While we’re on the subject of education, a survey by the new research and advocacy group Common Core shows “a significant proportion of teenagers live in ‘stunning ignorance’ of history and literature.” The organization says “The No Child Left Behind Act has increased the amount of time schools devote to basic reading and math skills,
There’s a new online registry for donor-conceived children, their parents, and sperm, egg, or embryo donors to find each other. Donor Offspring Matches (DOM) has just launched as an alternative to the older Donor Sibling Registry (DSR). DOM has one advantage over DSR, though: it is free, whereas DSR charges $40 per year. Is this
Children need to play. Oh, that’s obvious, you say—but according to NPR’s Alix Spiegel, children today need more “freewheeling imaginative play,” as opposed to structured enrichment classes or play centered around single-purpose toys. I’ve long felt this; one of the many reasons my son has my 25-year-old Legos rather than today’s versions. (OK, there’s some
After 15-year-old Lawrence King was shot to death by a fellow student because he was gay, California Assemblyman Mike Eng proposed a new bill to “establish school diversity and sensitivity training to help prevent such tragedies in the future.” According to Gay Wired, “The new bill would require mandatory classes on diversity and tolerance in
Helen and I start our vlog this week by explaining the difference between parenthood and lesbian Turkish oil wrestling. Our main topic, however, is storytelling. We discuss the surreal and whimsical works of Caldecott-winning author David Wiesner, which force parents to become storytellers, and recommend a book featuring a boy with two moms that celebrates
NBC’s Today Show ran a piece Monday featuring an eleven-year-old boy with two dads. It’s one of few mainstream stories in which we hear the perspective of the child him- or herself. It’s also exceptional in that it shows a divorced family; Henry’s dads broke up after they adopted him. Henry is doing well, however,
If you can keep your kids up till 10:01 p.m. EST tonight (and still maintain their sanity and yours tomorrow), you can share with them the rare occurrence of a total lunar eclipse, the last one until December 2010. Both Sky and Telescope and NASA have details on the event, which should be visible in
Yet another school district has made a fuss over And Tango Makes Three, the book about the chick hatched by two male penguins, and the American Library Association’s Most Challenged Book of 2006. The school superintendent of Loudoun County, Virginia, has instructed county elementary schools to take the book out of general circulation and move
I love today’s XKCD comic: Two thoughts come to mind here, other than the obvious feminist point the author is making: How this attitude is reflected in some people’s reactions to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (substitute “women” or “blacks” for “girls”); How this attitude also applies to LGBT parents and our children, who
No, not W., although I do think we need an explanation of how someone who can’t say “nuclear” correctly made it to the Oval Office. How do you explain the president to young children? We’ve been telling our preschooler “The president is the person the people in our country choose to help lead the country.”
