More than nine out of 10 private Korean kindergartens are disregarding the curriculum determined by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and are teaching English to their students.

Teaching English in kindergarten is illegal under the Early Childhood Education law.

In South Korea, the kindergarten curriculum is under the jurisdiction of the Education Ministry, but kindergarten is not compulsory at all and most kindergartens are run by private institutions. In addition, kindergartens are not part of elementary schools as they are in some Western countries.

According to figures released by the office of Democratic Party National Assembly member Choi Jae-sung, a study of 274 private kindergartens revealed that 262, or 95.6 percent, are teaching English.

Of those, 216, or 82.4 percent, began teaching English to their kindergartners in 2006 and 19 more began in 2008.

Some 173, or 66 percent, said they teach students English “because of parental demand.”

Another 13.4 percent responded that they teach English because they “don’t want to lose out in competition with other kindergartens,” while 10.3 percent said they are only teaching English “because of the government’s emphasis on strengthening English education.”

In addition, 43.9 percent, or 115 kindergartens, said they employ native English teachers.

Under law, kindergartens may only teach within the range of permitted curricula via ordinances set by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; currently, that does not include English.

“Given the emotional and mental development of children, at the kindergarten level they need an education method where they learn diverse areas in an integrated manner, and not concentrate on one subject,” said a ministry official. “According to the ministry, kindergartens should not teach English.”

“We have a situation in which ‘the law over there, while reality is over here’ with the continuing increase in kindergartens that teach English and private English academies that are sprouting up all over the place,” said Choi. (…)

Source: The Hankyoreh, South Korea
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/317869.html

Success in school depends upon both teacher and parental involvement (parents being the most important part of the equation). I am not a professional teacher; however, as a professional librarian, I have spent the last several years teaching parents during storytimes at the public library and also at community outreach classes (in medical clinic waiting rooms, etc.) the importance of their roles in their child’s education and success in life.

Most of a child’s brain development takes place during the first three years of life.Once the brain is “wired” or “not wired” during early childhood, it can be very difficult for a child to catch up in school. Whenever I talk to teachers and ask them their take on the situation, the comment I most often receive is, “If I could only get the parents to get involved, my students could really succeed.”

Ms. Karmacharya said, “There is not a relationship between poverty and poor performance, but there is a relationship between childhood experiences for a child in poverty versus childhood experiences in middle or upper class.”

Her statement is absolutely correct, and there is extensive research to back it up. What this means is that if a child is at a disadvantage in any way, even more time and attention must be given to make those “experiences” available to children.

Experiences, however, don’t require money; they just require time and attention.This can be as easy as reading to your child every night and exposing them to new vocabulary or eating dinner together as a family and letting each of the children tell stories from what happened during the day.

Yes, educators need to be accountable, but parents have the greater responsibility. If a child is not doing well in school, a parent’s love, attention, and involvement is the greatest key to that child’s success.

Source: Hattiesburg American, MS
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20081022/OPINION03/810220333

Although school has been back for less than a month, it is likely that many children are already experiencing frustration and confusion in math class. Research at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada could change the way we view math difficulties and how we assist children who face those problems.

Daniel Ansari is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Western. He is using brain imaging to understand how children develop math skills, and what kind of brain development is associated with those skills.

Research shows that many children who experience mathematical difficulties have developmental dyscalculia - a syndrome that is similar to dyslexia, a learning disability that affects a child’s ability to read. Children with dyscalculia often have difficulty understanding numerical quantity. For example, they find it difficult to connect abstract symbols, such as a number, to the numerical magnitude it represents. They can’t see the connection, for instance, between five fingers and the number ‘5.’ This is similar to children with dyslexia who have difficulty connecting sounds with letters. In a recent study Ansari and graduate student Ian Holloway showed that children who are better at connecting numerical symbols and magnitudes are also those who have higher math scores. A report of this research is forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

‘Research shows that many children have both dyslexia and dyscalculia. We are now exploring further the question of exactly what brain differences exist between those who have just math problems and those who have both math and reading difficulties,’ says Ansari.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the brains of children with math difficulties, Ansari says that it becomes clear that children with developmental dyscalculia show atypical activation patterns in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex.

