Part 6 (of 874) in an occasional series about how standardized tests are destroying education.

One frustration with standardized testing is its seeming inevitability. The bureaucratic, Kafkaesque testing structure. Your disagreements don’t matter. Your arguments and pleas don’t matter. You will be tested. But what if you didn’t have to take a standardized test? A growing number of parents and students are exploring that: Opting out of standardized tests. [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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What does it mean to write well? That the writing is clear? Eloquent? Powerful? Emotion-inducing? Connected? Ah, but there we get into it: Your writing’s value is connected, linked, intertwined with an audience. A reader. Someone who might think about what you’re saying. Someone who might, of all things, care. [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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We have a peculiar relationship to facts. Dickens’ Prof. Gradgrind and his love of facts. Star Trek characters Spock, Data. “Just the facts ma’am.” We like facts. We’re nervous about facts. We believe in facts. [Read more →]

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There was a time when kids played organized sports and enjoyed the experience in whatever form it took. They didn’t have much perspective on a bigger youth sports picture. Now, we turn them into little joiners. We want them connected to the best team possible. We want them to experience heightened competition at the ripe old age of nine. But is it for them and their athletic hopes, or is it just so we can look good at neighborhood gatherings? [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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So where do you keep your hoes, if you are lucky enough to have any in the first place or you have a living environment that requires (or at least facilitates the use of) them? [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Anybody who knows me at all knew this one was coming. The IOC board voted to dump wrestling from the Olympics starting in 2020. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Like many a sports-crazed lad, I grew up thinking about what it would be like to take my kids to a ball game. We’d be sitting in a colorful arena, watching our team, in the midst of a pleasantly churning crowd, cracking nuts, smiling at the ease and joy of it all. But it’s not like that anymore. Big-time sports at all levels are hopelessly corrupt, egocentric, decadent. You have to be willfully ignorant to look past it all and soak in the simple joys of a game. But we are lollipop heads,so we keep fueling it with our interest. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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I’ll be straightforward: I was not told I would spend most of my dad life turning off lights that my kids had left on. I never knew it was going to be like this.

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I grew up with hobbits and trolls thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien. So, although I had read and heard some polarizing views of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, I was eager to see it, which I did. I liked it a lot. [Read more →]

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I enjoy the holidays. Years ago I vowed to resist letting any of the hoopla get to me, as I know can happen. But oh there’s pressure, tinsel-draped, gift-wrapped pressure. [Read more →]

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I recently attended a fundraising event for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). This event was sponsored by the Kevin Turner Foundation. Turner, a former Philadelphia Eagle, has ALS, and through his foundation he supports research about the disease. The Foundation also seeks to raise awareness about how brain trauma is related to contact sports. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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In a recent article in The Atlantic John Tierney took a hard, unsubtle look at AP courses, straightfowardly titled, “AP Classes are a Scam.” [Read more →]

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“Friend” is a suggestive word, loaded as it is with warmth, intimacy, harmlessness. Having a friend is always a good thing. The word was a shrewd choice to represent Facebook connections, because the word itself lulls you past any critical perspective about the relationships you clickably create.

[Read more →]

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If you read between the lines in this space — or sometimes just read the lines themselves — you know that my now teenage daughter is not always the easiest person to get along with. [Read more →]

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You don’t need research (although it’s easy to find) to tell you that children are sending thousands of texts per month, sometimes hundreds per day. And you don’t need to be a news hound to know that, communications-wise, this has widely been viewed as a sign that all that we know of as good is coming to an end. [Read more →]

Tags: language & grammar, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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DAZS — In a finding full of surprises, scientists have discovered key factors for one major aspect of childhood corpulence. One surprise: A gene with an auditory behavioral trigger. Another: You must be on vacation. Surprise #3: The gene resides not in the children, but in their parents.

[Read more →]

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You don’t know nothin’ about raising kids, and then one day there’s a child in your house. Then another. For some, this familial accretion goes on for some time. What do you do? You stitch and paste some values together from somewhere – parents you’ve known, cartoons, strangers you meet on the bus — and off you go, bringing up humans. [Read more →]

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This year a family beach vacation overlapped with the Olympics, so I was able to get a huge dose of the events from London. I am one of those people who loves the summer games, and I was able to indulge that passion more than any year since probably 1984. [Read more →]

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There have been many high-profile child sex abuse cases lately. A recurring aspect of the legal side of these stories has been the victims’ silence. People try to shed doubt on accusations by asking of victims, “Why didn’t you speak up earlier?”

Let me tell you about my own close call. [Read more →]

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So, how much will your children read this summer? How attached are you, emotionally, egoistically, to that question’s answer? [Read more →]

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