Singapore math is taking hold in schools throughout the country. Here in New York City, home to the nation’s largest school system, a small but growing number of schools have adopted this approach, based on Singapore’s national math system.
Many teachers and parents here say Singapore math helps children develop a deeper understanding of numbers and math concepts than they gain through other math programs.
artwork { Jasper Johns, 0 through 9, 1960 }
Babies can readily differentiate pet dogs and cats from “life-like” battery-operated toy dogs and cats. Babies will smile at, hold, follow, and make sounds in response to the live animals more than in response to the toys. In one study, 9 month olds were more interested in a live rabbit than an adult female stranger or a wooden turtle. A 1989 study of 2- to 6-year-olds with animals in their classrooms showed that children ignored realistic stuffed animals (80% never looked at them), but that live animals - especially dogs and birds - captured the attention of the children. Seventy-four percent touched the dog, 21% kissed the dog, and more than 66% talked to the bird.
Living with pets seems to stimulate children’s learning about basic biology. In one study, Japanese researchers showed that kindergarteners who had cared for pet goldfish better understood unobservable biological traits of their goldfish, and gave more accurate answers to questions like “does a goldfish have a heart?” (…)
When asked to name the 10 most important individuals in their lives, 7- and 10-year-olds on average included 2 pets.
1. 65% of 3-year-old children are spanked at least once by their parents during the previous month.
2. The odds of using physical punishment doubled in households where parents used aggression against each other. This is not surprising, since physical punishment is a form of interpersonal aggression.
3. Maternal stress significantly increased the odds of using physical punishment. This is also not surprising since physical punishment is more likely to be used by parents who are angry.
4. Maternal depression significantly increased the odds of using physical punishment.
5. The odds using of physical punishment were not associated with maternal education, but when the father had a college degree, both the father and the mother were significantly less likely to use physical punishment.
By what age do children recognise that plagiarism is wrong?
To view plagiarism as an adult does, a child must combine several pieces of a puzzle: they need to understand that not everyone has access to all ideas; that people can create their own ideas; and that stealing an idea, like stealing physical property, is wrong.
images { Left: Maurizio Cattelan, Bidibidobidiboo, 1996 | Right: Print ad for Seidl Confiserie, 2008. Advertising Agency: Serviceplan München/Hamburg, Germany. Maurizio Cattelan was not credited. }
Is The Child The Father of the Man?
One of the fundamental themes (and a continuing debate) in developmental psychology concerns the continuity or discontinuity of temperament and personality from infancy through the rest of a child’s life and into adulthood.
Some researchers believe that they have found evidence for the continuity of relatively stable personality traits through development. Despite the clear importance of environmental stressors and other random events, the evidence seems fairly clear that the personality traits that dictate the response pattern to such life events in adulthood is fairly predictable based on early childhood temperament.
photo { Bill Owens }
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
{ We Are What We Choose, Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Class of 2010, Baccalaureate | Princeston University | Continue reading }
In his book, “The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls From Today’s Pressures,” Stephen Hinshaw, chairman of the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley, explains that sexualizing little girls — whether through images, music or play — actually undermines healthy sexuality rather than promoting it. Those bootylicious grade-schoolers in the dance troupe presumably don’t understand the meaning of their motions (and thank goodness for it), but, precisely because of that, they don’t connect — and may never learn to connect — sexy attitude to erotic feelings.
That ongoing confusion between desirability and desire may help explain another trend giving parents agita: the number of teenage girls — 22 percent according to a 2008 survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy — who have electronically sent or posted nude or seminude photos of themselves.
Few studies have examined the differences between spirituality and religion in adolescents. Now, a University of Missouri researcher is exploring these differences by determining how youth define and practice spirituality separate from religion. Defining spirituality can help reveal its impact on adolescent development. (…)
Anthony James, a graduate student in the MU Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), examined adolescents’ responses to the question, “What does it mean to be a spiritual young person?” The responses reveal that youth describe their spiritual behavior in terms of seven categories related to personal and social development, including:
• To have purpose
• To have the bond of connections, including those to a higher power (typically God), people and nature.
• To have a foundation of well-being, including joy and fulfillment, energy and peace
• To have conviction
• To have self-confidence
• To have an impetus for virtue; for example, having motivation to do the right thing and tell the truth
Lithium has been established for more than 50 years as one of the most effective treatments for manic depression, clinically termed bipolar disorder.
However, scientists have never been entirely sure exactly why it is beneficial.
Now, new research from Cardiff University scientists suggests a possible mechanism for why Lithium works, opening the door for better understanding of the illness and potentially more effective treatments.
photo { Anthony Suau }
With the warnings this week in Canada and the United States about the risks of dosing errors with vitamin D drops, I thought it was an appropriate time to discuss dose measurement as barrier to science-based care. Dosing errors are among the most common and most preventable causes of adverse drug events in children.
Why children? Drugs for children are often in liquid form for ease of measurement and administration. Typically dosed based on milligrams per kilogram, liquid formulations allow us to (in theory) deliver the exact dose that’s appropriate. But measurement isn’t always easy or intuitive. What’s the best way to measure 2.5mL (half a teaspoon)? How easy is it to confuse teaspoons (5mL) and tablespoons (15mL)? And what instructions should health professionals give parents and caregivers to ensure they can measure and administer a dose accurately? Despite the prevalence of dosing errors, there is little evidence telling us what health professionals, or parents, can do better. Until now.
In a study by Yin et al in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, the authors set out to determine what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to measuring liquid medications for children.