This research holds tremendous promise for people who, in the past, had simply accepted that they are ‘not good at math.’ Understanding the causes and brain correlates of dyscalculia may help to design remediation tools to improve the lives of children and adults with the syndrome.

‘We have some cultural biases in North America around math skills,’ says Ansari. ‘We think that people who are good at math must be exceptionally intelligent, and even more dismaying and damaging, we have an attitude that being bad at math is socially acceptable. People who would never dream of telling others they are unable to read, will proclaim publicly they flunked math.’

Ansari says that math skills are hugely important to life success and children who suffer math difficulties may avoid careers that, with help, might be a great fit for them.

Ansari is the recipient of an Early Researcher Award grant from the Ontario government and a CIHR grant. Ansari recently reviewed existing research in this field for the April edition of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and he hopes that news of this important research will also reach parents, teachers and individuals.

An article by Ansari entitled ‘The Brain Goes to School: Strengthening the Education-Neuroscience Connection,’ will be published in the upcoming Education Canada, the magazine of the Canadian Education Association. In the article Ansari says technological advances such as fMRI have provided unprecedented insights into the working of the human brain.

‘A teacher who understands brain structure and function will be better equipped to interpret children’s behaviours, their strengths and weaknesses, from a scientific point of view, and this will in turn influence how they teach,’ says Ansari.

Source: Science Centric, Bulgaria
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=08102244

Children from broken homes are almost five times more likely to develop emotional problems than those living with both parents, a report has found.

Young people whose mother and father split up are also three times as likely to become aggressive or badly behaved, according to the comprehensive survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics.

Living in a “reconstituted” family containing step-children or step-parents increased the risk of developing behavioural problems still further, it found.

The stark findings of the study, commissioned by the Department for Health and the Scottish Government, fly in the face of the Government’s repeated failure to extol the benefits on children of growing up in a traditional family home.

Under Labour, the number of couples getting married has fallen to the lowest level for more than a century while almost half of newlyweds are now expected to end up divorcing.

Yet Harriet Harman, the party’s deputy leader, insisted recently that “there is no ‘ideal’ parenting scenario” and “marriage has little relevance to public policy”.

The ONS report involved interviewing parents, teacher and children themselves to find out how many suffered emotional problems such as anxiety or depression, how many had “conduct disorders” such as aggression, and what the possible reasons behind them were.

After interviewing 5,364 children aged between five and 16 in 2004 and again last year, the researchers found that 3 per cent had developed problems over that time. In addition, 30 per cent who had emotional problems at the first survey, and 43 per cent who had behavioural issues, still had them three years later.

The researchers stressed they had not discovered any direct causes of emotional and behavioural problems developing or persisting in children, but agreed there was a link to living in a broken home.

Children whose parents had split up over the three years were 4.53 times more likely to develop emotional problems than those whose mothers and fathers stayed together, and were 2.87 times more likely to show the onset of behavioural disorders.

The report said: “The odds of developing an emotional disorder were increased for children where there had been a change in the number of parents between surveys, from two parents to one parent compared with children and young people in families that had two parents at both times.”

It went on: “Children and young people in households of ‘reconstituted’ families, particularly where there were step-children, were more likely to develop conduct disorder as were those in families which had two parents at Time 1 and one parent at Time 2.”

In addition, children whose mothers were mentally ill were found to be more likely to develop conduct disorders, as were those whose mothers were poorly educated.

Children who endured three stressful events such as seeing one’s parents divorce or appear in court, or suffering a serious disease or being badly injured, were three times as likely to develop emotional problems.

However those who were happy where they lived, had lots of friends or enjoyed activities outside school were less likely to become unhappy.

The report’s author, Nina Parry-Langdon, said: “If children belong to more clubs, it may offer some protection against getting a disorder in the future.”

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/5h5qea

A lot of parents feel unhappy when seeing their children learning hard in early childhood, while others believe that early childhood is the best time to begin learning.

Most state-owned kindergartens do not teach English to pupils, while the Ministry of Education and Training does not have regulations on teaching foreign languages to small children. However, at people-founded kindergartens, foreign language lessons are a fixture.

Phuong, an expert at a scientific research institute in Hanoi, who has a daughter learning at the Kim Lien state-owned kindergarten, said that teaching English to small children is a kind of maltreatment.

