Tag: children

anthropology · behavior · children · culture · education · family

Children’s past role and identity as worker

Beth Kelley
Children in Jerusalem.
The role of children has changed significantly over the past 100 years. Image via Wikipedia

This call for paper submissions from the The Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past got me thinking about how actively children used to participate in the daily household and economic life of families, from general maintenance like sweeping the kitchen to vital income by helping during harvest time.  Children used to have to help out on the farm, and later work in factories, in order to help their families make ends meet. While some of the work was dangerous and unhealthy, some of the work was beneficial to both the kid and the family. Kids felt like they contributed to their family, and learned skills from farming to general entrepreneurship. I wonder what kids are missing out on by not having as many daily chores to do, or summer jobs like mowing lawns and lemonade stands, and how children fit into our idea of work now.


In 2011, the themed session will be on children and work. The aim of the themed papers will be to bring together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines who are studying any aspect of children and work in the past – children as economic contributors, children as slaves, elite children taking on adult roles, children as carers, children as consumers, the impact of working in childhood on children and society. The aim will be to advance cross-cultural knowledge and understanding of childhood and children in the past, and in particular to evaluate the varying nature and impact – social, economic, cultural, medical – of work performed by or for children in the past. Archaeology, history, literature and other sources will be explored.
In providing this opportunity for scholars of childhood to present their work to an international, interdisciplinary audience, the SSCIP International Conference aims to generate new perspectives on existing knowledge and to stimulate new avenues of research for the future.

I’d be interested to hear what jobs you had growing up, before the age of 18. Did your parents encourage you to work? Did you get an allowance or did you get paid by the job, or were you just expected to “earn your keep”? How is it different with your own kids, or nieces and nephews?

behavior · brain · children · community · creativity · education · environment · health · learning · mental health · technology

Let’s hear it for being a kid

Beth Kelley

I’ve been reading some very depressing stuff today – about one school that doesn’t allow anyone over the age of 6 to have recess, kids not feeling protected from their tormentors, and so on – so I needed a pep talk.

Adora Svitak’s TED talk did just the trick.

 

community · culture · education · family · learning · play · school · Social · technology

HASTAC, Superman, and the school fair

Beth Kelley

The Education system in the U.S. has reached a pretty low low right now. This is currently being displayed on the big screen in the documentary “Waiting For Superman.” Film-maker Davis Guggenheim “follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, and undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying ‘drop-out factories’ and ‘academic sinkholes’.” (IMDB)

So, what do we do about it?

Lots of things.

One idea is HASTAC, or Humanities, Arts, Science, and Advanced Technology Collaboratory. Pronounced “haystack”, it is “a network of individuals and institutions inspired by the possibilities that new technologies offer us for shaping how we learn, teach, communicate, create, and organize our local and global communities.” They’re the group behind Reimagining Learning (DMLcompetition.net), and other scholarly workshops.

Cathy Davidson, Duke University Co-founder, HASTAC; Co-PI, HASTAC, writes:

Traditional education too often forgets its precious social condition of face-to-face interaction and takes its collective opportunity for granted. If your classroom can be replaced by a computer screen, maybe it should be.

We are using lessons from collaborative open web development and peer-to-peer learning and assessment to storm the academy at the first international Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona, Nov 3-5. Surrounded by pioneering open source web developers and experimenters in online peer-to-peer learning, we are using methods of the open web to look back and at shake up traditional learning institutions. Were looking at four key areas that need storming: collaboration, syllabus building, assessment, and publishing (including peer review). Our chief idea is that face-to-face learning should not be taken as a given in education but as an affordance, as an opportunity not a default. How does thinking about the unique opportunity to learn together change the components of traditional learning?

more via We’re Storming the Academy! A Provocation and a Promise | HASTAC.

Teachers are already spending their own money to provide supplies for a fuller education experience.

