A fascinating column in the New York Times (yes, you read that right), about oxytocin and attachment theory. Not that we can explain everything using a simple hormone. But there is a lot of truth to this stuff. Especially:
Over the past few decades federal and state governments have spent billions of dollars trying to improve high schools. Much of the effort has gone into trying to improve individual math and reading scores. But the effects have been modest and up to 30 percent of students drop out — a social catastrophe.
The dropout rates are astronomical because humans are not machines into which you can input data. They require emotion to process information. You take kids who didn’t benefit from stable, nurturing parental care and who have not learned how to form human attachments, and you stick them in a school that functions like a factory for information transmission, and the results are going to be horrible.
[…]
If I had $37 billion, I would focus it on the crucial node where attachment skills are formed: the parental relationship during the first few years of life.
Here you will notice he does not mention the need for more – and better – institutional daycare (pardon me, early childhood education). Most normal people know the best place for a young child is at home with his or her parents. In most cases, anyway. Yet countless women are being pressured into returning to work shortly after having a baby, and we all know how popular institutional daycare is with politicians. Problem is, none of that is good for the kids (it’s not brilliant for the moms either).
You might also notice an issue the columnist didn’t mention. Thirty-five years after Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to argue that legalizing abortion has given us a society where every child is “wanted”. If they were as wanted as all that, kids wouldn’t be flung into daycare before turning one, and they wouldn’t have the kinds of emotional issues David Brooks talks about (to say nothing of what Miriam Grossman has documented).
Not bad, for a NYT column.
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I wish I was a writer then maybe I could express my thoughts about the young people of today and their main handicap properly. To my way of thinking they do not have much of a chance from the git go. They are born, Mom & Dad get them into day care so both of them can hold down jobs to pay for their oversized house, 2 or 3 cars, boat, snow-machine or quad, hell maybe both. Then there is the membership at the country club for summer recreation and skiing in the winter months. Who has time for kids the system and nanny will look after them. All they have to do is spend lots so they have all the bells & whistles and everything is OK. That may sound extreme but not here where I live. I witness it every day as I do things with my grand-kids. My daughter and her husband have not had a night out except when I can afford to chip in to help pay for it and then babysit for 10 years. They are also the ones that transport and look after the kids of the ones going to the country club and ski hill because after all those folks paid good money for their kids to be there, to play hockey, soccer, & baseball and so on. Hell why should they have to PARTICIPATE. My daughter and son in law have 5 kids that love sports, family things and being together and school where they are doing quite well thank you. If more of the people in our fair country worried more about what they can give than what they can pay for especially when it comes to family we would all reap the benefits especially the kids.
I believe that under a new presidency, there are lots of changes expected to be happening in the government system particularly in the financial institutions as we know that the financial crisis is really a burden to all of us. I know the reality of how much people think about their political choices is less than studied. Many of you may even have studied more about whether you should take out a payday advance than who to vote for. As a case in point, check out this brief audio snippet from a recent episode of “The Howard Stern Show,” posted courtesy of BPM Deejays of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Roving Reporter Sal sought the opinions of men and women on the street, to see whether they supported Barack Obama or John McCain for President. Admittedly, they were attempting to gauge whether African-Americans would automatically vote for Obama simply because he’s black. That point is driven home by the location Sal obtains his samples from: Harlem, New York.
However, the trick Sal employs in his interviews is telling. By reversing the candidates’ positions on issues like the pro-life argument, stem cell research, the war in Iraq and who Sarah Palin is – attributing McCain’s positions to Obama – Sal gets people to admit that they support all kinds of ideas that Obama wants little or nothing to do with. He exposes the ugly truth that many of us are ignorant when it comes to the issues. We parrot popular opinions and flow along with our peer groups. But when it comes to things like presidential elections and your vote, I hope you thought about it considerably. Please reao on the following liks for more results. http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/a-fast-cash-payday-advance-saved-my-wifes-stupid-cats/