WHICH RAISES THE OBVIOUS QUESTION: WHILE THE OB/GYN HAS HER UNDER, CAN HE GIVE HER A POST-HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION TO DO THE DISHES, OR AT LEAST TO CLUCK LIKE A CHICKEN WHENEVER SHE HEARS A PHONE RING?

Hypnobirth is sweeping into delivery rooms across the country, as thousands of moms-to-be put themselves in such a calm state that they hardly notice the births of their babies. Hypnobirthing even has its own euphemisms - a contraction is a uterine surge or wave, pushing is birth breathing, and false labor is practice labor.

"When you hear 'hypno,' you think weird, hippy, earthy type stuff," said Kelly Yeiser, 31, of Ashville, N.C., who had her first baby last August using the technique. "But it's really more about meditation and getting yourself into a calm, relaxed state."

Yeah, that doesn't sound weird or hippy at all.

WE'RE PRETTY SURE THE FILTHY PEACENIKS ARE BEHIND THAT iPOD, TOO

The battle over cell phones in classrooms rages here this week, as New York City school safety agents have been confiscating scores of phones during random security screenings, sparking fierce complaints from both students and parents. Moms and dads consider the phones to be an essential life line for older kids who commute alone and regularly confirm their safety upon reaching school, exiting the subway, and arriving back at home. There's also, of course, the fear of kids being without a phone line in case of a school shooting, terrorist attack, or natural disaster. Every parent's worst nightmare is being separated from their kids during a major crisis, and this is why the city is going to lose this battle, and might as well give in sooner than later. They've got a rule on the books that is only spottily enforced to begin with, and by the time they construct a defense of how they choose where they enforce it, they'll have no support left.

In the Times today, some school officials complained that the bad outweighs the good with cell phones, such as illicit locker-room pictures, cheating on tests, or friends calling friends to join brawls. However, we didn't catch any administrators claiming that students are unduly disrupting teaching time with cell-phone use, or any students or parents arguing that schools would be unjustified in confiscating the phones of students who did disrupt a class in session. Some administrators did claim if weakly, that cell phones were unnecessary even as a lifeline, since schools could call parents in case of emergency, or allow kids to use school phones in a crisis. Fine - you run a middle school with 450 kids. A shooter breaks into the building. Who gets to use the office phone?

Taking a different, wackier approach to the issue is the right-wing New York Sun, which never passes up an opportunity to use today's public debates to bash yesterday's enemies. In a column on Tuesday, the dean of Jamaica High School argued that we wouldn't even be talking about cell phones in the schools if the country had only heeded the warnings of Justices Hugo Black and John Harlan thirty-odd years ago, when our schools were overrun with hippies daring to oppose the war in Vietnam by wearing black armbands to school, and the jurists dissented in Tinker v. Des Moines, refusing to accept that the armbands were protected speech:

Justice Hugo Black issued a prophetic dissent warning, "... I repeat that if the time has come when pupils of state-supported schools, kindergartens, grammar schools, or high schools, can defy and flout orders of school officials to keep their minds on their own schoolwork, it is the beginning of a new revolutionary era of permissiveness in this country fostered by the judiciary."

We've long since crossed that Rubicon. Justice Harlan joined Justice Black in opposing the expansion of these free speech rights of students. He observed that "The original idea of schools, which I do not believe is yet abandoned as worthless or out of date, was that children had not yet reached the point of experience and wisdom which enabled them to teach all of their elders. It may be that the Nation has outworn the old-fashioned slogan that 'children are to be seen not heard,' but one may, I hope, be permitted to harbor the thought that taxpayers send children to school on the premise that at their age they need to learn, not teach."

Unfortunately, Black and Harlan were on the losing side of the argument, and we are living with the consequences today in our schools. Don't expect any changes in the schools . . . until the wisdom of Black and Harlan once more dominate our sensibilities.

Black and Harlan were indeed prophetic, as we have now clearly skidded down that slippery slope from students protesting a war in schools to students, um, calling their parents.

