Driving in to my school, where I’m preparing to teach 11th graders this year, I heard this story on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725196) about a new device with which parents can track their teenagers’ whereabouts. Apparently, a GPS system can be installed in a child’s car — with or without their knowledge — that has the ability to e-mail parents when the kid is driving too fast or going where he or she should not go. With this device, a parent might even be able to flash the car’s headlights or honk the horn as a warning!
While I’m aware of the trouble teenagers can get into, I’m not sure that this is the best method with which to help them because it communicates a fairly complete lack of trust of the child. Having talked to my students, they seem to prefer, though still don’t exactly love, calling in to Mom or Dad to tell them what they’re up to. Also, if the issue of driving safely is a big enough problem, it seems best to take away the car privilege entirely until real faith can be restored between the parent and child.
George Mason University, a high-profile public institution in Virginia, announced that it will not require an SAT or ACT score for a student with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. This decision comes after the university’s three-year review, which concluded standardized test scores did not clearly indicate college success for a student who achieved at the upper level of his/her high-school class.
This decision, as reported by the Associate Press, (http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8JMC2BG2.html), follows those of dozens of other private universities and a number of public schools that have chosen to rely more heavily on grade records and letters of recommendation, particularly for students in the top 20 percent of their respective high schools.
While the College Board seems to have worked hard to make the SAT fair and well-suited to its task of assessing student potential, it continues to receive close scrutiny. One of the most promintent criticisms of the test is that it is biased against minority groups. However, George Mason University found the test a poor indicator of college success for all races.
As a high-school teacher, former SAT tutor, and veteran standardized test taker, I have long wondered how effective the test is in determining university success. In many ways, the SAT is an island of academia, one that requires rules and strategies of test-taking that fall outside so much of what students learn in classrooms. It may very well help the kid who can perform better on the test than in classes and it may also reveal the weaknesses of some students who get great grades at lower-performing schools. Still, it generates a tremendous amount of anxiety in all students who take it and sucks up way too many hours of time with which kids should be working on their classwork or just rounding out their busy lives with leisure or other enrichment activities.
Having graded countless papers and tests, I know the difficulties of assessing good academic work. But I also know that one kind of test cannot tell me enough about the overall student picture, which is why I appreciate George Mason University’s decision. That school, and other colleges which question the test, is shifting the emphasis back to the individual student, where it belongs.
While it definitely earns the ‘R’ rating with plenty of raw language and lifestyle issues that may make some adults uncomfortable, Little Miss Sunshine is the funniest, freshest film I’ve seen in a good long time. I belly-laughed throughout the movie, particularly in the outrageous climactic scene. And yet, without ever getting syrupy, the story shows how families connect, despite radical personality differences.
Little Miss Sunshine (http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/littlemisssunshine/) is a ‘road comedy’ in which a little girl named Olive (played without affectation by Abigail Breslin) wins a spot in a beauty contest and heads to California with her eccentric family. Generations collide with a grandpa (the brilliant Alan Arkin) who gives questionable advice to Olive’s silent and surly teenage brother (Paul Dano). Despite the efforts of a tirelessly open-minded mom (Toni Collette), things get even more tense between her her wannabe motivational guru husband (Greg Kinnear), who can’t get along with her brother, a suicidal, gay Proust professor (Steve Carrell, showing remarkable range and wry humor).
Written by Michael Arndt and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the film gained raves at the Sundance Film Festival and has ridden a VW-bus of buzz into a handful of theaters. Enhanced by a cool soundtrack, the movie has the chance to open wider and become a sleeper hit well worth a grown-up night out. If anything, it tells parents that, if you can laugh at the chaos, you can still have a loving family.
The August cover of Babytalk magazine (which can be viewed at http://www.parenting.com/parenting/babytalk/channel) shows a close-up of a baby nursing at a breast. There’s no nipple showing and the breast is airbrushed and only partially represented. But the depiction is clear enough, particularly with the headline “Why don’t women nurse longer?”
Let me start by saying that I strongly support breastfeeding. Numerous studies prove the health benefits, attachment advantages, and (dare I say it) cost efficiency of feeding a child breastmilk. So, for those women who are physically capable of breastfeeding, I think it should be tried, at the very least. For the men in these women’s lives, it must be supported, even though it postpones a man’s claim to his wife’s mammary glands for most of the time she breastfeeds (tough it out guys).
My three children were breastfed for more than a year per each kid. My wife nursed our children at home, in bathrooms, at her office, and in the car. She rarely fed our children in public, but when she did so, it was under heavy cover because she felt judged by others — especially when they made comments like “how disgusting” and “I don’t need to see that.”
With this Babytalk cover, the editors and publishers of the magazine take the debate high-profile. This is not the first time a publication has done this, but the impact of this doctor’s office mainstay is significant as is the image on the front. I think it looks beautiful because it depicts a natural, nurturing moment, but others feel it has the effect of ’shoving the issue in people’s faces.’
I believe our American culture needs to get past its issues with breastfeeding, especially in the first two years or so of a child’s life when the health benefits are so clear. We shouldn’t shame women who want to breastfeed as much as we shouldn’t pressure those who do not, for whatever their reason. But I don’t see what’s wrong with promoting breastfeeding’s benefits with pretty pictures or powerful words.
