This was sent to me from my friend, Kirbi, who said it made her think of me (what a WONDERFUL compliment). I'm unsure of its source, but I dig it.
Source: unknown
Draw a Sitting Dragon
11 years ago
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica
By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentTROMSOE, Norway (Reuters) - An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday.
"The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released," Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.
Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice -- bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City -- has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.
She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the U.N. Climate Panel to global warming.
The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula.
Nine other shelves -- ice floating on the sea and linked to the coast -- have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002.
The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, according to David Vaughan, a British Antarctic Survey scientist who landed by plane on the Wilkins ice bridge with two Reuters reporters in January.
Humbert said by telephone her estimates were that the Wilkins could lose a total of 800 to 3,000 sq kms of area after the ice bridge shattered.
The Wilkins shelf has already shrunk by about a third from its original 16,000 sq kms when first spotted decades ago, its ice so thick would take at least hundreds of years to form.
Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) this century, Vaughan said, a trend climate scientists blame on global warming from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories and power plants.
The loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the ocean.
But the big worry is that their loss will allow ice sheets on land to move faster, adding extra water to the seas.
Wilkins has almost no pent-up glaciers behind it, but ice shelves further south hold back vast volumes of ice.
The Arctic Council, grouping nations with territory in the Arctic, is due to meet in Tromsoe, north Norway, Wednesday to debate the impact of melting ice in the north.
(Source: Scientific American. www.sciam.com Editing by Sophie Hares)
Additional Info on and Images of Wilkins:
From the NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center):
From NASA:
From the European Space Agency:
Monday, April 27, 2009
What Do Piracy, Swine Flu, and Going Green Have in Common?
A recent article in Scientific American ties these topics together in a chilling story of global food shortages.
Read more below...
Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.
By Lester R. Brown
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.
For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!
For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.
I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.
The Problem of Failed StatesEven a cursory look at the vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one.
In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.
As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar]. Many of their problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk.
States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.
Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world’s leading supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).
Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling infectious diseases—such as polio, SARS or avian flu—breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.
A New Kind of Food ShortageThe surge in world grain prices in 2007 and 2008—and the threat they pose to food security—has a different, more troubling quality than the increases of the past. During the second half of the 20th century, grain prices rose dramatically several times. In 1972, for instance, the Soviets, recognizing their poor harvest early, quietly cornered the world wheat market. As a result, wheat prices elsewhere more than doubled, pulling rice and corn prices up with them. But this and other price shocks were event-driven—drought in the Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, crop-shrinking heat in the U.S. Corn Belt. And the rises were short-lived: prices typically returned to normal with the next harvest.
In contrast, the recent surge in world grain prices is trend-driven, making it unlikely to reverse without a reversal in the trends themselves. On the demand side, those trends include the ongoing addition of more than 70 million people a year; a growing number of people wanting to move up the food chain to consume highly grain-intensive livestock products [see “The Greenhouse Hamburger,” by Nathan Fiala; Scientific American, February 2009]; and the massive diversion of U.S. grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries.
The extra demand for grain associated with rising affluence varies widely among countries. People in low-income countries where grain supplies 60 percent of calories, such as India, directly consume a bit more than a pound of grain a day. In affluent countries such as the U.S. and Canada, grain consumption per person is nearly four times that much, though perhaps 90 percent of it is consumed indirectly as meat, milk and eggs from grain-fed animals.
The potential for further grain consumption as incomes rise among low-income consumers is huge. But that potential pales beside the insatiable demand for crop-based automotive fuels. A fourth of this year’s U.S. grain harvest—enough to feed 125 million Americans or half a billion Indians at current consumption levels—will go to fuel cars. Yet even if the entire U.S. grain harvest were diverted into making ethanol, it would meet at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year.
The recent merging of the food and energy economies implies that if the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy. That double demand is leading to an epic competition between cars and people for the grain supply and to a political and moral issue of unprecedented dimensions. The U.S., in a misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by substituting grain-based fuels, is generating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before.
Water Shortages Mean Food ShortagesWhat about supply? The three environmental trends I mentioned earlier—the shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising temperatures (and other effects) of global warming—are making it increasingly hard to expand the world’s grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand. Of all those trends, however, the spread of water shortages poses the most immediate threat. The biggest challenge here is irrigation, which consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. Millions of irrigation wells in many countries are now pumping water out of underground sources faster than rainfall can recharge them. The result is falling water tables in countries populated by half the world’s people, including the three big grain producers—China, India and the U.S.
Usually aquifers are replenishable, but some of the most important ones are not: the “fossil” aquifers, so called because they store ancient water and are not recharged by precipitation. For these—including the vast Ogallala Aquifer that underlies the U.S. Great Plains, the Saudi aquifer and the deep aquifer under the North China Plain—depletion would spell the end of pumping. In arid regions such a loss could also bring an end to agriculture altogether.
In China the water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling fast. Overpumping has used up most of the water in a shallow aquifer there, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable. A report by the World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future generations” unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.
As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China’s wheat crop, the world’s largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China’s rice production dropped 4 percent. The world’s most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.
But water shortages are even more worrying in India. There the margin between food consumption and survival is more precarious. Millions of irrigation wells have dropped water tables in almost every state. As Fred Pearce reported in New Scientist:
Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells and millions of shallower tube wells have already dried up, bringing a spate of suicides among those who rely on them. Electricity blackouts are reaching epidemic proportions in states where half of the electricity is used to pump water from depths of up to a kilometer [3,300 feet].
A World Bank study reports that 15 percent of India’s food supply is produced by mining groundwater. Stated otherwise, 175 million Indians consume grain produced with water from irrigation wells that will soon be exhausted. The continued shrinking of water supplies could lead to unmanageable food shortages and social conflict.
Less Soil, More HungerThe scope of the second worrisome trend—the loss of topsoil—is also startling. Topsoil is eroding faster than new soil forms on perhaps a third of the world’s cropland. This thin layer of essential plant nutrients, the very foundation of civilization, took long stretches of geologic time to build up, yet it is typically only about six inches deep. Its loss from wind and water erosion doomed earlier civilizations.
In 2002 a U.N. team assessed the food situation in Lesotho, the small, landlocked home of two million people embedded within South Africa. The team’s finding was straightforward: “Agriculture in Lesotho faces a catastrophic future; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of the country if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, degradation and the decline in soil fertility.”
In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti—one of the first states to be recognized as failing—was largely self-sufficient in grain 40 years ago. In the years since, though, it has lost nearly all its forests and much of its topsoil, forcing the country to import more than half of its grain.
The third and perhaps most pervasive environmental threat to food security—rising surface temperature—can affect crop yields everywhere. In many countries crops are grown at or near their thermal optimum, so even a minor temperature rise during the growing season can shrink the harvest. A study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has confirmed a rule of thumb among crop ecologists: for every rise of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the norm, wheat, rice and corn yields fall by 10 percent.
In the past, most famously when the innovations in the use of fertilizer, irrigation and high-yield varieties of wheat and rice created the “green revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, the response to the growing demand for food was the successful application of scientific agriculture: the technological fix. This time, regrettably, many of the most productive advances in agricultural technology have already been put into practice, and so the long-term rise in land productivity is slowing down. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers increased the grain yield per acre by more than 2 percent a year, exceeding the growth of population. But since then, the annual growth in yield has slowed to slightly more than 1 percent. In some countries the yields appear to be near their practical limits, including rice yields in Japan and China.
Some commentators point to genetically modified crop strains as a way out of our predicament. Unfortunately, however, no genetically modified crops have led to dramatically higher yields, comparable to the doubling or tripling of wheat and rice yields that took place during the green revolution. Nor do they seem likely to do so, simply because conventional plant-breeding techniques have already tapped most of the potential for raising crop yields.
Jockeying for FoodAs the world’s food security unravels, a dangerous politics of food scarcity is coming into play: individual countries acting in their narrowly defined self-interest are actually worsening the plight of the many. The trend began in 2007, when leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned their exports, in hopes of increasing locally available food supplies and thereby bringing down food prices domestically. Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand, banned its exports for several months for the same reason. Such moves may reassure those living in the exporting countries, but they are creating panic in importing countries that must rely on what is then left of the world’s exportable grain.
