On the face of it, Luke Burton is a shining example of how someone from an economically disadvantaged background can succeed in education. His mum at one time was working in a chip shop and doing three other jobs to make ends meet, he didn’t go to a high achieving school and, by his own admission, he messed around in class more than he should have done.
Yet at 24 he is training to be an actuary with a big firm in London, has a maths degree from Oxford and an MA - the first graduate in his family. Why is it that some young people seem inoculated against less advantaged beginnings while others don’t? New UK and US studies are pointing the finger ever more clearly at particular kinds of parenting and home environments that do the trick. But the big money still doesn’t go into parenting education, despite research that proves it can be an enormous force for change. Yet stark facts suggest more finance for parenting education would be money well spent.

Attainment gap

Sizeable gaps in school readiness exist in the UK despite universal nursery education for three- and four-year-olds; in the US half the eventual gap in attainment between children from less advantaged and more advantaged homes exists when the child starts school. Here a bright but poor child can be overtaken in test results by a less bright child from an affluent home by age seven.

In England, poor children among the top performers in tests at 11 are much more likely to have lost that critical advantage by the time they take their GCSEs. All the money Labour has poured into the education system since 1997 has failed to increase the tiny numbers of young people from the lowest socio-economic groups getting into university. So why do Burton and others like him do so well?

Scratch the surface of Burton’s “disadvantage” and you soon start to see answers. He comes from Clevedon in Somerset and is the eldest of three. His father was a mechanic and his parents split up when he was small. Money was tight. His mum, Wendy Doig, had gone to what she describes as a “rubbish school - a Grange Hill type of school” where the idea of university was never considered, and she was seen as “posh” as she went on to work in an office rather than get pregnant or work in the local sausage factory.

But she chose to do part-time jobs rather than work full-time because she wanted to be in when the children came home from school. She also wanted money to pay for the Montessori nursery a friend told her was good. For Burton she feels that was a turning point. “Of all my children he was the most difficult to steer. It worried me how determined he was. I thought he was going to do something brilliant or terrible. I could see his strengths and the potential for disaster.

“I spent a lot of my time trying to find things to interest Luke. His playgroup lacked structure and it made him hyperactive. Joining Montessori was pretty key. That’s when the maths got off the ground.”

Burton remembers a male primary school teacher who told him he had potential and to stop mucking around. He remembers parents proud when he did well but who didn’t put him under pressure. He found it harder to respect teachers once he got to secondary school because there was less time to build relationships with them, but he does remember a maths teacher who took it as a given that he was going to university.

Burton’s mum remarried when he was 11, so he went to live with his dad for more freedom. His stepfather’s mother spotted a newspaper story about the Sutton Trust summer school at Oxford University for youngsters from families with no tradition of university. It was held at Magdalen College. “I thought: ‘This is quite nice. I’d like to come here.’ I didn’t know what other universities were like so it was not a big deal. It didn’t cross my mind that I wouldn’t get in once I’d decided to go.”

Doig says her own parents had been easy and supportive but she also read books on parenting to help her when the children were small.

Home learning

And it is that mindful attention to parenting style and home learning which is shown to be vital in a spin-off study from Europe’s largest piece of longitudinal research in this area - Effective Provision of Preschool Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) - which for more than 10 years has been following the educational development of 3,000 children from the age of three for the government .

The study has proved that high-quality preschool can ameliorate the effects of social disadvantage and break the cycle of deprivation, but it needs to be coupled with a good home-learning environment.

This is backed by unpublished research carried out for the Equalities Review by Iram Siraj-Blatchford, professor of early childhood education at the Institute of Education in London and a principal investigator for EPPSE, with 24 of the families whose children were succeeding against the odds in their education. Half were on free school meals, more than half were living with a lone parent, and four out of five were living in deprived areas.

In-depth interviews uncovered strong evidence of an adult or adults in the child’s life taking parenting seriously and valuing education either in the immediate or wider family or the child’s wider community, such as a religious community.

She believes the shift towards sending reading books home with children, which began in earnest in the 1980s, may be having an effect now those children are parents. In the interviews, it is clear that parents and their children think success at school is down to working hard and concentrating on what is said in class; when they hit difficulties they are not deterred. By contrast, the children from poor home-learning environments put school success down to ability and feel helpless in the face of lessons they find hard.

