“We do not mean to turn everything we know upside down,” Ron Paul, Obama, McCain?

Who Do You Think This Was Written By?  I’ll state that I do have permission from the author, the identity of which will be revealed at a later date.  The question is who do you think may have written it.  One of the presidential candidates?  If so which one?

     “We do not mean to turn everything we know upside down,.we merely wish to re-envision America’s future to be a more brilliant and hopeful one that will require the help of it’s government and the consent of it’s citizens.  I stand before you now a humble citizen of this great nation, but sadly one that sees certain un-ignorable faults in her systems, ones that we the people have the power to redress and amend.

     Education is on the downward slope in this country.  It is our responsibility as the government to support and further the governed in whatever way we can.  We must insure our future by putting more effort into the education of it.  I plan to take a very close look at government spending on education and hope to refocus funds as needed including higher learning and its availability.

     Taxes were a major motive in our revolt against the British, we can not and will not ignore unfair taxation.  Although taxes are the governmen’ts major funding, I understand that ludicrous taxation in and of itself puts a price on freedom.

     As health care becomes more and more unaffordable, I ask that all Americans bear with us as our economy recovers.  We will study this issue and find reasonable measures to combat the rising cost.

     The war in Iraq is shrouded in confusion for many.  Much of the nation feels it is an alien place and we have no right to interfere with their systems.  Let us not forget how the French once helped us in our own revolution against tyranny.  I will be straightforward with you here, the Iraqi government isn’t  yet stable enough to support itself and so we must remain for a brief period longer to ensure it’s stability in the future.  The war in Afghanistan is not over, as we pull troops out of Iraqi territory we must refocus some to combat the very real threat of the new terrorist regime.

     Our environment is that which supports us, let us not forget how much it deserves our respect.  Thoughout my adminsitration, I hope to promote the growth of eco-friendly technologies while making new efforts in habitat restoration and national parks.  There is no doubt that our economy is in a state of distress, but it is one that can be fixed.  For too long has America been the world’s foremost consumer.  We have more resources untapped than most can imagine.  It is important that we carefully manage these and use them to our advantage in the coming years.

     The Constitution itself declares that all men are created equal, to deny any man or woman the right to marriage makes a mockery of our liberty.

     It is in America’s earliest foundations that we shall find it’s best possible future, or rather it’s original path which was intended by the most humble and noble of men, our forefathers.  Not just the courageous leaders such as Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt, but the men who fought and died to defend and further our nation into the great Republic the original thirteen colonies had intended.  In this time of great change, let us not stray from the path and let us not fade into the shadow as so many before us, but instead let us bring light to the dark places of the world and offer liberty to those who seek it.”

  Kelton Fredrick                                                                                                                                                          

 

Now the curtain is pulled back, the author revealed, another disappointment perhaps.  It seems Frank Feather the Futurist was correct, again.  The above was written by a student as part of an ongoing American History assignment for his junior class.  On first reading it I was surprised at the depth in the  tone of his words and decided to share it with a wider audience for a few reasons. 

First, many questions and thoughts on the current state of education in the USA have been posted on Linked In, a professional network site.  Many of us have voiced the realization that bright minds capable of filling jobs, becoming self sufficient and  finding innovations to contribute to society will be our best hope for our future.  The above is a good example that there are bright minds out there, but also reflects the work of the group he was chosen to represent.  They chose the name “Re-Visionists”  Not as in revising, but re- envisioning our country through the eyes of the founders of the Constitution.  Ron Paul has struck a chord with many young people, including my son.

Which brings me to my second point: When we vote, we will vote not only for ourselves, but for those who will come of age under the next president.  These are the ones who will fight a war, try to get into college or make a living on their own, maybe bring a child into the world, all in the next four  years.  And make no mistake, the next four years will be tough and that will be true no matter who the next president is.  It’s almost a shame they have so little voice in these proceedings that will determine so much. 

