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Archives
- June, 2007
Organic Industry Shoots Itself in the Foot – June
22, 2007
There is a huge trend afoot to “eat local” – with individuals
computing their “food miles” and embarking on
100-Mile Diet challenges, and, as I wrote in an
article for the July/August issue of Natural Life, countries like Sweden
and the U.K. creating standards and even labels for climate-friendly
foods. For instance the U.K.’s largest organic certification agency, the Soil Association, says it
is considering refusing to certify produce that has been imported by
air.
Not only is locally grown food fresher and tastier,
it lowers the environmental impact of transportation, supports small
farmers and encourages a sense of community. Not all locally grown food
is organic, of course, but in the best of both worlds, it would be. In
the same issue of Natural Life, we report on new Nielsen survey results showing that in
spite of huge growth in the Canadian organic industry, consumption
outpaces production.
So then why am I reading in my local media that
organic growers across Canada are busy filling out applications for “Canada Organic”
certification so their products can be exported to supermarkets in France
and Japan? It looks like Europe is outpacing North America on the food front, in
the same way they are years ahead of us in terms of reduced packaging,
cradle-to-grave stewardship of consumer products and renewable energy
production.
Posted: 2007/06/22
3:49 PM
Not the Great Equalizer – June 20, 2007
As someone at the progressive end of the political spectrum, I often
find people to be confused about my support of homeschooling/unschooling.
Public education, they say, is the great democratic equalizer, providing
economically disadvantaged students with opportunities to overcome their
backgrounds. Hogwash, I say…and wrote at length in Challenging
Assumptions in Education about this fallacy. And now here are some new
statistics to illustrate that.
Students in public high schools whose parents have little
education and low income are more likely to choose courses that limit
their career options and earning potential, say University
of Alberta sociology professor Harvey Krahn and education policy professor Alison
Taylor in a Statistics Canada
study released yesterday. On the other hand, young people from affluent,
educated families are more likely to be enrolled in courses that keep
their post-secondary options open.
The researchers examined the controversial practice
of “streaming” grade 10 students into different levels of courses in
the so-called “core subjects” of English, science and math. The idea
– which seems to go in and out of style (it was “in” under another
name when I went to high school 40 years ago and is now back under
another guise) – is to allow students with different abilities to take
different courses. The result, according to Krahn, is that if students
from disadvantaged homes have the ability to do well in advanced
courses, various factors steer them away – including lack of mentors
and lowered expectations by teachers.
Those who cling to such lofty-sounding defenses of schooling will need to come up with better reasons for warehousing students. Or
here’s an idea: Maybe they could stop tinkering with our antiquated public education system long enough to admit that it
doesn’t work and to find some more modern alternatives that do work.
Posted: 2007/06/20
12:29 PM
Things
Can Be More Fun – June 19. 2007
We have had some good response to the articles in Life Learning about
spontaneous play…some from adults wondering why they find it so
difficult to have fun, let alone to create an environment for their kids
to do so. I realized a few years back that I had forgotten how to play
– or, perhaps more realistically, that my upbringing had left me
unsure if it was allowed – so now I make a point of having fun on a
regular basis. One of the people who inspires me in that pursuit (aside
from my very helpful youngest daughter) is
a guy named Bernie DeKoven.
A
couple of years ago, we published an
article by Bernie in Natural Life about his concept of Junkyard Sports.
His book of the same name (Human Kinetics Publishers, 2004) describes
this rather radical concept, which sounds a lot like the way people used
to have fun before it became controlled, institutionalized and
commercialized: “Personal involvement, making it up as you go along,
recycled materials instead of expensive equipment, active participation
by a diverse community, physical and psychological safety, creativity and, most of all, the opportunity to create and share fun.”
Bernie has been working hard on his ideas about
play for over 40 years, during careers in theater, education, game
design and group facilitation. Among his many accomplishments, including
a Master’s degree in theater and the design of award-winning games for Children’s Television
Workshop and others, is the establishment of The Games Preserve, a
retreat center where teachers, therapists and recreators can conduct
in-depth investigations of games and play. In his book The Well Played
Game (Writers Club Press, 2002), he voiced a philosophy of “healthy
competition” that formed the core teachings of the New Games
Foundation. As co-director of the foundation, he has developed
internationally successful programs in facilitating collaborative games,
community events and business meetings.
Bernie emailed me the other day to say that he is
using his Junkyard Sports website to create a community of fun seekers who can submit their own
junkyard sports games, or discuss the ones already posted on the site.
It’s worth a visit. One of the postings was a link to the very cool Toys from Trash website,
which is the creation of a teacher, physicist and toymaker named Arvin
Gupta who works in a children’s science center in the city of Pune,
India. Gupta says, “The best thing a child can do with a toy is to break
it.” I’m sure Bernie would agree…as long as the pieces were
recycled into something more fun!
Posted: 2007/06/19
2:27 PM
Innate Math Ability – June 11, 2007
Researchers at the University of Nottingham and Harvard have just
“discovered” that young children are able to solve approximate
mathematical problems involving large numbers without having been taught
symbolic arithmetic.
The study, published in the journal Nature on May 30 and undertaken at Harvard University, suggests that children do not
need to master either the logic of place value or the addition table in
order to perform approximate addition and subtraction. That means they
have an innate number sense by which they easily understand relative
concepts like “more” and “less” and are, in fact, interested in
and fascinated by such relationships. Before, that is, they have been
forced to pass tests full of addition and subtraction questions.
The researchers suggest that children’s
difficulty with learning “school arithmetic” may stem from the need
to produce an exact number when solving problems before they’ve had
enough experience just playing around with and thinking about numbers.
Gee, they could have just asked some kids who haven’t been exposed to
“school arithmetic”!
Posted: 2007/06/11
4:55 PM
A Brilliant Idea – June 4, 2007
I recently stumbled across a fascinating book called What is Your
Dangerous Idea? (HarperCollins, 2007) Edited by John Brockman, it is a
collection of short essays written by scientists and first posted on the
website The Edge. Some of
the ideas are breathtaking and many of them are daring. One, in
particular, caught my eye. Roger Schank is a cognitive psychologist and
computer scientist, and currently holds the title of Chief Learning
Officer at Trump University. He founded and was director of
Northwestern University's prestigious Institute for the Learning Sciences, and before that was
the director of the Yale University Artificial Intelligence Project. He
is also the author of Coloring Outside the Lines (HarperCollins,
2001,) which bothered me because of his arrogant writing style. Anyway,
his supposedly dangerous idea is entitled
“No More Teacher’s Dirty Looks.” Yup, he says, schools should
simply cease to exist. “The Government needs to get out of the
education business and stop thinking it knows what children should know
and then testing them constantly to see if they regurgitate whatever they
have just been spoon fed,” he writes. “Schools need to be replaced by
safe places where children can go to learn how to do things that they are
interested in learning how to do. Their interests should guide their
learning. The government’s role should be to create places that are
attractive to children and would cause them to want to go there.”
Obviously, this isn’t an original idea (why do so many guys seem to
need think they invented what they just discovered?), but it is surprising to see it
expressed by someone with heavy-duty credentials in and connections to the mainstream academic and capitalist worlds. I
wonder if any of the Fortune 500 companies and governments with whom he
consults will be listening.
Posted: 2007/06/04
12:44 PM
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