Maurice Sendak’s age

Just after I posted yesterday about age-based schooling, I read a short excerpt from a 2009 New Yorker interview with the late Maurice Sendak.  Sendak says of the photograph that accompanies the interview “I am in my bathrobe in the forest with my dog, Herman, who is a German shepherd of unknowable age, because I [...]

Brain Rules

John Medina’s Brain Rules is worth a look; the author’s website gives a great summary of the book so you’ll be able to tell whether it’s worth the full read to you.  So far, I find it a great, simplified, but carefully researched look at how the brain works and what it might mean for how we [...]

Uniqueness is messy.

This American Life’s recent episode on middle school mentions Maria Montessori’s belief that the appropriate environment for a child of middle school age is a farm school. What I’ve read about this idea and many other Montessori ideas sounds wonderful: young people at work and play alongside respectful adults who can teach them to do [...]

Set, and cognitive diversity

I was getting ready to post a link to the game Set and got distracted by a review that began like this: “I find it amazing that children could play this.” It’s nice that the reviewer was impressed that a child could play a game he considered difficult, but for some children, many children even, this [...]

Scare tactics and school zones

Fifteen miles per hour is very, very slow, for a car.  It occurred to me that in as hurried a world as this one, it’s quite amazing that (most) drivers are willing to slow down their vehicles that much in order to avoid endangering children outside of a school. Then yesterday I heard a story [...]

Built in

There’s a pair of kids in my neighborhood I probably wouldn’t recognize without their bike helmets.  Whenever I see them they’re on wheels – scooters, bikes, skateboards, Ripstiks. There’s a pattern in the way they use the equipment at hand.  When it’s new or recently borrowed, they ride it around in front of their houses, [...]

Enough

Enough already.  When will we stop the senseless measuring of young children’s intellect by whether or not they can perform (quickly) mundane tasks that require minimal intellectual effort and capacity?  I sit with children every day who can make elaborate and airtight arguments, design architecturally sound and aesthetically interesting structures, negotiate solutions to complicated social [...]

Wham

The title of my last post prompted this reader’s response: “Your title [what looks like lazy] reminds me of all the times I would look at the kids and see them just sitting there…”doing nothing”…..and then WHAM they would ask a profound question that would settle my soul, knowing that their minds are engaged.” David [...]

Being themselves

I saw a beautiful and inspiring commercial last night, encouraging young people to be themselves. (I missed what it was a commercial for.) We say this to kids a lot.  ”Be yourself!”  I was thinking that it must be confusing, because we also give them so many limits inside of which we expect them to [...]

Top billing

Parents of kids who struggle with or resist traditional academic subjects (math, reading, writing, etc.) are usually encouraged to concentrate all their energy and resources on helping kids with those areas.  It makes sense, but it also doesn’t usually work.  It often has the opposite effect of what we intend.  With a few exceptions, kids [...]