April 28, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

SUE THE HIGH-CHAIR MAUNFACTURER? CHECK.
FIRE THE NANNY? CHECK.
GET PAINFULLY OBVIOUS ADVICE? CHECK.

Britney Spears' adventures in parenting continue. A few weeks after her son took a nasty tumble from a possibly defective high chair, she's fired the nanny who was watching him at the time. We don't begrudge her the firing - parenting is in large part about gut feelings, and if she wasn't feeling comfortable with the nanny, she was justified in letting her go. On the other hand, parenting also requires some common sense. A Britney "pal" told In Touch that:

Britney also reportedly hired a doctor to advise her on how to keep her tot safe. “The doctor advised her not to leave Preston on any high surfaces where he could roll off,” an insider told [In Touch], which also reports that Spears was so impressed with the sage advice that she wanted to hire the doctor full time, but he told her that it wasn’t necessary.

Come on, doc, go to work for Britney! What could possibly go wrong?

JEWS ON ICE (NOT A MEL BROOKS MOVIE)

Is there an Olympic curling medal (non-perm category) in Israel's future? Maybe, as North American investors put $15 million behind the country's first winter sports center with hopes of boosting the profile of winter sports in the Mediterranean nation.

April 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

THIS IS AS GOOD A SEGWAY AS ANY TO OUR LATEST NEWS: FD.COM WILL INTRODUCE A NEW CHARACTER LATER THIS SUMMER, BORN WITHIN THE AMA's PRESCRIBED WINDOW, AND TENTATIVELY NAMED SMALL FELLOW 2.0*

The Journal of the American Medical Association has determined that women seeking to maximize their chances of having healthy babies should space them at least 18 months apart, but no more than five years apart:

The analysis found that spacing babies too close together or too far apart raises the risk of complications such as premature births and low birth weight.

* [No, this is not a joke; We're having a third child in late August, and it will be a boy.]

MUMPS'S THE WORD    

This won't be news to our Midwestern readers, but the mumps is back in a big way in that region's college towns - Newsweek reports that 1,165 people are sickened with mumps nationwide now. Not to mention, whooping cough is making a comeback (we know of cases right here in the Northeast), and what always fascinates a public-health buff like ourselves is the connection to vaccination policy:

Once a childhood disease, the virus has now taken hold in university towns. That's partly because crowded dorms and cafeterias are breeding grounds for germs that are spread by sneezing and coughing. But there's also a factor unique to this generation of college students. In the late '80s, the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine was upgraded from one dose to two, and some of the last kids to get the less effective single-dose vaccine are in college now. Others haven't had any doses at all because some parents, fearing a purported link to autism, did not have their kids vaccinated. And even those who've had both doses aren't fully protected: the vaccine is 90, not 100, percent effective.

Your two takeaways from this:
1. There are consequences to hopping on the anti-vaccination bandwagon.
2. No need to panic for your own kids; they got the better vaccine.

April 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

REALLY? CAN WE GET TINY GIRL AN APPOINTMENT, SAY, NEXT TUESDAY?

If your unruly child is giving you too much trouble, you may want to pull out her tonsils and adenoids - whether she needs it or not. That should fix 'er right up.

WE REALLY, REALLY WANT TO WISH THIS GROUP LUCK AND SHOW THEM OUR SUPPORT. BUT THERE'S A PART OF US - A SMALL PART OF US - THAT HAS AN URGE TO THROW AN ERASER AT IT WHEN ITS BACK IS TURNED

The National Substitute Teachers Alliance will "promote dignity and respect for substitute teachers who provide educational continuity for our nation's students."

AND THE NOMINEES ARE . . .

If you're like us, you may not have realized that there are daytime Emmys, or if you did, you may not have known that one of the prizes is for Outstanding Children's Series. This year's nominees are:

Between the Lions (PBS) - The kids love it, and it successfully teaches pre-reading, but we can't get over the idea that it's an "Electric Company" knockoff.

Endurance: Tehachapi (NBC) - "Survivor" for kids. Thanks, that's all we need to hear.

