Essays - links-education
TV Nation: The Killing of American Brain Cells
Posted 2009-09-15 11:16 by manarafo
TV, along with sugar, is one of the great evils in society. Walk into the home of any friend or family member, say hi to the kids, and they don't dare turn their face away from the tube to acknowledge that you’ve walked in, because they just can’t be distracted from their daily dose of obedience to their visual master. Their faces are frozen to the tube because they are unable to lose their trance for even a single moment. Look at their eyes, and note they are hugely dilated by the light of the idiot box.
Rewards and Praise: The Poisoned Carrot
Posted 2009-09-15 11:16 by manarafo
We give our children ice-cream if they're "good", chocolate if they're quiet, little gold stars if they eat their greens, maybe even money if they get good marks at school. We praise them with a "good boy!" or "good girl!" if they do something that pleases us. For the modern and discerning parent, the hitting-and-shaming method of "discipline" is passé. Punishment is out, and rewards are in. Why use the stick, when we can better teach a child by using a carrot?
http://www.naturalchild.com/robin_grille/rewards_praise.html
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Posted 2009-09-15 11:15 by manarafo
Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial “ brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”
How Not to Talk to Your Kids
Posted 2009-09-15 11:14 by manarafo
The inverse power of praise. Why does the child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges?...
Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!"
Posted 2009-09-15 11:12 by manarafo
An article by Alfie Kohn. Plenty of books and articles advise us against relying on punishment, from spanking to forcible isolation ("time out"). Occasionally someone will even ask us to rethink the practice of bribing children with stickers or food. But you’ll have to look awfully hard to find a discouraging word about what is euphemistically called positive reinforcement.
Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!"
Posted 2009-09-15 11:09 by manarafo
An article by Alfie Kohn. Plenty of books and articles advise us against relying on punishment, from spanking to forcible isolation ("time out"). Occasionally someone will even ask us to rethink the practice of bribing children with stickers or food. But you’ll have to look awfully hard to find a discouraging word about what is euphemistically called positive reinforcement.
American Kids, Dumber Than Dirt
Posted 2009-09-15 11:07 by manarafo
We are, as far as urban public education is concerned, essentially at rock bottom. We are now at a point where we are essentially churning out ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults and society as a whole will pay dearly, very soon, and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/10/24/notes102407.DTL
