“I can’t read.” Imagine the dropped jaws and stunned silence around the office conference table if a co-worker made that admission. Yet no one would blanch if that same co-worker announced, “I can’t do long division.”

While literacy is considered a requisite in most workplaces, basic math skills and science knowledge are considered a specialty, vital to the folks in IT and accounting but not for the rest of the staff. That kind of attitude — found in classrooms, lunchrooms and living rooms across the country — threatens to cripple the United States in global competition.

“There are consequences to a weakening of American independence and leadership in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering,” warns a recent report to President Bush from the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. “We risk our ability to adapt to change. We risk technological surprise to our economic viability and to the foundations of our country’s security. … Sound education in mathematics across the population is a national interest.”

In the 2007 results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test given in schools across the country, 30 percent of U.S. eighth-graders scored below the basic level in math. The failure rate was higher in Georgia, where 36 percent scored below basic.

“Whether filling white-collar or blue-collar positions, employers today want workers with pocket-protector skills — creative problem solvers with strong math and science backgrounds,” says U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

At a meeting earlier this month of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, a researcher explained to school leaders from around the state that the problem wasn’t that the U.S. was losing ground in its math achievement. The rest of the world was simply improving faster.

“Other countries are zipping past us,” said Daria Hall, a policy analyst at the Education Trust.

National standards for science and math education are part of the answer. Surely the principles of algebra remain the same whether taught in Boston or Ball Ground, and the chemical properties of water don’t vary across state lines. National standards — backed by testing — would also make it quite clear which states and school districts were failing their students.

But a strong national curriculum would be only half the battle; the other challenge is creating a teaching force capable of teaching to those higher standards. Like many other states, Georgia suffers from a serious shortage of teachers qualified as math and science instructors.

Only 8 percent of students in Georgia public colleges are majoring in engineering, technology or the natural sciences. Within the teaching profession, the numbers are even more stark. A new report by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement notes that Georgia public colleges produced 3,822 new teachers in 2007. Of that number, only 3.4 percent were trained in math and 2.5 percent were trained in science.

That helps explain why the state graduated only three new high school physics teachers in 2006, up from one in 2005. And that lack of qualified teachers — not just in Georgia, but around the country — in turn helps to explain why only about 15 percent of American high school students earn math or science credit in rigorous Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs.

That represents a lot of missed opportunity in a country that adds 100,000 new computer-related jobs a year. As Bill Gates pointed out in his March testimony before the House Committee on Science and Technology, “Only 15,000 students earned bachelor’s degrees in computer science and engineering in 2006, and that number continues to drop.”

As Gates knows better than anyone, the jobs are waiting. It’s up to the education system to make sure the students are ready. And to get more teachers into the classroom qualified to teach those students, Georgia and other states ought to use every tool at their disposal — including scholarships, college loan forgiveness and higher pay for math and science teachers — to persuade more bright students

Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution, USA
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2008/05/16/mathed_0518.html

“Boring” sums up Josh Bullock’s entire high school experience. The 17-year-old got in trouble and recalls spending time in in-school suspension, a practice he said confined him to a small room with no windows where he was supposed to do his schoolwork without any interaction.

He eventually dropped out.

“I’m intelligent,” he said, leaning forward then slumping back again, tapping his foot and moving his hand. He can’t sit still.

Neither can state officials who want to find a way to keep kids in school.

Mississippi’s dropout rate is 24.1 percent - similar to the rest of the nation. On average, only 70 percent of American students will graduate from high school. In Mississippi, only 63 percent will. State officials are determined to reduce the rate by 50 percent in five years.

Gov. Haley Barbour and State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds agree that high school dropouts pose an economic development hurdle for Mississippi.

“They are not going to have the same opportunities,” Bounds said. “They are more likely to get engaged with illegal activity. Dropouts are more likely to have children who will drop out.”

The economic reality of an undereducated class is staggering.

# Dropouts from the Class of 2007 will cost Mississippi almost $3.9 billion in lost wages and taxes over their lifetime, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy organization based in Washington.

# Dropouts cost Mississippi $458 million each year, Bounds said. The number comes from money spent on social services, including medical care and prison. It also figures in lost revenue in taxes based on what all those dropouts might have made in income had they completed high school.

# More than 13,000 students drop out every year in Mississippi, according to the Mississippi Department of Education.

# The dropout rate for black and Hispanic students is close to 50 percent nationwide, according to the America’s Promise Alliance, a Washington-based nonprofit collaborative chaired by Alma Powell and founded by her husband, Gen.Colin Powell. In Mississippi, about 57 percent of blacks graduate compared to 71 percent of whites.