Postcards From Buster (PBS ) - This will be the Hollywood choice for its (largely failed) attempt to show a child-rearing lesbian couple last year during its Vermont episode.

Strange Days At Blake Holsey High (NBC) - We DVRed it the other day, and will soon be filing suit with NBC/Universal for the restoration of the lost 22 minutes of our life.

Zoom (PBS) - The twenty-first century revivial of the popular 70s show created by WGBH in Boston.

The winner will be announced on April 28; our money is on Postcards From Buster, for its politics, and because it deserves credit for running against No Child Left Behind by trying to teach kids geography. (We've highly recommended its Web site in the past for its excellent geography activities; check it out.)

LOOK - UP IN THE SKY! IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE! IT'S - HEY, IS THAT THE NEW PONTIAC SOLSTICE?

Product placement is coming to comic books. Actually, it's returning, kind of. Those of us who grew up with Marvel comics remember how heroes were sometimes inserted into full-page ads for Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies. Today, it's the products being inserted into the heroes' stories. DC is introducing a new character, Rush, who, inevitably, rushes about town in his Pontiac Solstice. Meanwhile, Marvel and Nike have reached a deal to place the famous corporate swoosh in books like "The New X-Men." According to the Wall Street Journal, the comic companies retain creative control over where the corporate logos are placed, trusting that the creatives know how to reach the young adult males who make up the majority of the comics-reading population. We'll assume sure Nike is pleased with where Marvel placed their logo in the panel at left . . .

IF WE'RE NOT MISTAKEN, CHEWBACCA LEARNED HOW TO PLOT A COURSE THROUGH HYPERSPACE IN A BLACKBOARD-EQUIPPED CLASSROOM BACK ON KASHYYYK

This month in Edutopia, the educational magazine brought to you by George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, offers a witty eulogy for the chalkboard:

Slate Chalkboard -- Old Friend, Recent Foe -- Dies in Obscurity

 

The chalkboard, an education revolutionary and an icon of American learning culture, died recently after a long decline. It was (approximately) 205 years old. . .

[T]he chalkboard is believed to be the brainchild of a Scottish geography teacher who showed up at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in the early 1800s. . . . Once the dutiful intimate of millions of teachers, and the object of thrall for many more millions of children, the chalkboard ended its life accused of dullness and uselessness and more. . . . the upstart, porcelain-coated glossy whiteboard wooed educators with flashy color markers, quiet efficiency, and a dust-free relationship, but even the whiteboard has been steamrolled by the next big thing in classroom communication: the giant computer-screen writing surface, which offers more -- printing capability, memory, flashing lights -- than the chalkboard ever dreamed possible.

April 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

THIS IS THE ONE SUMMER MOVIE SMALL FELLOW DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE

Bob Saget is coming out with what sounds like a vicious, R-rated spoof of  one of Fellow's favorite films, "March of the Penguins," this summer. Gilbert Gottfried, Norm Macdonald, and Jon Lovitz, among others, will lend their voice talents, and Samuel L. Jackson will usurp Morgan Freeman's role as narrator, for "Farce of the Penguins," so we can expect a lot of voiceover about penguins "getting busy":

Saget wrote the script. . . that transforms the docu's depiction of penguin survival and mating rituals into the story of one bird's search for love while on a 70-mile trek with hedonistic buddies obsessed with getting laid.

IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU'D BE RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME NOW

Park Slope has lovely brownstones, gracious sidewalks, splendid parks, and a handful of the nuttiest parents in town, if you're to go by this recent exchange, captured by Gawker.com. In a nutshell: A child's winter hat was found. A parent, "Helene," posted a note to a neighborhood forum that she had found a "boy's hat" ("adorable navy blue or maybe black fleece hat with triangles jutting out ofit of all different colors") and was happy to return it. And then, hilarity ensued, kicked off by "Lisa":

Helene, I’m sorry, I know that you are just trying to be helpful, but what makes this a “boy’s hat”? Did you see the boy himself loose [sic] it? Or does the hat in question possess an unmistakable scent of testosterone?  It’s innocent little comments like this that I find the most hurtful…  What does this comment imply about the girl who chooses to wear just such a hat (or something like it)? Is she doing something wrong? Is there something wrong with her?

