Single Dads

People that have read this website before might remember previous rants on No Child Left Behind. Thanks to the Science Blog, I now have yet more ammunition against one of my least favorite federal programs.

Bruce Fuller, lead author and professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that the strong advances in narrowing racial and income-based achievement gaps seen in the 1990s have faded since passage of ‘No Child’. “The slowing of achievement gains, even declines in reading, since 2002 suggests that state-led accountability efforts—well underway by the mid-1990s—packed more of a punch in raising student performance, compared with the flattening-out of scores during the ‘No Child’ era,” he observed.

“We are not suggesting that ‘No Child’ has dampened the earlier progress made by the states,” Fuller said. “But we find no consistent evidence that federal reforms have rekindled the states’ earlier gains. Federal activism may have helped to sustain the buoyancy in children’s math scores at the fourth-grade level, seen throughout the prior decade.”

Give the article a peek. I find few topics more aggravating than the state of elementary and secondary education at the moment, especially in light of the fact that I actually feel compelled to send my daughter to private school for at least the first few years of her educational career. That costs money, and the idea of spending money at this level doesn’t quite drive me insane, but it HAS, along with child support, drove me to hold down two jobs and a freelancing position that I’ll have to share with you someday.

Come to think of it, having essentially three jobs might just be insane after all.

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?”

…I’ve been offline for a while now.

However, you’ll see I’ve been saving up posts for single dads (and moms) of all types. I apologize for the brief hiatus. Posts will be coming fast and furious now, however. I hope you can keep up!

…because it’s brilliantly true:  27 Skills Your Child Needs to Know That She’s Not Getting In School.

Credit where credit is due, though, at Zen Habits.

Everyone knows that our school system, in general, is not giving our kids the basic reading, writing, ‘rithmatic and science skills needed to be competitive in the high-tech workforce of the upcoming generation (at least, that’s the general assumption, and we won’t argue it here).

But there’s much more to life than those basic subjects, and unless you have an exceptional teacher who is willing to break out of the mold, your child isn’t learning the crucial things he or she needs to learn in life.

This pretty well considered article then goes on to name exactly what our children should learn.  It’s definitely worth your time reading, but let me add a couple of things that aren’t listed:

- Knowing yourself: Truly an important skill.  I know a lot of adults that still don’t know themeselves.  Kids can be in danger of being totally unprepared in a world that will probably attempt to slot them into groups… where they may, but most likely, may not, belong.  Self identification and self awareness is shockingly important in my opinion.

- Paying attention to your food:  Recently, I had a disscusion that alerted me that children of the 1940’s and 1950’s didn’t HAVE to pay attention to what they ate - they took it for granted, and pretty much most of the time, it wasn’t a bad thing.  Times have changed.  Ever look at what’s most of the superprocessed, plastic-covered, hormone-injected food that you eat?  Here’s a clue - you won’t know what most of it is.  Needless to say, this isn’t a good thing.  Healthy eating and drinking is key to health, and your children should be aware of that.

I’m sure that I could think of more - and perhaps you can.  Feel free to mention them.

You are going to see quite a few new items here on Single Dads.  This website, being a labor of love, will go through several changes as more features are incorporated and as it gets ready for Prime Time.  There have been many additions to the blogroll, including:

Daddy Types- A weblog for new dads.

Parenting Hacks - Real world parenting tips from actual parents, naturally.

Parenting Ideas - Features practical parenting ideas and tips.

T’mornin’- A single mom’s weblog.  She’s a friend of mine.  I don’t discriminate against mothers.

ringloss - Another friend’s blog.

Jaxed- A internet culture-oriented blog/website.

Engtech - A great WordPress blog for getting new blogging ideas and techniques.  I owe this site a debt of gratitude.

You’ll see posts being removed and things being moved around as we tinker with site design.  Hopefully you’ll see couple of new pages appear with some new features.  Basically I would like this to be a site that you look forward to reading, and if you have suggestions, please feel free to comment and let me know - I might try to incorporate them into the blog.

Digging through the Internet, I happened to, by chance, come across this article that attempts to explain why smart people are not the happiest people in the world’s big tent.

Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales).

Education systems in countries whose primary interest is in wealth accumulation encourage heroes in movies, war and sports, but not in intellectual development. Super intelligent people manage, but few reach the top of the business or social ladder.

Children develop along four streams: intellectual, physical, emotional (psychological) and social. In classrooms, the smartest kids tend to be left out of more activities by other children than they are included in. They are “odd,” they are the geeks, they are social outsiders. In other words, they do not develop socially as well as they may develop intellectually or even physically where opportunities may exist for more progress.

Their emotional development, characterized by their ability to cope with risky or stressful situations, especially over long periods of time, also lags behind that of the average person.

Adults tend to believe that intelligent kids can deal with anything because they are intellectually superior. This inevitably includes situations where the intelligent kids have neither knowledge nor skills to support their experience. They go through the tough times alone. Adults don’t understand that they need help and other kids don’t want to associate with kids the social leaders say are outsiders.

As a result we have many highly intelligent people whose social development progresses much slower than that of most people and they have trouble coping with the stressors of life that present themselves to everyone. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of prison inmates are socially and emotionally underdeveloped or maldeveloped and a larger than average percentage of them are more intelligent than the norm.

This was posted on Scribd, by Bill Allin, who is a sociologist who is most certainly more experienced than I on topics in this realm.  Thank Digg, where one can find many articles worth reading.

I would say this.  Read the article.  Think about it.  Then, steel yourself for the Part 2, coming soon (assuming that I can find the original posting), where I will explain to you in minor detail why this might be correct, and how a person can change this tendency without losing their mind, shunning society, and dying, finally, a broken old man on the street.  Or a broken old woman in some other way.

This is the first official post on my new blog, Single Dads.  I’d tell you exactly what to expect, but at this point, I’m simply updating posts (from another source) and getting the template ready.  What this means is that if you’re a single dad, or care about a single dad, or even have an interest in what single dads say, this is your place.  I’m a single dad myself, and my idea is that there really aren’t a lot of places on the way for people like me to go on the Internet and find like folks.  Hence, this was born.  Purely a labor of necessity.

Things are going to change fast around here.  Be ready.  Look often, as I know that I’ll be updating quite frequently.  Thanks for taking a look, and please, let me know if there’s anything in particular that you want to see, suggestions for topics or layout, categories you’d like to access, or any good info you can give me.