# Dropouts earn about $9,200 less per year than high school graduates.

‘Moral obligation’

The state’s new focus has not come about because things are suddenly worse in Mississippi.

“The graduation rate is probably better than it’s ever been,” Bounds said.

And it’s not that Mississippi is worse than any other state. Nationwide, dropout rates are similar to the state’s numbers.

The problem is more complicated than dropping out of high school, though. High school itself just isn’t enough anymore to make it in a global economy based on high technology and ever-evolving transformations.

“Now that we are really understanding this issue, we can understand and see what the real problem looks like,” Bounds said. “I just think I have a moral obligation to make this a focus of the state, to wage this war.”

While politicians, educators, pundits and other adults debate how to solve the dropout crisis, the kids are angry.

“Teachers actually say ‘They don’t pay me enough to do this.’ They don’t want to be there,” said Adam Dearman, 17, who dropped out of Seminary High School earlier this year.

Cameron Clark, 16, wanted to move on with her life. She wants to be an embalmer and plans to attend junior college to meet that goal. Forrest County Agricultural High School already taught her everything it could, she said, and she left school this year.

“I don’t count myself as a dropout. I withdrew from school - I didn’t drop out.”

But Mississippi does count her as a dropout.

High school obsolete

A Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded study that explored why kids drop out found 47 percent of dropouts said classes were not interesting and 69 percent said they were not motivated.

Gates got the shocked attention of the nation’s governors in 2005 when he told a gathering of them that high school was obsolete.

Students are not learning what they need to learn to work for international companies immersed in high technology, he said. The problem goes beyond secondary school - more Americans need to finish college and engage in intellectual challenges to propel the nation into the future.

But before that need can be addressed, more kids must finish 12th grade, experts say. To keep them engaged and make them marketable, a major overhaul is needed. American high schools need updating - call it High School 2.0.

Mississippi is in the middle of a high school redesign. Bounds said it is a move that will make high school relevant.

“There will be lots of strands that look alike - what we do with technology, what we teach teachers to counsel students and explain opportunities,” Bounds said.

Some things will vary for each school district. Schools are different sizes and different regions in the state have their own needs. For example, Lamar County schools are incorporating economics into the curriculum at every level to help students make better choices.

The experts

Part of the redesign has to include more guidance for students, even building it into the required curriculum, national experts say.

Effective comprehensive guidance has three components, said Norman Gysbers, an expert in the field and a professor at the University of Missouri.

First, the curriculum should include knowledge about career opportunities. Second, the school should work with each student and his parents to develop a personal plan of study in middle school. Third, the school should provide special help when it’s needed on a short-term basis.

“The focus is on a living plan initiated in high school,” Gysbers said.

An example is Navigation 101, a program in the state of Washington that has had great success. A program of comprehensive guidance should be an ongoing quest, not a one-time determination, Gysbers said.

“Plans change,” he said. Guidance should never lock students into only one option they can’t escape. Kids have to feel as if school matters in their life and actually makes a difference, Gysbers said.

“If students feel connected to school, they are going to do better,” he said.

Different programs and curricula are available based on the research of Gysbers and others who have examined the need for decades. An example is the extensive yet intuitive Career Choices course used in many schools across the nation, but not in Mississippi because strict state guidelines don’t leave room for a new subject. Career Choices incorporates English and math skills with “life planning.” That program promotes the idea of a 10-year plan starting around eighth grade with dreams and visions and morphing into a strategy for the next phase of learning after high school. By contrast, many existing programs just concentrate on getting through the four years of high school.

The challenge is getting comprehensive guidance implemented into the curriculum.

“If we have to concentrate on basics, how do we get extras in?” Gysbers asked. He said that is a common concern of school administrators already loaded with heavy state and federal requirements.

Ideally, the developmental process begins in elementary school.

“It’s really too late by high school,” Gysbers said. “That kind of effort takes a lot of time and resources.”

Other experts agree. It takes parents as well as teachers and schools that care about the individual kid.

“When you connect a student to an adult, it builds relationships, it helps him build goals,” said Gene Bottoms of Atlanta, senior vice president of Southern Regional Education Board and founding director of High Schools That Work.

Any dropout prevention plan has to be more than about holding more students in school, but at the same time that is one of the obstacles.

“You can’t do much to get them engaged if they aren’t in school,” Bottoms said.

“We have a very high failure rate in grade nine,” he said, adding that part of this is because of a high student-to-teacher ratio and part of it is because it’s often teachers with the least experience who teach freshmen high school classes.