“Vicky Halm spends a $1,000 a year out of her own pocket to equip her Brooklyn classroom. She buys star stickers to help motivate her students, but she also spends a great deal on basic supplies — such as pencils and paper.
A whopping 97% of teachers frequently dip into their own pockets to purchase necessary classroom supplies, according to a national survey conducted by Kelton Research. Last year, teachers spent more than $350 on average from their own income on school supplies and instructional materials, according to the National School Supply and Equipment Association” (CNNMoney)

There are lots of opportunities for students to gain hands-on learning outside of the classroom too. Zoos and Universities often have family or kid-only programs to try out.

“Children and parents hummed through wax paper-covered combs while jazz singer Jeni Fleming sang the “Science Saturday” version of “Hound Dog,” everyone rocking out to their newly learned blues chord progression. And so — with tingling lips and a room full of smiles — the second season of Science Saturdays came to a close. Over 900 children from Bozeman, communities as far away as Helena, Stevensville and Glasgow; and the Crow Indian Reservation have participated in Science Saturdays since MSU started offering the program in the fall of 2008, said Suzi Taylor, outreach director for MSU’s Extended University. (MSU News)

Parents can also organize these events. A blogger on GeekDad describes his son’s school fair:

For our school fete we blacked out a classroom with curtains and asked for donations from people to enter the “Corner of Curiosity.” It was amazing what people came up with. There was a delightful Plasma Ball near the entrance which was a favorite of the younger children, and a beautifully faded yellow newspaper from 1938 headlining concerns about Hitler’s leadership in Germany. One parent produced a display of the “history of mobile” phones and others had insect collections.

One student produced what has to be the most curious of collections – a collection of animal scats. A local community member supplied a whale vertebrae (and a kangaroo vertebrae for comparison). But, the real value was being able to present a fund raising activity for the school that was also educational. (GeekDad)

Any small measure, from buying markers to throwing a curiosity fair, helps enrich kids’ learning and keeps them wanting more. Even just a little bit of time each week adds up quickly.

architecture · Social · technology · writing

Booklust of the week

Beth Kelley

I am a little worried it was supposed to be released more than a year ago and I can’t find any updates, but…

Play All Day documents a collection of the most vibrant, stimulating and engaging design products and concepts for children. This book sets a new standard of design for children with fascinating examples of innovative and well-designed toys, playgrounds and play environments, room decorations, wall coverings, furniture and kindergarten architecture. In addition to these products, it also presents illustration and photography as well as new and original ideas offering playful solutions that talented designers and creative parents are designing for and with their kids. It is an inspiring reference for design-savvy parents and other professionals.

more at the Play All Day publisher’s website.

Mental · Social

The End of the Best Friend – NYTimes.com

Beth Kelley
Florida Atlantic students celebrating a basket...
Humans are social creatures, and need close bonds and feelings of belonging. (Image via Wikipedia)

As the new school year begins, I wanted to mention this article from the New York Times about how schools are discouraging kids from making best friends.

Ahem. Let me repeat that. Schools are discouraging children from having a best friend.

That is just stupid.

Or, put more professionally…

“…such an attitude worries some psychologists who fear that children will be denied the strong emotional support and security that comes with intimate friendships.

“Do we want to encourage kids to have all sorts of superficial relationships? Is that how we really want to rear our children?” asked Brett Laursen, a psychology professor at Florida Atlantic University whose specialty is peer relationships. “Imagine the implication for romantic relationships. We want children to get good at leading close relationships, not superficial ones.”

read the full article via The End of the Best Friend – NYTimes.com.

This is where political correctness and “fairness” go waaaaay too far and ignore human nature and the absolute NEED to have a confidante in life, someone you can rely on, particularly someone outside of your family of origin. Will those people hurt you from time to time? Absolutely. But it’s part of learning how to work within a society and be a social animal.

Studies keep showing how adults today have less and less close friends, and would LIKE to have more. Discouraging kids from learning how to make close bonds with people is just setting them up for this trend to get worse when they become adults.

Now go call your best friend.

children · education · learning

Developing minds

Beth Kelley1 Comment

Lots of cool news came out recently about human development, from chimps to little humans:

Wild chimps have been shown to understand fire and how it moves, and don’t freak out like other animals do. This is exciting because humans so far had been the only animals documented as keeping their cool around fire…for the most part.

