During this morning’s Senate DOMA hearings, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) destroyed Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery’s argument that children are better off with opposite-sex parents by demonstrating how Minnery misrepresented an HHS study. The study — which Minnery cited to oppose marriage equality — actually found that children do best in two-parent households, regardless of the parents’ gender.

You can watch it below:

Normally I’d avoid linking to something so potentially partisan, but this incident – which has been well-popularized around the Internet since it happened – seems to be a prime opportunity to take a look at a very complicated issue: that of what families should look like, what children’s needs are, and what parenting really is all about.

First, it almost goes without saying that this is a fine example of how research findings can easily be abused and misused. But second, and arguably more interestingly, this incident also highlights how swiftly ‘parenting’ can be co-opted by cultural beliefs and dogma – and, getting to the heart of the matter, how far our society’s concepts and public discussions of ‘parenting’ and ‘families’ have been removed from where I believe they should really lie: with children themselves. Ideally, I believe we should view ‘Parenting’ as as a responsibility taken on by an adult, whether through the birth or adoption of a child, to meet and provide for that child’s needs; while ‘Families’ can be viewed simply as whoever comes together around children to help in that task of meeting their needs. Unfortunately, such a focus on children themselves and their needs is often far from the true center of public discussions about families – so if I may, I’d like to try to reframe things here, in these different terms.

Reconsidering Families and Parenting through the Lens of Children’s Needs

Parenting can be seen through several different frames of reference. First there is a societal perspective – where parenting can be seen as a way to either perpetuate current social traditions and ways of life, or to prepare ‘future members of society’ for continued adaptation and the ability to meet the challenges of the future. Parenting can also be seen from a parent’s perspective – where the act of parenting provides some sort of meaning, gratification or change in the life of the parent. Finally, we can view parenting from the child’s perspective – where a parent is typically the primary person in their lives through whom that child’s needs are met.

It’s likely fair to say that all these frames of reference are valid, and can potentially be complementary to each other. Yet often, Western cultures like ours get too wrapped up in the first two perspectives, at the neglect or even exploitation of the third.

Yes, parenting is largely a cultural and philosophical act: how you interact with your children, and the environments and experiences you establish for them, is I think a profound statement on the way you see the world and how you want it to be. And Mr. Minnery and the Focus on the Family organization have every right to work toward a family subculture of their own, that matches their vision of the world. But, first, it is a problem when you try to press this subculture on others; second, and more disturbing, it is malicious and exploitative to intentionally misuse the researched evidence around children’s lives – to in essence use children themselves – to justify your own way of life, while persecuting others for theirs.

In this particular case, the research around children and their well-being proves that children are undeniably resilient and accommodating of many different family structures – and contrary to Mr. Minnery’s fervent belief, can absolutely still thrive while having two parents of the same sex, so long as their needs are still being met.

The Real Needs of Children

Since we raise the topic of children’s needs – and since we bandy about the term so freely in our discussions, often using it to justify our own prejudices and beliefs – it stands to question: what are these actual needs of children? Interestingly, they appear to be fewer and far more basic than one might imagine, according to eminent psychologist Jerome Kagan. After conducting decades of longitudinal studies globally, Kagan established that children, across all cultures, have only four essential, universal needs that have to be met in order for them to grow up emotionally and physically strong and socially well-adapted. They are:

1. Environmental variability;
2. Predictability;
3. Caretaking by adult(s) (as opposed to other children);
4. Opportunity to practice their motor skills.¹

Both history and cultural anthropology bear out that children can and have had these needs met in an infinitely rich and diverse number of ways. And everything else surrounding children and childrearing, everything outside of these needs, is either ultimately unnecessary or some culturally defined variant of these needs.

What the study by the Health and Human Services department (link goes to full PDF of the study), which Minnery unsuccessfully tried to use, clearly shows – and any number of other recent studies can corroborate – is that children need to grow up in a predictable family structure, where they are reassured that their needs will be met… but how and by whom those needs are met simply just doesn’t matter that much, provided that predictability is there.

To quote another important study which examined the significance of gender in parenting: “The family type that is best for children is one that has responsible, committed, stable parenting… The gender of parents only matters in ways that don’t matter.”

What about Single Parent Families?

An inevitable question soon arises about whether two-parent (or ‘nuclear’) households are better for children than single-parent households, and can offer more stability, commitment, and so on. To continue to quote the same study from earlier, though: “One really good parent is better than two not-so-good ones.” Predictability also comes in an emotional form, and one committed parent can provide this relationally to children just as well as two might.

One area where single parents do have the deck stacked against them, though, is the simple matter of practicalities. With single parents raising children on their own, you can statistically expect for their household’s family income (in a North American context) to be half, or often less than half, that of a typical two-parent (usually dual-earning) household’s family income. You can also generally expect for a single parent to have far fewer available hours in the week to devote to childcare and to attending to children’s needs, compared to two parents in a household who together can have more hours to devote to the children. So the question isn’t whether single parents are inherently worse parents, or whether children inherently need two parents, but whether a single parent has as equal an ability as a two-parent household practically and financially to meet the children’s needs. This is not to say that single parents can’t make it all work out, just that statistically it is simply harder for them, at least without an established social network of help.

But I don’t see this as an argument against single-parent family arrangements – or any type of other family arrangement. I simply see this as a sign that we as a society should increase the support we offer to all parents and families – politically, with better family leave policies, universal healthcare, and more accommodating employers and work schedules; and culturally, with supportive neighborhoods and community programs, a positive and caring collective attitude toward children, and a better understanding and openness in our culture of the struggles parents face every day.

Nuclear families, mothers and fathers, homosexual parents… It’s too easy to fall into the trap of blindly upholding and believing in particular family and social structures around children. What we need to realize are that these structures are cultural and, ultimately, don’t matter as much as we think they do. Meanwhile, the one thing that is truly important – making sure children’s needs are met – can be realized in any number of infinitely rich and diverse ways.

For kids, at least, there is no one right way to have a ‘family’.

In his piece, Adams brings up an old but important idea:

I read someplace that the brain needs some boredom during the day to process thoughts and generate creativity. That sounds right. My best ideas always bubble up when I’m bored. And my period of greatest creative output was during my corporate years when every meeting felt like a play date for coma patients.