The crucial importance of the home is also pointed out by a new study, which has documented income related gaps in areas such as literacy, numeracy and behaviour. It shows between one-third and half of these differences are the result of parenting style and home-learning environment. But it is a particular kind of parenting, described as “sensitive and responsive”, that works.

The research is based on data from 19,000 UK and 10,000 US children born in 2000 and 2001 analysed by Jane Waldfogel, professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University in New York, and Liz Washbrook, a research associate at Bristol University’s Centre for Market and Public Organisation on secondment to Columbia. The analysis was delivered to a private summit on social mobility and education policy organised by the Sutton Trust and the Carnegie Foundation in New York in June. Ed Miliband, minister for the Cabinet Office, who leads the government’s efforts to tackle social exclusion, was one of the leading politicians and education figures who attended.

Detailed observation of children in the US part of the study found parenting style having the biggest impact on school readiness gaps between low-income and middle-income children, accounting for 19% of the gap in maths, 21% of the literacy gap and a massive third of the gap in language. Sensitive and responsive parenting had the biggest positive effect. Observational data was not available from the UK.

Waldfogel says sensitive and responsive parents are able to provide “warm, supportive and nurturing parenting” and can respond to a child’s changing needs. Experience of parenting received as a child may affect responses to your children as may personal temperament and stress, she says.

Parenting programmes can and do help. Sure Start has been found to improve effective parenting and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) announced last week that it was extending the pilot of the Family Nurse Partnership, which works with vulnerable young women expecting their first child. Early signs suggest improved aspirations among the mothers after an intensive visiting programme from nurses who work with them from pregnancy until the child’s second birthday, advising on healthier lifestyles, baby and childcare, and planning life goals.

Positive changes

Another successful and rapidly spreading UK scheme is the Peers Early Education Partnership (Peep), which has been proved to boost cognition and self esteem in pre-school children by promoting parents’ and carers’ awareness of very early learning and development, and supporting adults in their relationships with the children.

Peep programmes are delivered mainly in children’s centres but are gradually being taken direct to vulnerable parents in their homes. But the programme remains a charity rather than mainstream provision. The government is spending £1bn on its ambitious 10-year Children’s Plan to ensure a better deal for children - including making sure 90% of them are ready to learn when they go to school - but education in providing a good home-learning environment currently doesn’t figure in it.

Last week it was revealed that an 18-month government initiative aimed at helping parents of young children from disadvantaged families become effective supporters of their children as learners was successful in making positive changes to parents’ behaviour. The Early Learning Partnership Programme, funded by the DCSF and undertaken by researchers from Oxford University’s departments of education and social policy and social work, aimed to support parents in socially disadvantaged areas across England.

It brought together the main agencies in the voluntary sector working with the parents of children aged between one and three but, because it was only funded for 18 months, it could not show whether it made differences to children’s long-term learning.

One good piece of news came last week when the DCSF announced £12m in backing for the Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People’s Services, which will gather and analyse information about what works in tackling a range of issues linked to child wellbeing.

This kind of work can’t come a moment too soon. Parenting is harder to influence, but without it good pre-schools and schools can only go so far - and it could take decades for the most disadvantaged to catch up.

Parental dos and don’ts

Sensitive and responsive parenting is about tuning into what your child needs from moment to moment, and adapting your behaviour.

Your child gets a new toy
Do watch how the child responds to the toy and let him/her explore it alone if he/she seems to want to
Don’t automatically show your child how it all works

A father bounces a child on his knee to cheer her up
Do watch for cues that the child is enjoying herself
Don’t carry on if the child cries. Think about what else she might need and experiment with meeting those needs, for example feeding or cuddling

Source: guardian.co.uk, UK
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2290865,00.html

Students are being taught maths at the most superficial level by teachers rushing to pass on the basic skills while shying away from complex ideas.

In yet another example of children being failed by national school curriculums, a special report for the state leaders finds maths teaching is failing students by setting the bar too low.

The National Numeracy Review report, released to The Weekend Australian, criticises the national benchmarks in maths, which assess students against minimum standards rather than requiring a desirable proficiency.

