The Human Odyssey

Great Quotations on Childhood

I just finished reading a cute book of quotations from Penguin Books called Child: Quotations About the Delight, Wonder, and Mystery of Being a Child, edited by Helen Handley and Andra Samelson.  Here are ten of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Babies are such a nice way to start people."

                            - Don Herold

"In a secular age, children have become the last sacred objects."

                           - Joseph Epstein

"One laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still."

                          - R.G. Ingersoll

"Ah! What would the world be to us

   If the children were no more?

We should dread the desert behind us

  Worse than the dark before."

                        - Henry  Wadsworth Longfellow

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."   

                       - Rachel Carson

"My music is best understood by children and animals."

                      - Igor Stravinsky

"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not."

                     - Mark Twain

"The lost child cries, but still he catches fireflies."

                    - Ryusui Yoshida

"Diogenes struck the father when the son swore."

                   - Robert Burton

"If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could be better changed in ourselves."

                  - C.G. Jung

Book Review: The Power of Play

I've just finished reading a new book by developmental psychologist David Elkind called The Power of Play, and I would recommend it to parents, educators, psychotherapists, and anyone else who has an interest in play and children.  David Elkind was a disciple of Jean Piaget, the great French structuralist thinker who changed people's conceptions of how children think.  In this book he explains how play changes as a child moves through different cognitive stages.  In infancy, play is sensori-motor, a matter of wiggling limbs and exploring the world through the baby's senses. Toddlers like to repeat play experiences over and over again as they experience a sense of mastery over their environment.  Preschoolers enjoy dressing up in cast-off clothes and pretending to be kings, princesses, and ogres.  Once children have reached Piaget's stage of concrete operations (Elkind calls this "the age of reason"), they enjoy playing games that have rules to them, and may spend as much time arguing about the rules, and determining what is "fair," as in following them.  Older elementary school children enjoy creating their own forts and spaces where they can cooperative, compete, or just get away from others and experience some well-deserved privacy. 

The problem with today's society, according to The Power of Play, is that these natural play experiences are too often disrupted by high-tech products that are being pushed on children at younger and younger ages as manufacturers seek new markets to expand their profits.  Elkind derides, for example, Baby Einstein videos and software for children two and under as virtually worthless, and devoid of any research supporting their supposed benefits.  He points out that babies do not possess critical thinking capacities.  Thus, frequent claims by software designers that these programs will expand a baby's thinking capabilities are simply wrong.  He also criticizes the formal teaching of reading and math in preschool, suggesting that children do not reach Piaget's stage of concrete operations until five to seven years of age, and that children can't really  understand that a number or letter is both a part of the number or alphabet system, but also that it's value changes depending upon where it is in relationship to other numbers or letters (e.g. an "e" is both a letter of the alphabet, but also a sound value that changes depending upon where it is in a word, as in "fine" "fen" "feign" etc.). 

Elkind criticizes parenting and schooling approaches that utilize any of three "theories" of learning.  The "watch me" theory:  that somehow by looking at what the parent or teacher is doing the child will figure out how to do the skill.  The "little sponge" theory:  that children can just soak up any kind of learning that we throw at them no matter who they are, or what age they are.  And the "look harder" theory:  the idea that if we just tell kids to "look!" they will "get it."  This is like yelling at a blind person.  Children move through different stages of growth at different rates, and they need parents and teachers who will watch them learn, and listen to them, and help them move from where they are in their understanding of a skill or subject, to the next step of whatever they are learning. 

All in all, The Power of Play is an excellent read.  I hadn't enjoyed an education book so much since reading John Holt, George Dennison, Herb Kohl, and Jonathan Kozol's books on open education when I was in my twenties back in the early 1970's.  I recommend that people read this book, and use its recommendations (it includes suggestions for creating rich early childhood education environments based on play) to refute the encroaching high-tech world of toys and software that leave so little to the imagination and that leave our children getting ever more obese.