In response to those restrictions, grain importers are trying to nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up future grain supplies. The Philippines, no longer able to count on getting rice from the world market, recently negotiated a three-year deal with Vietnam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice each year. Food-import anxiety is even spawning entirely new efforts by food-importing countries to buy or lease farmland in other countries [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar].
In spite of such stopgap measures, soaring food prices and spreading hunger in many other countries are beginning to break down the social order. In several provinces of Thailand the predations of “rice rustlers” have forced villagers to guard their rice fields at night with loaded shotguns. In Pakistan an armed soldier escorts each grain truck. During the first half of 2008, 83 trucks carrying grain in Sudan were hijacked before reaching the Darfur relief camps.
No country is immune to the effects of tightening food supplies, not even the U.S., the world’s breadbasket. If China turns to the world market for massive quantities of grain, as it has recently done for soybeans, it will have to buy from the U.S.
For U.S. consumers, that would mean competing for the U.S. grain harvest with 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with fast-rising incomes—a nightmare scenario. In such circumstances, it would be tempting for the U.S. to restrict exports, as it did, for instance, with grain and soybeans in the 1970s when domestic prices soared. But that is not an option with China. Chinese investors now hold well over a trillion U.S. dollars, and they have often been the leading international buyers of U.S. Treasury securities issued to finance the fiscal deficit. Like it or not, U.S. consumers will share their grain with Chinese consumers, no matter how high food prices rise.
Plan B: Our Only Option
Since the current world food shortage is trend-driven, the environmental trends that cause it must be reversed. To do so requires extraordinarily demanding measures, a monumental shift away from business as usual—what we at the Earth Policy Institute call Plan A—to a civilization-saving Plan B. [see "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization," at www.earthpoli cy.org/Books/PB3/]
Similar in scale and urgency to the U.S. mobilization for World War II, Plan B has four components: a massive effort to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent from their 2006 levels by 2020; the stabilization of the world’s population at eight billion by 2040; the eradication of poverty; and the restoration of forests, soils and aquifers.
Net carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by systematically raising energy efficiency and investing massively in the development of renewable sources of energy. We must also ban deforestation worldwide, as several countries already have done, and plant billions of trees to sequester carbon. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy can be driven by imposing a tax on carbon, while offsetting it with a reduction in income taxes.
Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty—and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.
The fourth component, restoring the earth’s natural systems and resources, incorporates a worldwide initiative to arrest the fall in water tables by raising water productivity: the useful activity that can be wrung from each drop. That implies shifting to more efficient irrigation systems and to more water-efficient crops. In some countries, it implies growing (and eating) more wheat and less rice, a water-intensive crop. And for industries and cities, it implies doing what some are doing already, namely, continuously recycling water.
At the same time, we must launch a worldwide effort to conserve soil, similar to the U.S. response to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terracing the ground, planting trees as shelterbelts against windblown soil erosion, and practicing minimum tillage—in which the soil is not plowed and crop residues are left on the field—are among the most important soil-conservation measures.
There is nothing new about our four interrelated objectives. They have been discussed individually for years. Indeed, we have created entire institutions intended to tackle some of them, such as the World Bank to alleviate poverty. And we have made substantial progress in some parts of the world on at least one of them—the distribution of family-planning services and the associated shift to smaller families that brings population stability.
For many in the development community, the four objectives of Plan B were seen as positive, promoting development as long as they did not cost too much. Others saw them as humanitarian goals—politically correct and morally appropriate. Now a third and far more momentous rationale presents itself: meeting these goals may be necessary to prevent the collapse of our civilization. Yet the cost we project for saving civilization would amount to less than $200 billion a year, a sixth of current global military spending. In effect, Plan B is the new security budget.
Time: Our Scarcest ResourceOur challenge is not only to implement Plan B but also to do it quickly. The world is in a race between political tipping points and natural ones. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to prevent the Greenland ice sheet from slipping into the sea and inundating our coastlines? Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the mountain glaciers of Asia? During the dry season their meltwaters sustain the major rivers of India and China—and by extension, hundreds of millions of people. Can we stabilize population before countries such as India, Pakistan and Yemen are overwhelmed by shortages of the water they need to irrigate their crops?
It is hard to overstate the urgency of our predicament. [For the most thorough and authoritative scientific assessment of global climate change, see "Climate Change 2007. Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," available at www.ipcc.ch] Every day counts. Unfortunately, we do not know how long we can light our cities with coal, for instance, before Greenland’s ice sheet can no longer be saved. Nature sets the deadlines; nature is the timekeeper. But we human beings cannot see the clock.
We desperately need a new way of thinking, a new mind-set. The thinking that got us into this bind will not get us out. When Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, asked energy guru Amory Lovins about thinking outside the box, Lovins responded: “There is no box.”
There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive.
Lester R. Brown, in the words of the Washington Post, is "one of the world's most influential thinkers." The Telegraph of Calcutta has called him "the guru of the environmental movement." Brown is founder of both the Worldwatch Institute (1974) and the Earth Policy Institute (2001), which he heads today. He has authored or co- authored 50 books; his most recent is Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Brown is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including 24 honorary degrees and a MacArthur Fellowship.
From the May 2009 Scientific American Magazine
Read more below...
Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.
By Lester R. Brown
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.
For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!
For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.
I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.
The Problem of Failed StatesEven a cursory look at the vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one.
In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.
As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar]. Many of their problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk.
States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.
Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world’s leading supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).
Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling infectious diseases—such as polio, SARS or avian flu—breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.
A New Kind of Food ShortageThe surge in world grain prices in 2007 and 2008—and the threat they pose to food security—has a different, more troubling quality than the increases of the past. During the second half of the 20th century, grain prices rose dramatically several times. In 1972, for instance, the Soviets, recognizing their poor harvest early, quietly cornered the world wheat market. As a result, wheat prices elsewhere more than doubled, pulling rice and corn prices up with them. But this and other price shocks were event-driven—drought in the Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, crop-shrinking heat in the U.S. Corn Belt. And the rises were short-lived: prices typically returned to normal with the next harvest.
In contrast, the recent surge in world grain prices is trend-driven, making it unlikely to reverse without a reversal in the trends themselves. On the demand side, those trends include the ongoing addition of more than 70 million people a year; a growing number of people wanting to move up the food chain to consume highly grain-intensive livestock products [see “The Greenhouse Hamburger,” by Nathan Fiala; Scientific American, February 2009]; and the massive diversion of U.S. grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries.
The extra demand for grain associated with rising affluence varies widely among countries. People in low-income countries where grain supplies 60 percent of calories, such as India, directly consume a bit more than a pound of grain a day. In affluent countries such as the U.S. and Canada, grain consumption per person is nearly four times that much, though perhaps 90 percent of it is consumed indirectly as meat, milk and eggs from grain-fed animals.
The potential for further grain consumption as incomes rise among low-income consumers is huge. But that potential pales beside the insatiable demand for crop-based automotive fuels. A fourth of this year’s U.S. grain harvest—enough to feed 125 million Americans or half a billion Indians at current consumption levels—will go to fuel cars. Yet even if the entire U.S. grain harvest were diverted into making ethanol, it would meet at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year.
The recent merging of the food and energy economies implies that if the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy. That double demand is leading to an epic competition between cars and people for the grain supply and to a political and moral issue of unprecedented dimensions. The U.S., in a misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by substituting grain-based fuels, is generating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before.
Water Shortages Mean Food ShortagesWhat about supply? The three environmental trends I mentioned earlier—the shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising temperatures (and other effects) of global warming—are making it increasingly hard to expand the world’s grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand. Of all those trends, however, the spread of water shortages poses the most immediate threat. The biggest challenge here is irrigation, which consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. Millions of irrigation wells in many countries are now pumping water out of underground sources faster than rainfall can recharge them. The result is falling water tables in countries populated by half the world’s people, including the three big grain producers—China, India and the U.S.
