Forget Mozart CDs and Baby Einstein videos, Boston’s mayor is urging parents to teach preschool children the old-fashioned way: by talking, reading, and playing with them.

Hoping to turn a new page on early-childhood education in Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared today as “Talk, Read, Play Day” in conjunction with Boston public schools’ Countdown to Kindergarten program and ReadBoston.

The day is part of a new public awareness campaign focused on the role of parents and their responsibility as their child’s “first teacher,” from birth until age 5.

The program’s three components of interaction meld to give babies and toddlers essential skills. Talking, reading, and playing help young children develop longer attention spans, larger vocabularies, and proper social interactions as well as foster creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills, Menino said.

“Talk, Read, Play” is part of Thrive in 5, Boston’s new 10-year plan, spearheaded by Menino and the United Way, to ensure Boston children are prepared for educational success.

The program, implemented in March after two years of planning and $3.25 million in funding from the city, the United Way, and area hospitals, highlights the importance of a child’s first five years in five areas of growth: language development, cognition and general knowledge, approaches to learning, social and emotional development, and physical and motor development.

Source: Boston Globe, United States
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/11/12/mayor_to_parents_read_to_children/

‘A fox could bite my bottom’: Childhood worries and anxieties may be influenced by the anxieties of their parents

I grew up in the 1970s. To me it seemed a pretty anxious era. The Cold War, unemployment, staggering blindly around the house during power-cuts. Yet today, research shows, we are more anxious than ever. Children in particular are feeling the impact.

A recent report found that children as young as 8 are worried about the world today and a third of 10 and 11-year-olds are concerned about the credit crunch. And the Government has just announced that schools are to receive an extra £4.5 million to teach students about terrorism and violent extremism.

Against this backdrop, psychologists at Sussex University have embarked on research into the role that parents may play in transmitting anxiety to their children. At the Sussex University psychology lab, Isaac Maltby, 9, approaches with trepidation two cardboard boxes labelled “quoll” and “cuscus”.

A researcher asks if he’d like to stroke the animals inside. Isaac boldly puts his hand into the hole in the quoll’s box. Approaching the cuscus he is more circumspect, inserting his hand slowly, pulling it out again quickly.

His mother, Candida Maltby, 40, looks even more nervous when she comes into the room. “OK,” she murmurs, inching her fingertips in. “Feels still asleep to me,” she adds, swiftly pulling back.

Over the previous hour, Isaac and Candida have taken part in tests aimed at investigating how Candida’s feelings about these unusual animals might affect how confident her son is about them. When he was first told about the cuscus, Isaac sounded curious, keen to stroke one. As his mother’s trepidation became clear, so he, too, became more cautious.

Though the research is still incomplete, it looks likely to show scientifically what many parents feel instinctively: that children not only take seriously what their parents say about potential dangers, but are equally alert to more subtle, non- verbal clues. As Dr Andy Field, of Sussex University, puts it: “Do anxious parents give visual cues to their children that are anxiety-provoking? And do they overlook signs of anxiety in their children?”

Other adults can also let children down, particularly when it comes to social anxiety. “You have teachers saying things such as: ‘this child doesn’t really engage’. If I hear that, I think: they want to engage, but they’re anxious,” Dr Field says.

A child’s early environment can also be important, says Graham Music, child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London. “Recent research has shown that maternal anxiety can be transmitted in utero; stress hormones can be transmitted across the placenta. As they grow up, children are often emotional barometers of their environments.”

There are times, though, when a child can have extremely high levels of anxiety, but may not show it. Music says: “Attachment experiments show that one-year-olds who don’t cry when their mothers leave them alone in a room, and who seem not to care, often have the same physiological signs of stress as the babies who cry out when left.” While some children might go into a “cut-off, almost dissociated state”, others “become very reactive to almost every stimulus, and these often become out-of-control children”.

What’s the best advice for most of us, when we find ourselves confronted by a fearful child? Sam Cartwright-Hatton, of Manchester University, says that the first thing to do is to check your general parenting environment. “For a sensitive child, things need to be calm, clear, warm and consistent. Avoid shouting and smacking.”

