Reading comprehension is not a skill. An excellent "we've put the cart before the horse in education" essay. Critical thinking skills are not even an issue if the child doesn't know the vocabulary. Another instance in which "drill and kill" is actually life-giving.
Crystal Widjaja. "You need to be unemployed to keep up with AI, so that you don't fall behind and become unemployed."
Kids are safer than ever. We complain that the overemphasis on safety has made children tentative and vulnerable. Bethany checks out what we have gained for this.
3 comments:
While this does not refute bsking's general point that childhood is safer when measured by absolute number of deaths from various accidental causes, I think attributing the reductions to specific parental action might be more tenuous. As she notes somewhat tangentially, there has been a decline in deaths among the adult population from those causes as well. The decline in fire deaths for under 20s since 1980 is pretty much identical in slope to the decline for everyone over 20. So maybe it isn't so much that tweens aren't baking when their parents aren't around but that adults (with or without kids) aren't as likely to fall asleep in a recliner covered in highly flammable material with a lit cigarette in hand. Also, when looking at absolute numbers of deaths, the percent of the population that is under 20 has dropped sharply since 1980. That was about the last year any of the Boom generation were under 21, and just about a third of the US population was still under 20. It's now about 1 in 4 and I believe still dropping.
The article about reading comprehension puts me in mind of a funny Fran Liebowitz I read in 1978 and had completely forgotten: our heroine finds herself at a dreary party. "I occupy myself almost entirely with the art director—drawn to him largely because he knows the most words."
Loved the reading comprehension essay.
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