- THE WORD IS MESHUGANAH.

- MESHUGANAH. MESHUGANAH. CAN I HAVE A DEFINITION?

Apparently, there's something new to blame the Jews for: Tripping up your kid in the national spelling bee. It seems that during the past few bees, words like Lubavitcher, minyan, and ulpan have sent finalists home crying. The Jewish Week has the schadenfreude.

April 18, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

FREE KERMIT! FREE KERMIT!

We and the kids have been working our way through the delightful four-DVD set of "The Muppet Show," Season One. This morning, we watched one of the high points of the series, the episode featuring Ethel Merman. (She sings "Anything You Can Do" with Miss Piggy and comforts Fozzy with "There's No Business Like Show Business" after his tiny agent fails to win him a big raise from tightwad Kermit.) At one point, as Merman and Kermit sing a duet of "You're the Top," we hear this bit of banter:

Merman: "You're a Bendel bonnet, A Shakespeare's sonnet, You're Mickey Mouse!"
Kermit: "Is that supposed to be a compliment?"
Merman: "Hey, you called me a Coliseum."

It was just a harmless throwaway line at the time, an in-joke for show-biz-savvy parents of the 1970s, but this dis of Mickey must have deeply offended the mouse's entourage at Disney, who have a memory for these things like Dumbo. And today, sadly, Disney's minions are having their revenge: As owners of the "Muppet Show" Muppets,* they're debasing Kermit's image by trotting him out for risque pizza commercials with Jessica Simpson, and, for all we know, hiring out Miss Piggy to strip at college lacrosse parties.

-----------------------------------------------------

* -- who, as we all know, are a different corporate entity than the "Sesame Street" Muppets, which is why you only see Kermit on Sesame Street in old reruns.

BUT WHAT THIS LADY DID TO PISS OFF DISNEY, WE HAVE NO IDEA

A 49-year-old woman died on one of Disney World's most popular rides, the $100-million "Mission in Space," earlier this week. She was the second person to die on the ride in the past year, and park officials insist it was her own damn fault:

Disney told state officials that the woman, who was not identified, may have had high blood pressure and other unspecified health problems. “Walt Disney World engineers and ride system experts completed a thorough inspection of the attraction overnight and found it to be operating properly,” the theme park said Thursday in announcing the reopening of the ride.

FINALLY, THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION, WHAT DO THE WIGGLES AND WILMER VALDERRAMA HAVE IN COMMON? (BESIDES THAT THEY'VE ALL SLEPT WITH LINDSAY LOHAN)

Actually, the "That 70s Show" star and the tot-pop supergroup both appeared on "The Jimmy Kimmel Show" the other night. Kimmel filled his studio with moms and preschoolers for the musical segment, which closed the show. The Wiggles, on the eve of a national tour, sang two of their classics, including "Can You Point Your Fingers and Do the Twist?" (Turns out, no, we can't.) And we thought it was a lovely moment for late-night TV: Why NOT book the Wiggles, after all? But true to the spirit of the Kimmel show, which books Maxim cover girls far more often than kid-music performers, the camera repeatedly swooped over to check out the hottest blond mom in the crowd as she boogied to the songs. As for the performance itself, Wiggle Greg has definitely put on a few pounds since the "Yummy Yummy" tour, and that seems to limit his mobility a bit.

We taped the Kimmel segment and played it for Tiny when she woke this morning. All went well - she was thrilled by the surprise and even got up and danced - until Kimmel made a classic non-parent mistake during his signoff. He told the kids gathered in the studio that the Wiggles would sing another song just for them after the cameras went off. That naturally led to a lengthy Tiny Girl tantrum about why she couldn't see "the one more song."