My final point is this… as proud as I may be of his ability to write such a speech, I wouldn’t trust him to guide our country.  Americans need to wake up, snap out of the complacent trance they’ve happily succumbed to and stop listening to the charismatic words.  It’s very disappointing to find how few people have bothered to research the candidates stance on the issues.  Many Obama fans can’t voice why they feel Obama will be able to handle the economic recovery better than McCain.  When asked by a Rolling Stone reporter “How will your life be better if Obama wins” the woman’s reply was ” I don’t know, it just will.”  Sorry folks I just don’t have that kind of faith.  Not to endorse McCain either.  McCain certainly doesn’t provoke that kind of mindless following, but his stance on the economy will also lack teeth to be of any use if Congress doesn’t back the reforms he’d like to put in place.  And again, it matters not who is president, what they can’t control is the irresponsibilty of the American people.   Believe it or not it is within our power, and is absolutely our duty to demand better than this type of campaigning where issues are non existent, where candidates can refuse to disclose so much pertinent information ( and I am not referring to the Palin paternity question, I mean Obama’s refusal to reveal anything of any import about his activities and associations)  Maybe it is time we grow more bold and back an Independent, perhaps it’s time for the two parties to go through a thorough house cleaning.   

 So yes, as the speech above actually calls on the American people to make an effort, consent to necessary sacrifices, value our resources, and …. 

“…In this time of great change, let us not stray from the path and let us not fade into the shadow as so many before us, but instead let us bring light to the dark places of the world and offer liberty to those who seek it.”

Return to the vision.

Wisdom of Summer

This is a follow up post to Midsummer’s Day Dream and the comment from Ravi regarding the effect of a long break on learning.

My guess as to the origin of summer vacation would be that it was agriculturally induced. Summer, as a season-not necessarily the months designated, is/was the time when most growing communities have/had crops coming in as well as many other tasks that needed done and thus, more hands needed and the instruction programs were arranged around the need.  It’s a great example of how an old sociological artifact effects modern life.  Like why roads are the width they are.  People would assume the answer would be because that’s the width of cars.  This would only be partly correct- it’s due to Roman carts.  Romans built the majority of roads and everything just sort of came from that.  But let’s get back to the topic which is the wisdom of summer and why we should keep it.

Many schools are indeed cutting the number of summer programs available and this year in particular, closing down as many schools as possible to save money.  This makes sense as an energy conservation method.  Some schools are discussing going to a prolonged 4 day week to cut costs as well.  

As far as learning is concerned, I agree that a long break does seem counter intuitive at initial glance. However there are several reasons why this works. One is the sleep needs of the average child.

According to the NICH the average child needs at least 9 hours of sleep per night, in adolescents the need for sleep actually increases and the average need is actually 10 hours or more. So lets work backward.

If the school day begins at 8:00 am, we must allow at least an hour for a child to wake, dress, eat, and travel to school. For children being bused we would need to add another hour for wait time at the stop, other pickups and the arrival must be 30 minutes prior to the bell. So a bused child would have to wake at 6:00 am for school. To attain the recommended 9 hours, the child would need to be asleep by 9:00 pm. In order for the child to be asleep by 9:00, the bedtime would need to be more like 8:30-8:45 pm. This seems quite reasonable and is exactly why adult TV programming begins at 9:00 pm.

Quite frankly though in society today this rarely happens. Many parents do not get off work until 5:00 pm or so, then by the time the kid is picked up, it’s usually closer to 6:00pm. At this point the various evening activities kick in; church, scout meetings, music lessons, dance lessons. Most children have at least one activity, most have more than one or siblings with a different activity schedule to sit through as well. These habitually begin at 7:00 and last for an hour, at which point there’s still the mandatory hour or so of homework, dinner to eat, daily chore to do, shower to take. Hmm, all have to be accomplished in the hour we had to work with. Sure it can be done, if one moves with a purpose with no dallying about. Maybe eat with one hand and pencil the math problem with the other. This is ok for adults, but this isn’t an ideal situation for kids, or young adults.