“The implication (is) that minimum standards are good enough, at least for some students,” says the report on numeracy commissioned by the Council of Australian Governments. “All students and their families, however, have a right to expect high-quality - not minimum - numeracy outcomes from their schooling.”

The review committee, chaired by the former head of the NSW Board of Studies Gordon Stanley, says the time spent teaching maths in classrooms has decreased over the past decade, yet students are expected to learn about a greater number of mathematical concepts.

“Curriculum emphases and assessment regimes should be explicitly designed to discourage a reliance upon superficial and low-level proficiency,” the report says. It recommends phasing out the streaming of students according to their ability, citing research that says it has little effect on achievement.

“It does produce gains in attainment for higher-achieving students at the expense of lower-attaining students,” it says.

The report recommends that all teachers, regardless of their intended speciality, be trained as numeracy teachers and maths be taught across all subjects.

The report says primary school students should spend five hours a week and high school students four hours a week on maths and numeracy, including time spent learning maths in other subjects.

The report also suggests introducing specialist maths teachers to work shoulder-to-shoulder with other teachers, particularly those without specialist training in maths teaching.

Source: Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24006438-663,00.html

If you were an energetic nine-year-old boy who loved school, did your best but also loved charging about, trying to beat your friends at every game possible, imagine the hell of our currrent state school system where ball games are banned from the playground in case someone gets hurt, there is no outside play in bad weather and you are constantly in trouble for being too competitive because winning is not what it’s about. And, worse, Jamie Oliver fruit smoothies have replaced sponge pudding in your school dinner, so you’re starving by two o’clock.

Sue Palmer is a former head teacher, literacy adviser and the author of 21st Century Boys. She says it is a biological necessity that boys run about, take risks, swing off things and compete with each other to develop properly. “If they can’t, a lot of them find it impossible to sit still, focus on a book or wield a pencil,” she says, “so their behaviour is considered ‘difficult’, they get into trouble and tumble into a cycle of school failure.”

Boys are three times as likely as girls to need extra help with reading at primary school, and 75 per cent of children supposedly suffering from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are male. “We are losing boys at a rate of knots, particularly in literacy,” Palmer says, “because at some point in the past 30 years, masculinity became an embarrassment.”

Research by Simon Baron-Cohen, a respected Cambridge professor, that began as an investigation into autism, puts a solid case for biological male/female differences in the brain, with boys tending to be “systematisers” and girls “empathisers”. This explains why boys generally are less keen on reading and comprehension, and lag behind girls in literacy. A lot of boys find it easier to explain the workings of a watch than to discuss how a character in a story is feeling. “But now,” says Palmer, “apart from the very bright ones, boys aren’t even doing better at maths and science.”

Some people blame this nosedive, first noticed in the mid-Nineties, on the “feminisation” of education - too many women teachers, girl-friendly classroom environments and modular exam systems that suit girls’ study skills but disadvantage risk-takers. “Geniuses are much more likely to be male,” Palmer says, “but if you don’t tick the right boxes, you fail.”

There are seven times as many women primary school teachers as men, but Christine Skelton, Professor of Gender Equality in Education at Birmingham University, argues that there have always been far more female teachers than male. “Obviously there are some women who understand active boys, and some men who don’t, just as there are energetic girls and inactive boys,” she says.

The current generation of teachers, though, were born and raised in an atmosphere dominated by women’s liberation and “non-gender-specific” education that began in the Seventies. Barbies were banned, most protagonists in books were female and there was no tolerance of war or superhero play. As a head teacher, Palmer remembers making her reception teacher remove all the cloakroom pegs that depicted tractors for boys and bunnies for girls.

“The belief was that you were shaped by your environment, and it was the teacher’s responsibility to ‘socialise’ boys away from their natural inclinations and to encourage girls to study traditionally male subjects such as physics and technology,” she says.

Palmer would never deny that some of it was absolutely necessary - but with movements such as Reclaim the Night, Greenham Common and Gay Pride, groups that offered an alternative perspective to the traditionally dominant male view taking centre stage, masculinity became suspect. “I really think,” she says, “that the almighty cock-up of the sisterhood in the Seventies was that we believed we could turn boys into girls.”