Phuong said that she did not learn much when she was small, but she still became a PhD. She will not force her daughter to study hard. Phuong said that the most important thing now for a child like her daughter is good health.

Meanwhile, Thu, the owner of a limited company in Hanoi, does not share the same view. Thu learned about the syllabuses of many kindergartens before deciding to send her 2-year-old daughter to a kindergarten. There, Thu’s daughter has lessons in literature, music, games, English and many subjects to help children become cleverer.

“I want my daughter to get the most active education. As far as I know, in western countries, children begin learning when they are 2 years old,” Thu said.

Learning at the age of 3: good or bad thing?

According to Associate Prof Dr Nguyen Cong Khanh from the Hanoi Pedagogical University, a lot of parents worry that teaching children at the age of 3 will torment children. The parents believe that children at this age need more playing than learning. However, Khanh said that this is the wrong viewpoint.

Khanh said that if children have a suitable education, i.e. they can learn right in early childhood, they could have many more opportunities in their lives.

Source: VietNamNet Bridge, Vietnam
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/education/2008/10/809340/

Australian fathers spend only six minutes alone with their children on weekdays, according to new research which found that dads Down Under leave most child-raising chores to their female partners.

In a study which also looked at parenting roles in Denmark, France, Italy and the United States, researcher Lyn Craig found that Australian fathers were among the most traditional.

“The difference between men’s and women’s lives when they have children is particularly pronounced in Australia,” Craig told AFP.

“In terms of the total amount of child care that’s done within a household in Australia, 10 percent of it will be done alone by the father and 90 percent of it will be done alone by the mother.

“In Denmark, 17 percent of the household care will be done alone by the father. So it’s quite a lot better but it’s by no means equal.”

Craig, from the University of New South Wales Social Policy Research Centre, said that Australian fathers spent more time with their children on weekends, but this was mostly as part of a family group than as a solo dad.

And when they were alone with their offspring, Australian fathers were less likely to do the chores of bathing or feeding the child and more likely to take them to the park or play games with them, she said, adding that men are more prone to volunteer only for “the fun stuff”.

“That’s true worldwide really, but it’s slightly less true in Scandinavia,” she said.

Craig said Australia was quite traditional in comparison to the other countries, with only 18.5 percent of households having both parents in full-time work compared with 64.7 percent of households in Denmark.

“Part-time work for women and full-time work for men is the usual thing in households with children (in Australia), and other countries are a bit more equal in workforce participation,” she said.

“Just about all over the world, men spend relatively little time alone with their children.”

Source: AFP
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j3ao1sJAmC-dOJ-PEz4f79CsHxJA

Parents who have their children in their 30s and 40s, give them a better start in life, according to a new study.

Meanwhile children of young, poorly educated mothers are more likely to face health and educational problems before they start school, the report found.

The study is based on interviews with 15,000 families whose first child was born at the turn of the 21st Century.

It suggests delaying parenthood to get the best qualifications and a career first, gives children an advantage over those whose parents have no qualifications, who end up being a year behind in their vocabulary by the time they start school.

“Waiting until 30 to have children seems to be associated with a lot of benefits for the family.”

She said educated parents aged over 30 tend to be more interested in a school’s reputation, anti-bullying policy and class sizes than they are in raw school test scores.

And working parents with higher qualifications do more activities with their children, including reading, music, making things and playing outdoors.

But the report also found that less than two-thirds of children are living with their married natural parents when they enter school.

Pam Barnes, 35, manager of Tidy Towns Wales, from Rhoose in the Vale of Glamorgan had her daughter, Romi, now aged four, when she was 31 years old – and she is glad she waited.

“In my 20s I did a lot of voluntary work but by the time I had Romi I had been settled into my job for a few years, had sorted out my career, was financially stable and I was settled in myself,” she said.

“Romi’s father, Mark Rowles, is a boat pilot, and although we separated in the summer, when we were together, he looked after her two days a week while I worked so we only needed a child minder three times a week.

“It was a special time for them both and it worked well financially for us.

“My mother was a teacher and read to me from an early age and I’ve read to Romi since she was a few months old.

“She started nursery in January and I quickly noticed how socially interactive she is and she loves it, there are no problems. She picks up habits, good and bad – but that is part of life.