The more experienced teachers often teach Advanced Placement classes to smaller classes in higher grades. Bottoms wants to turn the whole system around.

He thinks one reason for the dropout rate and the ninth-grade failures is because current high school requirements load up on academics in the ninth grade. Some students have to take two math classes, for example. One is remedial if their math scores are too low and one is required for them not to get left behind.

Keeping boys interested is another large problem, Bottoms said.

“We’re losing male students at a higher rate than young ladies,” he said.

Schools need to change the experience for teenagers. In the ninth grade, there should a practical class with hands-on applications, either in fine arts or technology that allows kids to get up out of their seats and interact as they put academic skills to work. That’s one idea.

Another idea Bottoms has is to offer catch-up classes so students have another opportunity to pick up a required class without becoming so hopelessly behind they don’t choose to stay.

Hattiesburg High is considering something along these lines with online courses that could meet the need.

“We have got to redesign the curriculum in ninth grade,” Bottoms said. “Do less tracking and sorting. Enroll more kids in AP classes. Don’t wait until 11th grade to start tech classes. Improving the high school completion rate is as much about changing adult behavior as it is about changing student behavior.”

Bottoms describes a high school in San Antonio, Texas, that had bullet holes in the walls and looked and felt like a prison. The school administrators eventually turned to Boys Town, a Nebraska-based nonprofit organization, for help.

“They did a 180-degree turnaround,” Bottoms said. The difference? Treating the students as individuals.

“They don’t sense adults respect them,” Bottoms said.

Schools that want to change need a district that supports them. Mississippi’s dropout prevention program is a step in the right direction, Bottoms said.

“Hank (Bounds) has a handle on things. Accountability has to give as much importance to completion as to achievement.”

Where are parents?

A lack of parental involvement is at the root of many dropout stories.

“Parents do not get involved,” Bottoms said. “And there’s not very good mechanisms for poor parents to get involved. Better-off parents who are educated know how to work the system.”

It’s not only one thing that needs fixing. It’s many things. Bottoms suggests leadership training for principals and teachers to start.

“This will cost some money,” Bottoms said. “Look at your prison costs. You are either going to make your investment now or pay for it later.”

Josh Bullock, meanwhile, is still angry but not unmotivated. The former Oak Grove student is getting his GED, looking for a part-time job and planning to attend junior college to study computer science, maybe something in game design.

School just got in the way of his plans.

Source: Hattiesburg American, MS
http://tinyurl.com/6mot7g

Parents are increasingly turning their backs on traditional parents’ evenings and would prefer more informal contact with schools to learn about their children’s progress, research shows.

The research finds that only half of parents report feeling very involved in their children’s education, with their working lives being the number one barrier to helping with homework.

The children’s secretary, Ed Balls, publishing the research, said: “We know parents are increasingly involved in their child’s education - and want to do even more. But for many it’s a difficult balancing act to juggle work, childcare and quality family time and still be able to help their children with homework and keep track of how their child is doing at school.

“Parents tell us they like having informal contact with their child’s school - whether that’s a chat in the playground or the chance to go online and see their teenager’s latest marks and make sure they are going to all their classes.”

Parent evenings would always have a role but schools should keep up to date with what parents want, he said.

Although the research, based on telephone interviews with more than 5,000 parents or carers of children at state schools, shows that only half of all parents feel very involved in their child’s education, that figure is up from 29% in 2001. The majority (65%) would like to be more involved.

The parents most likely to be involved in their children’s education - and to help with homework - are women not working full-time, parents of younger children, families from ethnic minorities, and parents who have been to university.

The popularity of parents’ evenings has plummeted since the last research. In 2001, 43% of parents said that parents’ evenings were the “most useful” way of communicating. That figure now stands at 19%.

Balls was speaking at an event to publicise the government’s Parent Know How scheme, which was showcasing new ways to offer support and advice to parents. The programme, worth £44m over three years, is designed to help more parents access information and help through the web, over the phone and through text and instant messaging.

Balls has put parents at the heart of his efforts to improve education. In his 10-year children’s plan, which was published in December, he promised parent councils and a dedicated tutor for every child who would build up a relationship with the child’s family.

Source: guardian.co.uk, UK
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2278429,00.html

There’s no ignoring that China, with a population exceeding 1 billion people as well as burgeoning economic capabilities, is a force to be reckoned with. Throw in the fact their kids too often score better in math and science than students in the United States and what does not make sense about getting Minnesota and Chinese educators together?