Palmer says that most women are not natural risk-takers, so for teachers who have not helped to bring up brothers and who don’t have sons, boys’ behaviour can be frightening. “Play-fighting, for example, reaches a peak at age 7 or 8 but is not actually aggressive,” she says. “It’s social - it’s the way boys get to know each other and see how the other one ticks. A lot of women teachers are horrified when I suggest that they should let boys get on with fighting and shouting because eventually they’ll come out the other side and start negotiating.”

Another problem for boys seeking adventure is that, because we live in an increasingly risk-averse society, children are rarely allowed to play unsupervised. When did you last see a group of boys climbing a tree?

“There is a rational fear of increased traffic but also an irrational fear of stranger danger, fanned by media reporting of child abduction,” says Palmer. “Parents are worried about being considered irresponsible, so they never let their children out of their sight.” And because we are not used to seeing boys playing outside, when we do it feels hostile even when what is going on is not particularly boisterous.

Dan Travis, a sports coach, argues that it is very important for boys to muck about on their own. “Coaching is formal and necessary but should only take up 20 per cent of the time they play,” he says. “The informal 80 per cent is where most of the learning and practising occurs - away from adult supervision.”

Travis is running a campaign to bring competition back to school sport. “The Sport for All ethos took hold in the Seventies and never let go,” he says. “Games are only about inclusion, with no winners allowed.” This is disastrous for boys, who need to compete to establish their place in the hierarchy, which is how they organise their friendships and something that they understand from nursery age onwards. It is also bad for sport. Palmer adds that “self-esteem” arrived from America and now no child is allowed to “lose” at anything.

Palmer is not suggesting that boys should be allowed to behave in any way they want. What we need, she says, is to celebrate what makes them boys and help them to understand the things that don’t come naturally to them. That means getting them outside more, particularly as space gets squeezed in urban schools. “Not letting boys be boys is not only detrimental to them but also to girls, many of whom become overcompliant with what is considered ‘good’ behaviour and could do with a shove outdoors to take more risks,” she says. “I certainly wish that had happened to me.”

Palmer is especially enthusiastic about the few “outdoor nurseries” that we have in this country, and about the Scandinavian system that puts off formal learning until the age of 7 or 8, concentrating instead on playing outside and the development of social skills.

In the ideal Palmer world, everyone would go to a Scandinavian-style school. What we are doing instead is bringing in the Early Years Foundation Stage, a new government framework that becomes law in September. It says that by the age of 5 children should be writing sentences, some of which are punctuated. “That would be impressive for a seven-year-old,” says Palmer. “So rather than tackling the imbalance in the way that we have treated boys for too long, we are going to make them sit still and learn even younger. I’d call that little short of state-sponsored child abuse.”

21st Century Boys will be published by Orion in early 2009

Source: Times Online, UK
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4288100.ece

I can’t believe what I just read. We are going to spend millions for our teachers to teach our children how to be lazier.

The question was, “How do you solve the turkey problem if you are a third grader who doesn’t know how to multiply?”

If the kids are really supposed to stretch their math muscles, you teach them the multiplication tables in the second grade. Are our children as smart as we were? A teacher told me they are not. They sit in the classroom and will not listen, will not work, and will not try. This is not a learning problem, this is a parental problem.

Out with the rules, in with the real world. That’s the problem to begin with. We have become so lax in our parenting that we are developing generations of lazy, unproductive, overindulged children. Their parents grew up the same way. They only learn what is fun for them. They can tell you all the words to every song on their Ipod but they can’t remember 5 X 5 = 25. They can’t spell because they use text message lingo and everyone accepts that. Parents, teachers and society do not demand excellence from an early age, so the children don’t demand of themselves.

There are too many parents who think children will learn by osmosis. They are so self-absorbed with themselves and by life outside the home they don’t see or care what happens inside.

On the other hand, there are caring parents who teach their children self-control, the importance of learning and how to work for something they want. There are good teachers who have their hands tied when they try to teach excellence. Many are getting discouraged and changing their profession.

And there are children out there who put forth the effort to learn and apply it to a productive life. They are the ones I hope will become the teachers and leaders of tomorrow. The rest will be draining our welfare system forever.