Show confidence to your children, even if you don’t feel it. “If you’re scared of dogs, try not to leap 6ft in the air. Keep calm.” And monitor what you tell children - whether about the environment, the economy or creepy-crawlies.

If all else fails, contact your GP and ask for professional help. “Beware the advice that children just grow out of anxieties,” she says. “They usually don’t.”

ANXIETY TIMELINE

0-2 YEARS Unusual situations, water, heights, not being around care-givers, fears about survival.

3-5 YEARS Ghosts, goblins, nightmares, monsters under the bed, increasing awareness of threat in the immediate environment.

5-8 YEARS Animals, growing awareness of the real threat in the immediate environment. Children of this age are aware that, while very mobile, they are still small and vulnerable.

9-11 YEARS Personal injury, fears of injections, breaking arms and legs.

11-13 YEARS Social anxieties, social phobias, fears about one’s place in the hierarchy, fears of being cast out if you don’t have the “right” clothes or trainers.

What children really fear

Elsie, 3 “I get scared when someone says they don’t want to be my friend and they don’t want to play with me any more.”

Charlie, 5 “In the daytime foxes have gone to bed but when they come out at night, a fox could bite my bottom.”

Millie, 5 “I am a bit scared of carrots. I used to be scared of pear but now I know it is nice.”

Maddie, 6 “I always tuck the duvet under my legs when I go to sleep because I don’t want snakes to eat my feet. When I was little the snakes got in and ate my feet.”

Jess, 6 “In the night, when everyone’s asleep, I can hear footsteps going up the stairs and I feel scared. I think there’s kind of a monster creeping up the stairs.”

Josh, 8 “It’s scary to think of the pollution destroying all the rainforest so the animals haven’t got anything to eat and then the plants will die and the human race will die.”

Nye, 9 “I don’t like burglars. When there’s a loud noise upstairs I always think that there’s a burglar breaking in.”

Ira, 10 “I’m scared of hookworms and tapeworms. I hate the thought of having one in my body because they worm their way into you and live inside you.”

Tula, 11 “I worry about all the people in Africa dying and I feel I should be doing something about it. I also worry about my house setting on fire.”

Lemar, 12 “I want to drive a car when I’m older, so I worry about petrol prices and more people driving electric cars which are really dangerous and will cause road deaths because people won’t hear them.”

Amy, 13 “It scares me thinking that one day I might get so old that I lose my sense of humour and no one wants to be friends with me because I’m no fun.”

Source: Times Online, UK
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5124499.ece

Children are struggling at school because they don’t know if they are left or right-handed

The proportion of infants arriving at school not knowing whether they are right or left-handed has trebled in the past decade, researchers say. The situation has been made worse by excessive parental fears, driven by cot death, about letting them lie or crawl on their front.

“The most important thing parents can do is ensure that when they are being observed during the day, they are given a chance to be on their front.” Previous research by Portwood has found that 57% of three-year-olds are unable to carry out tasks expected at their age. She cited children’s inactive lifestyles as “a major contributory factor”.

Other experts have also raised concerns about children’s development. “Brain development is at its most rapid between the age of zero and three,” said Aric Sigman, a psychologist and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. He pointed to research showing that for every hour a day a three-year-old watches television, there is a 9% rise in attention problems.

Sigman has described television as “the greatest unacknowledged public health issue of our time”. He also believes video games have led to children spending less time working with their hands and failing to grasp concepts such as weight, volume and measurement.

“By using your hands, you can actually become more civilised,” said Sigman. “These are problems likely to persist in life, they are rather indelible.”

The problem was highlighted at the Conservative party conference when a restaurateur told a session addressed by David Willetts, the shadow skills secretary, that she was unable to find British employees under 25 who had the dexterity to peel a potato.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5114484.ece

And here’s the proof: Use the JUMP program and enjoy the unaccustomed taste of success

Melissa Marsh is a special education co-ordinator at Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw School in Port Hardy, at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Its students include some of the most challenged kids in Canada. Many struggle with learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities and behaviour problems. The community has its share of social issues, and parental involvement is low.