Usually aquifers are replenishable, but some of the most important ones are not: the “fossil” aquifers, so called because they store ancient water and are not recharged by precipitation. For these—including the vast Ogallala Aquifer that underlies the U.S. Great Plains, the Saudi aquifer and the deep aquifer under the North China Plain—depletion would spell the end of pumping. In arid regions such a loss could also bring an end to agriculture altogether.
In China the water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling fast. Overpumping has used up most of the water in a shallow aquifer there, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable. A report by the World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future generations” unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.
As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China’s wheat crop, the world’s largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China’s rice production dropped 4 percent. The world’s most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.
But water shortages are even more worrying in India. There the margin between food consumption and survival is more precarious. Millions of irrigation wells have dropped water tables in almost every state. As Fred Pearce reported in New Scientist:
Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells and millions of shallower tube wells have already dried up, bringing a spate of suicides among those who rely on them. Electricity blackouts are reaching epidemic proportions in states where half of the electricity is used to pump water from depths of up to a kilometer [3,300 feet].
A World Bank study reports that 15 percent of India’s food supply is produced by mining groundwater. Stated otherwise, 175 million Indians consume grain produced with water from irrigation wells that will soon be exhausted. The continued shrinking of water supplies could lead to unmanageable food shortages and social conflict.
Less Soil, More HungerThe scope of the second worrisome trend—the loss of topsoil—is also startling. Topsoil is eroding faster than new soil forms on perhaps a third of the world’s cropland. This thin layer of essential plant nutrients, the very foundation of civilization, took long stretches of geologic time to build up, yet it is typically only about six inches deep. Its loss from wind and water erosion doomed earlier civilizations.
In 2002 a U.N. team assessed the food situation in Lesotho, the small, landlocked home of two million people embedded within South Africa. The team’s finding was straightforward: “Agriculture in Lesotho faces a catastrophic future; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of the country if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, degradation and the decline in soil fertility.”
In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti—one of the first states to be recognized as failing—was largely self-sufficient in grain 40 years ago. In the years since, though, it has lost nearly all its forests and much of its topsoil, forcing the country to import more than half of its grain.
The third and perhaps most pervasive environmental threat to food security—rising surface temperature—can affect crop yields everywhere. In many countries crops are grown at or near their thermal optimum, so even a minor temperature rise during the growing season can shrink the harvest. A study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has confirmed a rule of thumb among crop ecologists: for every rise of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the norm, wheat, rice and corn yields fall by 10 percent.
In the past, most famously when the innovations in the use of fertilizer, irrigation and high-yield varieties of wheat and rice created the “green revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, the response to the growing demand for food was the successful application of scientific agriculture: the technological fix. This time, regrettably, many of the most productive advances in agricultural technology have already been put into practice, and so the long-term rise in land productivity is slowing down. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers increased the grain yield per acre by more than 2 percent a year, exceeding the growth of population. But since then, the annual growth in yield has slowed to slightly more than 1 percent. In some countries the yields appear to be near their practical limits, including rice yields in Japan and China.
Some commentators point to genetically modified crop strains as a way out of our predicament. Unfortunately, however, no genetically modified crops have led to dramatically higher yields, comparable to the doubling or tripling of wheat and rice yields that took place during the green revolution. Nor do they seem likely to do so, simply because conventional plant-breeding techniques have already tapped most of the potential for raising crop yields.
Jockeying for FoodAs the world’s food security unravels, a dangerous politics of food scarcity is coming into play: individual countries acting in their narrowly defined self-interest are actually worsening the plight of the many. The trend began in 2007, when leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned their exports, in hopes of increasing locally available food supplies and thereby bringing down food prices domestically. Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand, banned its exports for several months for the same reason. Such moves may reassure those living in the exporting countries, but they are creating panic in importing countries that must rely on what is then left of the world’s exportable grain.
In response to those restrictions, grain importers are trying to nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up future grain supplies. The Philippines, no longer able to count on getting rice from the world market, recently negotiated a three-year deal with Vietnam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice each year. Food-import anxiety is even spawning entirely new efforts by food-importing countries to buy or lease farmland in other countries [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar].
In spite of such stopgap measures, soaring food prices and spreading hunger in many other countries are beginning to break down the social order. In several provinces of Thailand the predations of “rice rustlers” have forced villagers to guard their rice fields at night with loaded shotguns. In Pakistan an armed soldier escorts each grain truck. During the first half of 2008, 83 trucks carrying grain in Sudan were hijacked before reaching the Darfur relief camps.
No country is immune to the effects of tightening food supplies, not even the U.S., the world’s breadbasket. If China turns to the world market for massive quantities of grain, as it has recently done for soybeans, it will have to buy from the U.S.
For U.S. consumers, that would mean competing for the U.S. grain harvest with 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with fast-rising incomes—a nightmare scenario. In such circumstances, it would be tempting for the U.S. to restrict exports, as it did, for instance, with grain and soybeans in the 1970s when domestic prices soared. But that is not an option with China. Chinese investors now hold well over a trillion U.S. dollars, and they have often been the leading international buyers of U.S. Treasury securities issued to finance the fiscal deficit. Like it or not, U.S. consumers will share their grain with Chinese consumers, no matter how high food prices rise.
Plan B: Our Only Option
Since the current world food shortage is trend-driven, the environmental trends that cause it must be reversed. To do so requires extraordinarily demanding measures, a monumental shift away from business as usual—what we at the Earth Policy Institute call Plan A—to a civilization-saving Plan B. [see "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization," at www.earthpoli cy.org/Books/PB3/]
Similar in scale and urgency to the U.S. mobilization for World War II, Plan B has four components: a massive effort to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent from their 2006 levels by 2020; the stabilization of the world’s population at eight billion by 2040; the eradication of poverty; and the restoration of forests, soils and aquifers.
Net carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by systematically raising energy efficiency and investing massively in the development of renewable sources of energy. We must also ban deforestation worldwide, as several countries already have done, and plant billions of trees to sequester carbon. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy can be driven by imposing a tax on carbon, while offsetting it with a reduction in income taxes.
Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty—and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.
The fourth component, restoring the earth’s natural systems and resources, incorporates a worldwide initiative to arrest the fall in water tables by raising water productivity: the useful activity that can be wrung from each drop. That implies shifting to more efficient irrigation systems and to more water-efficient crops. In some countries, it implies growing (and eating) more wheat and less rice, a water-intensive crop. And for industries and cities, it implies doing what some are doing already, namely, continuously recycling water.
At the same time, we must launch a worldwide effort to conserve soil, similar to the U.S. response to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terracing the ground, planting trees as shelterbelts against windblown soil erosion, and practicing minimum tillage—in which the soil is not plowed and crop residues are left on the field—are among the most important soil-conservation measures.
There is nothing new about our four interrelated objectives. They have been discussed individually for years. Indeed, we have created entire institutions intended to tackle some of them, such as the World Bank to alleviate poverty. And we have made substantial progress in some parts of the world on at least one of them—the distribution of family-planning services and the associated shift to smaller families that brings population stability.
For many in the development community, the four objectives of Plan B were seen as positive, promoting development as long as they did not cost too much. Others saw them as humanitarian goals—politically correct and morally appropriate. Now a third and far more momentous rationale presents itself: meeting these goals may be necessary to prevent the collapse of our civilization. Yet the cost we project for saving civilization would amount to less than $200 billion a year, a sixth of current global military spending. In effect, Plan B is the new security budget.
Time: Our Scarcest ResourceOur challenge is not only to implement Plan B but also to do it quickly. The world is in a race between political tipping points and natural ones. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to prevent the Greenland ice sheet from slipping into the sea and inundating our coastlines? Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the mountain glaciers of Asia? During the dry season their meltwaters sustain the major rivers of India and China—and by extension, hundreds of millions of people. Can we stabilize population before countries such as India, Pakistan and Yemen are overwhelmed by shortages of the water they need to irrigate their crops?