There are some special-needs children who require special learning skills. They deserve all the help we can give them. However, we are raising generations of “special needs” children because parents are neglectful, society accepts mediocrity and school boards look for expensive ways and new fads to educate rather than teach the basics.

5 X 5 equaled 25 in 1930 and in 1960, and it still does in 2008. New Math didn’t work in the 60s and it will not work now. Stop wasting our tax dollars.

I cannot support the school board anymore until they start coming up with ideas that make sense. My vote will be “no,” until they get back to teaching basic principles and build from there.

Source: Idaho Press-Tribune, ID
http://www.idahopress.com/?id=11471

Teachers are misdiagnosing some children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when they are just naughty, psychiatrists have warned.

Only half of children teachers suspected of having ADHD were diagnosed with the condition by a mental health expert, a study found.

The results of the study carried out in East London will be presented at the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Children with ADHD cannot concentrate on school work or play and are easily distracted, forgetful or fail to follow instructions.

They also unduly noisy, restless and fidget constantly and often talk excessively, butt in to other’s conversations and cannot wait in line.

Estimates suggest that around 1.7 per cent of the population is affected by ADHD, mostly children and if it cannot be controlled with behavioural therapy then medication such as Ritalin is considered.

In the study, based in Tower Hamlets, 52 children were referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services team with ADHD-like symptoms over the course of one year.

The researchers said that they are unsure why teachers may be over-identifying children with possible ADHD diagnoses.

Lead author Dr Benjamin Keene, said: “Naughty children may at some point present symptoms but someone with ADHD has them at all times.”

They suggest that better educational resources need to be made available to teachers to help them accurately identify those children with ADHD, and that CAMHS teams should develop structured school observation tools or telephone interview schedules, so that identified children can be independently and expertly assessed in a classroom setting.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/6l74sw

Children are just as well-adjusted as their counterparts of 20 years ago and, if anything, better behaved and less anxious - at least to their parents. But teachers appear to have a different view.

Research published today by the Australian Institute of Family Studies compares two studies of children two decades apart, and found that, in both the 1980s and the first decade of this century, the “great majority” of young children were happily adjusted.

Despite fears that modern life is producing a generation of badly behaved or anxious children, today’s parents are even more relaxed and less worried about their children’s progress than were parents in the past.

“Very few toddlers and children were reported as showing clear signs of behaviour problems,” say the study’s authors, Diana Smart and Ann Sanson. They say today’s parents may be more tolerant and understanding of, or less bothered by, challenging behaviour than parents in the 1980s.

The studies, in 1988 and in 2005, each involved thousands of six- and seven-year-old children. Researchers asked parents and teachers parallel questions about the children’s behaviour and temperament. Parents of children aged two to three were also asked similar questions in both studies.

Taken together, the studies provide a rare opportunity to test the common assumption that children in the 21st century are faring worse that yesteryear’s children, the authors say.

Today’s parents rated their toddlers as more sociable, persistent in completing tasks, and less prone to acting out frustrations than did parents of the 1980s. The toddlers were seen as less destructive, and less likely to hurt other children, and even as having less difficulty falling asleep.

Today’s parents of six- and seven-year-olds also rated their children as more sociable and less intense in their reactions than did parents of the 1980s. Although serious problems were uncommon in both eras, today’s parents were significantly less likely to report conduct problems, such as fighting or disobedience, or that their children were anxious, worried or fearful.

In 2005 2 per cent of the six- to seven-year-olds were considered disobedient by their parents, compared with almost 8 per cent in the 1980s; 3 per cent of today’s children were said to have “many worries”, compared with 12 per cent in the 1980s.

But today’s teachers were more likely than those of the 1980s - and more likely than today’s parents - to report six- to seven-year-old children had conduct problems or were hyperactive.

About 8 per cent of today’s children were hyperactive, teachers reported, compared with about 6 per cent in the 1980s; about 3 per cent were disobedient, compared with 1.6 per cent in the 1980s; and 3.5 per cent fought with other children, compared with 2.9 per cent in the 1980s.