For kids like these, academic failure is depressingly familiar. “The shutdown mode comes extremely quickly,” Ms. Marsh says. But now, kids at this school are experiencing the unaccustomed taste of success in a subject that far more advantaged kids have grown to dread - math.

The JUMP program, pioneered by Toronto mathematician John Mighton, breaks almost every rule of current math pedagogy. It does not depend on the “discovery” method, group work or real-life examples. It is highly structured, relies on a great deal of direct instruction, repetition and reinforcement, and proceeds in small, incremental steps.

It also works.

“Repetition is crucial for many of our students,” says Wayne Peterson, the principal. He adds, “Your regular math texts have too much reading.” JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) is structured so that every kid can solve the problems, one small step at a time. That builds their confidence and self-esteem, and keeps them motivated and engaged. It can get even low achievers excited about math. Teachers say their math skills dramatically improve - and so does their behaviour, their levels of engagement and their attitude.

“The kids aren’t fighting me tooth and nail any more,” says Ms. Marsh. “They know what’s expected. They have the steps set out in front of them and they know they are going to be able to achieve all of those steps. The kids in my special education class go, ‘Whoo-hoo! I did the bonus question and I got it right!’ One Grade 7 student has never been able to sit in math class without completely disrupting it. JUMP has changed that. Today, he participates in class discussion and does the written work by himself.”

The JUMP program is now being used in more than a dozen first nations schools in B.C., as well as in many regular schools in the Vancouver area. “We found that the regular textbook way wasn’t reaching all the kids,” says Christine Hammond, head teacher of N’Kwala School, near Merit. The program is especially effective with her ESL students, because they don’t have to wade through oceans of text. One floundering Innu boy, for example, quickly became a math whiz. The kids at her small band school are now performing at the regional average in math, she says. JUMP is also effective with adult learners, some of whom, after a lifetime of frustration, are getting their GEDs.

Liz Barrett is a South Africa-born educator who travels the province doing outreach and teacher support in first nations schools. For her, proficiency in math is a social justice issue. “These kids are falling by the wayside, and that’s unacceptable. If your students aren’t getting a Grade 12, the door is closed to them.” She discovered the JUMP program four years ago, when she heard Mr. Mighton lecture in B.C., and became a passionate advocate. She’s now helping to launch a JUMP pilot program in South Africa.

Mr. Mighton, 52, is an unusual man. As well as being a mathematician (currently in residence at Toronto’s Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences), he is one of Canada’s best playwrights. He got interested in math education because he thinks the state of numeracy in Canada is a disaster. Judging by the evidence, he’s right. In Ontario, for example, a third of community college students are in danger of failing first-year math. Mr. Mighton also believes we must reverse the “culture of failure” that permeates math education. “There’s no reason the vast majority of kids can’t learn math.”

Ten years ago, Mr. Mighton began tutoring inner-city Toronto kids in his apartment, with great success. The next task was to determine whether JUMP would scale up. He began working to persuade school boards, a far tougher task than he expected. But the initial results have been good. One British inner-city school district, in London, agreed to try it. At the start, the kids were performing an average of two years below the national level in math. After one year of JUMP, 60 per cent of them passed the national exams.

JUMP works for middle-class kids, too. One Toronto teacher used it with her Grade 5 kids, whose math skills at the start of the year ranged from Grade 3 to Grade 7. By the end of the year, every student signed up for the Pythagoras competition, which is written only by top students. Fifteen out of the 17 achieved distinction.

The JUMP program is founded on observation, evidence, teacher feedback, continuous improvement and rigour, combined with new research findings on how the brain learns. By contrast, most programs taught in school are not. For the past couple of decades, both math and reading instruction have been an ideological battlefield that pits the “progressives” - educators who favour good things such as discovery and creativity - against the traditionalists, who favour bad things such as repetition and direct instruction. The progressives have had the upper hand, which is one reason why JUMP has been regarded in some quarters - especially in progressive-minded Ontario - as positively dangerous. Last May, consultants with the Toronto District School Board dismissed JUMP as a form of “rote, procedural learning.” In Ontario, that’s the kiss of death.

Now the tide is turning, though not fast enough. Last spring, the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel endorsed the seemingly obvious idea that, in order to succeed in math, children need to understand what they’re doing.