It is hard to overstate the urgency of our predicament. [For the most thorough and authoritative scientific assessment of global climate change, see "Climate Change 2007. Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," available at www.ipcc.ch] Every day counts. Unfortunately, we do not know how long we can light our cities with coal, for instance, before Greenland’s ice sheet can no longer be saved. Nature sets the deadlines; nature is the timekeeper. But we human beings cannot see the clock.
We desperately need a new way of thinking, a new mind-set. The thinking that got us into this bind will not get us out. When Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, asked energy guru Amory Lovins about thinking outside the box, Lovins responded: “There is no box.”
There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive.
Lester R. Brown, in the words of the Washington Post, is "one of the world's most influential thinkers." The Telegraph of Calcutta has called him "the guru of the environmental movement." Brown is founder of both the Worldwatch Institute (1974) and the Earth Policy Institute (2001), which he heads today. He has authored or co- authored 50 books; his most recent is Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Brown is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including 24 honorary degrees and a MacArthur Fellowship.
From the May 2009 Scientific American Magazine
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Happy Earth Day!
My Earth Day began bright and early with a cup of coffee, the dogs, and my laptop. The sun was already saturating the house, and it was completely still. Bleary-eyed, I dove into the 10 or so email boxes, blogs, store fronts, and whatnots that occupy my every morning.Cole and I had already made plans to cut out early and hit the zoo, so I was in a really great frame of mind. And then I checked my facebook page.
It is my sincerest and most regretful belief that some people are put on this Earth to buzz kill everything that is beautiful, progressive, and intelligent in our society. Their plight in life is to inflict their negativity and small-mindedness on those of us seeking true enlightenment and awareness. Inflict and infect is their mission.
So, one of these Buzz Killers posted a status today that said something like:
"So and so hates when people worship the created (Earth) and not the creator (God)."
My first reaction was a rather sardonic sneer in response to this person's need to define his hatred so specifically. This obviously is not a person who wants others thinking for themselves. Control. Control. Control.
My second thought was, "Goodness. I don't like 'hate' and 'God' in the same sentence."
Sends shivers down my spine. Hello, folks? Can you say Middle East? Hitler? Croatia? The Black List? What is with this mental genocide from a so-called God-lover? I think it's sad when one's religious, political, or otherwise strongly-held beliefs lead to hate in any form. It sickens and sometimes frightens me when God is used as a rationalization for calculated condensation of those who do not share similar beliefs on any public platform (and over something so positive!).
Okay, okay. He's just referring to Earth Day, but this type of attitude gets me all riled up, especially when aimed in direction of a NECESSARY, BEAUTIFUL, INTELLIGENT, GLOBAL COMMUNITY EFFORT TO BETTER THE PLANET FOR ALL PEOPLE, OUR CHILDREN, AND FUTURE GENERATIONS OF HUMAN BEINGS, ANIMALS, AND PLANTS.
Sure, Earth Day has become just as commercialized as religion, but the intent of Earth Day is to bring awareness to the increasingly rapid decline of our HOME PLANET to which we contribute a great deal and to incite people to WAKE UP, TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, AND CONTRIBUTE.
A Little History of Earth Day from the Earth Day Network:
Earth Day -- April 22 -- each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Apollo 13, the Beatles' last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, the birth of Mariah Carey, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina -- an incident not acknowledged for 18 years.
It was into such a world that the very first Earth Day was born.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest "to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda. " "It was a gamble," he recalls, "but it worked."
So, Mr. Buzz Killer, open the windows of your mind and let in a little fresh air. Study a little history and science (they really can co-exist with religion) and realize we're caring for this Planet and its inhabitants for you and your children and your grandchildren even if you're too narrow-minded to give a shit. You may have inflicted, but you have not infected.
Cole and I went on to have a FABULOUS Earth Day at the zoo and wondered at the marvels of Nature, the beauty around us, and enjoyed each other's company.
We had intelligent conversations about why we celebrate Earth Day, why our Planet and its inhabitants are a true miracle and should be cared for as such, and about how observing Earth Day provides a sense of Community in a shared global mission that enables activism on a level and with an impact otherwise unachievable.
I have no doubt the occasion of Earth Day provided similar such experiences for people around the world - um, us non-Buzz Killers that is - and I'd bet plenty of God-worshiping individuals included.
I'm proud to say my 11 year old is quite a Go-Greener himself. He JUST informed me we are turning all of the lights of for one minute at 8pm in observation. Heathens, I know!
BTW, Cole and I particularly loved the Red Pandas and the un-fenced Kangaroos who hung out with us on the path today! KC Zoo looks GREAT!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Investing The Stimulus Money In Smart Kids And Their Green Projects
posted by Ira Flatow on Tuesday, February 3. 2009
How about taking some of that stimulus and bailout money we're investing in Detroit and investing it in kids who know how to get the job done?
Case in point: West Philadelphia High School Hybrid X Team. The high school students there built a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. They did it as an after school project. And they used commonly available, off the shelf parts, based on a Ford Focus chassis. That means this car could even past highway safety standards, long the nemesis of new car designers.
This is no elite, high priced academy. It's an inner city, urban high school. But what these kids have that a carload of Detroit car designers lack is the inability to say it can't be done. They just went out and did it.
As the team's leader teacher Simon Hauger told us on Science Friday, the school is entering the competition for the automotive X-Prize.
"If an inner city high school can do it, that says something," says Hauger of their hybrid car they will enter into the competition. The car will run 60 miles on a charge of electricity, and can be charged overnight. So why are we waiting 2 years for a Chevy Volt that gets 40 miles on a charge? These kids did that in 2004.
And the 100 mph car they are building now is one "even school teachers can afford," between 20-$25,000.
Why aren't we investing our stimulus money in these kids and others like them? Hello!!!!
This is a win-win situation. We invest our money in green technologies ready to use today. And we reward kids from the inner city for their smarts and moxie.
Mr. President, next time you want to visit a cutting edge, mean, green factory head out to West Philly.
Click here for more Science Friday: http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/
How about taking some of that stimulus and bailout money we're investing in Detroit and investing it in kids who know how to get the job done?
Case in point: West Philadelphia High School Hybrid X Team. The high school students there built a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. They did it as an after school project. And they used commonly available, off the shelf parts, based on a Ford Focus chassis. That means this car could even past highway safety standards, long the nemesis of new car designers.
This is no elite, high priced academy. It's an inner city, urban high school. But what these kids have that a carload of Detroit car designers lack is the inability to say it can't be done. They just went out and did it.
As the team's leader teacher Simon Hauger told us on Science Friday, the school is entering the competition for the automotive X-Prize.
"If an inner city high school can do it, that says something," says Hauger of their hybrid car they will enter into the competition. The car will run 60 miles on a charge of electricity, and can be charged overnight. So why are we waiting 2 years for a Chevy Volt that gets 40 miles on a charge? These kids did that in 2004.
And the 100 mph car they are building now is one "even school teachers can afford," between 20-$25,000.
Why aren't we investing our stimulus money in these kids and others like them? Hello!!!!
This is a win-win situation. We invest our money in green technologies ready to use today. And we reward kids from the inner city for their smarts and moxie.
Mr. President, next time you want to visit a cutting edge, mean, green factory head out to West Philly.
Click here for more Science Friday: http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/
Monday, January 19, 2009
2009 Presidential Inauguration
My return plane from Dallas lands around 7:30 p.m. tomorrow night, so we're having a low-key dinner with the fam, working on the DC puzzle we have yet to finish, and watching all of the hype on TV. It's a very exciting time in America! Give us a shout if you'd like to stop by.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Less-Homework Revolution
This was on the Today Show today and is also posted on Parenting.com.
As most of you know, the ridiculous amount of homework and in-class busy work Cole was required to do was one of the many reasons we opted to homeschool.
For those parents not in a position to homeschool, this article provides compassion and guidance in addressing the homework problem experienced by most publicly and privately educated children (and their parents) in the US today.
.........................................................................................
The Less-Homework Revolution
How fed-up parents are changing the way schools think -- and how you can, too
By Nancy Kalish, Parenting
I used to be extremely pro-homework. In fact, I once wrote an article for this very magazine telling readers how to get kids to stop whining and knuckle down to work. Back then, I could afford to be smug: My second-grader was happily zooming through her ten minutes a night. But a few years later, Allison started coming home with four hours of homework each night, and everything changed. Now there was not only whining but also begging, yelling, and crying -- sometimes from both of us. The worst part: hearing my previously enthusiastic learner repeatedly swear how much she hated school.