The report, Do Australian Children Have More Problems Today Than Twenty Years Ago?, says teachers today may be more aware of these problems than teachers of the 1980s and more willing to report them. But the authors say changed behaviour, perhaps due to less regulated classrooms, may also be a factor.

The authors said it was unusual in this type of research for teachers to report more problems in children than did the parents. The report is published in the institute’s journal, Family Matters, and based on the Australian Temperament Project, which has followed people to age 25, and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/3t39rl

They dominate schools to the detriment of teenage boys, says parenting expert. And mums spoil their sons, too

Female teachers need to stop talking so much and at such a high pitch if they are to engage with boys in classes, a parenting expert claims.

Celia Lashlie, an education adviser and author from New Zealand, said women are important to boys’ learning, but they need to learn from their male colleagues.

Women should make more use of silence – asking a question then giving boys time to think before answering – and non-verbal cues such as raised eyebrows. They also should talk at a lower pitch.

“Don’t speak so much – just shut up,” says Ms Lashlie, a self-described feminist.

“I’ve been in classes with young female teachers, and by the end of the session my ears hurt.”

In secondary schools just 40 per cent of classroom teachers are men; in primary schools, it’s only 12 per cent. Ms Lashlie recommends heads “defeminise” the workforce by employing more men and dealing with teenage boys’ fathers rather than their mothers.

Too often, she says, parents turn up for meetings with their son’s teacher or headteacher, and the mother talks while the father is too scared to say a word. Some schools are already considering making fathers sign an admissions charter agreeing that they will be the first point of contact with the school.

Ms Lashlie, who is visiting schools in Britain next week, said boys need their fathers or other male role models to help them grow into “good men” – but instead they are coddled by mothers. “Women need to step back, and shut up,” she says.

Her comments come as the Government campaigns to involve fathers more in children’s learning. Beverley Hughes, the children’s minister, urged heads to think about fathers, as some may be put off visiting schools because they see them as “women-centred places”.

Ms Lashlie began her investigation into the influences on boys after being the first woman to be a warder in a New Zealand men’s prison. Her book, He’ll Be OK, has become a bestseller in Australia and New Zealand and is to be published in the UK next week.

It urges mothers and teachers to allow “boys to be boys”. They will take risks, she says, but with the right male role models those risks will not land them in prison.

Mothers need to stop making their sons’ school lunches and ironing their shirts. It is often because boys never learn to make their own decisions and face the consequences that they take risks with alcohol, drugs, sex and fast cars.

Ms Lashlie interviewed 180 classes at 25 boys’ schools in New Zealand for the Good Man Project to discover how schools can help shape teenage boys’ futures.

The lack of good male role-models contributes to Britain’s problems with teenage suicide and knife violence, she says. Schools need to work with fathers, “to keep more of our boys alive”.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said Ms Lashlie’s proposals for schools were “a load of claptrap”.

“It is disappointing that a woman has felt the need to pander to the views of a tiny group of men who present themselves as the oppressed minority,” she said.

Becky Francis, professor of education at Roehampton University, said teachers – male or female – needed to help boys develop their communication skills, rather than playing to stereotypes of boys as incommunicative.

“In fact, the profound gender gap in literacy and communication suggests that boys have got a lot to learn from girls,” she said.

Source: Times Educational Supplement, UK
http://www.tes.co.uk/2635135

This month millions of American kids flee the tyranny of the classroom bell for lifeguard stands, grandparents’ homes and sleepaway camps. But summer vacation hasn’t always been a birthright of U.S. schoolchildren. In the decades before the Civil War, schools operated on one of two calendars, neither of which included a summer hiatus. Rural schooling was divided into summer and winter terms, leaving kids free to pitch in with the spring planting and fall harvest seasons. Urban students, meanwhile, regularly endured as many as 48 weeks of study a year, with one break per quarter. (Since education was not compulsory, attendance was often sparse; in Detroit in 1843, for example, only 30% of enrolled students attended year-round.)

In the 1840s, however, educational reformers like Horace Mann moved to merge the two calendars out of concern that rural schooling was insufficient and–invoking then current medical theory–that overstimulating young minds could lead to nervous disorders or insanity. Summer emerged as the obvious time for a break: it offered a respite for teachers, meshed with the agrarian calendar and alleviated physicians’ concerns that packing students into sweltering classrooms would promote the spread of disease.