Browsing back through the Danielsaurus archives, though, I came across this old piece I linked to and referenced more than a year ago: “Boredom Begins at School”. It highlights research which shows some of the physiological dangers of boredom, and shares how many scientists and education reformers are actually faulting it as one of the key reasons our education system fails.

I’ve linked to both perspectives, and I actually do believe there’s some truth in both perspectives even though they seem at odds with each other: On the one hand, boredom can be a breeding ground for creativity – and certainly, it is something I believe is vital for children to experience and have (a lot of) in their life as they grow up. On the other hands, boring places don’t make for good learning environments, at least if its inhabitants are expected to learn certain things and not how to doodle cartoons in class while ignoring the intended curriculum.

It leaves me to ask myself several, possibly overlapping questions. Wondering out loud right now:

Is boredom the same as disengagement? Is it possible, and maybe even good, to by physically bored (perhaps by a lack of intentioned activities or tasks you need to do) but mentally engaged and curious? Is there a difference between a “boring” geographic place (or person, or book, or…) and an individual person, child or adult, “being bored”? Could a boring place be the same, and perhaps more aptly described, as an “un-stimulating” place? And when we talk about “boring” classrooms and schools, are we perhaps really just talking about environments that force their users into a natural inclination toward disengagement?

This may seem like playing with semantics, but I wonder if there’s something there. Who knows, maybe there isn’t. But if there isn’t, how do we reconcile the boredom paradox? Is it simply a matter of saying “some boredom is good” but “constant boredom is bad”?

Oh sure, I’m not alone in this sentiment. Like me and many others, Peter Hartlaub is another fan of Mr. Rogers, a profuse apologist of Mr. Rogers’s ‘Hood – and so it was to Peter’s surprise as well as mine when he recently discovered and shared video footage of Mr. Rogers actually moonwalking during one long-past TV episode. Yes, as in Michael-Jackson-is-alive-and-well, wow-this-is-really-the-’70s moonwalking. Take a look:

As Peter recalls:

I’m a huge Mr. Rogers fan, but I somehow wasn’t aware of this video’s existence until this afternoon. Of course it only makes me love the guy more, if that’s possible. This just proves that Fred Rogers was physically incapable of being patronizing or self-conscious. He clearly knows nothing about breakdancing – and may have never seen a boombox. (“How do I turn your music on?”) This was a time when most squares in Middle America equated breakdancing with drive-by shootings and crack sales. But Fred Rogers was game anyway. And he looked cool trying to do it, because children are excited about it, and he was excited about children.

“Because he was excited about children.” Excited about children. I can’t think of any better attribute in a person.

It does not seem intrusive to wonder about the Romeros’ and Dekkers’ exact understanding of the notion of parental responsibility. Moreover, we would point out that being young is not, in itself, an achievement.

Not to give the London Times the short shrift, but it is just unfathomable to me that someone could claim this point of view. How is having faith in kids and trusting in their capacities really some grievous form of parental irresponsibility? Nonetheless, the Times’ columnist apparently does honestly believe this, and very much defends it (in the most bitter and snarky of manners, if I might say). Unfortunately she’s not alone: you can also behold a whole raft of complaints in the column’s comments about the clearly “tantamount” physical risk and psychological harm these high-achieving children are surely now burdened by.

It all just leaves me puzzled and saddened, and ultimately left to question: Why are we so begrudging our children that sense of the awesome wonder and achievement possible in life? What do we actually do to them when we say that their dreams are too dangerous, too unrealistic, or even plain impossible? How can it be a bad thing to believe in them, and know along with them that anything is possible? I can’t help but believe that everyone needs a little adventure – most especially, I would say, kids. Going out bravely into the fog to meet the unknown head-on and tame it… why, that’s the very essence of what growing up is about.

The video is short and succinct, but captures well what makes Finland’s education system work. I’d encourage everyone to watch it. In short, though, Finland’s success really all comes down to a few things: a strong sense of trust – both in students and in teachers and schools; a pedagogy based on deep, meaningful, long-term relationships between students and teachers; and a relaxed, non-competitive culture of education, where learning is seen as natural and is valued and encouraged by everyone in society.

Those may sound like simple solutions, but, as anyone within the education field can tell you, that kind of culture takes a lot of hard work to establish – especially when you’re working against the status quo. That may be one reason why private or chartered alternative education settings – like Montessori, Reggio-inspired and Waldorf schools, and democratic schools like Summerhill and Sudbury, as well as Unschooling – often do so well; they start out with a blank slate when creating that culture, and the people whom these settings draw are either already devoted to a culture of living, breathing democratic education or are open to questioning the status quo and searching out new ways of education. That’s not the case with regular public schools, where the ideologies and frameworks of education are firmly entrenched and to question them is to go up against a vast, monolithic 100-year-old system.

That’s why, in a culture of competition and faux-accountability, with an ‘education’ system that has strayed so far from the real nature of education, alternative settings offer a chance to reboot the system entirely.

From their “The Truth about Boys and Girls” cover article:

If there is a neurological disparity between the genders, it could explain important behavioral differences. But surprisingly, researchers have found very few large-scale differences between boys and girls in brain structure or function. Yes, boys have larger brains (and heads) than girls—from birth through old age. And girls’ brains finish growing earlier than boys’. But neither of these findings explains why boys are more active and girls more verbal or reveals a plausible basis for the consistent gaps in their reading, writing and science test scores that have parents and teachers up in arms.

They go on to illuminate how experience – or nurture, if you feel compelled to put it in terms of that age-old argument – plays a much more important role in establishing gender: “Most sex differences start out small—as mere biases in temperament and play style—but are amplified as children’s pink- or blue-tinted brains meet our gender-infused culture.”

I’ll chime in to say it’s important to remember that children’s brains are quite malleable, especially in early childhood. In practical terms, this means that our own cultural ideas and subtle gender-based biases present within our interactions with boys and girls actually impact and help shape our children’s physical brains – with the potential to magnify the originally small sex-based neurological differences that a child may start out with. As much as there may be real neurological differences between older boys and girls, those neurological differences, to a large degree, have been a result of the brain’s own self-shaping responses to culturally informed experiences.

This has been perhaps one of the largest faults present in past scientific research about children and gender: much of the research simply never acknowledged that there is no fixed, neurological standard in brain development, or that the brain itself grows and shapes itself based on experiences. In effect, studying the neurological roots of gender is like trying to pin down a fast-moving target, and then trying to tell others how to do the same thing with other fast-moving targets. It just can’t be done.