Hypertension in Children and Adolescents on the Rise

A study that appeared in the August 22/29, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), reports that pediatric hypertension is increasing as a result of the obesity epidemic in the United States, and that in most cases, high blood pressure in children goes undiagnosed.  The study observed over time 14,000 children aged 3 to 18 at outpatient clinics in a large academic urban medical care system in Ohio.  Of these, over 500 had hypertension (3.6%). Almost three-quarters of these cases had been up to that point undiagnosed.  One of the problems is that doctors do not routinely take children's blood pressure, assuming that hypertension is an adult problem. If one extrapolates from these findings, then nationwide, roughly 2 million children have high blood pressure, and 1.5 million of those cases are undiagnosed. Left untreated, high blood pressure can lead to a variety of health problems including heart disease, stroke, artery damage, and kidney disease, which are problems that often take years to develop after the first onset of hypertension.  There is concern that this increase in undiagnosed hypertension in children and adolescents could be a warning sign that the nation's obesity epidemic is predisposing many youngster to developing serious health problems later on in life.  (see April 2, 2007 post in The Human Odyssey blog:  "TV Food Ads Contribute to Child Obesity." 

ADHD as a Developmental Issue (Not a Medical One)

I was very glad to see the research report this week (November 16, 2007) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), concluding that children labeled ADHD have normal brains that simply develop later than their peers.  This study compared brain scans over a period of years between a group of  223 children diagnosed as having ADHD and a group of 223 children in a control group. Typically, brain growth in the cerebral cortex goes through a developmental process of thickening for the first few years of life, then a peak, after which there is a "thinning down" or "pruning" of cortical tissue as the brain becomes more efficient in its adaptation to the surrounding environment (e.g. connections that are not required for adaptation are eliminated).  The study revealed that the average age for this peaking of cortical development was 7.5 years old in "normal kids", but that in children labeled ADHD it was 10.5 years old, three years later. This research strongly suggests that kids identified as having ADHD are really latebloomers after all.

I've argued this case in my books The Myth of the A.D.D. Child, and  ADD/ADHD Alternatives in the Classroom.  In my own work with kids with this label, I noticed that they acted younger than their peers.  I remember one seventh grade student in my special education class who would see something that interested him on the other side of the classroom, and simply get up and walk toward it, like a toddler would do.  Some people might call this "immaturity," but there is a much better word to use that captures the vitality and freshness of these kids:  neoteny.  Neoteny is a Latin word meaning "holding youth."  In an April 8, 2007 post in this blog, I wrote a piece called "Neoteny: The Lost Fountain of Youth Rediscovered," where I explained that neoteny is essentially the retaining of childlike characteristics into adulthood.  There appears to be a tendency, as species evolve, for more of "the child" to be retained into adulthood.  This has obvious survival value, inasmuch as retaining the "plasticity" of the child's brain later on in development, gives the human species more flexibility in adapting to changing circumstances.  It's curious in this regard to note that many of the most advanced creators and thinkers in civilization have had more than a little of the child in them.  Einstein said "I never grew up."  Newton compared what he did to child's play on the beach.  Picasso said it took him his whole life to learn how to paint like a child. In my book Awakening Genius in the Classroom, I've argued that it's these neotenous characteristics of childhood--playfulness, creativity, imagination, vitality, curiosity, flexibility--that need to be retained into adulthood if our society is going to continue to transform and evolve.  It appears from this week's study in PNAS, that kids labeled ADHD are slower to grow up, and as a result, they have more of their childhood available to them than the average person as they move into adulthood.  This is why they're constantly moving, imagining, making associations, and playing around when they're supposed to be "serious."  We should admire these qualities in them.  We need to stop using negative terms to describe these kids.  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, after all, has three negative words in it:  deficit, hyperactive, and disorder.  If by retaining more of their youth into later development these kids are the vanguard, so to speak, in the evolution of our species, then I think it would be more appropriate to give them positive labels:  "evolutionarily gifted," comes to mind.  And yet the scientific community continues to use the disease-based "medical model" term that doesn't at all speak to the true nature of these kids. 