Forty-nine principals from all over China made a cross-global trek to meet last week with Minnesota educators in the first-ever U.S.-China Principals’ Summit hosted by the University of Minnesota’s China Center and the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals, among others.

The four-day event, also sponsored by the Beijing-based China-American Education Foundation, was a conversation about the commonalities and differences in each nation’s system of schooling their children.

Education is “their number one priority and their number one fiscal commitment. They are intentionally focusing on becoming a world leader in first-rate education. We need to collaborate with China and we need to keep them a close educational partner,” explained Joann Knuth, executive director of the principals’ group.

There is also Chinese students’ widely recognized academic reputation, said Youngwei Zhang, director of the center. “They outscore their counterparts in many countries in math and science. These are things we need to know about so our students can do better,” he said.

For instance, MinnPost reported last December on recent Program for International Student Assessment, a.k.a. PISA, scores where students in Hong Kong and Singapore outperformed American high school students.

The forum benefits University officials as well, Zhang said, since the University has the largest population of students from China of any U.S. campus. Currently, about 2.5 percent of the University’s student body is international students, and the intent is to double that number. He estimates the U received about 800 student applications from China.

Though international differences in education approaches are difficult to swallow in one big gulp, I asked two educators, Knuth, and Chin Yi (Chin is his family name), to share their initial reactions to the summit.

Chin, who is director of international programs from the Middle School attached to Hunan Normal University, and spoke in English, had this to say.

He praised the American educational system’s “creativity.” “One of the first things that attract me is the creative spirits I found in the American high school teachers and students. We often found that American high school students are very creative, although the Chinese kids have a solid academic foundation, they lack the creative spirit,” he said.

The American system seems more open to new ideas and innovation, he said, with China having a “unified curriculum.”

In addition, China attaches great importance to academics, Chin said, claiming more than 95 percent of its students graduate from high school – much exceeding U.S. rates.

“Also, I like to point out China is attaching great significance to education by the parents. You say the involvement. In China there is no problem in parent’s involvement,” he said.

Knuth, who also represents Minnesota at the National Association of Secondary school Principals in Washington, D.C., shared these thoughts:

“I was very intrigued by China’s commitment to education. Education is their number one priority.” For instance, they talked about a 10- year education reform program where they expect to establish 110 key universities and how they are investing $2 billion in poly-technical colleges, what Americans call technical or vocational schools, she said.

“This is an extraordinary commitment. When you think about their population and the impact it will have on global education, it’s amazing.”

However, China recognizes the need to reform some cultural aspects of their kindergarten through 12th-grade system, she said. “Right now it’s very intense.” She talked to a Carleton College student from China at the conference who told her Chinese students regularly spend 10 to 12 hours a day in “intensive study.”

What the Chinese are looking to infuse into their education system from the American system is innovation. “[Chinese] students are very good at rote learning, but the idea is to learn concepts and then be able to think about, analyze and create new. That is not the cultural pattern in their schools,” Knuth said.

It was 1972 when Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People’s Republic of China, thus opening the door to normal relations with the Communist nation. The U’s China Center has worked since 1979 to encourage understanding and cooperation between the U.S. and Chinese people and cultures.

Source: MinnPost.com, MN
http://tinyurl.com/4xte2v

The kiwi classroom of the future could look a little like this, if American educationalist Dr Leonard Sax has any influence.

A room is filled with 7-year-old boys, none of whom is sitting - in fact there are no chairs on offer.

There is noise, cooler light and the temperature has been turned down. This, says Sax, is the environment in which boys learn best.

The Maryland-based executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, is in New Zealand next month to speak at several single sex schools including Auckland’s St Cuthbert’s College and Dilworth School, and at Iona College, Lindisfarne College and Woodford House, Hawke’s Bay.

Citing research from Harvard Medical School, the US National Institute of Health and various European studies, Sax argues that no one-size-fits-all education programme can be successfully applied across the sex divide, that both girls and boys will flourish in environments tailored to their gender-specific requirements.

Traditional arguments for sex-segregated schools are often based broadly on the management of teenage hormones. The theory was there would be less distraction for everyone if the girls and boys were educated separately. But hormones have no part in today’s rationale for single-sex classes.

“There’s been a pretty fundamental shift in the way people think about single-sex education, at least in North America, over the last 20 years or so,” says Sax. “That’s what’s new: the idea that the single-sex format may be most beneficial for children who are 5, 6, 7 years old. This is the empirical finding.”

Of the 367 public schools in the US that have adopted the single-sex format in the past few years, Sax says that all but about 20 are primary schools.

