Devil Mouse Trying to Get Boys to Watch Its Movies

Another kid power movie, like Spy Kids. Was there anything like these kid power movies before the 80s? Maybe children will enjoy the fantasy, but is this another form of narcissistic fantasy in which they know more and can do more than adults? Remember when children looked forward to the day when they became adults and had adult skills, instead of pretending they could be better than adults as children?

Comparative Child-Rearing

Imaginative Conservative: Child-Rearing: Notes from a Comparative Cultures Tutorial by George Stanciu

Where are the studies

On electronic device use by children and consequent addiction/learning disabilities?

Childhood Innocence

Children watching a puppet show Paris 1963 by alfred Eisenstaedt. More pics: https://t.co/Xyf3I2xQnG pic.twitter.com/DMjH9aIYuN

— History Lovers Club (@historylvrsclub) April 30, 2019

Functional Strength and Fitness

The Telegraph: Children 'getting weaker because they don't climb trees'
Children have become weaker and unable to do physical tasks that previous generations found easy, a study has found.

Children and Original Sin

Reflecting today upon children's behavior after I learned of something that happened to student...

One of the girls, HD, a hard-worker, seemed really nice and generally well-behaved in class, but she was being catty to another girl (EN) because they're both running for the student council office (VP). She was allegedly telling other students to cover her competition's posters or to destroy them up. Competitiveness turned into animosity? Or something else at work?

CB, who finished 6th grade last year seemed to liked one of the bad boys of the class, someone who didn't do his work but was cocky-funny and defiant. I was disappointed, but she doesn't know any better, does she? It's not like her parents are governing her emotions for her.

Girls

CEB told me that her sister was to be confirmed tomorrow; she was excited to be going to church, since she doesn't go often (or at all). She seems to have mellowed out a bit this year; last year she had more of an attitude. Bad influences by some of her friends, perhaps; they are gone this year. Still, she was having problems getting along with CN. "I don't like her." She insulted her by saying she was still a kid, and CN was crying. "She's being mean to me." I didn't do much except to keep them apart and to console CN a bit. It's somewhat sad, since they were rather good friends in 3rd grade. What happened in the following three years?

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge

Read this book today; it's somewhat touching since it deals with contact between seniors and children, something that can be missing in many households in this country. It also alludes to the loss in war - World War 2? Probably not the Great War.



The characters are not ethnically diverse, either, but the book is originally from Australia.

It would be nice if I could one day say, "I miss teaching." Adults: smiles and a pleasant demeanor do matter to children. One of the girls today, who was in my classroom for only 30 minutes or so, said bye with a big smile on her face when she walked by me while I was on yard duty this afternoon. Her mom looked at me for a bit and then smiled. When her car passed, she was excitedly waving out the window. Absent father figure? Or just happy to have a [somewhat] pleasant adult around? I couldn't remember her name until after she was gone.

Carole King, "Chicken Soup with Rice"

Dr. Fleming on the origins of the jerk

Chronicles

A classical education had its advantages. It meant that most people who had finished high school had read many of the same books, which they could use as points of reference in a general conversation. A girl who was loyal to her family was another Antigone, a loyal wife was an Alcestis, and a strong but boastful man could be described as a modern Hercules. Sometimes the examples were negative. Some of Homer’s heroes are paragons of pride and selfishness who threaten death to anyone who thwarts their will. Achilles, who wants both Greeks and Trojans to exterminate each other so that he and his friend can have all the glory and booty for themselves, is perhaps the greatest Jerk in the history of literature.

He remarks on children:

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Case for Play
The Dangerous Lure of the Research-University Model
Social Media Lure Academics Frustrated by Journals
Free 'Video Book' From MIT Press Challenges Limits of Scholarship

A reaction to Academically Adrift: A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part I.

Dr. Gabor Maté on the stress-disease connection, addiction, attention deficit disorder and the destruction of American childhood
by Amy Goodman

(original)

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Maté, there’s a whole debate about education in the United States right now. How does this fit in?


DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, you have to ask, how do children learn? How do children learn? And learning is an attachment dynamic, as well. You learn when you want to be like somebody. So you copy them, so you learn from them. You learn when you’re curious. And you learn when you’re willing to try something, and if it doesn’t work, you try something else.


Now, here’s what happens. Caring about something and being curious about something and recognizing that something doesn’t work, you have to have a certain degree of emotional security. You have to be able to be open and vulnerable. Children who become peer-oriented—because the peer world is so dangerous and so fraught with bullying and ostracization and dissing and exclusion and negative talk, how does a child protect himself or herself from all that negativity in the peer world? Because children are not committed to each others’ unconditional loving acceptance. Even adults have a hard time giving that. Children can’t do it. Those children become very insecure, and emotionally, to protect themselves, they shut down. They become hardened, so they become cool. Nothing matters. Cool is the ethic. You see that in the rock videos. It’s all about cool. It’s all about aggression and cool and no real emotion. Now, when that happens, curiosity goes, because curiosity is vulnerable, because you care about something and you’re admitting that you don’t know. You won’t try anything, because if you fail, again, your vulnerability is exposed. So, you’re not willing to have trial and error.


And in terms of who you’re learning from, as long as kids were attaching to adults, they were looking to the adults to be modeling themselves on, to learn from, and to get their cues from. Now, kids are still learning from the people they’re attached to, but now it’s other kids. So you have whole generations of kids that are looking to other kids now to be their main cue-givers. So teachers have an almost impossible problem on their hands. And unfortunately, in North America again, education is seen as a question of academic pedagogy, hence these terrible standardized tests. And the very teachers who work with the most difficult kids are the ones who are most penalized.


AMY GOODMAN: Because if they don’t have good test scores, standardized test scores, in their class—


DR. GABOR MATÉ: They’re seen as bad teachers.


AMY GOODMAN:—then they could be fired. They’re seen as bad teachers, which means they’re going to want to kick out any difficult kids.


DR. GABOR MATÉ: That’s exactly it. The difficult kids are kicked out, and teachers will be afraid to go into neighborhoods where, because of troubled family relationships, the kids are having difficulties, the kids are peer-oriented, the kids are not looking to the teachers. And this is seen as a reflection. So, actually, teachers are being slandered right now. Teachers are being slandered now because of the failure of the American society to produce the right environment for childhood development.


AMY GOODMAN: Because of the destruction of American childhood.


DR. GABOR MATÉ: That’s right. What the problem reflects is the loss of the community and the neighborhood. We have to recreate that. So, the schools have to become not just places of pedagogy, but places of emotional connection. The teachers should be in the emotional connection game before they attempt to be in the pedagogy game.

But do we want to give public schools, with their agenda, that much power over a child?

I have two boys in the class who are very active, won't still sit on the carpet, speak out of turn, etc. and when they are called out on their behavior they often blame others. They are also big tattle tales, becoming whiners about the behavior of others. Are they merely trying to deflect attention and criticism from themselves? Are they seeking fairness? I tell them they should focus on their own behavior and not the behavior of others. I have gotten tired of having to deal with them over and over again. Is there any connection between their inability to be compliant and their whiniess?