Some will argue, "but these kids are troubled and troublesome to themselves and to others.  Research shows it."  Yes, this is true.  If you're evolutionarily advanced, and you have to function in an environment of Neanderthals, then, yes, this is a problem.  And that's what it is like for so many of these kids, who come into school in kindergarten brimming with enthusiasm, vitality, creativity, and spark, and have to sit for hours every day doing meaningless tasks in boring workbooks overseen by teachers who care far more about following rules than exploring exciting ideas.  Now we're even seeing a new development that can only make things worse:  the societal tendency to push developmental timetables backwards (again, toward the prehistoric).  We're increasingly expecting kindergarteners to do the work that second graders used to do and creating even less opportunity for the "child" in these kids to express itself (see my January 4, 2007 post "Preschoolers Need Play, Not Academics!"). 

So, here you have the situation:  evolutionarily advanced human beings bringing more of the child into later development, on the one hand, and evolutionarily regressive societal forces pushing more of the adult back into early development, on the other.  Is it any wonder that kids labeled ADHD have problems?  Their so-called "symptoms" (again, to use the medical model), are really the mismatch, the incredible disjunction, between the way in which evolution has fashioned them (as the cutting edge of the species), and the way in which an ignorant society has tried to push them back into the Stone Age.  It's this incapacity (this "deficit deficiency") of the ADHD community of researchers, psychiatrists, psychologists, special education teachers, parents, and others to understand these gifts (and to create environments where these gifts are allowed to flourish), that gives rise to most of the "problems" and "symptoms" you see among kids labeled ADHD:  poor self-esteem, negative social relationships, distractibility (which is just a "divergent mind" operating in a boring environment), and impulsivity (which is called "spontaneity" when that environment is open to new discoveries).  I hope that this new study in the prestigeous Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will prompt people who work with children labeled ADHD, to be open to a few new discoveries of their own, and to start thinking of this matter as a developmental (and evolutionary) issue, and not a medical one.

15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Worthless

It seems that everybody is talking about test results these days.  The No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) requires schools to make "adequate yearly progress" on standardized tests in reading and math (next year in science as well).  Local newspapers regularly post the standardized test scores of area schools.  Property values are sometimes tied to these test results.  Parents are doubtful of any innovations in schooling that do not in some way boost test scores.  But folks, the truth of the matter is that standardized tests are worthless, utterly worthless!   Here are 15 reasons why:

1. Because students know that test scores may affect their future lives, they do whatever they can to pass them, including cheating and taking performance drugs (e.g. psychostimulants like Ritalin "borrowed" from their friends).

2. Because teachers know that test scores may affect their salaries and job security, they also cheat (see the best-seller Freakonomics for some interesting statistics on this).

3. Standardized tests don't provide any feedback on how to perform better.  The results aren't even given back to the teachers and students until months later, and there are no instructions provided  by test companies on how to improve these test scores.

4. Standardized tests don't value creativity.  A student who writes a more creative answer in the margins of such a test, doesn't realize that a human being won't even see this creative response; that machines grade these tests, and a creative response that doesn't follow the format is a wrong response.

5. Standardized tests don't value diversity.  There are a wide range of differences in the people who take standardized tests:  they have different cultural backgrounds, different levels of proficiency in the English language, different learning and thinking styles, different family backgrounds, different past experiences.  And yet the standardized test treats them as if they were all identical; identical to the group that took the test several years ago, and to which the test has been "normed" (e.g. this original group is the "norm group" against which any future test-takers are to be compared). 

6. Standardized tests favor those who have socio-economic advantages.  Test companies (a multi-billion dollar a year industry) not only manufacture the tests, they also manufacture the courses and programs that can be taken to "prepare for the test."  If you have the money, you can even get special tutors that will help you do well on a test.  If you don't have the money, and your school is in a low socio-economic area that gets less funding than rich suburban schools, then you're not getting the same preparation for the test as those at the higher socio-economic levels do.

7. Because so much emphasis is placed on standardized test results these days, teachers are spending more and more time "teaching to the test."  If there is something that is interesting, compelling, useful, or otherwise favorable to the development of a student's understanding of the world, but it is not going to be on the standardized test, then there really isn't any incentive to cover this material.  Instead, most of classroom time consists of either taking the tests or preparing for the tests, and this shuts out the possibility of learning anything new or important.  For example, because the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) only tests reading and math (and next year science), that means that art, social studies, physical education, history, and other subjects are given far less attention than used to be the case.