“[I’m] not saying that there are not benefits at the high school level; there certainly are. But the benefits in the early primary years are much greater.”

He says advanced imaging techniques have offered neuroscientists fresh insights into brain development.

“When you compare a six-year-old girl with a six-year-old boy, you find quite staggering differences in the brain,” says Sax.

Regions of the brain develop in a different sequence in the genders, he says.

The areas of the brain associated with language and fine motor skills mature about six years earlier in girls than boys. The areas of the brain associated with maths and geometry mature about four years earlier in boys than girls. This finding may help explain why some girls find maths “hard”, he says, while some boys think poetry is for “sissies”.

According to Sax, understanding and exploiting these nuances allow educators to adapt lessons and classrooms to suit the all-girl or all-boy population.

One “very reliable difference” between 6-year-old boys and 6-year-old girls is in their ability to sit still and be quiet. The average girl can sit still for longer than the average boy, with implications for the duration of lessons and the structure of the day, says Sax. Girls can have longer, uninterrupted classes, but boys will do best with 20-minute lessons followed by a run around outside.

Some US schools have taken this finding a step further. At both Cunningham School for Excellence, Iowa, and Foley Intermediate, Alabama, sitting is optional in the all-boys classes. And Chicago’s Hardey Prep doesn’t even supply chairs to their 6 and 7-year-old boys.

“As one teacher said to me: when that boy sits down his brain shuts off,” says Sax. “So the boys stand for many of the classes.

“In the mixed classroom, every choice you make is going to advantage the girls at the expense of boys or advantage the boys at the expense of girls,” he says. “The lack of awareness of gender differences often has the unintended consequence of disadvantaging both the girls and the boys.”

But Sax’s theories relate not only to the type of lesson, but to the environment the students work best in.

He says studies of young people of normal weight have shown that the ideal room temperature for boys to learn is about 20C; for girls it’s about 3 degrees higher. With classroom thermostats typically set at somewhere between 21C and 22C, Sax says that both genders will be outside their ideal comfort zone.

Evidence that tailoring the learning experience rather than simply splitting up boys and girls enhances academic performance is mounting, with research showing improved grades and test results in both sexes.

Sax advocates the introduction of single-sex classes into co-ed schools as some New Zealand schools are already doing. In Auckland’s Mt Albert Grammar, most of the junior classes are gender segregated while Long Bay College in Auckland last year introduced single-sex classes.

Sax says he wasn’t always a devotee of single-sex education, believing that “we live in a co-ed world… schools should prepare kids for the real world”. And there are still many critics of the single-sex education model, notably the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organisation for Women, who see it as a discriminatory anachronism. Under the old model that prevailed in the US until around the 1960s, boys’ schools typically received the bulk of the resources while girls’ schools made do with their leftovers and hand-me-downs.

But Sax has no intention of returning to what he describes as “the bad old days”. He was educated in an era when “they pushed girls and boys into pink and blue cubby holes” - boys had compulsory woodwork, girls had home economics. The new world order he favours aims to “expand educational horizons, to get more girls excited about computer science and physics and engineering - and to get more boys excited about art and poetry and creative writing and foreign languages“.

“The irony is that we’ve had roughly three decades throughout the English-speaking world of ignoring gender, pretending that gender doesn’t matter,” he says.

“There are substantially fewer young women studying computer science, physics and engineering than there were 20 years ago - and fewer men who regard creative writing, or writing at all, as something that boys do. So we’ve ignored gender and the result of ignoring gender has been not to eliminate gender stereotypes; it has been a hardening of gender stereotypes.”

New Zealand Herald, New Zealand
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=10505122

In 2006, President Bush named a group to advise on improving U.S. mathematics education. Now, the experts say existing research offers few answers.

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

A committee has released its final report on ways to improve math education for American students. President Bush created the National Mathematics Advisory Panel two years ago.

The panel examined thousands of reports, along with survey results from more than seven hundred algebra teachers. Yet the report, released last month, is short on detailed advice. It says existing research does not show just what knowledge or skills are needed for effective math teaching. The solution? More research.

The report does say basic math skills must be taught completely in the early years of school. Children should be able to add and subtract in the third grade. By the end of fifth grade, they should be able to multiply and divide.

The report says a major goal for kindergarten through eighth grade should be understanding fractions. These skills are needed for algebra. Yet, the report says, at the present time they seem to be severely underdeveloped in American students.

Schools are urged to prepare more students to take algebra by the eighth grade.

Many people think math success depends largely on natural talent or ability; the experts say it depends on effort. Studies have shown that children improve in math when they believe that their efforts to learn make them “smarter.”

