Apt. 11D

Scenes from Summer

Question of the Day -- Tell the Principal

I had a really nice chat with Jonah's principal yesterday. She asked me what skills did I think the school should emphasize. What should students learn in elementary school to help them succeed later in high school and in college? It was a good question and I'm still thinking about it. I said writing skills. The students who come to college able to write effortlessly have a huge advantage. But now I'm thinking on a different line. Perhaps a good work ethic, good study skills, and ambition are the most important skills that determine success later in school and in life. I'm not sure how a school could teach those qualities though. So, I'm throwing that question out to you all.

Question of the Day -- What should students learn in elementary school to help them succeed later in high school and in college?

Schools or Family Life?

David Brooks writes today about a new book about American education and parenting skills. The author argues that family environment is a much better determinant of future success than anything a school can dish out.

In “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman probes the sources of that decline. It’s not falling school quality, he argues. Nor is it primarily a shortage of funding or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman directs attention at family environments, which have deteriorated over the past 40 years.

Heckman points out that big gaps in educational attainment are present at age 5. Some children are bathed in an atmosphere that promotes human capital development and, increasingly, more are not. By 5, it is possible to predict, with depressing accuracy, who will complete high school and college and who won’t.

I.Q. matters, but Heckman points to equally important traits that start and then build from those early years: motivation levels, emotional stability, self-control and sociability. He uses common sense to intuit what these traits are, but on this subject economists have a lot to learn from developmental psychologists.

Brooks always writes about stuff that we're talking about at home, which is one of the reasons that I regularly read him.

We live in an economically and socially diverse neighborhood and packed in rather tight to each other, so it makes comparing/contrasting rather easy. During the summertime, when the parents are entirely on their own, the differences are even more stark.

In some homes, the kids are sent to summer camps or swim lessons early in the morning. The parents establish routines, keep bedtime hours, supervise outside play, and take the kids on trips to mall or the beach or the swim club. In other families, the academically struggling kids are allowed to skip summer school classes, are in no activities, sleep until noon, and never leave their homes. There are no books in the house. They curse up a storm. They have hours and hours of free time where they absentmindedly throw rocks at a fence. Broken toys litter the backyard and new ones are provided freely. The kids power up on sugar cereal all day. The parents are overwhelmed and stressed. In one case, a parent was told by the school that her nine year old will never go to college, so she's entirely given up.

And, yes, it is very clear who's going to college and who's going to end up as a pole dancer.

What's to be done about those gaps in parenting skills? The parents aren't crack addicts, so social services will never get involved. This is where the schools have to step in. They have to level out these differences. All day nursery schools. Free books for toddlers.Towns need to offer parenting classes and organize babysitting cooperatives. Churches have to organize parent groups.

Brooks says that this book offers evidence that family environment has deteriorated over the past 40 years, but doesn't give more info. I'm going to have to check out this book. 

Disability Denial

Last week, Michael Savage said that most kids diagnosed with autism weren't really disabled. "In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.” At Pajamas Media, we learn that autism is the new sacred cow, and that the rest of society should be protected from these kids. A few weeks ago, Greene and Foster said that it was impossible that 1 in 7 kids were disabled, though they had absolutely no proof on that matter.

What's going on? Why the hate?

There's an inclusion backlash. People, unaccustomed to seeing kids with disabilities, are getting them thrust in their faces in their kids' classrooms. Newly empowered parents are leaving their homes for the first time and taking their kids to Wendy's, amusement parks, and movie theaters. The public is getting their first look at temper tantrums and hyperactivity. They may have to listen to a meltdown while they enjoy a Single Combo at Wendy's rather than enjoying their God-given right to a peaceful meal. They have to endure the kid who won't shut up during Wall-E. They have to make accomodations and, for some, that's tough.

There still aren't enough supports for families with disabilities. Disabled kids are being put into classrooms with untrained aides, who don't know how to contain the kids. It's inclusion, but bad inclusion.

The disability denial fits in really well with people who also deny poverty. They apply the "they have just gotta pull themselves up by the bootstraps" philosophy to everything.

The thimiserol debate has caused some lasting damage. There's a very strong case that there is no link to immunization and autism, but less than smart people have concluded that since this claim is false, all claims about disability are false.

Also, it would be really nice to think that disability is just about bad parenting. Then you can take back all those taxes for schools. You have a handy villian -- the stupid mother. With this line of argument, you can roll back the welfare state and hate women all at the same time. What a bargain!

C. Wright Mills Would Have Been a Blogger

Growing up in Rockland County, my dad would talk about the famous college professor who drove his motorcycle from our town into Columbia every day. I've been coming back to C. Wright Mills this week, because he's unexpectedly fitting into an article that I'm writing. I stumbled across this bio of Mills and was struck by how well he fits in with the ongoing blogger discussion of academics as public intellectuals.

