New study proves that giving elementary children homework does not make them smarter, it only makes them hate school.

Courtesy of Salon: 

“There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students.” 

This statement, by homework research guru Harris Cooper, of Duke University, is startling to hear, no matter which side of the homework debate you’re on. Can it be true that the hours of lost playtime, power struggles and tears are all for naught? That millions of families go through a nightly ritual that doesn’t help? Homework is such an accepted practice, it’s hard for most adults to even question its value. 

When you look at the facts, however, here’s what you find: Homework has benefits, but its benefits are age dependent. 

For elementary-aged children, research suggests that studying in class gets superior learning results, while extra schoolwork at home is just . . . extra work. Even in middle school, the relationship between homework and academic success is minimal at best. By the time kids reach high school, homework provides academic benefit, but only in moderation. More than two hours per night is the limit. After that amount, the benefits taper off. “The research is very clear,” agrees Etta Kralovec, education professor at the University of Arizona. “There’s no benefit at the elementary school level.” 

Before going further, let’s dispel the myth that these research results are due to a handful of poorly constructed studies. In fact, it’s the opposite. Cooper compiled 120 studies in 1989 and another 60 studies in 2006. This comprehensive analysis of multiple research studies found no evidence of academic benefit at the elementary level. It did, however, find a negative impact on children’s attitudes toward school.

I have sat down to help children with homework more times than I can count. 

Not just with my daughter, or my step kids, but with other people's children, and most often children with learning disabilities. 

For that reason, though I disliked homework as a child, I hate it as an adult.

Especially when it interferes in a child's ability to learn the most important lesson they need to learn, how to be a child.

Yes children need to learn, but the best way for them to learn is to allow them to run, and jump, and play.

Allowing the release of their pent up energy is the best way to get their attention in the classroom.

And yet today we see schools cutting out recess, taking time away from lunch, and doubling down on homework assignments.

That does not create well educated, well rounded adults. That creates mindless cogs in a machine.

And mindless cogs do not write symphonies, create new technologies, or move this country forward.

Yes education is broken in this country.

But do you know who broke it?

The people who keep saying they are trying to fix it.

Look I don't want to tell anybody how to raise their kids, but I would take that cellphone away for at least a week.

So it appears that Piper, who just recently turned fourteen, is learning to drive.

However I cannot imagine why anybody would allow this child to start her driving education with a cellphone balanced precariously on her lap.

In fact if this were my child that cellphone would be left at home until she successfully returned from practicing. And if they snuck it out with them, then I would do exactly what my headline says I would do.

But hey, that's just me. I care if my child lives of dies.

Some days I really miss Fred Rogers.

An absolutely perfect statement.

Today we try to start our children's education almost the moment that they open their eyes for the first time, but the fact is that their play IS their education for the formative years.

They learn about their bodies, their environment, their limitations, how to engage with others, how to share their belongings, essentially how to be human beings.

The rest of their learning will go on for the rest of their lives, and hopefully there will always be some time to play. But as a child that is really their most important job.

Are we putting religious tolerance above the rights of America's children?

Courtesy of Alternet:  

The appropriate balance between freedom and harm can be hard to strike, particularly when it comes to religious freedom. In an attempt to find this balance, religious conservatives have been granted exemptions from a wide range of civil rights laws and social obligations. In the last two decades, one of the exemptions they have secured in many states is the right to opt out of school attendance for their children. 

Led by a group called Home School Legal Defense Association, a network of institutions and activists have sprung up to advocate the rights of parents to educate their children—or not—as they please. Now the largest generation of home-schooled children are coming of age, and some are telling horror stories that suggest parent privilege may have gone too far. 

A recent testimonial posted at Homeschoolers Anonymous opens like this: 

"It was not so much homeschooling that traumatized me as much as my mother’s mental illness. This was hidden by homeschooling, and the pain that damaged me came from the constant exposure to her psychiatric illness. I feel like someone roasted me over a fire, leaving me with burns to rest the remainder of my life, and I didn’t even know at the time what fire was. "

As with nutritional or sanitary neglect, lack of education can create lifelong hardships for those it affects. Ask any adult who has taken a college course while working full-time. Then imagine tackling years of remedial elementary, middle and high school courses while supporting yourself—and possibly a family—with a job so menial it doesn’t require a high school education. This outcome may not be the homeschool norm, but on websites like Homeschoolers Anonymous, homeschool alumni are reporting experiences of educational neglect in alarming numbers. 

Homeschooling families often portray themselves as a persecuted minority, but compared to homeschooled victims of neglect and abuse, responsible homeschooling parents are a formidable army. Represented by groups like the HSLDA, which has lawyers, publicists and media personalities at its command, these groups can easily paper the walls of a legislator’s office with letters listing their demands. But for young children who are having their futures stolen, these groups offer no solutions. 