In other Wiggles news, the New York Times magazine gave them the profile treatment a couple of weeks ago, and concluded that they weren't such bad mates after all:

The success of the past four years does sit atop 11 years of hard-won, nonapplesauce-assisted Wiggles fame. . . . the Wiggles began in the ashes of a Sydney party band known as the Cockroaches. During the late 1980's. . . the band toured Australia, recording two albums of catchy roots rock that made Australia's Top 10. . . When the band fell apart, Anthony enrolled at the Institute of Early Childhood at Macquarie University in New South Wales to become a schoolteacher. One of only half a dozen men in a program with roughly 500 women, Field soon met two of the other men: Cook and Page, both former musicians. . . . [Page] said, ''I thought as a teacher I'll just write songs for kids and sing them.''

On the other hand, Wiggles Inc. also fills superstore shelves with $1 billion-plus worth of disposable crap placed right at a preschooler's eye level:

"If it's a toy, we'll try and keep it so that it fosters the imagination or language development,'' [Anthony] said. . . . "We have little guitars that come out that encourage children to believe that they're making music.''

The Times pressed Anthony on the question of why it wouldn't encourage imagination more if the Wiggles toy guitar didn't have a full set of sound chips and other add-ons:

"'Well, the guitar would probably be better for a child if it were a foam cutout as opposed to all the musical things,'' Field agreed. ''A kid could have just as much fun without those buttons. But the kid will have just as much fun with the buttons. So you could put out a foam one, and you could put one out that has the gizmos. The toy manufacturers probably wouldn't put out one without all the gizmos, because you're up against Elmo the doll.''

''I got my daughter a Dorothy [the Dinosaur] on her shirt,'' [Anthony] said, referring to the Wiggles character. ''She won't go to bed without Dorothy. She believes Dorothy's with her when she's got that on. She's using imagination.''

Or maybe his daughter just feels secure sleeping with Dorothy because she knows that thanks to the gardening dinosaur and her other Wiggles friends, she'll never have to earn an honest dollar in her life. But that's just a theory.

APPARENTLY, SHE TOOK THE "SEX" OUT OF "SEXTUPLETS"

By now, you've probably heard about the Midwest couple who scammed their community by claiming to be giving birth to sextuplets (the Today Show offers video of the scam). It was a creative plan, and it just might have worked, except for those nosy neighbors who called habeas corpus on them and asked to actually see the children whose college funds they had just invested in. Lousy meddlers.

Today's twist on the story is that the wife who perpetrated the scam says that her husband had no idea that she wasn't pregnant until the very end. "Sarah Everson refused to say how she kept Kris Everson from finding out," AP reports. Oh, those two are so headed for the Springer show.

April 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

AND NOW WE TURN TO SMALL FELLOW FOR A TWO-MINUTE REBUTTAL

Nick Schulz at Slate ignored other leading candidates - like, say, the guillotine or Jagermeister - to name the automatic toilet the worst invention in history. When we told this to Fellow, he said,  "What are you TALKING about? Automatic toilets -- ARE GREAT! Are you a CRAZY DOG?"

Actually, Fellow loves anything automatic that he finds in the bathroom, but has a special fondness for the automatic paper towel dispenser. After he wipes his own hands, he always makes sure to wave his hand across the electronic eye so a new towel will come out. "That's for the next person," our civic-minded friend assures us.

LET OUR SEDER GO

We like our seders long and boring, but apparently other people seek a condensed version. On Slate today, Michael Rubiner offers "The Two-Minute Haggadah" to families who really want to wrap things up in time for tonight's new episode of  "Lost." Here's an excerpt:

The four kinds of children and how to deal with them:
Wise child—explain Passover.
Simple child—explain Passover slowly.
Silent child—explain Passover loudly.
Wicked child—browbeat in front of the relatives.

Alternatively, for those of you looking to add to your seder instead of subtracting from it, you could do worse than to insert a few selections from Eric Kimmel''s "Wonders and Miracles: A Passover Companion" between your four cups. We found a happy poem about the afikomen that Fellow read aloud last night.