Little girls are saying goodbye to their dollies and hello to tech gadgets and computer games. Does this mean they’re missing out on imaginative play?

Wow. If that’s not a patronizing thing to say, I don’t know what is. Girls, boys, dolls, and computers and cell phones everywhere should feel highly begrudged right now. (Yes, I’m including inanimate objects in that list. Hush now.)

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just to be clear: I do actually get that the author is attempting to make a point about the supposed ‘disappearance’ of children’s imaginative play, and unconsciously presuming this is linked with children’s increasing use of mediated toys and technology instead of physical toys. I’m alright with being concerned about that, even if I think that fear is overplayed. Rather, it’s the wrapping that she surrounds her point in which is just presumptuous and sexist, while unconsciously reinforcing potentially harmful gender stereotypes.

First, there’s nothing necessarily “bad” with girls being interested in technology, nor is imaginative play necessarily inhibited by it. It’s a different topic, but one that should be considered: why is computer literacy still thought of as a predominantly male trait? As far as linking technology with the downfall of imaginative play – that’s a stretch, by far, and doesn’t actually consider the unique benefits that technology may offer to imaginative play. ‘Tis a topic worth it’s own discussion, and the research just ain’t there to make blanket statements at this point.

Second, while the prevalence of dolls has perhaps led us to accept that they’re necessary and beneficial, why should we assume that dolls are really all that important a thing in order for a girl to have a rich, imaginative playlife? As one commenter to the piece mentioned: If you’re concerned about a girl’s creativity and imagination, why not give her a tub of LEGO bricks in response? I should also probably not leave out the other begrudged party here – boys. What? Boys can’t play with dolls? History has shown that children (and adults) of all ages and genders have played with dolls in the past (see Howard Chudacoff’s book, “Children at Play: An American History”), so why have dolls become such a regimented part of the ‘girl’ gender stereotype?

I don’t mean to hate on dolls – there’s definitely a lot of play value in them, and I know a lot of little girls (and boys) who play with them. Even as the author recounts her own daughter’s doll play, you can get a picture of the richness dolls often add to play. But the real issues with this type of hypothesizing are the underlying assumptions made in the process: first with conflating doll play as a given and natural part of an imaginative girlhood (introducing gender stereotypes in doing so), and then with unnecessarily dichotomising technology against imaginative play (and undermining children’s potential in the process).

Those are some pretty big holes to be standing on when you’re asking about otherwise good topics.

Leading the activism charge: the Racebending.com website. By way of introduction, here is timeline they provide of the series and the movie (including its casting), and following are some excerpts from a recent explanatory letter the activists sent to the President of Paramount Pictures:

Avatar: The Last Airbender featured characters of color, and the film adaptation was an opportunity for Paramount to develop leading talent from Asian American and Inuit American communities—groups the Screen Actors Guild has acknowledged as underrepresented, particularly in leading and heroic roles. Only 1.8% of lead roles in Hollywood go to actors of Asian descent and less than 1% of lead roles go to actors of Native American descent. Yet, Airbender lead casting breakdowns worded as “Wanted: Caucasian or any other ethnicity” failed to provide adequate outreach to communities of color during lead casting. And the production’s specification of “Caucasian” and the initial casting of all four leads with white actors further reinforced Paramount’s failure to extend the rare opportunity to be a lead heroic character to minority actors. The casting of The Last Airbender exemplifies the “glass ceiling” that pervades Hollywood casting.

Of course, that’s one side to the story. Io9.com offers Shyamalan’s view, in this interview:

When we were casting, I was like, “I don’t care who walks through my door, whoever is best for the part. I’m going to figure it out like a chessgame.” Ideally we separate the nations ethnically — ideally. I didn’t know how or what it was going to be. And it was so fluid. For example if you found a great brother, [but] he didn’t go with my favorite Katara, then we couldn’t use him. Theoretical things like that. There was an Ang that we really loved, but he was like 5’10.” There’s all kinds of issues that come to the table physically. And I had a board of all the people that I was considering, the seven or eight. There was, at one time, a Chinese Sokka and Katara, and they were over here. One of them was a better actor than the other, and so I was gathering my pros and cons. I was without an agenda, and just letting it come to the table. Noah is a photo double from the cartoon. He is spot on. I didn’t know their backgrounds, and to me Noah had a slightly mixed quality to him. So I cast the Airbenders as all mixed-race. So when you see the monks, they are all mixed. And it kind of goes with the nomadic culture and the idea that over the years, all nationalities came together.

Whatever you may say about the process, it’s clear just by his answers that Shyamalan’s had a well-thought-out rationale for how he casted the film. The film news site UGO.com seemed to pick up on this as well, saying essentially as much in their “primer” to understanding the controversy:

Racebending.com argues that Katara and Sokka are clearly of Inuit heritage, and Aang, who can certainly pass for “mixed race” by his physical appearance, is nevertheless a clear depiction of Asian culture. Shyamalan argues that his film is the most culturally diverse tent-pole ever made, and that his casting decisions were based on a) finding the best performers and b) maneuvering appropriate races to the different “nations” on the Airbender mythos. […] What makes this controversy so fascinating is that it isn’t, if you’ll forgive the expression, a clear expression of black and white. Avatar: The Last Airbender, created by two Caucasians, was a show that borrowed heavily from all sorts of world cultures and philosophies. M. Night Shyamalan is one of the most successful directors of color working in Hollywood. There is dismay that the only characters of color in The Last Airbender are villains, but should the film continue through the full story arc we’ll meet other heroes of other races (and some of our original baddies will be redeemed.) What’s clear is that the characters of Aang, Katara and Sokka mean a lot to a lot of people. Heck, they mean a lot to me and I am not a member of an underrepresented minority in film. To many, The Last Airbender is a missed opportunity, to others, despite protestations to the contrary, it is a simple business decision on how to cast for a multimillion dollar movie.

Obviously it’s a touchy subject to some, and you can bet there will be opinions flying about it. Me? I have none (or at least none that I’m sharing). I’m a huge fan of the cartoon series, but also respect the process filmmakers have to go through to get things on screen. And yes, I’m sure there’s an ideal out there that all involved with the film would have loved. But as Jordan Hoffman, of UGO, noted: there’s nothing black and white about any of this.