Boiled down, most arguments for unregulated homeschooling amount to the same thing: “We must ignore the problems of abused homeschooled children to maintain the sovereignty of parents.” 

At the heart of this claim is religious homeschoolers’ insistence that God has elevated parents above any earthly authority. This is an attempt to resurrect an Old Testament-era legal theory, which afforded children no more right to life, liberty and self-direction than a sheep or a goat. It’s true thatbiblical fathers could do anything—including selling off their sons and daughters—but outside of homeschooling circles, few Americans would argue for a return to that kind of absolute parental license. 

In America, children are not possessions for parents to use or destroy. Rather, children are recognized as dependent beings whose bodies and futures are held in trust by their parents. Educational neglect is an abdication of a parent’s legal obligation of good stewardship. By failing to educate, parents potentially squander a child’s entire lifetime of future earnings and achievements. It’s difficult to imagine a more brazen theft. 

Having been burned by this debate before, I think it is important right off the back to differentiate between those who homeschool due to poor schools in their districts, or children with specialized needs, and those who homeschool for purely religious reasons, or as a method of controlling the lives of their children.

I have to say that as a person working in the mental health community, that there are many children with special needs who do not receive a diagnosis until they reach school age, and are evaluated by educational experts.

Therefore a child with learning disabilities may not receive that very important early intervention, and be left to sensibilities of a parent, with no background in education, who may see their child's lack of progress as a behavioral problem which needs to be addressed through punitive measures rather than educational strategies.

And that does not even consider the number of abusive, or mentally ill, parents who keep their children out of the public school system in order to protect themselves from prosecution or the risk of having their victims removed from their homes. 

I believe that I have already once shared the story of the little girls who lived behind me when I was a pre-teen, and who were kept home from school and raped repeatedly by their father, a deacon at a local church. When they made the mistake of confessing that to me that one day while out playing the family packed up and moved away the very next day.

I never saw or heard from them again.

As a professional I have seen numerous cases of abuse in the homes of religious homeschoolers that went unreported until somebody called the state and the children were removed from the home. Once the children were convinced they were safe the stories they would tell have left scars on my heart that will never fade.

Once again this is not ALL homeschooling families, nor is it ALL religious homeschooling families. Not by a long shot.

But it DOES happen, and all that it would take to minimize how often is to make sure that the homeschooling environment was regulated, and that the children are taken for regular doctor visits and possibly screenings for any potential learning difficulty or psychological concerns.

That may seem intrusive to some parents, but the fact is that often parents are NOT able to identify what is best for their children due to their own prejudices or the fact that they are too close to the problem.

To be blunt it is most often in the child's best interests for the role of parent and teacher to remain separate, and for the parent to remain involved, but not in charge, of a child's education.

And in my opinion, there is NEVER a time that religion should be considered before the best interests of the child. NEVER.

Texas, the birth place of "No Child Left Behind," dramatically cuts back on the number of standardized tests students must take. Is this the beginning of the end?

Courtesy of NBC News:  

The state that inaugurated the expansion of standardized testing in America’s schools 30 years ago and provided the model for the No Child Left Behind Act has now said enough is enough. 

Late Sunday night, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that cuts the number of standardized tests for the state’s 1.4 million high schoolers from 15 – the nation’s highest total -- to five. Gov. Rick Perry is expected to sign the bill within days. 

“Legislators heard their friends, neighbors and constituents,” said education historian and native Texan Diane Ravitch, a former testing proponent and adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush who has now become testing’s most prominent foe. “This is proof that democracy works.” 

Opponents argue that preparing for the exams consumes an increasing portion of the school year and that they don’t develop students’ critical thinking abilities. 

Texas is not the only state where expanded testing faces a backlash. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have received waivers from meeting the ambitious goals of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 law that helped spark an explosion of school testing nationwide. Eight more states have requested waivers. In November’s election, one of the nation’s foremost proponents of testing and accountability, Indiana public schools chief Tony Bennett, lost his job to a Democratic challenger after one four-year term in a “red” state.

I hear from teachers all of the time and the number one complaint that ALL of them have is that preparation for these standardized tests has completely taken over their curriculum and forced them to become a profession who focuses on test prep instead of actual learning.

As many of you know I worked in a Kindergarten room and even WE had to take a significant amount of time away from education in order to set up and prepare the children for these tests. And the stress put on teachers was nothing short of draconian, as the result could see funding cut or a bonus provided to the school and its teachers.

Now that the Iraq war is coming to an end the most egregious policy still remaining from the Bush administration is NCLB, and it is time to toss it aside and really improve our education system by empowering the teachers, funding the schools, and turn the focus to creating an environment that nurtures creativity and innovation and does NOT attempt to turn our children into uninspired cogs in a giant, and ultimately pointless, machine.

Let's end the day with an image to blow your mind, shall we?

Most of us think of our solar system as illustrated by the above image.