8.  Standardized tests occur in an artificial learning environment:  they're timed, you can't talk to a fellow student, you can't ask questions, you can't use references or learning devices, you can't get up and move around.  How often does the real world look like this?  Prisons come to mind.  And yet, even the most hard-headed conservative will say that education must prepare students for "the real world." Clearly standardized testing doesn't do this.

9.  Standardized tests create stress.  Some kids do well with a certain level of stress.  Other students fold.  So, again, there isn't a level playing field.  Brain research suggests that too much stress is psychologically and physically harmful.  And when stress becomes overwhelming, the brain shifts into a "fight or flight" response, where it is impossible to engage in the higher-order thinking processes that are necessary to respond correctly to the standardized test questions.

10.  Standardized tests reduce the richness of human experience and human learning to a number or set of numbers.  This is dehumanizing.  A student may have a deep knowledge of a particular subject, but receive no acknowledgement for it because his or her test score may have been low.  If the student were able to draw a picture, lead a group discussion, or create a hands-on project, he/she could show that knowledge.  But not in a standardized testing room.  Tough luck.

11. Standardized tests weren't developed by geniuses. They were developed by mediocre minds.  One of the pioneers of standardized testing in this country, Lewis Terman, was a racist (the book to read is The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould).  Another pioneer, Edward Thorndike, was a specialist in rats and mazes.  Just the kind of mind you want your kid to have, right?  Albert Einstein never created a standardized test (although he failed a number of them), and neither did any of the great thinkers of our age or any age.  Standardized tests are usually developed by pedantic researchers with Ph.Ds in educational testing or educational psychology.  If that's the kind of mind you want your child to have, then go for it!

12. Standardized tests provide parents and teachers with a false sense of security.  If a student scores well on a test, then it is assumed that they know the material.  However, this may not be true at all.  The student may have simply memorized the fact or formula or trick necessary to do well on the test (some students are naturally gifted in taking standardized tests, others are not).  A group of Harvard graduates were asked why it is colder in the winter and warmer in the summer.  Most of them got the question wrong.  They were good test-takers but didn't understand fundamental principles that required a deeper comprehension (the book to read is The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests; the K-12 Education that Every Child Deserves by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, named in a recent poll one of the 100 greatest intellectuals in the world).

13. Standardized tests exist for administrative, political, and financial purposes, not for educational ones.  Test companies make billions.  Politicians get elected by promising better test results.  Administrators get funding and avoid harsh penalties by boosting test scores.  Everyone benefits except the children.  For them, standardized testing is worthless and worse.

14. Standardized testing creates "winners" and losers."  The losers are those who get labeled as "my low students" "my learning disabled kids," "my reluctant learners."  Even the winners are trapped by being caught up on a tread mill of achievement that they must stay on at all costs through at least sixteen years of schooling, and more often twenty years.  The losers suffer loss of self-esteem, and the damage of "low expectations" (which research shows actually negatively influences performance - the book to read is Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson).  The winners suffer loss of soul, since most of them are performing penguins for fast-track parents and may reach midlife on a pinnacle of power and achievement, yet lack any connection to their deeper selves, to ethical principles, to aesthetic feelings, to spiritual aspirations, to compassion, creativity, and/or commitment to life.

15.  Finally, my most important reason that standardized tests are worthless:  During the time that a child is taking a test, he/she could be doing something far more valuable:  actually learning something new and interesting!

So, folks, the next time you have that conversation about testing at your child's school, or pick up the newspaper to read where your district ranks on the latest state-wide tests, or plan your child's future around a program that has the highest test results, think on these things.