“When we get home I talk about her day and she shows me things she has made – and we always make time to read stories together every night.

“Romi attends ballet classes and we like to go into the woods and kick leaves or go to St Fagans and talk about how people used to live on our days off together.”

As was found by the report, Pam said the ethos and the feeling of a school was more important to her than where it sat in the league tables.

“Romi attends Rhoose Primary School nursery, where they have junior discos, get parents involved and the teachers seem very committed,” she added.

“My childminder’s children are in the school and I hear very good reports.”

Emma Brennan spokeswoman for the Family and Parenting Institute said: “You can be a good parent at any age. But we do know that many older parents tend to be better off, have careers and a good education.

“It’s important that all parents get the support they want and need, such as health visitors, when their children are young.”

Source: WalesOnline, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/6s7nlw

Motherhood is thought to make women brighter, faster and more spatially aware. Now scientists believe that the birth of a baby also gives men a welcome boost

What transforms footloose, feckless men into switched-on, dedicated fathers? Science is starting to discover that, just as nature prepares women to be committed mums, it can also make dads’ brains significantly sharper and more empathetic. A study being presented next month to the Society for Neuroscience by researchers at Richmond University, Virginia, shows how hormone changes in motherhood seem to make women brighter, faster at solving problems and more spatially aware. But it’s not only mums’ minds that get chemically enhanced.

While the biology of fatherhood remains largely uncharted, a growing body of research shows how new dads undergo a series of hormonal changes that may boost their nurturing instincts, make them kinder, more concerned and attentive to the point of obsessiveness. And, because there’s usually a downside in nature, the changes may also induce phantom-pregnancy symptoms and attacks of the baby blues.

Fatherhood triggers hormonal changes

In a surprising series of tests by Canadian scientists, up to 90 per cent of dads have reported pregnancy-like symptoms such as nausea, cravings and weight gain. Anne Storey, of Memorial University, Newfoundland, analysed 31 expectant men’s blood and found that those with phantom-pregnancy symptoms had significantly raised levels of the hormone prolactin, which is named for its role in promoting lactation in women. It also prompts animals to build nests. Storey reports in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior how she also found that the boisterous male hormone, testosterone, falls in new and expectant fathers by as much as 33 per cent. It also decreases in response to an infant’s cries and when men comfort their own child. The reduction, she suggests, may serve to encourage fathers to relate, rather than compete, with their children.

Men become more alert to a child’s needs

The two hormones may boost male empathy in other ways. Research by the Toronto University researcher Alison Fleming shows that men with high prolactin levels are more alert to a baby’s cry. Fleming has also found that new fathers with lowered testosterone levels feel more of a need to respond to their infants’ bawling. The characteristically calming female hormone, oestrogen, plays a part, too, according to a report in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. It reports that new fathers have higher levels than other men.

“The evidence suggests there is a biology of fatherhood,” says Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist who has studied Aka hunter-gatherers in Central Africa for three decades and considers them hugely attentive fathers. Aka men spend almost half their time either holding their babies or being within reach of them. They let their offspring suck their nipples for comfort, Hewlett says.

But they’re not just the tribal equivalent of metrosexual dads competing to know most about baby slings - Aka men take their babies with them when they go out to drink palm wine with their pals.

“They have their babies, but they are talking guy talk. It’s amazing to watch,” says Hewlett, whose Aka studies sparked his interest in the role of hormones in fatherhood. He ran a study in the United States that took blood samples from fathers before they held their infants, and again after they had them on their chests for 15 minutes. Their prolactin levels went up.

They feel a real sense of responsibility

Jack O’Sullivan, the author of the BBC Guide To Fatherhood and He’s Having A Baby, says his own experience and his discussions with thousands of dads make him a firm believer in paternal brain-shaping: “There are definite changes. I suffered an attack of ‘provider fever’ both times my children were born. I suddenly experienced a real sense of responsibility, of needing to work at having a secure job and a supportive income.” O’Sullivan, who founded the pressure group, Fathers Direct, adds: “These are instinctive feelings. I think that new dads should listen to those instincts, rather than be told by many parenting books that they don’t actually know anything about childcare.”