I'd always assumed homework was essential. But when I finally looked into the research about it, I was floored to find there's little to support homework -- especially in vast quantities. While not every child gets too much, many kids are now overloaded as early as kindergarten. I was appalled (I even co-wrote a book about it, The Case Against Homework), so you can bet that this time around, you won't be getting any "how to be a good homework cop" tips from me.
Instead, I'm here to call you to action. You can change things for your child -- even for the whole school. There are more and more frustrated parents and wised-up schools around the country, so why should your child keep suffering through hours of work? A less-homework revolution is brewing, and you can join it.
taking back family time
Like me, Christine Hendricks, a mother of three in Glenrock, WY, had always believed in homework. Then her daughter, Maddie, entered elementary school. "By the fourth grade, she had so much, there was no time for after-school activities, playing, or simply enjoying our evenings together. We were always stressed, and I knew many other families were also miserable." Hendricks decided things had to change -- and she had a unique advantage: She's the principal of Glenrock's Grant Elementary School. Together with her teachers, she looked into the research and found what I did: Homework's not what it's cracked up to be. "We decided to do an experiment and eliminate most homework," she says. The one exception: occasional studying for a test. "This is only our second year without it, but there have been no backslides in the classroom or in test scores," says Hendricks. "Parents say their kids enjoy reading again because there's no pressure. In fact, there have been no negative effects whatsoever. And there's much less stress at our house, too." We're not all in a position to fast-track a solution as Hendricks did, but we still have power.
In Toronto, Frank Bruni decided to do something when a pediatrician told him that his 13-year-old son should exercise more. Says Bruni, "I thought to myself, 'And when would he do that?' " So Bruni organized other parents and lobbied the Toronto School District to hold public meetings, presenting the research behind homework. The result is a new policy that affects more than 300,000 kids, limiting homework to reading in elementary school, eliminating holiday homework, and stating the value of family time. Canada's education minister now wants all the country's school boards to make sure students aren't being overloaded. "It's so gratifying to know that this year, Toronto's kids are going to have a life," says Bruni. "It shows you just how much parents can do when they try."
why it's worth a fight
Homework is such an established part of education, it's hard to believe it's not all that beneficial, especially in large quantities. But the truth is, a recent Duke University review of numerous studies found almost no correlation between homework and long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school. "More is not better," says Harris Cooper, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and neuroscience who conducted the review. In fact, according to guidelines endorsed by the National Education Association, teachers should assign no more than ten minutes per grade level per night (that's ten minutes total for a first-grader, 30 minutes for a third-grader).
Pile on more and it can backfire. "Most kids are simply developmentally unable to sit and learn for longer," says Cooper. Remember: Many have already been glued to their desks for seven hours, especially at schools that have cut gym, recess, art, and music to cram in more instructional time. If you add on two hours of homework each night, these children are working a 45-hour week. Some argue that we need to toughen kids up for high school, college, and the workforce. But there are other ways to teach responsibility, such as the chores that parents often have to let slide because of studying.
And too much homework is actually sapping our children's strength, natural curiosity, and love of learning. "Kids are developing more school-related stomachaches, headaches, sleep problems, and depression than ever before," says William Crain, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the City College of New York and author of Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society. "We're seeing kids who are burned out by fourth grade. Soon, it will be by second grade." Too much homework also means that kids miss out on active playtime, essential for learning social skills, proper brain development, and warding off childhood obesity.
All this work doesn't even make educational sense. "It's counterintuitive, but more practice or the wrong kind of practice doesn't necessarily make perfect," says Kylene Beers, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and author of When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do. For example, children are able to memorize long lists of spelling words -- but many will misspell them the following week.
"Instead, they should spend the time reading and writing, and practicing words that are at the appropriate level for each child," says Beers. According to the U.S. Department of Education, most often a math teacher can tell after checking five algebraic equations whether a student has understood the necessary concepts. Even more important, whether it's algebra or addition, five problems is enough to tell if a student doesn't understand a concept. Practicing dozens of homework problems incorrectly only cements the wrong method into his brain. Naturally, some kids need more practice before math skills become automatic, but pages of problems rarely help the whole class. In addition, teachers who assign large numbers of problems are often unable to do anything more than spot-check homework. That means errors are missed -- and some children truly are left behind.
So why are schools ignoring all these guidelines? "Many teachers are under greater pressure than ever before to assign more homework," says Beers. "Some of it comes from parents, some from the administration and the desire for high scores on standardized tests." And here's a surprise: Your child's teachers have probably never taken a course that covers what constitutes good or bad homework, how much to give, and the research behind it. "I'm disappointed to admit that colleges of education simply don't offer specific training in homework," says Beers. Cooper adds, "Teachers are winging it."
4 waste-of-time assignments
typical assignment: Keep a reading log
why it's busywork: Writing down the title is one thing; adding on the author, publisher, and other info turns reading into a tedious activity. Rather, let kids write a line or two about why they liked or didn't like the book. The time would also be better spent reading another book.
typical assignment: Play an "unscramble the word" spelling game
why it's busywork: If a child sees a spelling word with the letters scrambled, he could end up remembering it that way, says National Council of Teachers of English president Kylene Beers.
typical assignment: Answer the questions at the end of the chapter
why it's busywork: This can encourage kids to "skim and scan," hunting for answers and ignoring other content. The exception is questions that help kids infer meaning.
typical assignment: Create a diorama/model/game board/anything that requires craft supplies and a glue gun
why it's busywork: Such "fun" projects usually involve a frantic trip to the crafts store, expensive supplies, too much parent participation -- and too little educational value to justify the number of hours they take (with the possible exception of science-fair projects). If it's all about how it looks, it's probably not worth it.
the start of something big
A revolution has to begin somewhere, and as Christine Hendricks, the Wyoming principal and mom, proves, that somewhere isn't only on the coasts or in big cities. It's in communities and schools all over the country.
After teaching math for several years at South Valley Middle School in Liberty, MO, Joel Wazac realized that his students were rarely finishing the reams of problems he sent home. So he and other math teachers decided to eliminate homework and concentrate on making class lessons more engaging. "I had more time for planning when I wasn't grading thousands of problems each night," says Wazac. "And when a student didn't understand something, instead of a parent trying to puzzle it out, I was right there to help him." The result: Grades went up and the school's standardized math test scores are the highest they've ever been.
In some cases, entire schools, such as Mason-Rice Elementary in Newton, MA, have limited homework according to the "ten-minute rule." The Raymond Park Middle School in Indianapolis has a written policy instructing teachers to "assign homework only when you feel the assignment is valuable. A night off is better than homework which serves no worthwhile purpose." Others, such as Oak Knoll Elementary in Menlo Park, CA, are eliminating elementary school homework altogether. If these schools can do it, why can't yours?
Many parents are the ones leading the fight against homework overload…and winning. In Danville, CA, Kerry Dickinson, a mother of two, spearheaded the effort by organizing more than 100 parents to convince the local school district to revise its homework policy. The policy still exceeds the "ten minutes per grade" rule, but it discourages weekend and holiday homework and stresses the value of family time. "Is it perfect? Not even close," says Dickinson, who has a teaching credential herself. "But it's progress." You may feel more comfortable starting smaller -- but that's a great way to get the revolution brewing in your community. Aubrey King is a mom who found that teachers can be more responsive (and sympathetic) than you might think. "Normally, we have no time for after-school activities, the park, or even getting an ice cream cone," says King, the Colorado Springs mother of a third- and a sixth-grader, as well as three younger children. But when one child's homework interfered with the family's preparations for Christmas, it was the last straw. King e-mailed the teacher, who promptly eliminated all assignments for the entire class until after winter break.