Also posted at:  Free Agent U  and The Karl Frank Jr. Communicator 

The Curriculum Superhighway

I have an article in this month's (May, 2007) issue of Educational Leadership (a publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development or ASCD), criticizing the educational establishment for trying to hook-up or, as they say, "align", the curriculum all the way from pre-kindergarten to the fourth year of college.  In educationese this is called "PreK-16," that is, going all the way from pre-kindergarten to grade 16 or the fourth year of college (see, for example, the PreK-16 Educational Collaboration in Texas).  This aligning of the curriculum from PreK to grade 16 is considered by most educators to be a very wonderful thing.  But I regard it with much alarm.  I know that the purpose of this new initiative is not so that all the good stuff from preschool (fingerpainting, dress-up, nap time) can be brought up into the higher grades, but rather the reverse:  so that all the educational practices of the fourth year of college (lectures, exams, pressure), can be sent down to the preschool level.  This is the last thing that young kids need (see my blog post "Preschoolers Need Play, not Academics").  In fact, the real purpose of the PreK-16 initiative is so that the rigorous academics of the university can be threaded all the way through the curriculum, regardless of what the specific developmental needs of kids happen to be in high school, middle school, elementary school, kindergarten, or preschool.  In my book The Best Schools:  How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice (also published by ASCD), I make the case that kids at different grade levels have distinct developmental needs, which this current No Child Left Behind law, and the preK-16 initiative completely ignore.  Preschoolers need play.  Elementary schoolers need to learn about the real world through rich interactive experiences.  Middle schoolers need to learn through social, emotional, and metacognitive strategies.  High schoolers need to learn how to live independently in the real world, since they will shortly begin doing so.  The PreK-16 "Superhighway" just blasts a concrete path right through these sensitive developmental ecologies with their textbooks, standardized testing, and overemphasis on reading and math.   To read my article "The Curriculum Superhighway," click here.  To see the entire May, 2007 issue of Educational Leadership, which has at its theme "Educating the Whole Child," click here.  To read excerpts from my book The Best Schools, click here.  To listen to an interview about my book The Best Schools, click here.

Dead Iraqi Children: Who Talks About Them in the Iraq Debate?

I just read that a U.S. helicopter attack against suspected insurgents in Bagdad today has killed a number of children at a primary school.  Also, another report today that a suicide car bomber killed many people, including children, at a holy Shia shrine in Kufa.  These reprehensible actions come on the same day that a report by Save the Children surveying 60 countries ranked Iraq as the worst country for saving the lives of children under 5.  According to their State of the World's Mothers Report, Iraq's child mortality rate has soared 150% since 1990.  Some 120,000 Iraqi children died in 2005 before reaching their fifth birthday.  Since the beginning of the Gulf War in 1990, children in Iraq have been subjected to war, terrorism, and a lack of medical services, food, and other necessary goods as a result of the sanctions placed on Iraq by the United Nations during Saddam's regime.  While politicians are talking about the best "exit strategies" for the war in Iraq, or how to "win" this terrible conflict, or how we're going to "support the troops," meanwhile, these poor children are being slaughtered right and left, and hardly any of this makes it onto the 6 o'clock news.  What would happen if, along with the photos of the U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, news organizations like PBS would also put up photos of dead Iraqi children and their grieving parents?  Perhaps the parents on all sides of this conflict (U.S., Shia, Sunni, Al Quaida etc.), would feel some sense of empthy for these families.  For once, I would like to see compassion for children overcome all the ideologies (Democracy, Christianity, Islam etc.) that have put us in this senseless mess.

Introducing Curious Kids to an Amazing World: How Difficult Can This Be?

About education:  here's what I don't understand.  On the one hand, you have the child - this incredibly wonderful organism that has had millions of years to evolve a beautifully complex brain that is designed to be naturally curious, playful, vital, creative, and joyful.  On the other hand, you have this amazing world:  exquisite life forms, unbelievable cultural achievements (Beethoven, Picasso, Einstein), new ideas coming forth all the time.  Education should be about introducing this curious child to this amazing world.  How difficult can this be?  It should be the simplest and most natural thing in the world.  Yet, somehow we manage to muck it up.  Why?  First, because educators generally don't regard the child as incredible.  Instead, they place limits on his or her potential with labels like "learning disabilities,"  "developmental delay", "unmotivated", and "average ability."  Second, because educators don't regard the world as amazing, at least when they're teaching about it in school.  Instead, the world is broken down into little skills and tasks that are so small and insignificant that the wonder of the world is lost. Third, because all sorts of garbage is interposed between the curious child and the amazing world to make it nearly impossible for the two to meet: bureaucratic timetables, mandates, standards, legislation, rubrics, standardized tests, and other bits of idiocy.  I would like to suggest a meditation for all those interested in education.  Visualize the way education should be: introducing incredibly curious and creative children to an amazingly rich world.  How difficult can this be?