A final, tangentially related bit: Media guru Henry Jenkins has an excellent look at how fan Lorraine Sammy came to become a fan activist and help run Racebender.com.

Facing down protesters who didn’t want him at Notre Dame, President Obama fought back not with harsh words but with the most devastating weapons in his political arsenal: a call for “open hearts,” “open minds,” “fair-minded words” and a search for “common ground.”

There were many messages sent from South Bend. Obama’s opponents seek to reignite the culture wars. He doesn’t. They would reduce religious faith to a narrow set of issues. He refused to join them. They often see theological arguments as leading to certainty. He opted for humility.

Many of my more personal friends know my stance on abortion. It’s a sensitive topic to be discussed in public, but one that I’ve grown slowly more accustomed to speaking out about vocally – not because I hold strongly to any one position on it, but because of how much the abortion discussion has been co-opted and dwarfed by dogma, to the point where the statistical and individual realities of abortion have long been left out of the picture. It’s natural that some of the nuance of reality will be lost in social policy discussions, but on this – on abortion – I feel we’ve reached a breaking point, where the rhetoric surrounding it is actually harming any meaningful effort to address the tensions of the topic. But It’s more important than ever that we know the singular, statistical facts about abortion, and they are these:

1. Outlawing abortion has no impact on the number of abortions performed – in fact, the countries with the lowest rates of abortion also have the most open and supportive laws regarding abortion.

2. A full 75% of abortions are driven overwhelmingly by economic motivation – women donʼt feel they can afford to have a baby or will have the necessary support to continue raising a child.

3. Finally, social and economic supports at a societal level do more to reduce abortion rates than any judicial or legislative efforts. Countries like Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom rank among the lowest in terms of abortion rates, despite their very open policies allowing it, and there is a powerful argument to be made that this is directly related to these countries’ systems of universal healthcare and strong safety nets for those of low-income status. In short, in order to see abortion rates decline (as much as it can), we need to see this not as a war against abortion, but instead against poverty.

These three facts make up much of the statistical reality America faces with abortion, and this reality simply doesn’t change based upon your personal disposition, values, or political orientation.

The evangelical American Church needs to realize this. As vocal as some from both sides of the debate have been, and as much as there are people on both sides acting out of the best and most moral reasoning, many still need to acknowledge that the abortion issue is far more complex than they’ve assumed –– and they need recognize that President Obama’s and the Democratic Party’s longstanding commitment to rebuilding our social safety net and providing better social and economic supports for the poorest among us may actually make more of a difference in reducing the rates of abortion than their own efforts. Shouting and demonizing doesn’t change reality, nor does it bring us closer to working out real solutions or to finding a conciliatory center that’s good for us all – and most especially for the women and families facing circumstances which may lead them to choose an abortion.

Instead, we’ve allowed the conversation to devolve into a culture war, and for that proponents on both sides of the debate should be ashamed. We’ve strayed from reality, allowed ourselves to be blinded by jealousy and hate, and hurt those we most need to help. We should instead humbly search out a common ground between these two ultimately insufficient labels, of “Pro Life” and “Pro Choice.” We need to find, as Notre Dame president Reverend John I. Jenkins said, a place of “conciliatory dialogue” where we can approach each other and the matter at hand “with love and a generous spirit.”

Here is how to make a child bored: first and foremost, keep him indoors so that the infinitude of nature, its endless variation and chaotic messiness is replaced by a finite, orderly, predictable realm. Second, through television and video games, habituate him to intense stimuli so that everything else seems boring by comparison. Third, eliminate as much as possible any unstructured time with other children, so that he loses his capacity for creative play and needs entertainment instead. Fourth, shorten his attention span with fast-paced programming, dumbed-down books, and frequent interruptions of his play. Fifth, hover over him whenever possible to stunt his self-trust and make him dependent on outside stimulation. Sixth, hurry him from activity to activity to create anxiety about time and eliminate the easy sense of timelessness native to the young.

A somewhat needlessly anti-media piece, but it makes for nice musing. Plus, it introduces a new phrase I think I really like: “the primal self-sufficiency of play.”

“Oh, grow up.”

The subtle, even unintentional implication here is that this type of petulant behavior is only and naturally the purview of children – whom you by definition incriminate when you suggest something isn’t “grown up.” I have known and worked with many children, my friend, and not one of them has been nearly as petty and arrogant as John Boehner. One simply does not just act like he does by virtue of being a child.

So, to the New York Times: instead of labeling this behavior as “childish” or ascribing it to those who need to “grow up” or “act their age,” let’s stop demeaning kids and label this behavior what it really is – plain immaturity. It’s as simple as that.

Maturity and age are two very separate, independent things.

All this worry, however, is based on the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.

Today, American high schools offer a sequence of algebra, geometry, more algebra, pre-calculus and calculus (or a “reform” version in which these topics are interwoven). This has been codified by the Common Core State Standards, recently adopted by more than 40 states. This highly abstract curriculum is simply not the best way to prepare a vast majority of high school students for life. […]

In math, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move practically between everyday problems and mathematical formulations (as when we decide whether it is better to buy or lease a new car).

Garfunkle and Mumford (and really, they couldn’t be better named for two mathematicians) make an excellent argument against traditionalism in education, and the picture they later paint – of a holistically minded, culturally relevant math curriculum – just warms my heart. This is what school should be like.

In an effort to accommodate an aging customer base and make the McDonald’s experience “super fun for seniors 65 to 95,” the fast-food chain unveiled its new Senior Citizen PlayPlaces Wednesday. “The ball pit has a special winch to lower seniors into and out of it,” said day-shift manager Will Earle, adding that the tunnel-maze has multiple exits in case seniors become disoriented or scared. “We have a slide wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs, and on Saturdays, Ronald himself stops by to make balloon animals and just talk to the old folks. They like talking to Ronald.” McDonald’s confirmed plans to open even more senior PlayPlaces by 2013, saying they provide a space in which children can enjoy a meal and still keep an eye on their elderly parents or grandparents.

Simply priceless.

The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College has announced the launch of the online Curriculum Toolkit as a new resource for college and university faculty that combines video footage from the Fred Rogers Archive with a variety of multimedia course materials. […]

The initial set of Curriculum Toolkit syllabi, collected from college and university faculty nationally, covers language development, creativity, music, and the role of play, among other relevant topics. The Curriculum Toolkit also provides a number of assignment ideas that include everything from puppet construction to assessing emotional development in children. A reference area includes research abstracts and links to other research in the field.

