Alex sent me this excellent article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/may/04/leave-them-kids-alone-griffiths

The title and blurb are not quite right: the article suggests the opposite of ‘leaving them alone’ for babies and toddlers, in order to get them to a point where they can be independent (and left alone) later as they grow up.

Does sound pretty much like what we did in parenting – lots of affection, not a lot of control, and the explicit goal of making them self-reliant people.

Seems to have worked for us, though Cassie and Alex might want to comment.

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/05/austerity_never_works_deficit_hawks_are_amoral_and_wrong/

Very good article about Orson Scott Card: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/end_game_for_orson_scott_card_partner/

This para in particular struck me, though, and applies much more broadly than to Mr Card:

Democracy is empathy. It is being able to see the rest of society as people just like you are, whether they agree with you or not. It is about not ruling at the barrel of a gun, but explaining to others the way you feel, bringing them around by letting them inside. By getting them to feel what you feel, which is the very definition of empathy. There are those who think that the failure of the world to agree with them, and their embrace of violence as a solution, somehow makes them the strong ones and the world the weak ones. But violence is such an easy solution, the emotional coward’s way out of actually dealing with the existence of those who disagree as legitimate equals.

(although, really, most people reading this will get to eat – they might just pay more. It’ll be the global poor who starve…)

Report from the Guardian on the loss of arctic ice, which is occurring much faster than predicted¹: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/may/02/white-house-arctic-ice-death-spiral

OK, the words ‘death spiral’ in the title may be a touch hyperbolic…

1. Tell us again how ‘climate change stopped in 1998′. I dare you.

Last lecture for 7801EDN – Teaching and Learning in the Middle Years – today.

I decided to try to do a better job of ‘practicing what I preach’. Here’s a list of ‘signature middle years practices’ from one of the lecture PowerPoints earlier in the course:

1. Higher order thinking strategies
2. Integrated and interdisciplinary curricula
3. Negotiated, relevant and challenging curricula
4. Heterogeneous and flexible student grouping
5. Cooperative learning and collaborative teaching
6. Small learning communities and sustained individual attention in a safe and healthy schooling environment
7. Strong teacher student relationships with extended contact with a smaller and consistent number of teachers
8. Authentic and reflective assessment with high expectations
9. Democratic leadership and shared governance
10. Parental and community involvement in student learning

Given that many of the students are mature age students and parents themselves, the last one might be a stretch, though more community involvement would have been good.

Despite these aspirations, what have we been doing? Big lectures with PowerPoint in big lecture theatres. There are reasons for that, but I’m not sure they are good educational reasons. They have more to do with the traditions of universities, and with costs and scale and models…

Of course, these are adult learners, not adolescents, so it does make sense that there are some differences in the way we teach.

But for today at least, I’ve decided to eschew PowerPoint, and largely eschew lecturing. The hour and a half we have for the class session will be broken into three 25-minute segments, and students will be able to choose to focus on one of these topics in each session. Not the whole class, just all those interested in that topic will band together and discuss it for the 25 min. This means there will likely be several groups involved in different activities at the same time.

Each student will also be tasked with noting the most revelatory thing s/he hears or says in the 3 sessions, and we’ll randomly report back a few of those at the end (names in a hat at the beginning of the session for randomness).

It will be messy, potentially risky, and draw on the students’ knowledge as much as on mine, but hopefully also rich, engaging and educational… and modeling some of the things we hope our students will facilitate with their students.

‘Bread and circuses’ – it was the Roman poet Juvenal’s diagnosis of the malaise of Rome in about 100 AD. The emperors kept the people’s bellies full and kept them distracted with entertainment, and the people didn’t get engaged in the important affairs of the republic (or was it an empire by that time?)

Not for me to judge others, and I need to look in the mirror, as ever, to identify my own circuses, but it seems to me that if all your outrage is being used up on two girls who say ‘babe’ too often, you’re unlikely to have any left to notice that Tony Abbott’s policy platform is the full Reverse Robin Hood…

The budget will be out shortly, and those on the conservative side of politics will be sure to be shouting from the rooftops that the deficit is due to Labor over-spending.

Here’s Tim Colebatch with some facts: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/before-we-tackle-the-budget-lets-clarify-a-few-points-20130429-2iot4.html

In particular, more of the problem is on the revenue side than the spending side, and that is due to a slowing economy.

Had the Coalition been in power throughout the GFC and until now, their avowed policy of ‘no stimulus’ would have led to a recession and to a much *worse* deficit, with much lower revenues.

Tony Abbott has not stated his policy yet – and has billions in unfunded spending commitments – but it’s plausible he would tend toward ‘austerity’, as a conservative (as the UK Tories have) and drag the economy into recession, worsening the deficit.

So please, by all means, let the facts get in the way of a (not so) good story about Labor’s spending and economic incompetence.