Another step in the right direction: Krisi Repp of Gray Summit, MO, sent each of her three children's teachers a letter detailing her family's already busy schedule and gently informing them that homework was interfering with sleep, exercise, dinner, church, and precious time together. "Several teachers commented 'I never thought about that' or 'You're right,'" Repp reports. "Many don't have school-age children yet themselves. They're not going to know any better unless we speak out."
Joining the revolution
Fewer than 60 percent of schools have official homework policies, which means that it might be a lot more negotiable than you think. Keep your approach nonconfrontational and cooperative, and you have a good chance of success.
If your child has too much homework tonight... stop the suffering with a note. If he's been working longer than he can bear, don't push him further. It'll only make him dislike homework more. Instead, write a note to the teacher on the homework, saying that Jonathan tried but couldn't complete the assignment and that you felt it was more important that he get a good night's sleep. There usually are no negative consequences.
If homework overload is a continuing problem... speak up. E-mail the teacher to request a meeting, and ask how long she expects her assignments to take. Compare that to the ten-minutes-per-grade-level guideline and how long it actually takes your child. Then when you meet, try not to be accusatory ("Your homework is killing my child!") but to enlist the teacher as an ally ("Lucy can't concentrate for more than X minutes each night. After that, she starts to hate the work, and the learning stops"). Together, perhaps you can decide that your child will tackle reading first, do only five math problems, and stop once she's reached her limit. Another strategy: Describe a typical night for your family. This might be enough to help the teacher realize there isn't enough time (for any kid) to finish all of the assignments.
If homework overload is a widespread problem at school... find strength in numbers. If your child is miserable, chances are other kids in his class are, too. Ask the other parents to e-mail the teacher or approach the principal with you. Sometimes that's all it takes. If that doesn't work, you might want to organize a homework forum at your school or speak before the school board, with the goal of establishing a reasonable homework policy. Ask parents to fill out a survey first so you have documentation of how much homework the children are doing.
Click here for a sample one from The Case Against Homework. Another great site, StopHomework.com, is run by less-homework advocate Sara Bennett; it has the latest research and can give you personal advice for making change.
Nancy Kalish is the coauthor, with Sara Bennett, of The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Children and What Parents Can Do About It.
As most of you know, the ridiculous amount of homework and in-class busy work Cole was required to do was one of the many reasons we opted to homeschool.
For those parents not in a position to homeschool, this article provides compassion and guidance in addressing the homework problem experienced by most publicly and privately educated children (and their parents) in the US today.
.........................................................................................
The Less-Homework Revolution
How fed-up parents are changing the way schools think -- and how you can, too
By Nancy Kalish, Parenting
I used to be extremely pro-homework. In fact, I once wrote an article for this very magazine telling readers how to get kids to stop whining and knuckle down to work. Back then, I could afford to be smug: My second-grader was happily zooming through her ten minutes a night. But a few years later, Allison started coming home with four hours of homework each night, and everything changed. Now there was not only whining but also begging, yelling, and crying -- sometimes from both of us. The worst part: hearing my previously enthusiastic learner repeatedly swear how much she hated school.
I'd always assumed homework was essential. But when I finally looked into the research about it, I was floored to find there's little to support homework -- especially in vast quantities. While not every child gets too much, many kids are now overloaded as early as kindergarten. I was appalled (I even co-wrote a book about it, The Case Against Homework), so you can bet that this time around, you won't be getting any "how to be a good homework cop" tips from me.
Instead, I'm here to call you to action. You can change things for your child -- even for the whole school. There are more and more frustrated parents and wised-up schools around the country, so why should your child keep suffering through hours of work? A less-homework revolution is brewing, and you can join it.
taking back family time
Like me, Christine Hendricks, a mother of three in Glenrock, WY, had always believed in homework. Then her daughter, Maddie, entered elementary school. "By the fourth grade, she had so much, there was no time for after-school activities, playing, or simply enjoying our evenings together. We were always stressed, and I knew many other families were also miserable." Hendricks decided things had to change -- and she had a unique advantage: She's the principal of Glenrock's Grant Elementary School. Together with her teachers, she looked into the research and found what I did: Homework's not what it's cracked up to be. "We decided to do an experiment and eliminate most homework," she says. The one exception: occasional studying for a test. "This is only our second year without it, but there have been no backslides in the classroom or in test scores," says Hendricks. "Parents say their kids enjoy reading again because there's no pressure. In fact, there have been no negative effects whatsoever. And there's much less stress at our house, too." We're not all in a position to fast-track a solution as Hendricks did, but we still have power.
In Toronto, Frank Bruni decided to do something when a pediatrician told him that his 13-year-old son should exercise more. Says Bruni, "I thought to myself, 'And when would he do that?' " So Bruni organized other parents and lobbied the Toronto School District to hold public meetings, presenting the research behind homework. The result is a new policy that affects more than 300,000 kids, limiting homework to reading in elementary school, eliminating holiday homework, and stating the value of family time. Canada's education minister now wants all the country's school boards to make sure students aren't being overloaded. "It's so gratifying to know that this year, Toronto's kids are going to have a life," says Bruni. "It shows you just how much parents can do when they try."
why it's worth a fight
Homework is such an established part of education, it's hard to believe it's not all that beneficial, especially in large quantities. But the truth is, a recent Duke University review of numerous studies found almost no correlation between homework and long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school. "More is not better," says Harris Cooper, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and neuroscience who conducted the review. In fact, according to guidelines endorsed by the National Education Association, teachers should assign no more than ten minutes per grade level per night (that's ten minutes total for a first-grader, 30 minutes for a third-grader).
Pile on more and it can backfire. "Most kids are simply developmentally unable to sit and learn for longer," says Cooper. Remember: Many have already been glued to their desks for seven hours, especially at schools that have cut gym, recess, art, and music to cram in more instructional time. If you add on two hours of homework each night, these children are working a 45-hour week. Some argue that we need to toughen kids up for high school, college, and the workforce. But there are other ways to teach responsibility, such as the chores that parents often have to let slide because of studying.
And too much homework is actually sapping our children's strength, natural curiosity, and love of learning. "Kids are developing more school-related stomachaches, headaches, sleep problems, and depression than ever before," says William Crain, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the City College of New York and author of Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society. "We're seeing kids who are burned out by fourth grade. Soon, it will be by second grade." Too much homework also means that kids miss out on active playtime, essential for learning social skills, proper brain development, and warding off childhood obesity.
All this work doesn't even make educational sense. "It's counterintuitive, but more practice or the wrong kind of practice doesn't necessarily make perfect," says Kylene Beers, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and author of When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do. For example, children are able to memorize long lists of spelling words -- but many will misspell them the following week.
"Instead, they should spend the time reading and writing, and practicing words that are at the appropriate level for each child," says Beers. According to the U.S. Department of Education, most often a math teacher can tell after checking five algebraic equations whether a student has understood the necessary concepts. Even more important, whether it's algebra or addition, five problems is enough to tell if a student doesn't understand a concept. Practicing dozens of homework problems incorrectly only cements the wrong method into his brain. Naturally, some kids need more practice before math skills become automatic, but pages of problems rarely help the whole class. In addition, teachers who assign large numbers of problems are often unable to do anything more than spot-check homework. That means errors are missed -- and some children truly are left behind.
So why are schools ignoring all these guidelines? "Many teachers are under greater pressure than ever before to assign more homework," says Beers. "Some of it comes from parents, some from the administration and the desire for high scores on standardized tests." And here's a surprise: Your child's teachers have probably never taken a course that covers what constitutes good or bad homework, how much to give, and the research behind it. "I'm disappointed to admit that colleges of education simply don't offer specific training in homework," says Beers. Cooper adds, "Teachers are winging it."
