Things are as they are, not as you want them to be

You may already have come across an article by Charles J. Sykes called: “Some rules kids won’t learn in school”. The whole article is worth reading, but here are some extracts that seem appropriate for a Monday morning.

The original was printed in The San Diego Union Tribune in 1996. In the intervening 12 years, nothing has altered the truth of what Mr. Sykes wrote. That’s a little depressing, but I guess social revolutions take a good deal longer than that and the next one to affect us hasn’t even started. Continued

If you can’t trust the evidence, there’s nothing left

I hope others are as concerned as I feel about this article, from The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research”), giving examples of where Photoshop or similar programs had been used to fabricate or manipulate images to support research conclusions.

Editors at scientific publications are, it seems, having to act more like detectives to test the images supplied with articles for signs of tampering. The root of the problem, I guess, is the ease with which modern software allows images to be manipulated and ‘enhanced’, coupled with researchers’ desire to present compelling evidence for their conclusion (even when it doesn’t quite exist). Continued

Various movements are growing in the USA to encourage children to get outside and away from computer screens and electronic games. Their proponents also claim significant health benefits, saying that their children become happier, healthier and smarter as a result of more time spent with nature.

According to this article (“Got Dirt? Beyond Nature-Deficit Disorder”), the practice has substantial backing:

Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at Centers for Disease Control, recently describes the clear benefits of nature experiences to healthy child development, and to adult well-being.

“In the same way that protecting water and protecting air are strategies for promoting public health, protecting natural landscapes can be seen as a powerful form of preventive medicine,” he says. He believes that future research about the positive health effects of nature should be conducted in collaboration with architects, urban planners, park designers, and landscape architects. “Of course, there is still much we need to learn, such as what kinds of nature contact are most beneficial to health, how much contact is needed and how to measure that, and what groups of people benefit most. But we know enough to act.”

There’s even a teenager-founded group, Geeks in the Woods, that, “makes a U-turn back to…a balance between virtual reality and what sustains all life…nature.”

The article suggest these five steps for parents:

1. Go for a family walk when the moon is full.
2. Help your child discover a hidden universe in a piece of wood left on the ground.
3. Tell your children stories about your special childhood places in nature. Then help them find their own.
4. Revive old traditions for keeping nature collections.
5. Invent your own nature game.

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