Then remember former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello’s comment that Abbott is ‘an economic illiterate’.

I’ve been thinking about the ‘class warfare’ framing for a while, and intended to post, but Nicholas Reece at The Age got there before me: and with specific examples of specific policies:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-not-gillard-is-the-true-class-warrior-20130428-2imis.html

It’s been the international trend of more than a decade – indeed, arguably since Reagan and Thatcher – that governments have dragged resources out of the poorer end of the community and into the ‘big end of town’. Dramatically increasing societal inequality.

But apparently *that’s* not class warfare – but noticing the trend and trying to reverse it and create a fairer society is…

I’ve quoted Kenneth Davidson, an economist writing for The Age, with approval here before, and this article is excellent:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/how-privilege-rules-over-school-funding-20130428-2imiu.html

The issue is tied in with the ‘class warfare’ post I’ve been thinking about and will probably make later today.

Excellent article by Virgina Trioli on ‘Children overboard’:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/reith-rewrites-history-to-hide-the-shame-of-children-overboard-lie-20120831-255u3.html

The Sun is not a star. Apparently.

http://www.geocities.com/rebornempowered/thesun.htm

Yep: cherry-picking is a good way of making the ‘data’ fit the conclusion… and a terrible way of making the conclusion mean anything about the real world.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/18/graaarh-physicists-biologists/

(and yes, if y’all read Pharyngula daily I’d post a little less frequently )

The archives here are deep: heading for 1700 posts over 8 years. So it’s easy to forget what lurks in the depths.

A random spammer (I think, hard to tell) made a comment on an old post from 2005, which brought it to my attention – and I was a little surprised to note that I had made a post entitled ‘Pig Demons of the Bermuda Triangle’.

Here it is: http://www.bravus.com/blog/?p=234

Wonder what other oddities lurk in the back issues?

Australian parents are most likely, by a fair margin, to describe their children as ‘happy’. That ain’t a bad place to be…

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/how-parents-around-the-world-describe-their-children-in-charts/274955/

Nice takedown by Ben Goldacre of some silly claims by Baroness Greenfield:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/21/bad-science-publishing-claims

(‘weighing a pig doesn’t make it heavier’) Here’s an excellent little article about the proposal to add science tests to NAPLAN, and why it’s a terrible idea:

http://theconversation.com/naplan-science-tests-unlikely-to-improve-science-education-13399

I do have concerns about the way NAPLAN literacy and numeracy tests push aside other school subjects, but the solution is to scrap NAPLAN, not expand it.

Good article on why properly implementing (and funding) Gonski is crucial:

http://theconversation.com/an-ethical-education-why-gonski-is-a-moral-issue-12849

One possible topic for the essays I’m marking at the moment is the effect of socioeconomic status on educational achievement.

The papers on that topic, as on the various other ones, are typically of high quality, interesting and well referenced.

They include a variety of possible influences related to poverty itself – like lack of access to computers, books, resources and study space at home – and to the associated ‘social capital’ – things like lack of friends who aspire to success, parents who can help with homework and so on.

In a few cases I’ve suggested that it may also be related to parents who don’t value education – because in their experience, education failed to value them.

But there’s one issue I haven’t seen represented so far, and have been thinking about: development of language in babies and very young children. This paper offers a pretty good overview: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01805.x/abstract

The upshot, though, is that parents of higher socioeconomic status typically talk much more to their children – many times more words in total – and use a wider range of vocabulary and grammar, and a wider variety of modes (e.g. instructions, conversations, stories and so on) with the children, and that the children develop more language earlier.

This language development also predicts schooling success quite strongly.

What this suggests to me is that, while interventions at school level are important, and can address some issues, by the time kids get to school some of the effects of socioeconomic status are already ‘wired in’ to their brains in terms of language development – the tools for learning.

The ideal solution would be to eradicate poverty, but since that’s not going to happen, interventions that help parents to spend time talking with their children, encourage them to talk, get them in playgroups with other parents talking to their children, offers them books and encourages them to read stories to their children and a wide range of other not-so-easy but also not-expensive steps could help to address disadvantage in ways that can complement and enhance the things schools can do.

Not because it’s controversial, or for intellectual property reasons (although lots of images are borrowed), but because it won’t make sense to anyone.

http://www.bravus.com/EarthScience2013.pptx

I decided to try to do the opposite of my usual text-heavy approach and go all-images, and talk with the class about the images.

I think it’ll be fun, and educational – and it’s part of stretching myself as a teacher.

My left hip had been getting very sore. That leg has been broken a couple of times and I limp a bit on it, which seems to bother the hip.

Cam had told me about aspartame in Pepsi Max causing him joint pain, and I was drinking a lot of Diet Coke.

Stopped drinking it, and after about a week and a half the hip stopped hurting. Almost completely.

OK then, that’s gonna have to be that – I like Diet Coke, but it’s definitely not worth chronic pain.