Children with Tourette’s Syndrome, the neurodevelopmental condition characterised by involuntary motor and verbal tics, have superior timing abilities compared with their healthy age-matched peers, a new study suggests.
“While I remained at Paris, near you, my father,” said Fleur-de-Marie, “I was so happy, oh! so completely happy, that those delicious days would not be too well paid for by years of suffering. You see I have at least known what happiness is.”
“During some days, perhaps?”
“Yes, but what pure and unmingled felicity! Love surrounded me then, as ever, with the tenderest care. I gave myself up without fear to the emotions of gratitude and affection which every moment raised my heart to you. The future dazzled me: a father to adore, a second mother to love doubly.
{ Eugene Sue, Mysteries of Paris, 1842-1843 | Continue reading }
The first thing to remember about probability questions is that everyone finds them mind-bending, even mathematicians. The next step is to try to answer a similar but simpler question so that we can isolate what the question is really asking.
So, consider this preliminary question: “I have two children. One of them is a boy. What is the probability I have two boys?”
This is a much easier question, though a controversial one as I later discovered. After the gathering ended, Foshee’s Tuesday boy problem became a hotly discussed topic on blogs around the world. The main bone of contention was how to properly interpret the question. The way Foshee meant it is, of all the families with one boy and exactly one other child, what proportion of those families have two boys?
To answer the question you need to first look at all the equally likely combinations of two children it is possible to have: BG, GB, BB or GG. The question states that one child is a boy. So we can eliminate the GG, leaving us with just three options: BG, GB and BB. One out of these three scenarios is BB, so the probability of the two boys is 1/3.
Now we can repeat this technique for the original question. Let’s list the equally likely possibilities of children, together with the days of the week they are born in. Let’s call a boy born on a Tuesday a BTu. Our possible situations are:
▪ When the first child is a BTu and the second is a girl born on any day of the week: there are seven different possibilities.
▪ When the first child is a girl born on any day of the week and the second is a BTu: again, there are seven different possibilities.
▪ When the first child is a BTu and the second is a boy born on any day of the week: again there are seven different possibilities.
▪ Finally, there is the situation in which the first child is a boy born on any day of the week and the second child is a BTu – and this is where it gets interesting. There are seven different possibilities here too, but one of them – when both boys are born on a Tuesday – has already been counted when we considered the first to be a BTu and the second on any day of the week. So, since we are counting equally likely possibilities, we can only find an extra six possibilities here.
Summing up the totals, there are 7 + 7 + 7 + 6 = 27 different equally likely combinations of children with specified gender and birth day, and 13 of these combinations are two boys. So the answer is 13/27, which is very different from 1/3.
It seems remarkable that the probability of having two boys changes from 1/3 to 13/27 when the birth day of one boy is stated – yet it does, and it’s quite a generous difference at that. In fact, if you repeat the question but specify a trait rarer than 1/7 (the chance of being born on a Tuesday), the closer the probability will approach 1/2.
Which is surprising, weird… and, to recreational mathematicians at least, delightfully entertaining.
{ Magic numbers: A meeting of mathemagical tricksters | NewScientist | Continue reading }
photo { Bill Owen }
Anyone pondering the future of television programming and related business models had better talk to my son Carson.
At the ripe old age of 18 months, he’s already a veteran iPhone and, now, iPad user. Having watched Carson control his exploration of media for nearly six months, I’m now convinced that there is no future for passive video consumption on any device — at least not once marketers become interested in him.
This isn’t going to be a gradual shift. This isn’t about migrating video to internet connected TVs or other devices. This definitely isn’t about moving some media dollars to support a schedule of :30s on Hulu or a home page roadblock on YouTube.
This is about how a generation feeding on absolute control and connectivity will have a completely different perception of media overall, and video in particular. The ramifications for programming and advertising are far more significant than anyone inside the current ecosystem is prepared or equipped to address. (…)
Here’s what we’ve found most interesting: While our son still has some tolerance for passive video watching on a television or mobile device, when given the choice, he almost always chooses the interactive experience. (…) I suspect that my son and other children of his generation will demand a seismic shift in programming — from static, passive video to immersive, interactive and intertwined content available on-demand and on any device.
photo { Bill Owens }
Singapore, the country with the lowest child mortality rate in the world at 2.5 deaths per 1,000 children, cut its rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2010. Serbia and Malaysia, which were ranked behind the U.S. in 1990, cut their rates by nearly 70% and now are ranked higher.
The U.S., which is projected to have 6.7 deaths per 1,000 children this year, saw a 42% decline in child mortality, a pace that is on par with Kazakhstan, Sierra Leone and Angola.
“There are an awful lot of people who think we have the best medical system in the world,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, who directs the institute and is an author of the study. “The data is so contrary to that.”
Even many countries that already had low child mortality rates, such as Sweden and France, were able to cut their rates more rapidly than the U.S. over the last two decades. (…)
Murray said high child mortality rates were not limited to black and Latino populations in the U.S. In fact, researchers have found high rates among higher-income whites, a group that traditionally has better access to medical care.
The data instead suggest broader problems with the nation’s fragmented, poorly planned healthcare system, Murray and other healthcare experts say.
What kids searched for this summer. Seeing “sex” and “porn” at #4 and #6 reminds me of how, from age 10 to 15, I looked up “fuck” every time I picked up a dictionary. Some terms you might also need to Google:
• Webkinz (#16)
• Runescape (#37)
• Nigahiga (#99)
• Miniclip (#18)
• Poptropica (#54)
• Hoedown Throwdown (#61)
• naked girls (#86)