If nothing else, and even if you aren’t academic faculty, the videos and interviews the Center has collected here are just gold.

A week before it began, Campbell, in an interview with the Guardian about cuts to youth services, predicted what would happen. Asked what he thought the future held, he said, simply: “There’ll be riots.”

Looking at his words again, he said: “I did see the riots coming and the government should have seen it coming, too. Jobs are hard to get and, when they do become available, youths don’t get the jobs. There is nothing to do, they are closing youth clubs so the streets are just crazy. They are full of people who have no ambitions, or have ambitions but can’t fulfil them.”

Lost in all this hand-wringing is the most visible symbol of a failed system: the classroom. Almost without exception, the reform efforts under way will preserve the classroom as our children’s primary place of learning deep into the 21st century. This is profoundly disturbing because staying with classroom-based schools could permanently sink our chances of rebuilding our economy and restoring our shrinking middle class to its glory days.

The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution.

Indeed, this is perhaps the most fundamental flaw of all education reform efforts in the past several decades, while at the same measure the most stubbornly – even vehemently – ignored. Go back and watch Waiting for Superman, for instance – the documentary widely heralded “to save public education.” You won’t find even a passing consideration in it of the most fundamental elemental of education: individual students and learners. Nor will you find any challenge to the past industrial-era mindset of education as a passive “conveyor belt”-like consumption of knowledge – in fact the documentary almost criminally perpetuates this destructive model, while ignoring a vast decades-old body of scientific research that proves that learning doesn’t happen this way.

Instead of considering this most basic element of education, Waiting for Superman – like so many education reform debates and efforts before it, and I’m sure many more to come – settles for skirting the issue and blowing around more hot air. It seems almost dogmatically fixated on the relatively superficial things in public education, like teachers’ unions and rubber rooms, student tracking and charter schools – incorrectly labeling these things as the root problems of (or, in some cases, solutions to) our system, without even stopping to consider whether it could be something more fundamental.

That’s the problem in the “education reform” world: We’re not lacking for magic answers, for solutions that we’re sure will “fix the system”. The thing is they’re useless, though, and will continue to be, so long as we avoid asking the right questions.

While her communication skills are questionable, her judgment is completely unsound. In the past, she has neglected errands assigned to her, including hiring a piano tuner, purchasing gingerbread and shopping for fish, in favor of taking the children to visit one of her mentally incapacitated relatives, commonly referred to as “Uncle Albert.” This frivolous outing ended with my children being stricken with a similar illness, whose side effects include drinking tea on the ceiling. Similarly dangerous daytrips include horse racing and gallivanting on rooftops with dance crews of like-minded chimney sweeps. Worst of all, May Poppins deceived me into bringing my children into work at the bank with me.

The Daily Mail:

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong. They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others. Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

Morning Star:

It is meaningless complaining that many teenagers show no respect without appreciating the reality that they too are often treated without respect.

Q: What attributes do you wish were seen more commonly among children?

A: Good parents!

Typical for Bill Watterson: a quietly direct, even mousy, but unexpectedly truthful response. I was caught off guard by it at first, actually, thinking about how most people might answer the question. Of course Watterson would see it from the kids’ side, though; leave it him to recognize that many of the problems of children – and the deficiencies we like to find in them – actually have their roots in the failings and indifference of the adults around children instead.

Harper Collins signed self-publishing sensation Dallas Clayton to a three-book deal.

The Los Angeles-based Clayton self-published the children’s picture book An Awesome World! in 2009 after writing it for his then six-year-old son (with actress Shannyn Sossamon) Audio Science. An Awesome Book!, which Clayton says is about “dreaming big and never giving up,” evokes a brighter and softer Maurice Sendak with a hint of Shel Silverstein. […]

Under the deal Harper Collins will publish its own edition of An Awesome Book! in spring 2012. Clayton will also develop children’s content across multiple platforms, including television.

I’m a huge fan of Dallas (if you don’t know his work yourself, you really should!), and I can’t begin to say how excited I am that he’s been given this very well-deserved opportunity.

I’m thinking about making up road signs to mark the occasion: “Unimaginably Brilliant and Uncontained Awesomeness Ahead!” (What do you think?)

“Of course, the government wants their hands on your children as fast as they can. That is why I opposed all these early starts and pre-early starts, and early-early starts. They want your children from the womb so they can indoctrinate your children as to what they want them to be. I am against that.”

It isn’t the first time he’s said so, either; last May, Santorum somewhat inexplicably compared preschool education to his grandfather’s experiences in Fascist-era Italy. Now that strikes me as a step particularly beyond using “children’s interests” as a strawman argument and officially into verified paranoia territory.

To put it another way: in the world of the Simpsons, Santorum would be Helen Lovejoy.

Please do go off and read her full post, pip pip, but for now here are Morgan’s five lessons – they’re honestly all you really need, I believe, to help guide you to having rich and wonderful relationships with children:

1. Notice everything.  Appreciate how the world around you looks, feels and smells.  Think about what else you could do with the things that surround you, what else they could become.
2. Be brave, in your own time.  Different things are hard for different people.  It’s okay – you can decide what’s right for you when you’re ready.
3. Be good to people.  They’ll generally be good back, and when you meet some who aren’t you’re more likely to have friends to help you out!
4. Be yourself.  Everything’s more fun if you stop worrying about whether you look silly or might get it wrong.  It’s too tiring to try and be what you think other people expect, and frankly not worth the effort.
5. Be flexible.  Stay light on your feet and keep your eyes open.  Unexpected and wonderful things happen all the time, and you don’t want to miss a moment.

Try this the next time you meet a little girl. She may be surprised and unsure at first, because few ask her about her mind, but be patient and stick with it. Ask her what she’s reading. What does she like and dislike, and why? There are no wrong answers. You’re just generating an intelligent conversation that respects her brain. For older girls, ask her about current events issues: pollution, wars, school budgets slashed. What bothers her out there in the world? How would she fix it if she had a magic wand? You may get some intriguing answers. Tell her about your ideas and accomplishments and your favorite books. Model for her what a thinking woman says and does.

Needless to say, makes for an interesting comparison.

(An old piece, but it remains a fascinating look at the early years of Jim Henson’s Muppet enterprise.)