Mentos and Diet Coke Videos

Lounging on my sister's porch last night, Steve, my brother, and cousin were talking about the Mentos/Diet Coke YouTube videos. Somehow I have missed out on this craze and am spending some serious time this morning getting caught up. This is important business that requires some research. It's a real testament to the ingenuity of bored suburban kids. A few of my favorites:

5 Guilty Pleasures on the iPod Meme

I've been tagged by Dan Drezner with the “what five songs in my iTunes are my guiltiest pleasures” meme. I guess Dan and I are the two remaining people in America without an iPod, so I have to tweak this post. I thought about giving the 5 reasons that I've never gotten an iPod, but instead I'll list the 5 guilty pleasures on the living room Bose.

For the longest time, I haven't been able to listen to music at home. For years, one kid demanded Raffi and audio books of Thomas stories. Then the other kid became too sensitive to music and would scream whenever I put on the stereo. Over the past few months, the mute kid has being shedding his music phobia, so I'm slowly rediscovering my music collection. I've been going back to the 80s stuff to see what works and what doesn't. Here's what's on our stereo:

1. Under the Blood Red Sky. U2.
2. Armed Forces, Elvis Costello
3. Monster, REM
4. Tom Tom Club, Tom Tom Club
5. Odelay, Beck (one from the 90s)

I tag Harry Brighouse, Tim Burke, and Jo(e).

The Writing Process

I always get questions from my neighbors and friends about what professors do in the summer time. I have to explain that I write papers in the summer and that my job is more than just giving lectures and grading papers. They check out my grubby t-shirt and my hair in a knotty pony tail and then give me a skeptical look. The thought bubbles over their head are saying, "sure. She's watching Oprah and lazing about."

No really. I'm writing. And it is very, very painful.

I started a paper on the Internet and American politics a few weeks after the end of the semester. It a theoretical paper, which brings together a lot of literature and adds my own spin to things. I wanted to write without the pressure of deadline in order to produce something better than the rush jobs that I usually do in the summer, so I decided to give the end of summer APSA conference a miss this year.

By last week, I had forty pages of stuff. Well, forty pages of bad stuff. I was too caught up in making every small point that I had ever thought up and not the overall picture. I wrote pages and pages of long descriptive passages with eloquent language. But I had buried the big point somewhere on page 30. I had started writing a book, rather an article. I finally realized what I had done over the weekend. On Sunday, I made a new outline. All week, I've been hacking and slashing and things are finally coming together. The goal is to have a decent rough draft by next week, when the kids finish camp.

There something tortuous about this process. Each sentence requires a certain amount of blood letting. One paragraph comes out easily, but keeping my ADHD riddled mind focused enough to write a second and third paragraph requires a mental whipping. Editing makes waterboarding look good.

I experimented with offering myself little treats and incentives. I tried writing at home for a while, then moved to my office, and now I'm backing writing at home.

I know I'll be pleased when it's all done and I suppose it beats a day job, but this writing process sure hurts.

The Wordle of my paper:

UPDATE: Funny conversation between Dan and his brother about Dan's summer "research" projects.

Newpaper Comments

My brother the journalist often gripes about the crackpots that leave comments on the online version of his newspaper. He says it's an enormous pain in the ass to have to monitor the neo-Nazi rants at the end of each newspaper article. Similar sentiments at Gawker.

While you're there, you must check out how they age McCain and Obama. I'm loving Gawker lately.

A New Media Link-Fest

Christopher Caldwell writes about the New Yorker/Obama mess and comes to a similar conclusion that we did in our comment section.

This problem would never have come up 20 years ago, when the only people who read the New Yorker were subscribers. But today, billions of people are a mouse-click away from being New Yorker “readers”. Enough clicks and the cartoon begins to convey the opposite of what it meant to. Under the influence of a hyperdemocratic medium like the internet, you can’t say anything to anyone that won’t be heard by everyone….

Dan adds, "I’m not sure the problem is strictly about partisanship.  Methinks it’s the witches brew of partisanship and the democratization of media."

I've been trying to ignore the "stealing the cracker"/death threat nonsense in the blogosphere. Nobody comes out clean in that fight, and I'm not going to even link to relevant posts. Use google.

Hendrik Hertzberg says that the netroots are quibbling about Obama's flip flops. Gotta wonder if the Netroots is going to be able to make the switch from "the loyal opposition" to actually getting someone elected.

I only read the New York Times business section on Mondays, when it covers the media business. My husband's stress level is a much better barometer of the general economy than anything I can read in the paper. I highly recommend Monday's business section. I always look forward to David Carr's column. Today's column is a light piece about Facebook. (I'm due for a light post on Facebook.) Carr's take on new media is a little stogy, but he knows the business really well and writes charming pieces. Last week, he dropped hints about his former crack habit. A few days later, I read an excerpt of his book at Gawker. And then there was the magazine piece this weekend. Great stuff. It adds a whole new angle to memoir writing.

Two big blog conferences happened this weekend: Netroots Nation (a much better title that Kosfest) and BlogHer. I'm looking around for good recaps.

A blogger makes six figures.