Soeaking of young adults, remember the NICH says they need more sleep. They also found that the natural sleep cycle becomes delayed in adolescence. This is why you’re teen is still sound asleep at noon in the summer or weekends. They truly do experience difficulty falling asleep at an earlier hour and need the extra sleep, because there is quite a bit going on there physiologically! This is a huge problem because many highschools begin at 7:00 or 7:30 am and the adolescents are not physically prepared for it. Some states have listened to the NICH advisement and moved the start time back to 8:00 or 8:30 and immediately found a reduction in tardiness and absenteeism.

Hmm, let them sleep a bit and they get to class on time and more often. Sounds like a plan, I wish more states would adopt it. So why don’t they? The teachers and staff are parents also, this means they would have to work later, and well you know they have kids to pick up, dinner to get, meetings and classes to go to, homework to grade and well they would like to get to sleep at a decent hour. Sound like a viscious cycle to you?

True we can’t please everyone, but we do need to consider how important this is.  I can’t swear to my recall on this, but I believe we are up to 25% of children in the US are obese, or at high risk.  We are seeing health problems in children which were previously confined to the adult population and these are due to the current weight and health status of the children.  How does this relate?  Easy, we now know that important hormones are released during sleep which helps to control weight.  If our children are not recieving adequate amounts of sleep, they are at risk.  Being left to a more natural rhythym in summer helps to combat this problem.  Not a full solution, but it helps.  Restoring daily physical education and recess progarms would help also!    

The other reason why a summer break works has to do with neurology, just how much stimulation can a young mind be expected to handle and is also under study by the NIH.  Facts here are harder to come by for a simple reason.  It’s hard to get volunteers for the brain study of normal children.  This is as it should be, I would hope parents aren’t willy nilly volunteering healthy kids to be poked and prodded particularly when it comes to their brains!  Even as MRI’s and such are not seen to have unhealthy side effects, prudence rules here.  The NIH is studying it now and though many findings are released, it will take several years to understand the full implications of the study. 

One finding of the study was that there is not one, but several ‘brain blooms’ we experience as we grow.  Sure we figured the brain underwent significant development as a baby learns to walk and speak, but it was believed that this curtailed around 4 or 5 years and then the brain set about refining the neural connections for the duration of life.  The NIH study found that we go through several of these  and it begins again with puberty.  Figure about ten years of age, of course some earlier, some later.  Hmm, the child began a significant period of neural growth and development after birth, again at age 1.5 which lasted until about age 5, began a period of neural refinement, which lasts several years and guess what, begins another vast period of neural growth and development which  lasts until… college.  The average age of prefrontal cortex full development is 23 years of age for males, females a little younger.  This is why teens can grasp the idea of black holes and not understand why they should not leave the dishes in the bedroom. 

The down time of summer is about the only long period of respite the brain gets.  It stands to reason that any over taxed system is prone to break down, whether you’re talking about ecologicl, mechanical or biological systems.  If we are overtaxing our youth with the modern schedule of activity then yes, we should cut back, but I doubt that will happen in this cut throat world.  These afterschool enrighment programs are making great money and parents are pushing ever harder at the kids to complete more classes and tougher classes than their peers.  I know students taking 8 courses, most of them honors, several AP and they belong to at least 4 organizations to rack up the volunteer hours and officer positions for the applications.  Now this is trickling down to the middle school level also, where the state of Florida is considering having all 8th graders commit to an area of study.  Get real, college freshman can’t even do that. 