A disappointment all around, but especially for the kids:

“It’s a shame,” [documentary filmmaker] Shapiro said. “Their country isn’t ready for this. The schools aren’t ready. The parents aren’t ready. The only thing that’s ready are the kids and their talent. They will make it one day, and if there is anything positive out of this, it’s for people to realize what wonderful things are happening with these kids. They’ve got their own little world growing here.”

UPDATE: More from the kids themselves, and a bit of history about the fledgling roots of Little League baseball in Africa, here.

So turning 13 and beyond was both terrible and wonderful but the fact remains that all these ideas recoiled when I tried to address them in relation to my son’s 13th birthday. And it’s only here, in this 7th paragraph (again, fuck you writer’s block), where my block begins to find its logic. It is precisely this unsaying that defines my son’s movement into teen life. This inability to speak about him, his resistance to being said, the fact of his emerging own life apart from our relation creates the substance of the block.

He’s stepping into the light of being the main character in a story that evades the reach of my narrative. He’s not my character to write anymore.

Play is a mindset. It shouldn’t be restricted to the playground; neither should it be restricted to children. Play is for everyone and can happen everywhere!

Very true; also very interesting to see this coming from the KaBOOM! organization – whose bread and butter comes almost exclusively from perpetuating the old traditional, prefabricated fixed-equipment playground model. That Kerala, though – she has always been quite the rebel… so who knows.

Sendak’s sense of humor is pitch-black and ribald, though this fact, and the baroque essence of his work, is often lost on readers now that his books have become canonical. “A woman came up to me the other day and said, ‘You’re the kiddie-book man!’ I wanted to kill her.” He hates to be thought of as safe or his work as classic, and he won’t tolerate overpraise. “My work is not great, but it’s respectable. I have no false illusions.”

He’s wrong, of course. Sendak is the best-known, and by most measures simply the best, living creator of picture books, and in the stretch of years since his most prolific period—when he made In the Night Kitchen, Where the Wild Things Are, Kenny’s Window, The Sign on Rosie’s Door, and the “Nutshell Library”—his work has only grown in stature. No one has been more uncompromising, more idiosyncratic, and more in touch with the unhinged and chiaroscuro subconscious of a child.

Sendak’s upcoming picture book, Bumble-Ardy – the first he’s done solely on his own since 1981’s Outside Over There – looks great, and I can’t wait for it. Anymore, though, I find myself more excited by Maurice Sendak himself. He’s a fascinating man, both as an artist and an individual, and he holds what I think is a wonderful attitude and philosophy about children and childhood. If you ever wanted a glimpse into his life and thoughts, I can’t recommend enough that you go out and watch the 2010 documentary Tell Them Anything You Want, by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs: it’s an uncompromisingly honest portrait of him, one that touches on the many wonderfully rich, philosophical themes that have emerged throughout his life.

Though he is now 83 years old, it strikes me that, just in these past few years, ol’ Maurice has perhaps become more alive and honest and connected to life than ever before.

Mr. Dwyer has installed playhouses that look like pirate ships, windmills and castles at the homes of several film and sports stars who asked not to be named to protect their children’s privacy.

“Only a certain kind of clientele can afford what we offer,” he said. And few have backyards big enough to hold it. Red Beard’s Revenge, for example, is a $52,000 playhouse in the shape of a 12-foot-tall, 18-foot-long pirate ship, complete with a crow’s nest, upper and lower decks made of mahogany and leather benches in the captain’s quarters that double as beds. […]

Barbara Butler, an artist and playhouse builder in San Francisco, said her sales are up 40 percent this year, and she has twice as many future commissions lined up as she did this time last year. Not only that, but the average price of the structures she is being hired to build has more than doubled, from $26,000 to $54,000.

It’s probably easy to see the ludicrousness in all of this – but let’s take a stab at it, shall we? Real imaginative play is almost directly antithetical to predesigned, adult-built structures, which lack all of the opportunities for a child’s agency and control over the environment that, say, a plain stack of scavenged wood, a bucket of nails, and a little paint might offer that child. In fact, while the obligatorily-quoted psychologist in the article, Dr. Steven Tuber of City University of New York, notes that “over-the-top playhouses may do something for the parent’s sense of grandeur, [but] certainly are irrelevant to the child’s needs and desires for a play space,” I’d go further and say they’re not just irrelevant but are directly obstructive to children’s play – adulterating it with preconceived expectations about what that play should be, to say nothing of shifting the control and maintenance of the environment over to adults.

What strikes me as more ludicrous, though, are the dominant reasons people seem to be buying – and builders seem to capitalize on while selling – these expensive playhouses:

“Childhood is a precious and finite thing,” Ms. Butler said. “And a special playhouse is not the sort of thing you can put off until the economy gets better.”

Not to go on an Old Sociologist Guy rant here, but – well, yes, to go on a rant… Let’s just be clear on something. “Childhood” = not about how fancy of stuff you had growing up, while “being a good parent” = not about simply outspending your neighbors on fancy playhouses and Baby Einstein DVDs. And there’s nothing “precious” about childhood; that’s just you being stupidly drunk with nostalgia. To the point: while some of these playhouses might look cute, and even be fun for children (for a while), they ultimately only undercut children’s independence, creativity, and control over their play – whereas these kids might just be better served with a bike and a summer of free afternoons where they can do whatever they like, and scavenge for spare materials and loose parts to build their own playhouses.

If there’s one silver lining to all of this, it’s that I think kids see through all this BS quite clearly. The kids from the families featured in the article might be too young now, but it won’t be long before they’re 10 or 11 years old and taking a hammer and saw to the playhouse because they know that can build something that’s better.

Even if children do suffer fewer physical injuries — and the evidence for that is debatable — the critics say that these playgrounds may stunt emotional development, leaving children with anxieties and fears that are ultimately worse than a broken bone.

“Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” said Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at Queen Maud University in Norway. “I think monkey bars and tall slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are some of the few features that still can give children thrilling experiences with heights and high speed.”

And:

By gradually exposing themselves to more and more dangers on the playground, children are using the same habituation techniques developed by therapists to help adults conquer phobias, according to Dr. Sandseter and a fellow psychologist, Leif Kennair, of the Norwegian University for Science and Technology.