But the modern U.S. school year, which averages 180 days, has its critics too. Some experts say its languorous summer break, which took hold in the early 20th century, is one of the reasons math skills and graduation rates of U.S. high schoolers ranked well below average in two international-education reports issued in 2007. Others insist that with children under mounting pressure to devote their downtime to internships or study, there’s still room for an institution that sanctifies the lazy days of childhood.

Source: TIME
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1816501,00.html

I’ve taught a fifth-grade Sunday school class for years, and my kids mostly seem to like me. That’s so, I suspect, mostly because rarely am I smarter or more mature than a fifth-grader. Invariably, likability breeds the threat of hugs.

Yes, threat. Should a little angel with outstretched arms come my way, two scenarios may unreel:

OK. I’m exaggerating. I just walk very fast. Sad as it is, in many folks’ minds, the mere mention of male mentors triggers an Amber Alert. And this air of suspicion has benched some men who in years past had stepped in to mentor kids with absent or disengaged dads.

Still, University of Florida sociologist William Marsiglio says there are men investing in kids and communities. It’s the subject of his new book, Men on a Mission: Valuing Youth Work in Our Communities.

“Men who clearly exploit kids are out there, and we need to be concerned about them,” he says, “but there are thousands and millions of men interested in and capable of . . . creating this cultural narrative that kids are important and men have as much responsibility in helping this generation as women.”

For his book, Marsiglio interviewed 55 men who served as coaches, schoolteachers, youth ministers, camp counselors, Scout leaders and volunteers with programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Their backgrounds and pursuits were diverse, but their motivation largely was the same:

“They wanted them [youths] to embrace this gift of giving so it didn’t stop,” Marsiglio says.

That proved more important than worrying about dirty looks and whispers. Not that the men didn’t feel the glare.

“Some were annoyed,” Marsiglio says, “but most understood, though felt strapped by it.”

Many never shook hands with kids. Some stuffed their hands in their pockets or held items to dissuade kids from reaching out.

I won’t mourn the demise of the dubious congratulatory swat on the butt some coaches deliver to young athletes. But these days, the no-touching rules in youth sports can even be interpreted to extend to high-fives.

Marsiglio agrees that the pendulum has swung too far. And it’s robbing kids of encouragement a pat on the back conveys.

“Putting your hand on a kid’s shoulder, high-fives . . . can be a very empowering experience that reinforces the positive connection that men have with kids,” he says.

No easy answers exist to counter the media-hyped notion that Americans face a predator around every corner, he says. But he says the solution probably is anchored in common sense.

“Giving a kid a side-hug with 10 other folks around should raise fewer flags than something that might be done in private,” he says.

The National Fatherhood Initiative soon will reveal a new study that explores the collateral damage of a father’s absence and puts the annual public costs of it to the federal government at $100 billion.

Male mentoring, though not a panacea, long has stood in the gap. I doubt that even Uncle Sam’s deep pockets can afford the cost our communities will pay if the prevailing climate continues to force stand-up men to sit down.

Source: Orlando Sentinel, FL
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-owens0708jun07,0,4787136.column

Children who look away when problem solving may be more likely to come up with the right answer than those who do not, research has suggested.

The findings are being used to help teachers gauge a child’s progress.

The study, which assessed children from across the Forth Valley and Glasgow, found those aged between five and eight were more likely to avert their gaze when carrying out a difficult task.

Children aged between four and six also showed similar results, although they were more likely to look at the questioner if they knew them well.

Dr Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon, who led the study group, said: “These results are important because they show that children avert their gaze when they are trying to carry out a task which is difficult or with which they are not yet familiar.

“In our most recent work we have investigated whether gaze aversion is associated with transitional knowledge states.

“That means that gaze aversion is a useful thing for teachers, carers and parents to know about.”

Dr Doherty-Sneddon said that from a teacher’s point of view, gaze aversion was a positive sign that a child is developing their understanding.

By contrast, she said the study showed that children who are not improving or in fact regressing, tended to look away less.

The study is being used to help teachers and educational psychologists help youngsters with conditions like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Source: BBC News, UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/7433436.stm