Everybody knows how important it is to read to toddlers. Apart from the emotional element, reading out loud every day during the pre-K years sends a child to kindergarten with a significantly larger vocabulary than a child without that experience possesses. And what happens in kindergarten and after is that the gap grows (because of what is called the “Matthew Effect”). Continue Reading »
Today’s students are more socialized and considerably more self-disciplined than their predecessors. To teach them is a joy, but they will risk nothing, not even for one facetious question on a minor exam. Continue Reading »
Contrary to the popular view, children are integral to . . . . Continue Reading »
On a bright day in early autumn, I found myself sitting on the floor of my favorite bookstore with a pile of picture books two feet . . . . Continue Reading »
Near the end of Reproduction and Responsibility, the 2004 report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, comes a call to safeguard women and pregnancy. “In an effort to express our society’s profound regard for human pregnancy and pregnant women,” the council urges Congress to . . . . Continue Reading »
We’re Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents’ Divorceby constance ahrons harpercollins 304 pages $24.95 It is often said that those who are concerned about the social and personal effects of divorce are nostalgic for the 1950s, yearning for a mythical time . . . . Continue Reading »
At first glance, Hardwired to Connect, the recent report from the Commission on Children at Risk, a group of thirty-three children’s doctors, research scientists, and youth services professionals, might be viewed as yet another harbinger of social decay. The report, jointly sponsored by the . . . . Continue Reading »
For the past two years, I have been the head “Library Mommy” at my daughter’s private nursery school. The children tell me what books they have or have not read, what books they have at home, and what interests them in the school’s library. The nursery school is full of bright, lively, . . . . Continue Reading »
In a famous passage from Science and the Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead gives this counsel to scholars in the various historical disciplines: “Do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which [controversialists] feel it necessary explicitly to defend.” More . . . . Continue Reading »
My April calendar reminds me that my oldest child celebrates her birthday this month. Which in turn reminds me of the mysteries and puzzlements of child-rearing. Which in its turn reminds me, once again, why I am a cultural conservative. . . . . Continue Reading »
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