But the school system is plagued by other barriers that actively discourage best practices. One is the widespread use of consultants, who often write the very textbooks they then are paid to recommend. Some teachers are heavily discouraged from using instructional methods or materials their school board frowns on, even though they work. Many schools and parents are beaten into submission by claims that certain programs are “evidence-based” even though they’re not. There’s a lot at stake in how curriculum decisions are made - but parents and teachers seldom have a clue, or a voice.

So if you’re interested in JUMP for your kid, you may have to move to Vancouver or Port Hardy. You could also check out the JUMP website (jumpmath.org). And Mr. Mighton has written two books, The Myth of Ability and The End of Ignorance. The program survives on charitable support, and he is a more or less full-time volunteer.

“Teachers get so excited by this,” says Liz Barrett. “Suddenly they’ve got the tools to reach the students, and suddenly they’re all achieving.”

Source: Globe and Mail, Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081108.COWENT08/TPStory/National

On her back in a dark tube, Blair Smith held still as a scanner combed her brain with magnetic waves. Words flashed by her eyes: tack, vase, hope, glow, vague, cade.

The 11-year-old had been told to press the button in her right hand if the word was real, the button in her left if it was nonsense. The answer itself was less important than the map the scanner would make of which areas of Blair’s brain lighted up when she struggled with a word.

The aim of the study, said Laurie Cutting, director of the Education and Brain Research Program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, is to understand the neurological differences among students who are skilled readers, those who have difficulties and those with diagnosed learning disabilities.

If neuroscientists can pinpoint which parts of the brain are activated when a reader puzzles over an unknown word, they may eventually help teachers tailor reading instruction for individuals.

That is only the beginning. Many educators hunger for scientific data to help them structure their lessons, and neuroscience is beginning to offer them broad guidance about what works best.

One of the most startling recent revelations in neuroscience has been that the brain’s structure is much more flexible (a concept called neuroplasticity) than was previously thought; this understanding may help teachers find ways to train the brain to better solve math problems or understand a book.

“There’s an awful lot that neuroscience can begin to tell us in broad strokes that’s relevant for education and that ultimately 10 or 20 years downstream can provide us with prescriptive information,” said Robert Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.

“I think we’re looking at a period of five years of very rich territory for investigation here.”

Complex conditions

Brain research already is opening the way to help teachers detect and address complex conditions — such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia and its mathematical cousin, dyscalculia — that defy blood tests and other simple medical diagnostics.

Cognitive scientists are developing a theory of “micro-development” that could turn some lesson plans upside down. Studies have found that, on a minute-to-minute basis, children and adults learn in fits and starts, often going backward. That could indicate that students should be allowed to grope their way to understanding — for instance, by being asked to power up a light bulb using a battery and a strand of wire before having the theory of electricity explained to them.

How the brain functions remains deeply mysterious, with studies seeming to unfold at a glacial pace. One expert noted that it took decades for researchers, examining data from brain and behavioral studies and other sources, to confirm the belief of many educators that focusing on phonics helps youngsters who struggle with reading.

Still, top educational institutions have recently shown new interest in the link between brain activity and education. Harvard University founded its mind, brain and education degree program in 2002. Johns Hopkins University this year briefed the Maryland State Board of Education on a neuro-education initiative that aims to “explore how current findings have application to educational practice.”

Better ways of teaching

A study published in the journal Nature last month reported a link between a primitive, intuitive sense of the size of numbers and performance in math classes, a finding that could lead to ways to identify young students who may have trouble with math and develop better ways of teaching them. Advocates of expanding pre-kindergarten classes point to studies that show the importance of early education in molding young minds.

Pianta, of the Curry School, said neuroscience has also influenced the education of autistic students.

“Twenty years ago, you might have seen an intervention that was far more oriented toward trying to get those kids to be affectionate, let’s say. Or the therapist in that case would be promoting physical contact with kids who didn’t like physical contact,” Pianta said. “Now we would look at that (response) as sort of saying this kid’s behavior is a result of their brain’s ability to process social, emotional information. You would structure your interactions with an autistic child so as not to overwhelm their capacity to process that information.”