The Best Schools Are Not Test Factories but Places for Developing Whole Human Beings

I've written a new book for educators called The Best Schools:  How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice (publisher:  The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, December, 2006).  In this book I suggest that our educational climate has become totally overwhelmed by what I call an "academic achievement discourse."  This discourse concentrates on accountability, rubrics, benchmarks, "closing the achievement gap', a "rigorous curriculum," "tougher standards," and standardized testing.  The epitome of this discourse is the No Child Left Behind Act, which demands that schools make yearly progress on test scores or face tough sanctions.  What is missing from this conversation is any real discussion of human beings.  In my book I suggest that we need to start speaking (again, because we used to talk this way) "human development discourse."  That is, we need to focus on helping children develop their cognitive, social, emotional, creative, and spiritual potentials.  We need to measure student progress, not through "normative" evaluation (comparing a child to an ideal group), but through "ipsative" measures (comparing a child to his or her own past performance).  We need to stop spending so much time focusing on basic reading and science and math skills, and provide more time in the curriculum for social studies, history, the arts, physical education, vocational education, wellness education, character education, and other fields that taken together make for educating whole human beings.  In The Best Schools,  I suggest that educators need to take seriously the unique needs of children at each stage of development, instead of creating developmentally inappropriate instruction to raise test scores at all age levels.  I recommend that schools focus on specific developmental issues at each level of instruction. 

• In early childhood education (ages 3-6) play should be the center of the curriculum, with no formal instruction (teaching reading and writing at this early age is developmentally inappropriate according to early childhood expert David Elkind, a leading advocate of Jean Piaget's work in the United States). 
• At the elementary school level (ages 7-10), learning how the world works should be the focus of classroom instruction.  Children at this age are entering a more complex social world, they have more complex cognitive abilities, and they are hungry to know all about the world around them  about nature, culture, other people and themselves.  Too much time is being spent on preparing kids for tests, or teaching them silly irrelevant academic skills, and too little time is spent engaging students in rich encounters with the real world.  The model of the children's museum is a good one to use for this stage of schooling. 
• At the middle school level (ages 11- 14), instruction should focus on social, emotional, and metacognitive growth.  Adolescents entering puberty have a whole range of new emotions, social interactions, and intellectual insights descending on them, and to ignore these changes by focusing only on academic subjects like algebra and reading comprehension is to risk turning these kids off of school, and turning them toward gangs, violence, drugs, addictions, and other social problems.  Middle schools should teach using peer instruction, cooperative learning, and mentor-guided experiences.  They should teach school subjects by engaging the students' emotions (e.g. teaching the Revolutionary War by asking students if they ever felt like revolting against anything).  Students should also have their newly-developed "meta-cognitive minds" engaged (where they can think about thinking itself) both in academic learning, and also in thinking about the conflicts in their often emotional turbulent personal lives.
• Finally, high schools (ages 15-18) need to focus on helping students prepare to live independently in the real world.  In middle and late adolescence, students are beginning to take on responsibilities that will make them a part of the adult world (between 15-18 kids in many states are able to marry, open IRA accounts, drive, and engage in other adult responsibilities).  Instead of having to spend all their time cooped up in a large impersonal high school, where they have to raise their hand if they want to go to the bathroom, they should be out in the real world engaged in internships, field work, cooperative education, job shadowing, career academies, part-time jobs that link with academic instruction, and other educational models that help these kids across the great divide separating childhood from adulthood. 

All of these developmental goals require that schools that have become testing factories radically alter their direction, their purpose, and their structure.  The Best Schools provides many examples of schools at all levels around the United States that are already doing this; that are already providing developmentally appropriate instruction for kids and treating kids not as test-taking machines, but as whole human beings.