4 waste-of-time assignments
typical assignment: Keep a reading log
why it's busywork: Writing down the title is one thing; adding on the author, publisher, and other info turns reading into a tedious activity. Rather, let kids write a line or two about why they liked or didn't like the book. The time would also be better spent reading another book.
typical assignment: Play an "unscramble the word" spelling game
why it's busywork: If a child sees a spelling word with the letters scrambled, he could end up remembering it that way, says National Council of Teachers of English president Kylene Beers.
typical assignment: Answer the questions at the end of the chapter
why it's busywork: This can encourage kids to "skim and scan," hunting for answers and ignoring other content. The exception is questions that help kids infer meaning.
typical assignment: Create a diorama/model/game board/anything that requires craft supplies and a glue gun
why it's busywork: Such "fun" projects usually involve a frantic trip to the crafts store, expensive supplies, too much parent participation -- and too little educational value to justify the number of hours they take (with the possible exception of science-fair projects). If it's all about how it looks, it's probably not worth it.
the start of something big
A revolution has to begin somewhere, and as Christine Hendricks, the Wyoming principal and mom, proves, that somewhere isn't only on the coasts or in big cities. It's in communities and schools all over the country.
After teaching math for several years at South Valley Middle School in Liberty, MO, Joel Wazac realized that his students were rarely finishing the reams of problems he sent home. So he and other math teachers decided to eliminate homework and concentrate on making class lessons more engaging. "I had more time for planning when I wasn't grading thousands of problems each night," says Wazac. "And when a student didn't understand something, instead of a parent trying to puzzle it out, I was right there to help him." The result: Grades went up and the school's standardized math test scores are the highest they've ever been.
In some cases, entire schools, such as Mason-Rice Elementary in Newton, MA, have limited homework according to the "ten-minute rule." The Raymond Park Middle School in Indianapolis has a written policy instructing teachers to "assign homework only when you feel the assignment is valuable. A night off is better than homework which serves no worthwhile purpose." Others, such as Oak Knoll Elementary in Menlo Park, CA, are eliminating elementary school homework altogether. If these schools can do it, why can't yours?
Many parents are the ones leading the fight against homework overload…and winning. In Danville, CA, Kerry Dickinson, a mother of two, spearheaded the effort by organizing more than 100 parents to convince the local school district to revise its homework policy. The policy still exceeds the "ten minutes per grade" rule, but it discourages weekend and holiday homework and stresses the value of family time. "Is it perfect? Not even close," says Dickinson, who has a teaching credential herself. "But it's progress." You may feel more comfortable starting smaller -- but that's a great way to get the revolution brewing in your community. Aubrey King is a mom who found that teachers can be more responsive (and sympathetic) than you might think. "Normally, we have no time for after-school activities, the park, or even getting an ice cream cone," says King, the Colorado Springs mother of a third- and a sixth-grader, as well as three younger children. But when one child's homework interfered with the family's preparations for Christmas, it was the last straw. King e-mailed the teacher, who promptly eliminated all assignments for the entire class until after winter break.
Another step in the right direction: Krisi Repp of Gray Summit, MO, sent each of her three children's teachers a letter detailing her family's already busy schedule and gently informing them that homework was interfering with sleep, exercise, dinner, church, and precious time together. "Several teachers commented 'I never thought about that' or 'You're right,'" Repp reports. "Many don't have school-age children yet themselves. They're not going to know any better unless we speak out."
Joining the revolution
Fewer than 60 percent of schools have official homework policies, which means that it might be a lot more negotiable than you think. Keep your approach nonconfrontational and cooperative, and you have a good chance of success.
If your child has too much homework tonight... stop the suffering with a note. If he's been working longer than he can bear, don't push him further. It'll only make him dislike homework more. Instead, write a note to the teacher on the homework, saying that Jonathan tried but couldn't complete the assignment and that you felt it was more important that he get a good night's sleep. There usually are no negative consequences.
If homework overload is a continuing problem... speak up. E-mail the teacher to request a meeting, and ask how long she expects her assignments to take. Compare that to the ten-minutes-per-grade-level guideline and how long it actually takes your child. Then when you meet, try not to be accusatory ("Your homework is killing my child!") but to enlist the teacher as an ally ("Lucy can't concentrate for more than X minutes each night. After that, she starts to hate the work, and the learning stops"). Together, perhaps you can decide that your child will tackle reading first, do only five math problems, and stop once she's reached her limit. Another strategy: Describe a typical night for your family. This might be enough to help the teacher realize there isn't enough time (for any kid) to finish all of the assignments.
If homework overload is a widespread problem at school... find strength in numbers. If your child is miserable, chances are other kids in his class are, too. Ask the other parents to e-mail the teacher or approach the principal with you. Sometimes that's all it takes. If that doesn't work, you might want to organize a homework forum at your school or speak before the school board, with the goal of establishing a reasonable homework policy. Ask parents to fill out a survey first so you have documentation of how much homework the children are doing.
Click here for a sample one from The Case Against Homework. Another great site, StopHomework.com, is run by less-homework advocate Sara Bennett; it has the latest research and can give you personal advice for making change.
Nancy Kalish is the coauthor, with Sara Bennett, of The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Children and What Parents Can Do About It.
Monday, January 5, 2009
"Emancipate Yourself from Mental Slavery"
The title to this post are the lyrics from one of my favorite Bob Marley songs, "Redemption Song". With Martin Luther King Day and the Inauguration of President Elect Barack Obama approaching, Marley's hopeful lyrics reflect the my own hopes for the New Year and for the years to come.
I have no idea of the quality of this recording as my volume
isn't working currently. Hope you find it enjoyable.
I have no idea of the quality of this recording as my volume
isn't working currently. Hope you find it enjoyable.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Celebrating a Week of Einstein
Great spirits have often encountered
violent opposition from weak minds.
- Albert Einstein
"Albert Einstein struck many of his teachers
as insolent and lazy, but his mind was always
at work. As a young patent clerk, Albert loved
to think about light, space, and time. Other
scientists thought his ideas were crazy, but
Albert didn't care. His imagination and natural
gift for physics helped him develop ideas that
would shake the world - and make him one of
the most famous thinkers of our time."
Recommended reading for folks 10 and up:
Albert Einstein - A Photographic Story of a Life
by Frieda Wishinsky
www.dk.com
violent opposition from weak minds.
- Albert Einstein
"Albert Einstein struck many of his teachers
as insolent and lazy, but his mind was always
at work. As a young patent clerk, Albert loved
to think about light, space, and time. Other
scientists thought his ideas were crazy, but
Albert didn't care. His imagination and natural
gift for physics helped him develop ideas that
would shake the world - and make him one of
the most famous thinkers of our time."
Recommended reading for folks 10 and up:
Albert Einstein - A Photographic Story of a Life
by Frieda Wishinsky
www.dk.com
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Why does Missiouri need school choice?
Consider this:
Missouri has a long way to go toward ensuring that all students can read at proficient levels.
Missouri has a long way to go toward improving student math performance.
Missouri can do better toward ensuring that students graduate from high school.
Yet, Missouri spends approximately $7,349 to educate each student, every year. Can you imagine if Cole had access to even a portion of those funds for educational resources?!
When parents are given the option to use their tax dollars and choose the best schools for their children — public or private (this includes home schooling) — education in America will improve.
Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that educational freedom has a positive, transformational impact on families, schools, and communities.
Myth: School choice drains funds from public schools that need it most.
Reality: Studies have consistently demonstrated that, with private school choice programs, school districts retain a portion of the funding for each child who leaves the public system. In effect, while some of the money "follows the child" in school choice programs, districts still retain a portion of the per-pupil funding, even though they don’t have to educate the student.
Myth: School choice is just a Republican, right-wing issue.
Reality: School choice is truly a bipartisan issue. In 2007, more than 90 percent of new funding for school choice programs was enacted by Democratic governors or Democratically-controlled state legislatures. Prominent Democratic leaders—such as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams, and former U.S. Representative Carrie Meek—have spoken out in favor of private school choice programs.
Myth: School choice hurts achievement in public schools.
Reality: No study has ever demonstrated that school choice hurts public schools in any way, shape, or form. Without competition and meaningful parental choice, rapid reform and dramatic improvements in public schools will not be realized. When parents are given an option to choose the best schools for their children, public schools will have to resist special interest and improve faster. In fact, studies have demonstrated that school choice programs have lead to an improvement in public school quality.
Source: Alliance for School Choice
Please keep this information in mind when reading about campaign issues, when reaching out to your legislators, and when you vote!
Missouri has a long way to go toward ensuring that all students can read at proficient levels.