Speaking of children: We hid some matzoh. Whoever finds it gets five bucks.

THE EXODUS: POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

One of the most troubling aspects of the Passover story is the 10 plagues. We drop a bit of wine on our plate after reciting each one, as a way of showing our empathy for the suffering of the Egyptians, but at the same time, many families grasp the plagues as a "fun" entry to the story for children. Sure, plagues bags with collapsing cattle, dark sunglasses, and food-coloring blood may make little kids happy (and keep them occupied as you muddle through the "boring parts"), but we imagine that one of the key signposts of maturity in a child is the year he or she questions why Egyptian "civilians" needed to suffer so much. To speed along that process, or just to bring your seder to a screeching halt, help yourself to this poem Radosh posted today.

April 12, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

BOMBSHELL NEWS ON MANHATTAN GIFTED AND TALENTED PROGRAMS

For weeks, the New York Times has been reporting on the controversy swirling around the process of assigning New York City students to public-school gifted and talented (G&T) kindergarten programs, especially on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where parents have been outraged by changes to the admissions system that seem at best to ignore some basic practicalities of parenting (like the benefits of having siblings in the same school) and at worst to stack the deck against certain kids (white or minority, depending on your perspective - and, of course, on whether you've been able to get your kid into a G&T under the system or not).

We'll go right to the full disclosure before relating Friday's stunning news - We are Upper West Side parents, and a year ago, when Small Fellow was applying to gifted public kindergarten programs, the process worked against him - at the time, the system  favored siblings of students already in the programs, and gave preference to new students applying to gifted programs in their assigned neighborhood (or "catchment") school. Fellow is an oldest child, and our catchment site, while a great school, has no gifted program - in fact, its parents association and administration actively oppose such programs.* So - Fellow ended up being accepted a year ago to a gifted program 25 blocks away, an offer which we turned down because it was logistically impractical and the program was not as well established as some other neighborhood G&Ts.

This year, however, the district's gifted program no longer gives preference to siblings, or to students applying to their catchment schools. This has outraged many parents trying to get younger siblings into their older brothers' or sisters' schools. On the other hand, the new system favors kids like Fellow: It simply ranks applicants based on a combination of their Stanford-Binet (S-B) scores (an objective test administered by outside psychologists) and the city's own Gifted Rating Scales, or GRS  (a subjective test filled out by teachers - more on this below). Students are then, theoretically, assigned to G&T programs based on that rank. We reapplied to the G&T program this year, and Fellow's high S-B score from a year ago helped get him assigned to the district's second-most-popular program as a first-grader for the fall. And we have accepted that offer.

But as readers of Joyce Purnick's late** Times column are well aware, many more Upper West Side parents have been attacking the altered system with a fury. But while Purnick covered the story as an embed with the wealthy and leisurely nursery-school moms who gather each morning at the Columbus Bakery (see her columns here and here***), one of her rivals on the education beat seems to have actually done some reporting: If we're to believe Andrew Wolf's Friday column in the New York Sun, the Dept. of Education's District 3 (Upper West Side) staff had ordered some - and some seems to be the key here - nursery schools this season to artificially deflate their students' GRS scores (which are subjective evaluations, you'll remember), or take the chance that all of their students might fail to land preferred gifted placements.

Shockingly, Ilana Ruskay-Kidd, newly-installed director of the JCC nursery school on the UWS, went public with Wolf. (More disclosure: We're JCC parents.) Here's his report:

Parents on Manhattan's West Side. . . claim to have evidence that the system has been "rigged" to create "equity" for others at the expense of opportunities for their children. They say it is likely that they will turn to the courts for relief.

Wolf restates the complaints we've been hearing all year: Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein don't support gifted programs, they've added no new G&T seats on the UWS, etc.

As for the GRS, Ruskay-Kidd:

charged that her teachers were warned by a Department of Education official not to give children ratings that were "too high," lest this be perceived as unduly helpful to "entitled" students. The teachers, Ms. Ruskay-Kidd said, were cautioned that if the school scored their students too generously, there would be negative consequences.