But what sets off these hormonal changes? Here the research is scant, but two mechanisms may be responsible: the first is the environmental fact that men are meeting a new range of social expectations that can alter their brain functioning. The second agent is pheromones: the chemical messengers that all animals emit.

But it’s not all good news

Classic studies show that women living together in dormitories have their menstruation cycles synchronised through pheromones. Similarly, a man and a woman who share intimate space may communicate chemical messages that cue a man to start getting parental. Certainly, men’s brain-patterns do change. James Swain, a researcher at Yale University, used an fMRI scanner to examine 25 new dads’ heads when they heard their infant crying or viewed a picture of their newborn. The scans showed activity strikingly similar to that seen in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms.

New dads aren’t mentally ill, but they do tend to fuss - often on typically male matters such as whether the car seat is strapped exactly right. Over-attentiveness can be one problem - and postnatal depression is another.

The Adelaide University researcher, Karina Bria, says about 10 per cent of fathers develop the disorder. “Many don’t acknowledge it,” says Bria, who has conducted a national study on depression in first-time fathers. One man who isn’t in denial, though, is Will Courtenay, a San Francisco psychotherapist who has launched Saddaddy.com after suffering the disorder following his son’s birth in June. “These hormones coursing through our bodies can really wreak havoc on a man’s functioning,” he says.

As far as Mother Nature is concerned that’s small price to pay for turning millions of men into smart, caring parental partners. (…)

Source: Times Online, UK
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4962480.ece

Children who eat breakfast each day are half as likely to be obese as those who skip it, new research shows.

They eat less for lunch and tend not to snack between meals, experts say.

The study looked at 15,000 five year olds born in the first two years of the millennium who were weighed and measured.

It found children who were obese were about twice as likely not to eat breakfast as children of normal weight.

Researchers also found those with unemployed parents were almost three times as likely to go without breakfast as those whose mothers and fathers were both working.

The study found about one in five of the children was either overweight or obese when they started school. More than 17 per cent of girls and 13.5 per cent of boys were overweight and a further 6 per cent of girls and 5 per cent of boys were obese.

“It is also likely, of course, that parents who fail to give their children breakfast may be less organised about nutrition in general.”

But Prof Joshi, of the Institute of Education at the University of London, added that economic pressures, such as the inability to afford healthy food, do not appear to be key contributors to weight gain.

She said: “Poor children in our study were no more likely to be overweight and only very slightly more likely to be obese.”

Eating regular meals, other than breakfast, also appeared to have no influence on whether a child would be overweight or obese.

But the researchers did find an association between mothers’ education level and children’s weight. Just three per cent of the children of graduate mothers were obese, compared with eight per cent of youngsters whose mothers had no qualifications.

Dr Colin Waine, immediate past chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “”This confirms what we have suspected for some time that breakfast is a good way to start the day for all children and is associated with reduced obesity levels and also better performance at school.”

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/69zkck

Almost a third of British children suffer from back problems before the age of eight because they do not exercise or carry school bags that are too heavy, doctors have warned.

A survey of more than 1,200 children by the British Chiropractic Association highlights a dramatic increase in those suffering from the increase in “slouch potato” lifestyles.

Carried out to coincide with World Spine Day, it found that 32 per cent of six and seven year olds had suffered some kind of back problem, rising to 45 per cent of children by the age of 11.

This compared to 29 per cent of 11 to 18 year olds who complained of back pain in a 2002 survey.

The BCA blames a combination of lazier lifestyles and heavy school bags for the increase in cases at a younger age.

It found that 45 per cent of children spent the majority of their half terms playing computer games or watching TV, while a tenth of eight and nine year olds said they didn’t do any sport at all.

A total of 72 per cent of children said they carried around heavy books and sports equipment on their backs, but only a third said they wore their rucksack on both shoulders to distribute the weight evenly.

The study follows Irish research at two Dublin schools which found that 13 year olds were carrying nearly 6kg (13lbs), or an average of 12 per cent of their body weight, on their backs every day.

The BCA’s Tim Hutchful said the results were alarming, since children suffering from bad backs were likely to take their problems into adulthood.

He said that parents should take responsibility for their child’s development by encouraging them to go outside and exercise.

“We are in no doubt that lack of exercise is children’s number one enemy,” he said.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/4okmjs