- 68 percent of Missouri students in 4th grade are not ranked “proficient” in reading
- 69 percent of Missouri students in 8th grade are not ranked “proficient” in reading
Missouri has a long way to go toward improving student math performance.
- 62 percent of Missouri students in 4th grade are not ranked “proficient” in math
- 70 percent of Missouri students in 8th grade are not ranked “proficient” in math
Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2007
Missouri can do better toward ensuring that students graduate from high school.
- 25 percent of Missouri children never graduate from high school.
Yet, Missouri spends approximately $7,349 to educate each student, every year. Can you imagine if Cole had access to even a portion of those funds for educational resources?!
When parents are given the option to use their tax dollars and choose the best schools for their children — public or private (this includes home schooling) — education in America will improve.
Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that educational freedom has a positive, transformational impact on families, schools, and communities.
Myth: School choice drains funds from public schools that need it most.
Reality: Studies have consistently demonstrated that, with private school choice programs, school districts retain a portion of the funding for each child who leaves the public system. In effect, while some of the money "follows the child" in school choice programs, districts still retain a portion of the per-pupil funding, even though they don’t have to educate the student.
Myth: School choice is just a Republican, right-wing issue.
Reality: School choice is truly a bipartisan issue. In 2007, more than 90 percent of new funding for school choice programs was enacted by Democratic governors or Democratically-controlled state legislatures. Prominent Democratic leaders—such as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams, and former U.S. Representative Carrie Meek—have spoken out in favor of private school choice programs.
Myth: School choice hurts achievement in public schools.
Reality: No study has ever demonstrated that school choice hurts public schools in any way, shape, or form. Without competition and meaningful parental choice, rapid reform and dramatic improvements in public schools will not be realized. When parents are given an option to choose the best schools for their children, public schools will have to resist special interest and improve faster. In fact, studies have demonstrated that school choice programs have lead to an improvement in public school quality.
Source: Alliance for School Choice
Please keep this information in mind when reading about campaign issues, when reaching out to your legislators, and when you vote!
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Busy Little Bees
It is not enough to be busy...the question is 'what are we busy about'?
Henry David Thoreau
What are our children actually learning in school?
I've been doing a lot of thinking on this lately, and these are my thoughts.
For starters, even very young kids (I'm talking Kindergarten here) are required to conduct themselves in a manner most adults would find challenging. The institution of the school is institutionalized alright! Try prison-like. Each subsequent year seems to find shorter recesses (if recess is permitted at all - some Dallas elementary schools I know of have done away with it completely), no-talking restrictions in the cafeteria during a shrinking lunch hour - oh, I mean 20 minutes, restroom privileges suspended, and on it goes.
Many reasons exist for the changes in education over the past decade and almost all of them are well-intentioned. However, no matter the end, our schools and our kids are suffering.
Q: So, what's changed since we were kids?
A: A heck of a lot.
In 1999, the Columbine High School massacre, motivated frightened parents to demand No Tolerance rules towards violent acts, cliques, and bullying within our schools. Who could blame them? Millions of parents watched in horror as students fled the high school to escape the carnage occurring within its doors. We saw the interviews, saw the fear on the faces of students, teachers, and parents affected, and weren't we all affected? We mourned the tragic and unimaginable death of 12 Columbine students and one teacher. We hugged our kids tight and worried as we sent them off to school in the morning. Subsequent acts of violence within or around our schools have dominated news media and remain a growing concern in many cities around the Nation. Increased security and No Tolerance rules have changed the atmosphere of enrichment, creativity, and fun in schools to one more akin of a penitentiary.
Add to this, the increasing desire of parents and educators to close the disparity between the privileged and under-privileged combined with the need for inclusively where children are concerned pushed legislators towards so-called Reform. Good intentions to be sure, but the results are less than brilliant. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 calls for increased accountability from States to education all children to a specified standard. And how is this measured and reinforced? You guessed it - standardized testing tied to State and Federal funding. This not only puts the focus on these test results but also limits where funds are spent within schools (for instance, many gifted and/or remedial programs as well as the arts have been cut out in favor of a more standard level and course of study).
The Act reduces eduction to a primary goal of preparing students for mandatory state testing. I went to parent orientation at the beginning of this school year, and the 5th grade teachers spent at least half of their allotted time discussing the importance of attendance during testing, their expectations of the students and parents during the week of testing (get rest, eat a healthy breakfast, take vitamins - uh...like these things aren't important every day?), and how they would handle make-up testing for students who dare to get sick during the original test week.
Criticism of standardized testing aside (and believe me - there are criticisms), the Act motivated the State of Missouri to improve its testing scores...and how did they do this? By lowering testing standards.
"Teaching to the test" is the basis for curriculum in the US and begs the question what is the definition of education today?
Mine certainly does not fit into the current box we call public education in the United States. I could go on and on about the reasons why I feel our education system is failing on so many levels. Where is the excitement and fun in learning? Is learning even occurring?
Finally, after years of discussion and research, we hit our limit of %*&! this year and have taken Cole out of school. We are in Week Two of the new and exciting endeavor of home school, and things are going GREAT.
Stay tuned...
Education–noun
1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Henry David Thoreau
What are our children actually learning in school?
I've been doing a lot of thinking on this lately, and these are my thoughts.
For starters, even very young kids (I'm talking Kindergarten here) are required to conduct themselves in a manner most adults would find challenging. The institution of the school is institutionalized alright! Try prison-like. Each subsequent year seems to find shorter recesses (if recess is permitted at all - some Dallas elementary schools I know of have done away with it completely), no-talking restrictions in the cafeteria during a shrinking lunch hour - oh, I mean 20 minutes, restroom privileges suspended, and on it goes.
Many reasons exist for the changes in education over the past decade and almost all of them are well-intentioned. However, no matter the end, our schools and our kids are suffering.
Q: So, what's changed since we were kids?
A: A heck of a lot.
In 1999, the Columbine High School massacre, motivated frightened parents to demand No Tolerance rules towards violent acts, cliques, and bullying within our schools. Who could blame them? Millions of parents watched in horror as students fled the high school to escape the carnage occurring within its doors. We saw the interviews, saw the fear on the faces of students, teachers, and parents affected, and weren't we all affected? We mourned the tragic and unimaginable death of 12 Columbine students and one teacher. We hugged our kids tight and worried as we sent them off to school in the morning. Subsequent acts of violence within or around our schools have dominated news media and remain a growing concern in many cities around the Nation. Increased security and No Tolerance rules have changed the atmosphere of enrichment, creativity, and fun in schools to one more akin of a penitentiary.
Add to this, the increasing desire of parents and educators to close the disparity between the privileged and under-privileged combined with the need for inclusively where children are concerned pushed legislators towards so-called Reform. Good intentions to be sure, but the results are less than brilliant. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 calls for increased accountability from States to education all children to a specified standard. And how is this measured and reinforced? You guessed it - standardized testing tied to State and Federal funding. This not only puts the focus on these test results but also limits where funds are spent within schools (for instance, many gifted and/or remedial programs as well as the arts have been cut out in favor of a more standard level and course of study).
The Act reduces eduction to a primary goal of preparing students for mandatory state testing. I went to parent orientation at the beginning of this school year, and the 5th grade teachers spent at least half of their allotted time discussing the importance of attendance during testing, their expectations of the students and parents during the week of testing (get rest, eat a healthy breakfast, take vitamins - uh...like these things aren't important every day?), and how they would handle make-up testing for students who dare to get sick during the original test week.
Criticism of standardized testing aside (and believe me - there are criticisms), the Act motivated the State of Missouri to improve its testing scores...and how did they do this? By lowering testing standards.
"Teaching to the test" is the basis for curriculum in the US and begs the question what is the definition of education today?
Mine certainly does not fit into the current box we call public education in the United States. I could go on and on about the reasons why I feel our education system is failing on so many levels. Where is the excitement and fun in learning? Is learning even occurring?
Finally, after years of discussion and research, we hit our limit of %*&! this year and have taken Cole out of school. We are in Week Two of the new and exciting endeavor of home school, and things are going GREAT.
Stay tuned...
Education–noun
1. the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
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