The report also calls for strengthening the math preparation of elementary and middle school teachers. And it urges publishers to shorten math textbooks, which are often up to a thousand pages long. The panel said math books are much smaller in many nations where students do better in math than American children.

Publishers say American textbooks have to meet the goals of different states for what should be taught in each grade.

The report also calls for more research on the effects of using calculators. Many algebra teachers expressed concern about their use in the lower grades.

And the report says gifted students who can move through the material much faster than others should be permitted to do so.

The math panel says the educational system needs major changes. If not, it warns that the United States will lose the mathematical leadership it possessed during most of the twentieth century. (…)

Source: Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2008-04-09-voa2.cfm

To teach children how to play the piano, you have to teach them the basics of music - keys, notes, chords, melody, and harmony. With these tools learned, your kids can experience the joy and sense of accomplishment from playing their favorite songs on the piano.

To most of us, driving a car seems effortlessness. Our eyes, hands, and feet work together seamlessly, automatically, without conscious thought. But we first had to learn the basics of driving when we were young. Remember back to your father’s driving lessons? He taught you how to turn the steering wheel, where the gas and brake pedal was, how to stay in your lane, turn signals and stop signs, use of mirrors, keeping to speed limits, looking ahead. All these basics took time and practice to learn. Now, those of us who have been driving for many years, take these basics for granted. We drive “automatically” and with skill.

The same process applies to another skill—reading. Read a book or a newspaper and it seems effortless. Yet such skill comes from constant use, from constant practice of basic skills learned at an early age.

The results were inevitable - half the nation’s high-school grads cannot read a bus schedule. Businesses lose $40 billion a year for remedial reading classes for new employees fresh from high school. Thirty percent of Americans functionally illiterate. The child who is taught phonics is able to read thousands of words in a few semesters. The “whole-word” child-victim is able to “recognize” only a few hundred words. Thus we have the crash in reading skills, the dumbing-down of our kids, the millions of frustrated teens who drop out of school, turn to crime, and end up in prison because they can’t get a decent job.

Yet, in the face of such failure, such disaster for our children, the educrats turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. In the face of reality - massive denial and rationalization.

Buy why? What do they gain? There is always a reason for irrational behavior, and the educrats have many.

Educrats think phonics believers are extremist Christian Rightists or educational simpletons unable to understand the “complexity” of the educrats’ so-called learning theories. Yet, let reality be the judge. The children who learn phonics read far quicker and better than the “whole-word” readers. And the “complexity” educrats proclaim is a self-serving fantasy of their making, designed to ward off competition. Educrats think they are gurus with special skills no parent can possess. Rather, they are education buffoons who don’t know how to teach phonics to your kids any longer, or don’t want to bother.

Educrats claim that phonics and rules will turn kids off to the joy of reading. Just the opposite is true - when a “whole-language” victim-child tries to read the many words he was not taught to “recognize,” he will give up in frustration. His frustration will end his reading and his ‘joy” in reading. The phonics-trained child can read any word and any book, and the joy of reading follows from his skills.

This learning of basic skills need not be a struggle. What turns kids off? The insufferable boredom, the mediocrity of the educrats’ teaching methods, unchanged for 50 years.

Children learn the alphabet and letter sounds with delight at home. Sesame Street, “Hooked on Phonics,” the Internet, learning channels on cable TV, creative reading books especially made for kids by learning entrepreneurs can make learning letters and sounds a delight.

Phonics and drills are a drudge in government schools because educrats don’t have the time, skill, desire, or imagination to make them otherwise. Rather than blame themselves or their government-run system for failure, they blame everyone else. They now claim it is the child’s fault (he has attention-deficit disorder!), the parents’ fault (they don’t get “involved!”), or “society’s” fault (racism or “not enough money for the schools!”).

Educrats also say that drills and basics, tests and standards, are “unfair” to kids, cause them stress, and threaten their self-esteem. Just the opposite is true - real self-esteem comes from achievement, not from a teacher’s hot-air, feel-good compliments. Achievement needs tasks, content, ever-increasing complex skills children learn with guided effort. Joy, not stress, is the result of achievement. And what is more important than for children to learn that rewards come from effort and perseverence? Educrats hate phonics and true reading skills because their teacher colleges don’t train them in the phonics method. Teachers who are not taught the phonics method will naturally feel inadequate to teach phonics to children. It is not the teachers’ fault. Rather, the fault lies with educrats, teacher colleges, and educational theorists who have contempt for phonics.