Kurt Fischer, director of Harvard’s mind, brain and education master’s degree program, warned that many educational theories claim to be based on science but are not.

“One of the major problems we face is that there are a whole lot of things that claim to be ‘brain-based education’ that are nonsense,” he said. “One of them is the belief that boys and girls have totally different brains and learn totally differently. That’s not what the evidence shows. Not at all. The other is kind of a rigid idea of sensitive periods: that after a certain age you can’t learn a foreign language. You’ve also heard that there are left-brained and right-brained people. Total nonsense, unless they’ve had their left or right hemisphere removed. All of us use all our brains.”

Craving information

Another example Fischer cited is the widely held but dubious notion that listening to Bach in the bassinet will make babies smarter. Still, Fischer said, the popularity of such ideas shows that educators and the public crave scientific backing for classroom innovations.

At Kennedy Krieger, Cutting gave a nifty copy of her brain scan to Blair, her young research subject. The research team prepared Blair’s identical twin sister to go inside the tube for a new round of scans. They are both perfectly good readers, but the data from their studies might help others.

“Creepy but cool at the same time,” said Blair, an aspiring veterinarian. “It’s good because you help other kids.”

Source: Monterey County Herald, CA
http://www.montereyherald.com/health/ci_10913995

Parents who want their preschoolers to eat their vegetables may need to take a hard look at their own eating habits, new research suggests.

The findings, reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggest that even very young children do not indiscriminately reach for candy when given the chance. Instead, they seem to already be forming food preferences — potentially lasting ones — based on their parents’ shopping carts.

“The data suggest that children begin to assimilate and mimic their parents’ food choices at a very young age, even before they are able to fully appreciate the implications of these choices,” write the researchers, led by Dr. Lisa A. Sutherland of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

That, the researchers say, means that the grocery store can be like a classroom, where parents teach their children that foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains take priority over snacks and desserts.

For the study, Sutherland’s team had 120 children aged 2 to 6 years old each take a turn in a play grocery store. The children were told they could buy anything they wanted out of 133 items: “healthier” foods included fruits, vegetables, whole-grain cereals, bread and milk; “less healthy” items included desserts, candy, potato chips, soda and sugary cereals.

Parents completed questionnaires on how often they bought specific foods and beverages. All said they brought their children with them on grocery store trips.

Most of the children, the researchers found, bought some sugary, salty treats; on average, their carts were filled with equal parts healthy and unhealthy items.

Giving preschoolers a taste for healthy foods, the researchers add, could ultimately make it easier for them to keep up a lifetime of smart eating.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A26J920081103

It is a question which worries every parent – what is the best way to prepare your child for their first day at school?
Now a psychologist has devised a checklist of 22 skills she believes children need to learn before beginning their formal education.

According to her findings, nearly half of parents would like more advice and information to prepare children for their first day at school.

Fewer than one in six parents have a clear idea about this, while one in five said they had no idea what skills children should have by the age of four or five. Only 18 per cent said they knew where to go for official advice.

Dr Spencer said: “Ensuring a child is adequately prepared for school is one of the most important things parents have to do.

“But it can be very challenging and daunting if the guidance and information needed is not there.

“A lot of the available material on pre-school development is focused on teaching child carers the skills, but can be difficult for parents with young children to access and understand.”

The list of suggested skills, called the Curricu-mum, was commissioned by the children’s television show Hi-5 which is designed to reflect pre-school learning guidelines.

Cecilia Persson, programme director for the Cartoonito network, which broadcasts Hi-5, said: “We believe the Hi-5 Curricu-mum is exactly what parents of pre-school children have been looking for.”

The list suggests that by the time they start school, children should be able to recite the alphabet, to count and use number and to write their own names. It also suggests children should know how to share, how to play with others and be able to dress and feed themselves.

It also claims children should be able to join in conversations, learn to sing songs, know which foods are healthy and be able to differentiate between past and future events and actions which are right and wrong.

However, Judith Gillespie, development officer for the Scottish Parent Teacher Council said she was concerned the list could create more anxiety and pressure for parents of young children.

“To a parent that is an incredibly daunting list. I think the trouble is it will make some parents feel like failures,” she said.