Ruskay-Kidd claims the "troubling" orders came from Nicole Kram Rosen, who coordinates the district's G&T programs, and that she followed them. But Wolf later discovered that "teachers at some other schools were given no such admonitions."

Although the Dept. of Ed denied it to Wolf, many parents suspect the city issued its orders to Ruskay-Kidd and others to appease "a radical organizing group, the Center for Immigrant Families, which has been critical of previous admission policies as discriminatory and racist." The department says it added the GRS this year because the federal civil-rights officials demand that cities use multiple criteria to determine gifted placements, not just the S-B IQ test.

We have spoken to Nicole Kram Rosen many times over the past two years as we have gone through the process of G&T applications, and we have never felt that she was anything but above board. She did recently tell us that the entire G&T evaluation system will be revamped (again) next year, as the city will introduce its own home-made admissions test for gifted programs.

But if Wolf's charges are true and the city is bullying top nursery programs to artificially unleaven their kids' test scores, it's a truly shocking charge that throws into question not only the fairness of the city program, but of the nursery programs. Many nursery schools insist that they do not promote one child above another during the "exmissions" process, but if they're knuckling under to the Dept. of Ed and grading on a curve, then how are they deciding which kids to put forward or not? These are the problems inherent in a subjective test, of course. We know, for example, that to evaluate "creativity" on the GRS, teachers are asked to judge kids based on whether art projects are their first choice as an activity - but that's no real measure of artistic aptitude. Etc., etc.

And much as parents outside Manhattan chide all of us for being too neurotic about these things, we think the parents Wolf spoke to are probably correct to consider pursuing this matter in court. He reports that they plan to:

subpoena teachers at preschools throughout the district to testify about the instructions they received. They also will demand results of both the GRS and the objective testing, looking to identify a potential wide variance and correlate that by race, geography, and economic background to prove discrimination against their children.

Unless we've missed it, the Times has not yet picked up on this story. We'll let you know more as we learn more.

---------
* However, the school has come under fire itself for the way it admits students from outside its catchment each year, which is a story for another time.

** Just this morning, Purnick informed New Yorkers that we won't have her to kick around any more.

*** In Purnick's defense, she's also written columns from the other side of the controversy, in which she finds chancellor Joel Klein to be unassailable because, well, he really seems to care. We'll sure miss her . . .

April 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

THE GOVERNMENT SAYS WE CAN DECLINE TO HAVE OUR CHILDREN VACCINATED. WE CAN'T. WE'RE KOSHER, AND WE ANSWER TO . . . A HIGHER AUTHORITY

We encourage you to take a look at the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of United Synagogue Review, published by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Contained within a lengthy recap of the group's Biennial Convention (scroll down to the sixth item - it's worth it) was a rare look inside the usually closed sessions of its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards:

The shailah, or question, the committee considered had been proposed by United Synagogue's Rabbi Robert Abramson and Dr. Elaine Cohen, respectively the director and associate director of our education department. They had been asked by a Solomon Schechter day school principal whether the school was obligated to accept children who were unvaccinated. The children's parents said their decision to leave their children unvaccinated was a "religious" one . . . .

The panel considered whether it is acceptable to act on the assumption that because everyone around your child is vaccinated your child is in no risk of catching a disease and therefore need not be vaccinated. . . . As they deliberated, the committee took into consideration authoritative sources ranging from the Talmud (in its discussion of when a roof must be surrounded by a parapet) to the latest medical studies.

The committee unanimously decided . . . . that if a child does not have a serious medical condition that would make being vaccinated risky, he or she must be vaccinated to become a Schechter student. The unanimity is unusual; there is often a split in opinion, and if they are backed strongly enough two opposing opinions can both be judged valid.

Longtime readers of this site know how strongly we feel about the anticommunal decision too many parents make to reject standard vaccinations for their children. It's encouraging to find that the rabbinate stands with us on this one.

April 7, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS

GENTLEMEN, START YOUR LATE-TERM ABORTION PROTESTS

A new study shows that premature babies born as early as 24 weeks after conception can in fact feel pain.