The “whole-language” reading method, in contrast, is allegedly “student-centered,” meaning that kids get to sit around in circles and talk about their feelings rather than learn to actually read. With “whole-language” reading, educrats can claim there are no standards, no way to test reading skills and achievement. There are few rigorous tests, low standards, and no failing grades.

“Whole-language” reading therefore achieves the educrats’ ultimate goal - if there are no standards or objectivity, no one can blame them, no one can question them, no one can hold them accountable for their failure to teach our children to read. The educrats don’t want to grade their students’ performance because it allegedly hurts the kids “self-esteem.” I believe this attitude is merely a projection of the educrat’s primal fears—they do not want parents judging their performance and holding them accountable for teaching their kids to read. The educrats don’t want their fragile self-esteem threatened by angry parents who expect public schools to do one simple thing—teach their kids to read.

Government schools are designed to assuage the educrats’ terror at being judged by parents, and being forced to compete in a free-market education system. Government (public) schools’ ultimate purpose is to be a full-employment program for educrats - to give them guaranteed jobs without accountability to parents. It is to placate these fearful educrats that our government schools dumb-down our children and turn them into illiterates with bleak futures.

So what can you, as a concerned parent, do to protect your child? As long as public schools are run by government and their educrats, they will never change. In my book, Public Schools, Public Menace, I tell parents about wonderful new education alternatives to public schools, such as accredited, low-cost internet private schools. Parents, I urge you to look into these alternatives, before your children are irreparably harmed by public-school whole-language, anti-phonics, “reading” instruction.

Source: NewsByUs, ID
http://newsbyus.com/index.php/article/162

In 2007, the British Prime Minister commissioned an independent review of how parents and children are being affected by the rise of new technology, such as increased access to the Internet and gaming consoles. Dr. Tanya Byron, a psychologist with experience in child behavior, led the review, and spent several months exploring the research literature and meeting with parents, children, and industry leaders. The results of the work have now been released in a report that makes comprehensive recommendations regarding the role the government can play in helping parents make technology a safe and effective part of their child’s development.

In places, the report is remarkably blunt in its analysis. Dr. Byron argues that unsupervised exploration and the pushing of boundaries are a natural and essential part of childhood. In her view, UK society has become increasingly risk-averse, which has resulted in parents that let kids explore the outdoors only through carefully supervised and structured activities. Left with few boundaries to push, children are turning to games and the Internet as the only locations they can undergo this form of development.

Byron suggests that parents should treat technology as they do more traditional areas of childhood development, and makes two informative comparisons: crossing the street and learning to swim. Each of these is associated with risks, but parents manage them in stages, with education, followed by supervised exploration that ultimately leads to allowing children to explore largely unsupervised. Technology largely presents a problem because it lacks the intuitive and widely understood aspects of education and risk. “There is a generational digital divide which means that parents do not necessarily feel equipped to help their children in this space,” Byron writes, “which can lead to fear and a sense of helplessness.”

The report contains extensive recommendations for eliminating the fear and helplessness aspects, divided between efforts targeted towards games and those focused on Internet use. In general, the recommendations focus on voluntary self-regulation by the relevant industries and educational programs that will help parents understand the challenges and benefits of the technology.

In terms of Internet use, Dr. Byron recommends pervasive access to parental control software. Retailers should provide this at the point of purchase, and ISPs should include the software as part of their service. Search companies should agree to provide a “safe search” option that’s easily accessed from the main search portal, and can be locked in on a given machine. Content providers should also agree to strict takedown times for potentially harmful content. All of these efforts would be coordinated by a governmental council that works with the relevant industry groups. Byron avoids recommending any new laws, but suggests that the council be charged with evaluating existing laws to determine how they could be modernized or clarified to cope with technological advances.

The existing research on gaming and childhood development, in Byron’s view, mostly indicates that factors beyond gaming content can be critical: “there is a strong body of ethnographic research which argues that context and the characteristics of each child will mediate the effects of playing video games.” This, ultimately, means that parents should determine what gaming content is appropriate for their children. To make parents’ job easier, the report calls for improvements in the existing game ratings system, along with improved enforcement of age limits.

Overall, the recommendations are refreshingly short on fear-mongering, and the report recognizes a number of things that many people seem reluctant to admit: each child is a unique, so one-size-fits-all rules are ineffective; parents need to educate themselves so that they can set intelligent limits; and risk can never be eliminated, so their role should include developing their child’s resilience. Given these realities, its recommendations appear to appropriately focus on how the government and industry can work to make a parent’s job easier.