There was a time when this type of hype was reserved for the upper grades, but it trickles down, down, down.  Look in the infant toy isle for the Baby Einstein and other ‘enrichment’ products.  Take into account that many pre-school age children are in well, pre-schools being cared for in an educational program while the parent/s work.  I work in one such program that serves children 1 to 5 yrs and am sad to say how many kids are dropped off at 7:00/7:30 in the morning still half asleep.  The majority are picked up by 4:00 but there are many who have to go to aftercare and don’t get picked up until 6:00.  This is an eleven hour day, with a nap time, but too long a day, day after day, for a child to truly develop and bloom.  Now tell the child they have to do this for the next 12 years of their life, oh and then there’ll be college, work etc.   

Still wonder why the kid may need a summer vacation?

 

 

A Midsummer’s Day Dream

 ”What I did on my summer vacation….”

I was a superhero battling evil in the forest, a trainer of roly poly bugs for a circus, an arboreal tree dwelling native in the jungle, a teacher trying to teach with too many disruptions.  What were you during your summer vacations?

We all knew it was coming, the dreaded essay  on the first day back in school.  Why did we dread it so.   Everyone I knew then and now looked forward to summer.  Everyone seems to have plans of one sort or another.   Summer is the time filled with dreams and ideas.  Thoughts and possibilities, maybe even a few impossibilities brought on by too much heat and too many Popsickles.  Summer is the period between being one thing, and becoming another. This is true for parents and children alike, as our children grow, we are forced to grow and change with them.  Over the years we came to understand, there, in those few months, we would change, undergo metamorphosis if you will.  We were in elementary school, now we would be in Middle School.  We would leave this and go to that.   But in that time between, we could be, not just our ordinary ourselves, but our extraordinary selves. 

Did we look forward to those few magic months because it was a time when we had control?  We chose how we would change, what we would investigate and learn.  This was the time when we were masters of our own fate, motivated by our own desires and chose our own course.

Adults it would seem are no less immune to the siren call of summer.  Take Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights’ Dream for instance.  The chaos of the usual will break, and we look forward to the relaxation and time to…. well time to do whatever we chose to do in that little extra space in the day or our annual vacation.   Europeans are much luckier than Americans when it comes to this.  Most of those countries mandate 3 weeks of vacation, lucky individuals get even more time off.  Americans, well many of us are lucky if we get one or two weeks of paid time.  This leaves little dream time for our poor souls.  It’s no wonder society is so overstressed.

On occasion, usually around April, the desire to eliminate this wonderful period of childhood shows up in the newspapers or other media.  Many compelling and practical reasons are given and I would agree with the problems which are presented.    I don’t agree that the dissolution of summer vacation is the best answer to the problems.  Often we as a society do something to solve one problem while unintentionally creating another entirely new problem, or make an existing situation worse. 

Let us consider the opponents arguments.  (If you are opposed to summer vacation you may feel free to represent yourself and post a comment) 

• Children lose a great deal of knowledge during these uninstructed months

True.  Children do lose “knowledge” that was little more than rote memorization of facts.  I argue that this wasn’t truly learned/understood in the first place and the brain would eventually shove it off in a back corner anyway.  In order to “learn” knowledge well enough to retain and retrieve it, we must be able to file it away in a context, at least within a framework that makes sense.  If we are not making sense of the information it is useless and the brain will have no easy time in incorporating it into our long term memory.  Knowledge not incorporated into long term memory from our shorter term working memory is lost regardless.   If you wish your child to retain academic skills – spend a little time together working on them!

• Shorter vacation periods (2 weeks) between grading periods in lieu of a long summer break would be easier on families and more beneficial to the long term learning experience

I  have two points to make here:

1. While it is true that it may be easier on the families- translate parents- it would not benefit the long term learning of the child.  Traditional school methods are not for every child. (Some may disagree vehemently on this point, but unless you are a teacher, frankly, you’re not qualified to disagree, but you’re welcome to anyway)  Traditional schools are meant to serve the average need, there isn’t any such thing as the “average child”.  There are those that fall more within the ability to learn by this average rate and average material, but many children do not thrive within these restrictions.   These children excel within the creative time they spend by themselves or in a creative environment exploring the world, gaining or even reinforcing the knowledge that the classroom teacher was presenting day after day.  
2. Any child given enough time and too little stimulation will resort to finding a way to occupy themselves.  This should be a law of biological physics. 

