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News
& Views -
Mar, 2001 Issue (page
1).
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END PUBLIC SCHOOLING?
(October 1998) Marshall Fritz, Director of the Alliance for the Separation of School & State, Fresno, California, www.sepschool.org/Other/nr19981030.html, released a poll conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, International, Princeton, N.J. that showed 27% of Americans “support repealing compulsory school attendance and ending tax support for schooling.” The percentage jumped to 57% when they “were assured that there would be enough private scholarships available so that all poor and disadvantaged students had the chance to go to better schools than today.”
PARENTING STYLE AFFECTS PRESCHOOLERS’ AGGRESSION
(September 2000) A longitudinal study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health and reported in the September issue of Developmental Psychology, suggests that empathy helps prevent aggressive preschoolers from continuing along an aggressive trajectory. The study further finds that an authoritarian maternal parenting style seems to play an important role in extinguishing a child’s primitive empathy.
http://www.apa.org/journals/dev/900ab.html.
WINNIE-THE-POOH DIAGNOSED
(December 2000) The Canadian Medical Association, http://www.cma.ca/cmaj/vol-163/issue-12/1557.htm, published a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Hundred Acre Wood, made famous by the Winnie-the-Pooh series, “a forest where neurodevelopmental and psychosocial problems go unrecognized and untreated.” Pooh himself is seen as possibly having ADHD, OCD, Tourette’s syndrome and perhaps a type of “Shaken Bear Syndrome,” possibly causing his cognitive struggles. Christopher Robin, though not with diagnoses, does have issues such as absence of parental supervision, the questionable practice of spending his time talking to animals, and possible future gender identity issues, as suggested by the naming of Winnie-the-Pooh.
LAWSUIT AGAINST SWAT TEAMS
(January 16, 2001) The Latimes.com, http://www.latimes.com, reported an attorney was set to file a lawsuit in federal court that could have the outcome of ending the role of paramilitary units in drug cases. The case stems from a September 13th incident in Modesto where an 11 year-old boy was killed by an apparently accidental shotgun blast to his back while sprawled on the floor. The action occurred when a special weapons and tactics SWAT team was serving a drug warrant on the boy’s father. No drugs or weapons were found in the home, and the father has denied guilt in the drug charges.
SCHOOL VIOLENCE EXAGGERATED?
(February 7, 2001) Richard Rothstein, writing in the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/national/07LESS.html, describes the concern about school violence that sometimes is described as a “Plague.” He says: “the plague is more myth than reality…schools are among the safest places for children to be. Of the 2,000 killings of children a year, only about 10 occur in or near schools.”
STUDENT CODE OF SILENCE BREAKING?
(February 10, 2001) The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/national/10RAMP.html, reported that while in the past students felt reluctant to report fellow students’ activities to adults, the memory of the Columbine shootings has resulted in students reporting scary behavior. This has resulted in arrests that “police say averted three potential school massacres.”
This article copyright ©
1999-2001, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced without prior approval if the copyright notice and proper publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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