Category Archives: Society

The 6 killer apps of prosperity – 2011 TED Talk

The world is constantly changing, only now it’s changing ever more rapidly. This 21 minute talk can give you an idea as to how you, your children and grandchildren may be affected. Here’s a summary from the TED Talk page:

“Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture — call them the 6 killer apps — that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable.  (My underlining)

History is a curious thing, and Niall Ferguson investigates not only what happened but why. (Hint: Politics and money explain a lot.)”

View the talk here.

This talk has been viewed 993,860 times.

Financial Education Paradox?

Great little article by economist David Laibson delves into, “Most Americans know they should save for retirement and pay off their debts. Yet they often don’t do those things. Why?”

And why it’s so difficult to consider and create effective “Financial Eduction” curricula and classes – and that’s frustrating because “finances” is such an integral part of everyone’s real-world experience!

His last couple of paragraphs, I believe, speaks volumes about what an effective education looks like:

What does this tell us about the best way to teach financial education? 

What this means is that you should get the financial education you need when you need it. If you enroll in a 401(k) plan today, you should take the 45-minute educational seminar on it during the enrollment process. The time to learn about credit cards, borrowing and compound interest is when students are 18 and starting adult life.

The human memory is so fallible. If I tell you something and expect you to remember it five years from now, that’s a big ask. So I would focus on teaching skills that translate immediately to practical application.

(My underlining – teach around ideas and stuff in a real-world-ish application context. Tie math and English and science into such things as, how do your folks buy and pay for your clothes, where in the world do they come from, what do your parents/guardians do for a living, how long do they have to work to pay for a pair of new shoes, why was a textbook written, by whom, how much does it cost, how much is that for the whole class, where does that money come from, …)

Read the whole article here.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

From a letter to Benjamin Franklin from Mr. Benjamin Vaughn, January 31, 1783

“School and other education constantly proceed upon false principles, and show a clumsy apparatus pointed at a false mark; but your apparatus is simple, and the mark a true one; and while parents and young persons are left destitute of other just means of estimating and becoming prepared for a reasonable course In life, your discovery that the thing is in many a man’s private power, will be invaluable!  Influence upon the private character, late in life, is not only an influence late in life, but a weak influence.  It is in youth that we plant our chief habits and prejudices; it is in youth that we take our party as to profession, pursuits, and matrimony.  In youth, therefore, the turn is given; in youth the education even of the next generation is given; in youth the private and public character is determined; and the term of life extending but from youth to age, life ought to begin well from youth, and more especially before we take our party as to our principal objects.  But your biography will not merely teach self-education, but the education of a wise man; and the wisest man will receive lights and improve his progress, by seeing detailed the conduct of another wise man.  And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps, when we see our race has been blundering on in the dark, almost without a guide in this particular from the farthest trace of time?  Show then sir, how much is to be done, both to sons and fathers; we invite all wise men to become like yourself, and other men to become wise when we see how cruel statesmen and warriors can be to the human race, and how absurd distinguished men can be to their acquaintance, it will be instructive to observe the instances multiply of pacific acquiescing manners; and to find how compatible it is to be great and domestic, enviable and yet good-humored.”

From The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Vaughn was born in 1751, and studied medicine in Edinburgh and was elected to Parliament.

 

High School Dropout Success Story

Design By Nature, Maggie MacnabThis is  from  “About The Author” from a wonderful book, “Design By Nature – Using Universal Forms And Principles In Design,” published 2012.

 

Quote from the first chapter on intuition and creativity, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”  – Albert Einstein

Maggie Macnab grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her parents, Sandy, an architect, and Arden, a poet and teacher, and her younger brother Jesse. Her interest in nature and its creative potential was encouraged by her father who gave her a microscope at age nine to see the invisible, read her science fiction shorts as bedtime stories, taught her to observe and draw nature, and took her camping and horseback riding in the high deserts of New Mexico. She learned early on to appreciate nature in all of its many guises in beautiful and mysterious places such as Chaco Canyon,the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Big Bend National Park, Puye Cliffs, and the Santa Fe River on Upper Canyon Road.

Maggie left school at age 16 with one credit outstanding toward graduation, determined not to spend another year in the public education system, and began training in commercial art (the predecessor to design) in Albuquerque in 1973 as a production artist. She learned hands-on with hot metal and emerging computerized typesetters, printers, and ad agencies in Albuquerque and Austin. Maggie started her freelance business in Albuquerque in 1981, subsequently winning national awards and receiving recognition in national design magazines and books from 1983 on. She raised her two children, Evan and Sommer, in the Sandia Mountains.

Maggie teaches design theory at the Digital Arts Program at the University of New Mexico/Albuquerque and for Santa Fe University of Art and Design. She is the most part self-taught and has pursued education in her own way, never looking back.

 

The takeaway: pay attention to and honor what you feel your gifts are and don’t be afraid to go where they take you.

Preschoolers who stutter do just fine socially, new study shows

Preschoolers who stutter do just fine socially, new study shows

Melissa DahlTODAY

When parents hear their 3- or 4-year-old struggle with stuttering, many can’t help imagining all the ways it will cause them anxiety, especially when they enter preschool: they’ll be teased, have trouble making friends or be afraid to speak up.

