Common core maths

An article in the NaturalNews website illustrates some of the problems with Common Core mathematics, part of the new curriculum being pushed out in many parts of the USA.

Case in point: See this homework assignment from an elementary school in New York. The "mathematics" exercise instructs children to "Draw the cubes you colored in the number bond" and then "Show the hidden partners on your fingers to an adult."

The final instruction asks students to "Color the fingers you showed."

I do PhD-level work in analytical chemistry and code complex relational databases, yes despite my best efforts to grasp this Common Core exercise, I have no idea what on Earth this lesson is attempting to teach.

Examining these lessons, I feel a genuine sense of alarm for the future of America. If even the people writing mathematics lessons can't communicate clearly, then we are rapidly descending into Idiocracy. The real aim seems to be about making schoolchildren mentally ill so that they cannot possibly understand the federal budget deficit, national debt, or the coming collapse of the U.S. dollar (which will destroy their paychecks and life savings when it ultimately happens).

http://www.naturalnews.com/044338_Common_Core_math_education_Americas_children.html

See Common core: education without representation

Police strip searches

"LONDON (INTELLIHUB) — Information relating to police searches in the UK were recently revealed through a Freedom of Information Act document dump published by the London Guardian."

"The documents show that 4,638 children between the ages of 10 and 16 were strip searched by police between April 2008 and the end of last year. It is important to mention that these figures are likely only scratching the surface because it is possible that thousands of searches were conducted off the record."

"It is disturbing that the Met strip search children as young as 10 years old on a routine basis. Strip searching is an inhuman and degrading experience and children should not be subjected to such treatment unless there is no other feasible method to detect crime available to the police," said Sophie Khan, legal director of Police Action Centre, a charity that raises awareness about police abuse."

"However, an unnamed spokeswoman from the police said that the strip search procedures were "proportionate and appropriate".

http://intellihub.com/uk-police-strip-searched-4500-children-five-years/

Teenager and baby are found

A baby said to have been taken by her mother during a supervised visit was found safe and well today, as four people were arrested in connection with her alleged kidnap.

Lola Page, 13 months, was found by detectives. The child’s mother Stacey Ball, 18, and a man were arrested. Ball is accused of kidnap, whilst the man is accused of assisting an offender. A short time later, officers visited an address in Walsall Wood where two men were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to kidnap. All four were taken into custody and were being questioned today.

Police launched a major probe on Friday after Lola was put into a car during a supervised family visit at an address on Stroud Avenue, Willenhall. At the time of the disappearance, Lola was being cared for by a foster family in Walsall.

DCI Matt Markham from Force CID, said: "We are pleased to say that Lola is now returned to a place of safety and she is doing well. 

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2014/03/17/missing-mother-arrested-for-kidnap-as-baby-found-safe/

How did the Express and Star get the right to display the photographs of the child all over the newspapers?

Teenage mother absconds with baby

The family of a teenage mother who snatched her baby daughter from a foster family during a supervised visit have said her actions were an 'act of desperation'.

Police are searching for Stacey Ball, 18, after she bundled 13-month-old Lola Page into a car in Walsall, West Midlands.

But yesterday Miss Ball's father, Ryan Price, 46, said his daughter is simply 'screaming out for help' because she had been informed her daughter would be put up for adoption.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2582026/She-mother-screaming-help-Family-defend-teenager-Stacey-Ball-snatched-toddler-daughter-foster-family-vanished.html

Confidential material sent to the wrong address

"A council has apologised after a couple were mistakenly sent disturbing confidential details about a child welfare case. Cumbria County Council says it has taken action following the blunder in which the man and his partner, from Carlisle, received private minutes from a Children’s Services meeting about a child who was nothing to do with them."

"The man explained how he and his partner were involved with Children’s Services and the first page of the letter referred to their case. But the second page went on to reveal personal and disturbing information about another child, including his name and the history of his case."

"The blunder is believed to be due to the similarity between the name of the man’s partner and the mother of the child referred to in the documents."

"Former Children’s Services boss Julia Morrison, who presided over a period when child protection services in the county were repeatedly criticised by Ofsted inspectors for failing to adequately protect the most vulnerable youngsters, announced last Thursday she was leaving the role due to health reasons."