“Saying these are things children should be able to do is incredibly unhelpful. It would be more helpful to say that these are the kinds of things that many children learn to do before they start school. Children learn differently and develop differently and making it a requirement that they should be able do all these things is very bad news.”

Ms Gillespie said teachers did not expect children to learn the alphabet or to be able to count and use numbers before they started school and the list did not take into account the fact that boys tend to be more boisterous and learn at a different pace.

“In many respects, the most important things on the list are social skills like sharing – it is far more important that children go to school with social skills.”

Alphabet and dressing among 22 target tasks

These are the 22 tasks the report says children should be taught by the time they reach school.

1 Write their own name – a useful skill that helps confidence.

2 Know the alphabet. Being able to recite the letters of the alphabet will be a help when children begin to learn to read and write.

3 Sing/recite songs. Learning simple songs and rhythms helps children develop their learning skills.

4 Take turns and share with other people without a fuss. Learning to get along with other children is crucial.

5 Complete simple activities on their own.

6 Be sensitive to others’ feelings and know the difference between right and wrong.

7 Dress and feed themselves (even if they get it wrong).

8 Join in group activities with other children.

9 Make up stories (even if they make no sense).

10 Join in general conversation at home.

11 Tell the difference between past and future.

12 Be able to focus their attention on one thing for a prolonged period without becoming restless.

13 Count basic numbers and answer number-based questions such as: “How many carrots are on your plate?”

14 Complete simple puzzles such as jigsaws.

15 Ask lots of questions. Curiosity is a great asset in a pre-school child.

16 Know the difference between different groups; eg cats and dogs.

17 Experiment with basic technology, such as typing their name on a computer.

18 Have fun outside and be active.

19 Tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods.

20 Play “make believe” and use imagination.

21 Make things and get messy with paints and crafts.

22 Make music with toy instruments and experiment with different sounds.

Source: Scotsman, United Kingdom
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/The-key-skills-that-make.4652933.jp

The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.

Small, however, argues that the people who will come out on top in the next generation will be those with a mixture of technological and social skills.

“We’re seeing an evolutionary change. The people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge are the ones who master the technological skills and also face-to-face skills,” Small told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“They will know when the best response to an email or Instant Message is to talk rather than sit and continue to email.”

In his newly released fourth book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, Small looks at how technology has altered the way young minds develop, function and interpret information.

Small, the director of the Memory & Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and the Center on Aging at UCLA, said the brain was very sensitive to the changes in the environment such as those brought by technology.

He said a study of 24 adults as they used the Web found that experienced Internet users showed double the activity in areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning as Internet beginners.

“The brain is very specialized in its circuitry and if you repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others,” said Small.

“We are changing the environment. The average young person now spends nine hours a day exposing their brain to technology. Evolution is an advancement from moment to moment and what we are seeing is technology affecting our evolution.”

Small said this multi-tasking could cause problems.

He said the tech-savvy generation, whom he calls “digital natives,” are always scanning for the next bit of new information which can create stress and even damage neural networks.

“There is also the big problem of neglecting human contact skills and losing the ability to read emotional expressions and body language,” he said.

“But you can take steps to address this. It means taking time to cut back on technology, like having a family dinner, to find a balance. It is important to understand how technology is affecting our lives and our brains and take control of it.”

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE49Q34A20081027?sp=true

As a girl, author Peg Tyre didn’t like recess.

But as a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for Newsweek and CNN, Tyre noticed a trend: As schools across the country cut recess, music and other subjects not required by state tests, the number of students taking medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder went up.

“The American Medical Association tells us that 3 to 5 percent of Americans have ADHD,” said Tyre, who spoke at Book Passage in Corte Madera Tuesday and will appear at Redwood High School in Larkspur Thursday night. “Yet the Centers for Disease Control tell us that 14 percent of boys younger than 15 are diagnosed with the condition. I worry about why we’re medicating all these children.”

In her new book, The Trouble With Boys, Tyre argues that the changes schools have made during the past two decades - driven by a focus on standardized test scores - have created a huge disadvantage for boys.