To read excerpts of The Best Schools, click here.

To read a review of The Best Schools in the online Teachers College Record, click here.

To order The Best Schools, click here.

Elementary School Teaching is Mostly Mediocre Says New Study

A new study in the March 30, 2007 issue of the prestigious journal Science, reports that teaching methods in elementary schools in the U.S. leave much to be desired.  Researchers funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, went into 2,500 first, third, and fifth grade classrooms and reported some discouraging findings.  Among them:

• Fifth graders spent more than 90% of their time listening to teachers' lectures or working alone.  They spent 7% of their time engaged in small group learning, which is a superior method of teaching.
• Only 14% of kids at all three levels had a consistently high-quality instructional climate.
• At the fifth grade level, too much time was spent teaching reading and math skills (62%) and not enough time was given to science (11%) and social studies (13%).
• Students received only perfunctory feedback on their performance.
• Student spent little time involved in critical thinking, problem solving, teacher-student interaction, engaging activities, or emotionally supportive learning.

"Any given child has less than a 20 percent chance of having a rich classroom experience consistently through elementary school," says Robert C. Pianta, lead researcher and Novartis US Foundation Professor of Education in the University of Virginia Curry School of Education. And for kids in low-income areas, the percentage is even less.

All of this, despite U.S. Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, claim that the federal law No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is "99.9% pure" and not in need of change.  See my January 4, 2007 post on Margaret Spelling's statement.

Read excerpts from my book The Best Schools:  How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice, which criticizes American schools for spending too much time focusing on test scores, and not enough time educating whole human beings.

New Diagnostic Category for Child Trauma in the Works

Up until now, children who have been deeply traumatized during their early lives, and who have responded to this trauma with severe negative changes in behavior, attention, emotional regulation, or social interaction, have been diagnosed by psychiatrists as having post traumatic stress disorder, conduct disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, or any of a number of other psychiatric disorders.  Recently, however, a group of researchers have been working on a new diagnosis that may make better sense of what has happened to these children:  developmental trauma disorder (DTD).  DTD is being proposed for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) slated to come out in 2011 as the DSM-5.  Among the criteria for this diagnosis would be exposure to one or more forms of developmentally adverse traumas such as abandonment, betrayal, physical or sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. It could also be used with children exposed to war, natural disasters, community violence, and other collective experiences.  The team working on this is part of The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, a consortium of 70 child mental health centers funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (a part of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services).  To support this diagnosis, the team is building a set of data from children referred to these centers, tracking a 20-year longitudinal study of 4,000 Australian child survivors of natural disasters, reviewing an extensive child trauma literature, and studying the latest findings on the neurobiological consequences of traumatic interpersonal stress in childhood.  About 3 million cases of child abuse and neglect are reported in the Unietd States every year (with one million of those substantiated), acccording to the Administration on Child, Youth, and Families.

TV Food Ads Contribute to Childhood Obesity

Most people know by now that there is an epidemic of obesity in the United States and that children are the most vulnerable victims of this trend.  Patterns of poor nutrition developed during childhood can set kids up for a huge wallop from health problems in adulthood, including diabetes, heart disease,and cancer.  Now, a new Kaiser Family Foundation report has revealed the extent to which television advertising contributes to the development of these bad eating habits.  In cooperation with researchers at Indiana University, the Kaiser study found that half of all TV ads shown during children's show are food related. Children between the ages of 8-12 see an average of 21 food ads per day, or more than 7,600 a year.  Of all the food ads that target children, 34% are for candy and snacks, 28% are for cereal, 10% are for fast foods, 4% are for dairy products, and 1% are for fruit juices.  Of the 8,854 children's food ads reviewed in the study, none of them were for fruits and vegetables.  Many of these ads have tie-ins to websites, or children's television or movie characters, or premiums such as games or toys.  Clearly, the profit motive is overriding the importance of healthy child development as far as these children's food advertisers are concerned.  Click here for further information about this study.  The Food Trust is an organization that is  working to create health food habits among children and families.