Source: Ars Technica, MA
http://tinyurl.com/249xmq

Parents with aggressive kids need to be involved in early prevention and intervention, study says

Childhood bullies frequently fight with their parents, feel they can’t count on them and aren’t closely supervised, a Toronto-based study shows.

That means bullies not only require counselling on how to relate to peers, but also parents – and their parents need to take part, says lead author Debra Pepler, a York University professor and scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children, considered one of the country’s leading experts in the field.

“Focusing on the child alone is not enough,” she said. “You can’t just provide support at school and hope that the behaviour changes or that the learning transfers to other contexts. These are problems parents need to deal with.”

Technology, too, has added a twist because “adults aren’t in that space, they don’t understand what’s going on.”

The seven-year study of 871 Toronto students from age 10 onwards, is published in the March/April edition of the journal Child Development.

While most children experiment with bullying at some point, about 10 per cent become “persistent bullies,” it found.

Pepler said the study is among the first “to confirm that children who use power and aggression in their relationships have relationship problems and need relationship solutions.

“Let’s not have them sit on a bench for an hour to teach them not to bully. An hour on the bench is not going to teach them how to relate better next time.”

Stu Auty of the Canadian Safe School Network said many bullying issues stem from a child’s home life, and the strategy should always be “early prevention and intervention.”

Involving parents “is a good idea, and not done nearly enough,” he said. “But often you can’t get the parent to agree – that’s part of the problem.”

One of the network’s programs, used by the Toronto District School Board, educates children from junior kindergarten to Grade 2 on honesty, integrity and sharing, using animated characters. Parents can have access to the program and use it as a resource at home to discuss bullying.

“The sooner you get at this issue, the fewer concerns there are down the road,” Auty said. “If it’s anything schools can provide, it’s a focus on character education, on values, the difference between right and wrong.

“So for whatever reason, if they don’t get it at home, they are going to pick it up in school – although sometimes it feels like we have our fingers in the dike here.”

The study found that 9.9 per cent of students were chronic bullies from elementary to high school; about 35 per cent were moderate bullies; 13.4 per cent began as moderate bullies but ceased bullying by high school; 41.6 per cent reported “almost never bullying.”

Youth in the first three categories tended to lack “the protective processes of supportive family relationships (e.g. those with low parent trust, poor parental monitoring) and peer relationships (e.g. those associating with peers who bullied, high susceptibility to peer pressure),” the study found.

Past research has indicated children who bully tend to come from homes with “harsh and punitive” parenting, but it’s not an area that has been looked at in depth, Pepler said.

In her study, almost three-quarters lived at home with both parents; the rest with single parents or in blended families. Most of the children’s mothers had graduated from university or college, making it a “relatively advantaged” sample.

Pepler said while bullying might start in the home, it can also “start in the peer group – youth get a lot of power by victimizing each other. That’s one of the ways of increasing their status.”

Source: Toronto Star, Canada
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/350367

Education chief Michael Suen Ming- yeung is today expected to announce the reopening of all schools on Monday, ending the extra-long Easter holiday for younger students.

Primary and special schools, nurseries and kindergartens were shut on March 13 following a flu outbreak and the death of three children from unknown causes.

Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok and senior officials from the Department of Health and the Education Bureau met yesterday to discuss the reopening.

An announcement was expected after the meeting but an official said it was decided to wait until today to allow medical authorities another day to study hospital admissions.

“The most important thing now is that flu viruses have been found not to be especially cruel. They are just normal viruses,” Suen said.

He said the bureau is in constant contact with schools and parents should have no fears about allowing their children return to lessons.

The Centre for Health Protection has recorded no significant upward or downward trend in infections over the past few weeks with the average remaining at 76 cases per 1,000 consultations at private doctors.

The center said there were no hospital admissions yesterday of children suffering from serious flu complications and no new influenza outbreak had been reported in the past 24 hours.

The vice-president of Hong Kong University’s infection research center, Ho Pak-leung, said there is no serious danger to children as data has shown no mutation of the flu virus.

Hong Kong Education Policy Concern Organization chairman Mervyn Cheung Man-ping said an early announcement of the reopening would help parents and warned the Education Bureau it faced a firestorm of criticism if there is a repeat of the hasty manner in which it shut schools earlier for the Easter break.

Cheung also urged the bureau to brief schools on the latest sanitary policies and to provide them with abundant supplies of items such as facial masks and sanitizers. He also expects the bureau to shorten the summer break since schools are on course for the minimum number of prescribed school days this year.

Source: The Standard, Hong Kong
http://tinyurl.com/27qz73