“It used to be that boys did well in math and science, and girls did well in reading and writing,” Tyre said. “But in the last 20 years, girls have caught up in math and science, while boys have been taking a whipping in reading and have fallen behind in writing - at the same time that the whole curriculum has become literacy-based.”

In Marin, seventh-grade girls scored an average of 6 percentage points higher in English and 1 point lower in math on the 2008 California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exam, according to the state Department of Education. Eleventh-grade girls scored 6 percentage points higher in English and 2 points higher in math on the state’s high school exit exam test for 2008.

Statewide, the gender gap is even greater, with seventh-grade girls scoring 10 percentage points higher on the English portion of the STAR and 10th-grade girls scoring 8 points higher in English on the exit exam.

The problem, Tyre argues, isn’t that boys are less intelligent or capable than girls. It’s that the two genders reach mental and emotional maturity at different ages, she said, and that schools increasingly reward skills like organization and neatness over innovation and risk-taking.

“Girls are completely mature at age 15 to 16, while boys are not there until they’re 25,” said Tyre, basing her argument on neurological studies of adolescent brain scans.

Virginia Dunn nodded in agreement.

“She’s right about the developmental pace,” said Dunn, a retired teacher who works as a reading intervention tutor and family therapist in San Rafael. “I used to teach high school, and around junior year, it was as though something magically happened, and boys began to catch up.”

At a time when success in school can determine so many aspects of people’s lives - where they work, where they live and even when they can retire - the evidence suggests the deck is stacked against boys, Tyre said.

Boys are expelled from preschool at a rate five times that of girls and are twice as likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or a learning disability, she said. Students in the lowest-performing group at each school tend overwhelmingly to be boys, whether the school is a wealthy private institution or an impoverished neighborhood school.

“Boys learn early on that school is a game they can’t win, and so they decide they don’t want to play,” Tyre said.

Educators have addressed gender as an element of the “achievement gap” between successful and struggling students. Yet county Director of Alternative Education Lisa Schwartz noted that every student falls into a variety of groups, and that each student needs to be treated as an individual.

“Boys probably do better in a more active learning environment,” Schwartz said. “But we need to be paying attention to each individual child. Boys may need a more active, problem-solving curriculum; gifted and talented students need the opportunity to stretch themselves; our English language learners need intensive support to develop their English language skills. We need to focus on a variety of strategies to help kids succeed better in order to be doing our job.”

Tyre doesn’t assign blame to parents, teachers or even distractions like television or video games. Instead, she says parents and teachers need to work together, armed with data, to find ways to make the educational experience better for both genders.

“I grew up with teachers who told me, ‘You don’t have to be a secretary. You can be a lawyer. You don’t have to be a stewardess; you can be pilot.’ That changed the world for girls. They can apply that same attitude to boys.”

Source: Marin Independent-Journal, CA
http://www.marinij.com/ci_10787120?source=most_viewed

Poor parenting is to blame for a major deterioration in the behaviour of primary school pupils over the past five years, a study suggests today.

Many pupils lacked the social skills required to get on in class, said the researchers, commissioned the National Union of Teachers. “Teachers describe ‘highly permissive’ parents who admitted to indulging their children, often for the sake of peace or simply because they had run out of alternative incentives and sanctions,” the authors added.

Examples included a mother who, after great effort, succeeded in getting her five-year-old to bed at 1am instead of 3am, and a boy of seven who smashed his Sony PlayStation in a tantrum, then would not behave for a week until his mother bought him a new one.

Professors Galton and Macbeath were also told of parents who would do anything to shut their children up “just to get some peace”. Their report says schools face “formidable challenges” – particularly in poor areas where there has been “an increase in the incidence of confrontation and conflict”.

The researchers, who visited schools they studied five years ago, added: “There appeared to have been a significant and inimical impact on school life from a rapidly changing social scene.

“Motivating certain children, it was claimed, had become more difficult because by the time they came to school many of these children had become expert in manipulating adults.”

According to Galton and Macbeath, the top five obstacles to teaching are poor pupil behaviour, lack of time for reflection, large class sizes, too many initiatives and an overloaded curriculum. “Children arrive at school knowing too much and not enough,” they said.

Source: Independent, UK
http://tinyurl.com/4yeyje