But that is inaccurate. You see we are NOT simply rotating around a stationary sun.

Oh no the sun is FAR from stationary, in fact it is hurdling through space at 70,000 kilometers per hour.

So more a more accurate illustration of our solar system is of a vortex like this:

Do you suddenly have the urge to grab onto something? Well don't bother, because it is hurtling through space right along with you. And what's more everything has been, even back when the wise men of old believed the earth was flat and the stars were stuck in the waters above the firmament.

Just look how far science has expanded our view of the world around us.

If you want to learn more take a look at this video.

Rick Santorum claims that colleges are "indoctrinating" our youth.

Courtesy of Outside the Beltway:  

Rick Santorum said the nation’s colleges are promoting a “sea of antagonism toward Christianity” and “indoctrinating” its youth with ideals that support gay marriage, abortion and pornography. 

Santorum called in to Tony Perkins’ “Washington Watch” on Tuesday to talk about the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. The conversation dealt not only with abortion but also included other “symptoms” that have changed the nation. 

Perkins spoke broadly, saying pro-choice Americans represent a troubled country that doesn’t choose life, meaning “That is to follow the principals, the teachings, the instructions of God … You see that as you’ve been in Washington, D.C. There is a rejection of this idea of truth, and that there is a foundation or morality, which needs to be upheld.” 

Santorum agreed, adding that less young people devote themselves to Christianity. “If you look at the popular culture and what comes out of Hollywood, if you go to our schools and particularly our colleges and universities, they are indoctrinated in a sea of relativism and a sea of antagonism towards Christianity.” 

“Abortion is a symptom. Marriage is a symptom. Pornography [is a symptom],” he continued. “All of these are symptoms to the fundamental issue that we’ve gotten away from the truth and the ‘Truth-Giver.’”

 You know Inigo Montoya is exactly right. I don't think that Rick Santorum understands what it really entails to successfully indoctrinate somebody.

Now look I am loathe to disagree with a man who single-handedly made the sweater vest the most mocked article of clothing in the entire 2012 election cycle, but I am afraid I am going to have to here.

In order to successfully indoctrinate somebody you do NOT start at an age when they are just starting college. No THAT is much too old.

By then they have most likely developed the ability to access a variety of information sources and learned something called "critical thinking." Critical thinking is to indoctrination what sunlight is to vampires. (And not those stupid Twilight vampires either. REAL. totally fictional movie vampires.)

No in order to successfully indoctrinate somebody you have to start when they are quite young. Say around five, six or seven years old.

And you take them to a place where they can be put in a room together and have fantastical stories drilled into their heads until they ACTUALLY begin to believe they are true. And hell at this age you can make up just about anything, they are really are quite naive and trusting.

I'm just spit balling but perhaps you could tell them a story about a man who walked on water. Or about snakes that talk. Or perhaps you could weave a tale about a man swallowed by a whale who emerges unharmed three days later. Or, if you are feeling truly lucky, you might even convince these impressionable children that a woman gave birth to a child while still a virgin.

Let's see, you could probably gather this group of children together say once a week, when there was no school. Perhaps on a Sunday for instance.

Hey, you could even call it Sunday School!

You could even use a colorful felt board to illustrate your stories, and use apple juice and graham cracker snacks to dull the children's senses and make them more susceptible to the indoctrination into a belief system based totally on ancient Hebrew fables and allegories.

You know, for example.

If you wanted to expand on that theme you could also build a faux museum which refutes virtually EVERYTHING that science has learned about this planet, and even put together a colorful and purposefully duplicitous slide show and present it to the very young children as revealed truth in order to inoculate them from accepting fact based information later in their lives.

In fact if you do it right it , or some portion of it, will likely last their entire lives. Then you can use trigger words like "tradition," or "values," or "morality" to manipulate them into making choices that are not in their best interest and may in fact be damaging to them and their families in the long run.

You see THAT is how to indoctrinate people Rick Santorum. If anything, and I know this may be very hard to accept for somebody with your limited intellectual faculties, colleges may actually serve as a place where young men and women are freed from their PREVIOUS indoctrination. A place where they might learn that the world, and the universe around it, are in fact MUCH more amazing and complex than they were led to believe it was as children.

Or perhaps that is really what you are talking about here? Not indoctrination, but the deprogramming of those who were already successfully indoctrinated? Could that be the case?

Well no wonder you see college as an evil entity, the last thing a Republican politician, who identifies himself as a Christian, wants is people thinking for themselves. After all how long will the Republican party last if they do?

Why teaching Creationism and Evolution side by side will never work.

Oh yeah, THAT is certainly "teaching the controversy!"

This page reminds me very much of the "textbooks" that my daughter brought home during the time that her mother was homeschooling her.

The Creationists don't want students to rely on facts in order to compare evolution and creationism side by side. They want students to STOP thinking altogether and simply choose the one that is easiest to understand and makes them feel the most comforted.