“A buildup of potential energy within a biological system of an organism will seek an outlet.  Potential  energy will be converted to kinetic energy and will be released in an active manner rivaling that of a supernova, and have surprisingly unpredictable consequences.  Said consequences will result in adaptability and increase coping skills within the organism. thereby leading to the success of the organism within their environment in the long term.” 

There’s nothing quite like that second month, sometime in late July, when the novelty has worn off and the individual is ready to experiment with new activities, maybe even to pick up a book on their own. This is when the magic can begin.  This is when the child will do their best learning- they will subconsciously learn How They Learn  through manipulating their own brain and employ the best method for them.  Whether it be through logical forethought,  hands on trial and error, or through study of instruction then employing the material taught.  This is the learning that will last them a lifetime and benefit them throughout their lifetime.

• Families face undue financial burden in having to enroll their children in expensive summer programs

 This is going to sound harsh.  Families- translate parents- face an undue financial burden because they chose to have children.  It is not a right to have society make your life easier.  It is not a right to have your child taken care of by others to make your life easier, certainly not cheaper.  Some single parents and even two parent families do face terrible hardship for whatever reason and this is a shame.  However there are many organizations that do activities for little or no cost and provide fantastic learning opportunities for children.  If you make it a priority to research these programs you will find ones to meet your needs.  Your local library is a great place to start.  They often host programs as well as have information on others in your area.  While you’re there you might even find something to interest you!  Remember, now that it’s summer, you have a little extra time in the schedule, maybe some vacation time.  The best way to insure your child learns the value of knowledge and receives a quality education is for you the parent to model the behavior by doing.  Take time to increase your knowledge, show reading is important by reading a book yourself as well as one with your child.    

These seem to be the best arguments that society has thus far.  I don’t think they hold up under scrutiny.  Another point that I feel the need to make here is that of Transitioning.  Educators know the term- it’s meaning is simple- how to get a child/ren to move from one activity to another.  “Ok class we have ten minutes left and we will line up for ….”   Teachers use this technique because it’s needed, not just to encourage everyone to clean up.  Transition is used to signal change, inform what the change will be so it is both expectable and predictable, and the individuals are given time to make adjustments to their arousal level.  Think of it this way- if you were sitting at a desk and suddenly the boss tells you to jump up and start running a marathon- are you at a proper arousal level?   (Maybe this is a bad example; it may happen to you so frequently that you’ve become accustomed to it, if so realize you are only capable of doing so after much practice at transitioning, but you are not operating at an optimum level.) 

Transition takes time; how much time depends on the individual’s receptive language skill, cognitive skills, etc.  Suffice to say different people have differing amounts of time needed to move from one situation to another.  When properly transitioned to the next situation, learning in this case, the individual will be better focused resulting in increased likelihood of  success.    Summer is a needed, beneficial transition.  If we eliminate this, or fail to nurture it, we do so at risk.  What do we risk?  Creativity.  Innovation.  Adaptibility.  For it is when we have time to dream and imagine that our best work is done.

Starting the blog

This will be a learning experience!  By nature I’m a quiet person until someone gets to know me.  It’ll be interesting to see how challenging blogging will be for me.  I’m not shy so much as just not good at the small talk.  I’m aware that this probably hurts me as far as others perceptions of me, but am just not able to think of anything interesting to say as far as the weather, etc.   Subjects I would like to talk about and find fascinating usually get me blank looks in return!

 Here’s something I would like people to know.  When I ask “How’re you doing?” I asked because I’m interested in the answer.  Of course an individual has a right not to share this if they don’t want to, they can say “o.k.”  If I know them well I’ll point out “Really? Because you don’t look it”   

Is this presumtious?  How many times do you say ok because it’s polite?  What would happen if you told the truth?