5 Ways To Help Your Kids Do MathWritten by Murdo Macleod
===========================================================5 Ways To Help Your Kids Do Math (c) Copyright 2003 by Murdo Macleod =========================================================== Uh oh. Your kids arrive home with their school reports and it's poor marks from math department. Now what do you do? You may not be a math teacher, but thankfully there are ways you can help your kids improve their grades. Studies have shown that children are much more likely to perform well in a subject that interests them. So here are 5 ways to get your kids excited about math and actually looking forward to next math class: 1. Inspire them. Some kids don't enjoy math because they just can't see point of it. Unlike reading or painting, all those mathematical symbols and numbers don't seem to mean anything. What you need to do is show them how important math is in real world. Tell them stories about great engineering feats throughout history. From building great pyramids of Egypt, to Hoover dam, to latest space missions to Mars, nothing would have been achieved without mathematics, and mathematicians. 2. Get practical. Involve your kids in some real world math away from classroom. Find something your child is interested in and relate it to math in some way. For example, do they like baseball? Terrific. During a game, ask them how many points losing team has to score to beat other one. And how many games do they need to win before they have enough points to win league? If they enjoy helping around home then let them do "clever stuff". Ask them to work out sizes for that wood you're going to cut. Or get them to measure out ingredients for cake you're about to bake. When you're in a store, ask your kids to add up prices and keep a running total while you shop. Then ask them how much change you should expect at checkout. 3. Take life "step-by-step". Success in math - as in life - is largely about breaking large projects down into manageable, bite-sized pieces.
| | Speaking on Behalf of Our Children: Stop Blaming the VictimsWritten by Dawn Fry
Word Count: 893Speaking on Behalf of Our Children: Stop Blaming Victims by Dawn Fry How many times have you flipped through pages of a magazine or newspaper and seen images of children with captions like "Brats," "Bullies," or "Mean and Selfish"? Unfortunately, these are common occurrences in today's media. For some child advocates, these images serve as a call to action: We need to do something to help America's so-called "out-of-control" children. The problem is, while these negative images are a wake up call, they are not doing anything to help troubled children. In fact, they only add to problem. By labeling children brats, bullies, or mean and selfish, we are imposing very same behaviors on them that we teach as being wrong. In Robert Shaw's book, The Epidemic: The Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children, he asserts that "Our culture no longer offers what children need to truly thrive." That is, some children are so unruly because society has unknowingly taught them to act this way Getting Down to Root of Problem The "epidemic" that Shaw discusses is a result of a deeply rooted social system called Authoritarianism, which is a system of behaviors that manipulate and control through pain and humiliation. These behaviors include blaming, shaming, preaching, moralizing, accusing, ridiculing, belittling, evaluating, labeling, threatening, judging, and punishing - all bullying behaviors. These behaviors disrespect, discourage, and devalue person to whom they are directed. When such authoritarian behaviors are imposed on children, end result is usually a loss of dignity and self-respect. Instead of helping them overcome their problems, these methods only make children feel worse about themselves, causing them to react by displaying same authoritarian behaviors. Authoritarian behaviors are so deeply rooted that even professional advocates who speak out against bullying resort to using same tactics. For example, on an episode of his TV. show, Dr. Phil McGraw interviewed a teenage girl who was being verbally and physically abused by other girls at school. Since accused girls refused to appear on program, Dr. Phil delivered a message to them by looking and speaking directly into camera. When he began to ridicule accused girls and call them names, audience immediately applauded and cheered with approval. Both Dr. Phil and his audience were advocating very same behaviors that he was speaking against. Bullying is so deeply rooted in today's society, that it now seems reasonable. Adding to our trouble, our nation as a whole has a reputation of being a bully because of our authoritarian behaviors. In fact, The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran an article entitled "9/11 Reminds Chinese of America, a Global Bully." In article a student at Beijing Institute of Science said, "America is a bully, so when someone hits back, it feels good." When bullying is directed at children, cycle continues. Many bullied children end up being bullies themselves because "it feels good," causing others to feel like victims for much of their life.
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