SCARIEST TOY RECALL WARNING - EVER!

Giving lie to the myth that there is no publicity like good publicity, here's the latest news on Rose Art's popular Magnetix building sets:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is recalling 3.8 million Magnetix toy kits. The toys are sets of plastic building pieces and rods, which can be linked together using magnets. Last November, 18-month-old Kenny Sweet died after swallowing magnets from a Magnetix set that had been given to his 10-year-old brother. The magnets were so powerful, they squeezed and twisted parts of his intestines together.

Someone gave Fellow a small Magnetix play set at his 5th birthday party, but it has never become a top-tier choice for play time. And now it's gone. While we are usually loath to reacting hastily to toy recall warnings, this one is plenty gruesome enough for us:

The commission says it has received reports of 34 incidents nationwide involving the small magnets included in the Magnetix magnetic building sets, including the X-treme Combo, Micro and Extreme versions. The magnets are fitted inside the plastic building pieces and rods but can fall out, posing a danger to children who inhale or swallow them. Should a child ingest more than one of the magnets, the magnets can clump together and pierce or block the intestines.

SNAKES . . . WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES?

You've heard about the issues with Ritalin - it's overprescribed, it can lead to heart problems, etc. And now there's this: In between 2 to 5 out of 100 young patients, the drug causes "serious psychotic episodes like hallucinations," which typically star snakes, insects, and/or worms. Given that there are 2.5 million (2.5 million?!) kids on Ritalin in the U.S., that's in the neighborhood of 87, 500 kids seeing snakes. We hope having the boys sit still at the dinner table is worth it.

EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A RAINBOW-COLORED SHEEP, WE'RE TOTALLY BEHIND THIS IDEA

Nursery schools in Oxfordshire, England, have encouraged children to change the lyrics to the classic nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," to "Baa, Baa, Rainbow Sheep." In reality, the schools (unconvincingly) claim, the shift is not (entirely) a bow to political correctness - as commentators worldwide have (correctly) complained. It's more a pedagogic shift toward encouraging children to:

sing a variety of descriptive words so that the rhyme becomes an active one. The children will be asked to sing "sad," "blue," "pink," "black," "white," "happy," "hopping," and "bouncing" when describing the sheep to encourage the children to extend their vocabulary and use up energy.

Which is all lovely, except that this is no mere nonsense rhyme. As with many of the great British nursery rhymes, there's a historic reason the verse calls for a black sheep:

The nursery rhyme dates back to the mid-1700s and is related to a tax imposed on wool by the king, which divided receipts equally between the local lord (the master), the church (the dame), and the farmer (the little boy). Black wool was apparently taxed at a lower rate than white wool.

OK, CTW, BUT IF THE TELETUBBIES JUMPED OFF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE, DOES THAT MEAN YOU'D DO IT TOO?

As we mentioned here several months back, the Children's Television Workshop has decided to go into the business of marketing videos for infants and toddlers - expert recommendations that no kids under 2 should watch any TV be damned. CTW enters an already crowded market of videos for tots, including the insipid Baby Einstein series, and the insipidder Teletubbies - both of which, one should note, rely heavily on bright colors and sounds bordering on the psychedelic to get the untrained youngest eyeballs fixed on the screen, a strategy with which we've always been uncomfortable.

But CTW claims their series, featuring Baby Elmo and Baby Big Bird (licensed toys and dolls coming soon to a nursery near you, like it or not) will in fact have value for kids - and for their parents and caretakers, who the company claims are the real audience for the new venture. Their argument has won them the imprimatur of respected child-development think tank Zero to Three: "These are the absolute antithesis of park-your-baby-in-front-of-the-TV kind of videos," Yale researcher Kyle Pruett (of Zero to Three) told AP. "They are thoughtful, informative - it's not a corporate campaign trying to draw kids into TV life." FD respects Pruett greatly and we'll take his word for it - but we won't buy the videos.

April 7, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Subscribe to RSS