“Risky play mirrors effective cognitive behavioral therapy of anxiety,” they write in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, concluding that this “anti-phobic effect” helps explain the evolution of children’s fondness for thrill-seeking. While a youthful zest for exploring heights might not seem adaptive — why would natural selection favor children who risk death before they have a chance to reproduce? — the dangers seemed to be outweighed by the benefits of conquering fear and developing a sense of mastery.

“Paradoxically,” the psychologists write, “we posit that our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.”

Certainly, Sandseter and Kennair’s new study is just one more to go onto a heap of past studies – heralding from all disciplines and dating back over the past several decades – that reinforce children’s need for risk-taking, and that acknowledge the paradoxical dangers of a too-safe childhood environment. It’s still good to see the issue once again pushed to the fore, though.

What’s perhaps more interesting, to me at least, is to see how popular Tierney’s article actually is right now; despite only being published yesterday, it currently ranks #3 in the Most Emailed articles on the NYTimes.com’s website – and just speaking personally, I’ve been forwarded a link to it from no less than a dozen different people, from varying and in many cases unexpected backgrounds. (Even for me that rate and the diversity of sources is unusual.) Likewise, I’ve noticed that Lori Gottlieb’s essay in the Atlantic, “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy”, has experienced a similar effect: it is still #2 in Most Popular articles there – despite being published nearly a month ago – and it has continued to maintain a similar ranking every time I check it every few days or so.

I’m not sure what this says about us adults, but it certainly appears that children’s lives and play are the vogue topics to discuss right now.

With rampant unemployment, housing foreclosures, homelessness, hunger, and massive looming federal and state budget cuts, children’s well-being is in great jeopardy. One in five children is poor and children are our nation’s poorest age group. Child poverty increased almost 10 percent between 2008 and 2009, the largest single year increase since data were first collected.

I’ve never been fond of the ‘child-saving’ attitude that organizations like the Children’s Defense Fund tack toward: they tend to portray children as a passive group without much individual agency, and their solutions to children’s problems almost solely tend to rely on adults stepping in to “protect” children and “childhood”. Nevertheless, it’s vital to acknowledge the larger systemic context America’s children live in – a context which is increasingly being defined by poverty. That the blight of poverty is inflicted disproportionately and mercilessly upon our nation’s children is a disgrace. That it has continued this way for so long without any glimmer of hope on the horizon, well, that’s just sickening.

My beloved old high school in Yamhill, Ore. — a plain brick building that was my rocket ship — is emblematic of that trend. There were only 167 school days in the last school year here (180 was typical until the recession hit), and the staff has been reduced by 9 percent over five years.

This school was where I embraced sports, became a journalist, encountered intellectual worlds, and got in trouble. These days, the 430 students still have opportunities to get into trouble, but the rest is harder.

For the next school year, freshman and junior varsity sports teams are at risk, and all students will have to pay $125 to participate on a team. The school newspaper, which once doubled as a biweekly newspaper for the entire town, has been terminated.

Business classes are gone. A music teacher has been eliminated. Class size is growing, with more than 40 students in freshman Spanish. “It’s like a long, slow bleed, watching things disappear,” says the school district’s business manager, Michelle Morrison.

Coming from Kristof, who’s spent much of his career reporting on developing countries around the world, it’s truly poignant and disappointing to see how far we’ve strayed from the values that once made us strong as a country. Certainly, the nature of ‘education’ has changed – the needs of our society have moved on from the turn-of-the-twentieth-century industrial demands which once pushed the American education system forward. We no longer need (if we ever did) schools to function as factories, to educate and deploy a stable and homogenous workforce. The nature of schools and the function of education is – and should be – undergoing a more fundamental, if conflicted, paradigmal shift. But this is different. What Kristof speaks of here is about how we simply, plainly no longer value education in general, regardless of form.

We treat teachers abysmally, pay them poorly, disparage their unions and blame them for the problems of a system which, at its root, is currently fundamentally flawed and problematic. We bind the hands of school principals and district administrators to bring about larger change, burying them with reports and regulations – done out of the call for “accountability”, a word for which we have neither a clear definition nor proper understanding – and we force schools into operating within whatever is the cheapest and most barebones model of education that will still deliver adequate results on fanciful, made-up tests which have little to do with real education. And the children themselves, those we uphold as “our future”, we’ve disregarded with a whiff of disdain – if we render them any attention at all. Schools have been shaped into concrete prisons, far removed from the centers of our community life; where once schools were integral places in our communities and neighborhoods, as Kristof for instance recalls about how his old school newspaper doubled as the town’s biweekly newspaper, their societal role now has been marginalized and relegated to simply “educating” (or more often just “protecting”, or worse, “containing”) “the children.” We’ve devalued children’s roles in society, no longer recognizing or welcoming what good they can bring as members to community life – and by extension, we’ve done the same to schools and education; we’ve turned the one last place left where children can interact with and contribute to the surrounding community into a static prison, lifeless and bound by burdensome worries and demands, a place where children’s own voices and contributions don’t matter.

Think about it: when was the last time you actually entered and spent a meaningful amount of time in a local school (one your own children didn’t attend)? How often today do you see a local school’s sport team treated like royalty, with the entire population showing to support them at games and players being known and congratulated outside of school? How often are you encouraged in your local community to actually know the children who live in your neighborhood, who aren’t yours or friends of yours? What level of expectations, if any, do you see your local community setting and holding of its schools – and of the children in those schools? What does your community ask of them, and in what ways are children really actually encouraged to contribute and participate? Have you ever read, or had a chance to read, an essay or opinion of a student in the community whom you didn’t know personally? When was the last time you saw a school or group of children really valued by the community, upheld as a prized part of its local community life, and supported with the necessary resources and attention?

We can ask if our schools and education system are in decline, but I think these are some of the more relevant and insightful questions for the moment. I think what matters now isn’t so much the quality of schools themselves, but their decreasing place and importance in our communities. What matters now is something far larger and more central to the whole of society.

I’ve strayed from Kristof’s column and his central point, but I will end with this: I think he’s right. We don’t value education and we don’t support our schools; if we did, our financial budgets and legislative priorities would look different. But I will go further and say that our schools crumble not only because they lack our financial support, and not only because we no longer value education – but because we no longer value children themselves.

We’ve become a society which has no place for children. We’ve slowly but steadily distanced them from our public life and discourse. We’ve removed them, psychologically and physically, from much of our society. And we stand by and let the schools we keep them in rot and fall away, with them inside.