But a new Australian study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, suggests that it’s fairly common for preschool-age children to stutter – and those that do tend to do just fine, both emotionally and socially.

The researchers have been following more than 1,600 children from Melbourne, Australia, since they were eight months old. In this new report, they found 11 percent of those children had started stuttering by age 4, suggesting that a stutter isn’t abnormal for this age group.

“We will continue to follow the children to learn more about how many recover form stuttering with and without intervention,” says Sheena Reilly, the study’s lead author. Reilly is the director of speech pathology at the University of Melbourne. “We particularly want to be able to predict which children will continue to stutter so that we can target earlier and better intervention at those children. Understanding when anxiety, a feature commonly reported in adolescents and adults who stutter, becomes apparent is another area we will continue to research.”

But in the current study, compared to their non-stuttering peers, the children who stuttered were similar in both temperament and social-emotional development. That’s some encouraging news for parents who may be worried about sending their stuttering child to preschool this fall.

Courtesy of the Campbell family
Xavier Campbell, here shown at 3 in 2009, struggled with a stutter, but with help from a speech therapist, overcame it.

Elizabeth Campbell, the mom of a former tiny stutterer, remembers her similar anxieties well. Her son, Xavier, started to stutter when he was 2 years old. At that young age, the other kids in his day care were too little to notice or bother him about it. But Campbell started to imagine his future with a speech impediment.

“I think a lot of it is, the worry is, what if it doesn’t go away? What if my child becomes school age and they’re 6, 7, 8 – or even 12, 13, 14 — and they’re still stuttering?” says Campbell, who lives with Xavier, her husband and their 3-year-old son in Pennsylvania.

By the time Xavier was 2 1/2 , he’d noticed his own struggles with speaking, and started to become frustrated with it.

“It got to the point where he would be upset by it,” Campbell says. “He would be stuttering and then he would stop and say, ‘HELP, Mommy!’”

For many young children, the stutter may go away on its own. But experts say that when the child starts to be bothered by his or her own stutter, like Xavier did, that’s when it’s time to consider contacting a speech therapist. Xavier started working with one as a very little guy, at 2 1/2 years old. Shortly after his third birthday, he had his last real struggle with stuttering. He’s 7 now, and the stutter is gone, his mom says.

Anywhere from 5 percent to 12 percent of kids will go through a period of stuttering, says Ellen Kelly, Ph.D., an associate professor of hearing and speech sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “But we know from past research that 80 percent of those kids are going to recover,” she says, adding that a small percentage of those kids will have chronic stutters that may persist into their teens, or even adulthood. “Those are the people we want to find, and help early,” she says.

Because preschool-age is the optimal time for speech therapy, says Bridget Walsh, a research scientist at the Purdue Stuttering Project at Purdue University. “The brain is still undergoing a staggering amount of development. It’s malleable. This is a critical window, when connections are being formed,” she says.

Experts name a few things parents can look for that may signal their kid may benefit from speech therapy: The stuttering has been happening for more than six months, and it’s occurring more frequently. Another sign may be if the child is physically straining when speaking, almost forcing the words out. He or she might also avoid talking, or substitute words – something little Xavier would do, his mom noticed. When trying to ask for a balloon, for example, Campbell says, “He would say, ‘Give me that b-b-b-b—gimme dat!”

It’s important for parents to remember that stuttering is a neurological disorder, experts say, and so barking orders at a stuttering child to “slow down!” or “take a breath!” is not ultimately very helpful. Instead of telling them to slow down, for example, slow your own speech down, and the child will follow suit. Also: Don’t bombard the child with questions. Keep your full attention on the child when he or she is speaking, including eye contact. And build their confidence with very descriptive praise.

All this advice, experts point out, isn’t just good for stuttering children – it’s good advice for dealing with any child.

“It’s kind of why Mr. Rogers used that slow, slow pace,” says Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation of America. “The message it sends is, ‘We’re not in a hurry; we have time to listen.’

She adds, “Parents don’t cause stuttering. But there’s a lot you can do to pull the pressure off.”

Fraser and other experts we spoke to for this story suggest that parents who are concerned about their child’s stuttering start studying up about the speech problem the way we research anything else these days: the Internet. Here are a few reputable sources to try first, many of which can help connect you with speech therapy options in your state:

The Stuttering Foundation

The American Speech and Language Foundation

The Association for Young People Who Stutter

National Stuttering Association

Video: Why everything sucks; for parents & kiddo’s

Hey, it’s summer, so here’s a 3:20 video for both parents and kids.

This is both light and funny – and heavy and serious – all at the same time. Three minutes and twenty seconds of some mentally challenging social and advertising observations.

It will probably enlarge your perspective … and change some of your decision-points.

Silhouette man wonders what’s wrong with America

Interesting comic strip comparing Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden approach to education spending priorities and reasoning to our apparent priorities.

I couldn’t figure out how to embed or copy the actual comic image, so you’ll have to go to Silhouette Man to see and enjoy this one,