mothers or mothers who are not able to go on their husband’s benefits plans must purchase health insurance for themselves and for their children.

Hilarie Lieb, an economics professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, said it’s important to look at what the partner is doing.

“If you’re looking at dual income families, then you can get by on one person working full time because of benefits,” Lieb said. Whether or not one parent can work part-time is “really a function of what the main income earner is generating,” she said. “And it also depends on the lifestyle they’ve created.” (…)

Source: Pioneer Press Online, IL
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/800108,on-parttime-022108-s1.article

When I started teaching, I never dreamed that I’d have to remind students not to use shorthand like that to write, “Learn to read today.” But technology such as text messaging and chatting online has created new challenges for teachers and parents, especially when it comes to encouraging children’s reading and writing skills and preparing them for future jobs.

New technology will keep coming. But regardless of how we communicate today — or 10 years from now — basic reading skills will continue to be the foundation for student success in school and in the workplace.

Books are still the key to developing reading proficiency. The teacher is the most valuable resource in the classroom, and when you equip that teacher with up-to-date textbooks, the combination is unbeatable.

Yet we have situations, such as in the Pontiac schools, where some students don’t even have textbooks in their elementary science classes. Students without solid reading skills or the necessary textbooks to develop those skills and knowledge base will be at a serious disadvantage — not only in school but also in the workplace, limiting their choices of jobs and income.

Use technology to reach kids

In our classrooms, it’s clear that we need to continue to foster both a love of and a talent for reading. But we also need to meet students where they are; and while many of us may find new technology intimidating, it’s the key to reaching today’s students.

The explosion of information available online has heightened the need for students to develop high-level reading skills. Just do a Google search. Sorting through the thousands of results, you realize the value of having strong reading skills that allow you to draw connections between pieces of information or to apply meaning to words or to make judgments about accuracy and importance.

Organizations like the Michigan Virtual University and the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning are striving to help educators use technology and integrate it into the curriculum. School districts and the state should do everything they can to assist teachers in incorporating new technology as classroom tools that help build proficiency.

Outside the classroom, parents who make reading an important part of a child’s daily life are having a huge impact. I encourage parents to keep a variety of books and reading material around the house. Make it a point to have your children see you reading. And spend at least 20 minutes each day reading to your children or having them read to you. Working together, parents and teachers can help Michigan’s children be great readers and great future workers. (…)

Source: DetNews.com, MI
http://tinyurl.com/2uewgt

A new WestEd Policy Perspectives paper authored by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that U.S. students are failing at math, science, and reading partly because reading experts have overlooked the most important aspect of literacy — that reading comprehension depends on learning factual background knowledge in a broad array of subjects.

In “Why Do We Have a Knowledge Deficit?” Hirsch asserts that educators often mistakenly understand reading comprehension to be a skill, like typing, that can be transferred from one text to another regardless of topic. That approach, which assumes that students can apply all-purpose cognitive skills and critical thinking strategies to unfamiliar texts on any subject, deprives students of the substance and intellectual structure they need to succeed in reading comprehension.

It also can negatively impact student achievement in “all” subject areas (not just reading). The resulting comprehension deficit is apparent in fourth-grade achievement scores nationwide, and it becomes more acute as students advance through each successive grade.

“The only thing that transforms reading skill and critical thinking skill into general, all-purpose abilities is a student’s possession of general, all-purpose knowledge,” says Hirsch, author of the bestselling Cultural Literacy and founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation. “Cognitive science shows that domain-specific background knowledge is the key to comprehension.”

According to Hirsch, American educators have uncritically adopted notions about learning inherited from romanticism, an anti-intellectual 19th century movement, and therefore believe that reading is a natural stage of child development; in other words, children will naturally develop “reading readiness” and learn to read as readily as they learned to talk. American educators also mistakenly believe that kids need only learn formal reading skills disembodied from content, such as prediction, summarizing, questioning, and clarifying.

When student achievement remains low, despite teachers’ good-faith efforts to teach such formal skills and create naturalistic learning environments, educators too often blame other factors — such as poverty and social inequities — rather than faulty reading comprehension methods.

“We must demand curricula that is knowledge oriented,” argues Hirsch. “The reading problem will be solved only when our schools start teaching knowledge itself.” (…)

Source: Hawaii Reporter, HI
http://tinyurl.com/32veds