That’s the larger tragedy.

From playgrounds that derive inspiration from nature to pop-up urban installations, spaces for play are transitioning away from traditional manufactured solutions—ie. the ubiquitous plastic and/or metal jungle gyms one spies at most playgrounds—and getting the attention they deserve as exciting design opportunities. I use the term playscapes to highlight sites that move beyond the playground fence to become total landscapes for play.

My (absolutely biased) favorite of the bunch is the last one – a Pop-Up Adventure Playground built by kids while provided for by a new organization I’m involved with, called Pop-Up Adventure Play. Paige captures what we try to do with a Pop-Up perfectly: “It lets kids do what they love: make their own spaces for play!”

Ultimately, the back-and-forth by the high court reinforced the notion of a nation that will always be a little skittish about sex, while viewing violence as American as apple pie. If this ruling is indeed a triumph for the First Amendment, it continues a strange double standard. […]

Settling the law of the land on this latest iteration of age-old question, the court’s decision makes it clear that children are free to slice a clothed Godiva to bits — on screen — but should be shielded from seeing her as she was when she rode through the streets of Coventry.

I think Egan’s perspective falls apart a bit when he tries to poke holes in Scalia’s opinion on the effects of video game violence (the whole of the research clearly backs up Scalia on this, I believe), but Egan’s central premise is great: Why does America feel so uncomfortable with nudity, and yet not violence?

I think it is because I have stayed true to my own memories of childhood, which are not different in many ways from those of children today. Although their circumstances have changed, I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed.

The whole conversation between Cleary and The Atlantic’s Benjamin Schwarz makes for quite a nice read. I think what always sticks with me, though, when I read about the lives of the few true legends in the children’s book world – like Cleary, and like Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Arnold Lobel, and others who were inspired and nurtured by the great Ursula Nordstrom – is how honest and connected they were with their own childhood. They didn’t write and illustrate for children out of pretense or agenda; they just wrote to remember, and to honor their own childhoods. They worked at time when books for children were regarded as illegitimate, throwaway materials – and most were either simple penny novels to preoccupy, or pedantic ‘Dick and Jane’ readers to educate. But Cleary, and those like her, did something different. They didn’t try to trick or outsmart or educate their child readers; they just put their own memories on the page, and trusted that children would find the truth in it.

I rather like that. Don’t you?

The time is right to move beyond unproductive debates about the “blame culture” and instead to build momentum behind the idea of expanding children’s horizons. What is needed is nothing less than the wholesale rejection of the philosophy of protection. In its place, what we need to adopt is a philosophy of resilience that truly embraces risk, uncertainty and real challenge – even real danger – as essential ingredients of a rounded childhood.

Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. The beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That’s why my public focus is primarily adults.

No Child Left Behind “rates” children and schools arbitrarily through multiple choice questions. Standardization and rote learning lead to sub-standard results because they don’t inspire or challenge. My solution: get rid of binary right and wrong answers. Experimentation is learning. Only through making mistakes do we find out what works, what to do differently and how to get better.  […] Let’s inspire children by giving them the freedom to get things wrong.

When we engage in restoring childhood to some place in our thinking and recognize that childhood has significance in the development of the adult, it’s all right to talk generally about “childhood” and “the child.” But as a theoretical concept, “the Child” is a fiction. We do not know enough about what children, as biologically given creatures, will do at different stages in development or under different cultural circumstances. […] We will not develop a useful theory of child development until we recognize that “the Child” doesn’t exist. Only children exist; children in a particular context; children who are different from each other; children with different senses.

It is meaningless complaining that many teenagers show no respect without appreciating the reality that they too are often treated without respect.

Inside you, boy,
There’s an old man sleepin’,
Dreamin’, waitin’ for his chance.
Inside you, girl,
There’s an old lady dozin’,
Wantin’ to show you a slower dance.

So keep on playin’,
Keep on runnin’,
Keep on jumpin’, ‘til the day
That those old folks
Down inside you
Wake up… and come out to play.

[T]he joy of being alive always seems to go hand in hand with the sorrow that things change. Not even the brightest future can make up for the fact that no roads lead back to what came before — to the innocence of childhood or the first time we fell in love.

Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important; force them to plead for their natural right to the toilet and they will become liars and toadies; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even.

I’m glad to be a girl because I don’t have to be topless in the swimming pool.

Hopefully, when people watch ‘I Am Eleven’, it will remind them of the influence, both positive and negative, we can have on kids and how we should be empowering them and encouraging them, because they are the future. Sounds like a cliche, but they are.

The longer you live the funnier the sentence “You’re in BIG trouble!” becomes.

Why do Americans do so badly in mathematics? Because mathematics is a foreign language in America. The vast majority of children grow up in a number-poor environment. We’ve forgotten that the language of mathematics is founded in curiosity.  We too often think of mathematics as rules rather than as questions.  This is like thinking of stories as grammar.  Being curious together can be a really special part of the relationship in families.

Determination, strength, independence – those were the qualities I worshiped in my favorite movie hero, the Lone Ranger. I went to the movies every Saturday, and sometimes I even snuck in through the fire escape when I didn’t have the money to buy a ticket. I felt just like the Lone Ranger the day I set off to ride my bike across the George Washington Bridge to New York City. Ten years old, I pedaled twenty miles down unfamiliar roads and busy streets, past neighbors and strangers, out into the unknown. Just like the Lone Ranger, I didn’t need help from anyone. It took me all day, but I found the way and did it myself.

You always hear stories about the 70s. The first time I got on set, the set dresser and costume people were just amazing. I literally put the clothes on and I felt like I was instantly there. I think it was a really cool time, because things were a lot simpler, you know? I kind of wish I could experience it more.

The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a ‘good student.’

The great thing about children is that they like being busy. Since parents like being lazy, it makes sense for the children to do the work. This idea was partly explored in the 19th century, when children as young as five were sent into the factories. The fact that meddlesome liberals have since introduced child labour laws does not need to prevent idle parents today from exploiting their own offspring.

Schools are very good at teaching history. In England, they all know about the Battle of Hastings and the War of the Roses but they haven’t the faintest idea about how the corner shop works or how to get a mortgage.

The focus should be on the world today, what you need to know now rather than what happened three- or four-hundred years ago. Education is way behind where it should be. This education revolution… it’s the same old stuff all over again.