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Harry Brighouse links to a series of fab-sounding papers on gender egalitarianism. Authors include Gornick and Meyers, Crompton, and plenty of others. The papers can be found here. Just so you I can see what I'd be missing by not clicking through, I've pasted a list of them below, though the links don't seem to work down there. Damn t'internets! Bring back the slateboard!
And they're good enough for today's kids, too. Hi-tech 'educational' toys offer nothing that parental interaction doesn't, according to research.
A government-funded study examining the role of technology in the lives of three- and four-year-old children and their families found that the hi-tech devices - one of the fastest growing sectors of the toy market, aimed at infants as young as nine months - are no more effective than traditional ways of introducing basic literacy and number skills.
Toy laptops and mobile phones were of greater value to young children as an aid to imaginative play such as pretending to make phone calls than in teaching specific skills, researchers at the University of Stirling concluded after tracking families for 15 months.
Youngsters also gained an understanding of the social role of technology simply by watching their parents use computers, digital cameras and mobile phones for work and leisure - far outstripping the benefits of using computers for unrealistic exercises and games while at nursery.
[....]
Lydia Plowman, professor of education at Stirling University, said parents interviewed experienced "a lot of anxiety" about the role of new technology, and felt under pressure from manufacturers to buy educational electronic toys such as Leappads and games consoles.
Professor Plowman, announcing her research yesterday at a conference, Happy Families?, hosted by the Family and Parenting Institute, said such toys were neither harmful nor "particularly beneficial".
She said: "I don't think there is any problem about children having these toys at home, but in terms of basic literacy and number skills I don't think they are more efficient than the more traditional approaches."
Mark Kleiman discusses the role of teacher unions in determining the quality of schools (research verditc: somewhat helpful). The unfoggedetariat discusses.
horrible ghastly beasties, and our only solace is to tell them cruel lies. As the commments section explains.
Actually, beyond the first handful of comments, that section is very poor by unfogged standards - a bunch of childless people commenting knowledgably on how to be a good parent.
Just as everyone who can read the written word thinks they know how to write, everyone who was once a child thinks they know how to parent.
Uni classes being offered free over the internets. And in Ezra's comments, a great phrase: 'the sheepskin effect', ie the difference in earnings between someone who is just shy of a degree and someone who has the piece of paper.
Po Bronson's blog looks very interesting. And here is his Factbook on family.
Via Unfogged, and NY magazine article arguing that praising clever kids for being clever fucks them up; instead, you should praise them for working hard. Bronson and his partner also have some posts on the topic.
From unfogged comments, a potential book reference:
I'm really surprised the article doesn't mention Alfie Kohn (does it?), whose book Punished by Rewards is far and away the most readable, straightforward treatment of this issue.
Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 02-15-07 4:21 PM
Good news: everyone's unhappy with their education system, even countries like Holland and Sweden that are held up as beacons to the rest of us.
Via Matt T
Well said, James Hamilton:
I never meant it to be a central theme at this site. You can blame the press that it has been. It was their myth after all - that the kind of feelings fans experience watching football are the same feelings that the team needs to have on the pitch in order to win.
James again, lauding Chris Waddle's commentary (after an unpromising start):
Once the match was underway, though, he was superb. Intelligent, thinking, observing. At one point, he mentioned that Spain would pass to a man who had perhaps two yards of space around him - but England were reluctant to pass to anyone with less than five yards. Better, don’t you think, than merely saying that England weren’t passing the ball as well as Spain? Better than saying that they aren’t as comfortable on the ball as Spain?
Because we know those things already. But Waddle’s way of putting it actually makes you think a bit more about what’s going on - it makes you reflect on how much harder it will be for an England player to be in a position where a pass is on; how much harder for England to work the ball; how much more important each England pass becomes, therefore, because there’ll be fewer of them.