Since we’re in the jungle, it’s once again been show that it’s good for kids to go roll around in the dirt; for one thing it correlates with lower heart disease when they’re older.

But back to brain wiring, kids who get intensive language training when they’re young, like reading, actually have their brains re-wired, in a good way.

New education research is also showing that kids may understand Math at a much earlier age than previously though, and there are ways that they can learn the concepts just as early as we try to teach them language.

One of the skills kids can develop is compartmentalization, which it turns out cavemen could also do much earlier than previously thought; for example, they made different, compartmentalized work stations in their camps, rather than spread everything around and sleep right next to the meat-processing spot.

Speaking of stone-age types, a study has come out that counters the idea that hunter-gatherers didn’t eat any grains at all.

All this data almost makes me want to grab some popcorn and pop it over a fire while playing math games. But not before I go work in my garden patch.

children · gender · play

Effects of prenatal exposure of phthalates in boys

Beth Kelley2 Comments

First came across this in Discover Magazine:

A new study in the International Journal of Andrology has raised a storm of concern that prenatal exposure to these chemicals could make boys less masculine in their play preferences.

Phthalates, which block the activity of male hormones such as androgens, could be altering masculine brain development, according to Shanna H. Swan, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Rochester Medical Center and lead author of the new report [Los Angeles Times]. To test whether that link extended into behavior, Swan’s team tested women for phthalate levels midway through their pregnancy and then checked back in on the children four to seven years later.

The researchers asked parents to report their children’s patterns of play, but they knew they also had to separate any potential phthalate effect from the “nuture ” side of question. To determine how parental views might sway behavior, parents completed a survey that included questions such as, “What would you do if you had a boy who preferred toys that girls usually play with?” They were asked to respond with whether they would support or discourage such behavior, and how strongly [TIME].

The study of about 150 kids found that while girls were mostly unaffected, boys who had been exposed to the highest phthalate levels showed a lower likelihood than other boys to participate in what we consider typical rough-and-tumble male recreation—play fighting, pretending to play with guns, and so on. But the research might not imply the national masculinity crisis that some headlines suggest. Play in the most highly phthalate-exposed boys wasn’t “feminized,” Swan explains, since these kids didn’t preferentially play with dolls or don dresses. Rather, she says, “we’d describe their play as less masculine” [Science News]. Rather than play-fighting, she says, those boys tended toward “gender neutral” play like putting puzzles together or competing in sports.

Read full article here.

children

Why kids LOVE sugar

Beth Kelley

I just thought this was interesting; kids crave sugar the most, or love the sweetest juices, when they’re growing the fastest. Cravings for super sweet things tends to die down around 16, around the age that most of us significantly slow or even stop growing.

Very cool study that I would have loved to have been in as a kid. Actually, according to my mother I didn’t like very many sweets, AND I am only 5’2″. Coincidence? Hmm…

children · technology

Robot love

Beth Kelley

A baby monkey in the U.K. gets a stuffed surrogate mom with a mechanical heart while her mom recovers from a c-section, so the little DeBrazza baby can lie against the toy and be comforted by her “mom’s” heartbeat. Awwww…..

Teams in Italy and the U.K. are currently developing a robot kid. This robot has been programmed to learn how to crawl, walk, an move, using the leading theories today of child development. The best part, the schematics on how to make the kid are open access, meaning ANYONE who has serious robotics training could potentially make and teach this robot kid. They hope this will speed the development of the robot, including developing nerves and sensing skin for the kiddo. My favorite part in the film clip (see link), is when the robot gets “falls asleep.”

children · education · school

How to Be an Explorer of the World: New book

Beth Kelley

This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about. In school, at work, yes, yes, yes!!! Go Keri Smith. I’m seriously thinking about writing her a thank you Christmas Card, or at least buying several copies of her book and giving it to all the parents I know.

How to be an explorer of the world