Dedicated to my friend, Wendy Lee
All parents know well the wicked sour hour:
When the day begins to lose its light and its power;
That time right before bed, the feelings of dread,
When the very house itself wheezes out: “Sour!”
Sports are such an attractive spectator diversion for lots of reasons, and one certainly has to be their simplicity. You get winners and losers, mostly clear-cut. You can hide away from it all in the sports page. You can lose yourself, forget about your crummy job, for an afternoon and root for your team. You can put your frustrations behind and watch your kids play sports and dream — however pathological those dreams are for some — of straightforward glory on the field, in the arena. [Read more →]
I want to be a role model. I want to be a good citizen. I want my kids and their friends to look at me proudly, maybe even marvel a bit. So I do what I can, which has included purchasing the ultimate patriot machine: The reel lawnmower.
Here in New Jersey, education is a front-and-center topic. Public schools are under pressure. I live in Riverton, a small town with its own K8 grammar school that sends its students to a high school in the town next to us, Palmyra. Palmyra and Riverton are in many ways a unified community of 3.5 total square miles, sharing activities and services, like our youth sports teams. [Read more →]
The art of writing. The mysterious skill of writing. Writer Jack Dann once said, “For me, writing is exploration; and most of the time, I’m surprised where the journey takes me.” Alas, for many of our children, writing will never be about exploration, discovery, art, or the challenge of learning complex technical skill. Instead, writing will be standardized, boxed-in, formulaic. It will be an obstacle they need to figure out strategies to get around. Lucky for me, a pre-teen who may or may not live in my home, bless her heart, always has it all figured out. More about that in a moment. [Read more →]
We were in an ice cream parlor the other day, and my son was looking at some old-time paintings on the wall. One was a decades-old picture of a sundae with a price tag: 10 cents. Despite my efforts, he couldn’t comprehend it — which may not be difficult to imagine since my grasp of macroeconomic issues is wanting . I had similar success explaining to him that gas, the stuff that makes our car go, was once a quarter.
Children today are barraged with messages about going green, about sustainability, about saving the environment. But if you are a parent, you still probably spend a lot of time walking around the house switching off lights. [Read more →]
On her birthday, the daughter of a friend of mine came to him in a tizzy. You see, she explained, so-and-so was disrespecting her on Facebook. My friend geared up for the worst as he went with her to view the offending post. And there he saw it. Someone had posted this on her homepage: “happy birthday.” [Read more →]
As an alumnus of Rutgers Camden (BA, ’91; MA, ’95), I have received a lot of information through alumni channels and talked with many former classmates about Governor Chris Christie’s proposed “merger” of Rutgers University Camden with Rowan University. After digesting this information as best I could, I realize I am against this forced joining, for many reasons. But being faced with this issue has rekindled an embarrassing aspect of my thinking: My utter ignorance about educational branding. No, that’s being too generous: When it comes to educational branding, I’m stupid, naïve, and pathetically out of step with my fellow humans.
Has there ever been a time when there was such a hard-charging fury to be a great parent? Well, maybe it’s always been like this (see what Tolstoy thinks below), but many observers do see the rise of a stifling kid-centric worldview. Could it be that true greatness in raising kids is measured by a smaller yardstick than we realize?
If you see a clump of children wearing bright uniforms involved in some type of sporting activity, nearby are sure to be a throng of parents watching with great interest. It might feel nowadays that it couldn’t be any other way. It’s like the old tree-falling-in-the-forest thought experiment: If children played a game and their parents didn’t see it, did the game actually happen? [Read more →]
Wikipedia, for most, resides on the Web like a neighbor we see and interact with often, so we may be surprised to learn that this seemingly friendly presence has caused all kinds of trouble with schools. Some teachers and even a few institutions have considered banning their students’ from having a relationship with Wikipedia at all. [Read more →]
Early in 2011, New Jersey instituted rigid school anti-bullying laws that require schools to follow strict guidelines about HIB: harassment, intimidation, and bullying. While the intention is good, HIB’s over-zealousness creates a stifling bureaucracy for educators, and these blanket regulations, in their effort to eliminate the child bully, are perhaps empowering other types of bullies. [Read more →]
With the arrival of spring, love is in the air, they say, but there is (at least) one overlooked, terrible consequence of the excessive nuzzling of those early days of bloom: Children with holiday birthdays. These poor forgotten youngsters, whose most important day has always been an afterthought, a shred of wrapping paper discarded in the dusty, dark corner of a warm, fire-lit, festive holiday chamber. [Read more →]
My six-year-old daughter and I walked the cold, bare lines of February evening concrete in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. We were seeking a favorite restaurant after spending the afternoon at the Franklin Institute’s BodyWorlds exhibit, trying to see in those brilliantly split cadavers what makes us work. [Read more →]
As we withstand the informational deluge from Penn State, we are faced with the possibility of another case of institutional child abuse, in which a whole group of people, a whole structure, contributed to the horrific abuse of children. It is clear that we are just not getting it. [Read more →]
In the overall scope of human history, we are a prosperous people, us Americans living right now. Yes, the rich are getting richer, the economy is looking bleak, and there are sit-ins and protests around the country — the world could always stand a few straightenings — but if you take a moment you realize we have more, and more access to, things than anybody else ever has. With apologies to the diehard pessimists and the political gain they hope their pessimism brings about, Americans have it pretty good. [Read more →]
Plagiarizing was once clear-cut. Those intrepid college students who drove to a paper mill (which back in the day was a real warehouse full of papers) and bought someone else’s paper — they knew they were cheaters. If someone wrote a paper for you, you knew you were a lazy cheater. Xeroxing a big chunk of an encyclopedia and putting it word for word into your paper: Obviously, cheating! [Read more →]
Youth coaches should get a start-up package when they begin coaching: A whistle, a handbook, a clipboard, maybe a golf shirt and a visor. They should also get a foldable chair — perhaps with a seat belt. [Read more →]
What is it like being a kid in the standardized testing labyrinth of American education? I wonder if those of us who aren’t kids ask that question enough. I also wonder if kids themselves understand their own feelings about being tested, understand that it isn’t an inevitable aspect of being educated. [Read more →]