　
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/cumbria-council-apologises-after-child-welfare-case-blunder-1.1123190#

Sustainable development in the Curriculum for Excellence

The new Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland has the ambition of offering a broad general education with the opportunity for interdisciplinary work. Global topics such as climate change and sustainable development require such treatment:

The goal of sustainable development is to enable all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and improve the quality of their lives without compromising the quality of life for future generations　

Developing our children and young people as global citizens through sustainable development education is a key context for learning within Curriculum for Excellence. Sustainability issues feature prominently in the experiences and outcomes and offer learners an opportunity to engage with complex ethical issues relating to climate change, social justice, interdependence, health and wellbeing and biodiversity.

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/learningteachingandassessment/learningacrossthecurriculum/themesacrosslearning/globalcitizenship/sustainabledevelopment/introduction.asp

The PhD thesis `An exploratory study of the sustainable development education provided by the Curriculum for Excellence` is a small scale qualitative study based in one school in Stirlingshire. Its main findings were that although pupils received a solid foundation of knowledge on sustainable development issues in order to live more sustainable lives, they were not provided with enough knowledge with which to advance that education.

http://etheses.qmu.ac.uk/1148/

It is possible that there is too much breadth and not enough depth with which to build a sustainable education. It should be noted that since the Climategate scandal the term `global warming` has fallen out of favour to be replaced with `climate change`which illustrates how politicised this topic has become. It refuses to go away no matter what the evidence. Are our schoolchildren being equipped with enough information to be able to reflect on the politics and science as well as the ethics of global citizenship and sustainable development?  I don`t think so.

 

See also the Green agenda

Legal age for marriage

Less than a month before the eleventh anniversary of the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, the near destruction of much of the country, heritage, culture, secularism, education, health services and all State institutions, the country is poised to revert "two thousand years" say campaigners.

On 25th February Iraq’s Cabinet approved a draft law lowering the age of legal marriage for females to nine years old.

Iraq was, prior to the invasion, a fiercely secular country, with a broadly equal male, female workforce and with women benefiting from a National Personal Status Law, introduced in 1959, which remained "one of the most liberal in the Arab world, with respect to women’s rights."

The legal age for marriage was set at eighteen, forced marriages were banned and polygamy restricted. Cohesion between communities was enhanced and fostered by: "eliminating the differential treatment of Sunnis and Shiites under the law (and erasing differentiation) between the various religious communities …" Women’s rights in divorce, child custody and inheritance were an integral part of the Law, with Article 14 stating that all Iraqis are equal under the law.(1)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-and-the-rights-of-children-americas-proxy-government-legalizes-pedophilia-in-occupied-iraq/5373303

The resurgent blog of Stuart Syvret

Stuarty Syvret`s blog is up and running again albeit at a new IP address:

"So – November 2008?

What was taking place around then? And what was I writing and publishing on this blog that can have so frightened the Jersey establishment?

Jersey’s public authorities were secretly attempting to get this blog taken down in November 2008 for three reasons: (a) to cover-up their concealment of child-abuse, (b) to prevent scrutiny of their illegal suspension of Police Chief Graham Power, and (c) desperate panic that their vacuous, spin-doctor-authored smearing of the Haute de la Garenne investigation had had its entire legality and scientific credibility challenged head-on, immediately, by postings like this:"

http://freespeechoffshore.nl/stuartsyvretblog/37-questions-for-officers-warcup-gradwell/

Sharing information and big data

In light of the Children and Young People Act which has been passed in the Scottish Parliament and the implications for children and families regarding their personal informatiom held in various datasets, it is interesting to review what the Scottish Government had to say about ecare in 2008.

                                                                        ecare programme

A significant development over the next few years will be the new version of the national eCare framework that will further support information sharing. The existing framework already supports controlled messaging of information about child protection issues, and is being rolled out across Scotland in 2009. The next version of the framework is being developed in parallel, to support electronic sharing of information about children and young people to aid decision making surrounding their needs. The system is also being designed to ensure strictly controlled access to information, yet give ready access to those practitioners who need to know who else may be involved with a child or young person. More information on the development of the eCare framework is available on the Scottish Government Data Sharing and Standards website.

In the future, practitioners will be expected to record information using shared language, structured around a standard practice model, sharing key relevant information through the eCare framework. 

A guide to getting it right for every child (2008)

It is also interesting to read and hear Professor Alex `Sandy` Pentland, from MIT, and his pontifications about the potential that Big Data has for re-shaping society.

 We're going to end up reinventing what it means to have a human society.
ALEX 'SANDY' PENTLAND
Re-inventing society in the wake of big data

Please watch the video on the website where most of the motivations about Big Data are discussed by Alex ``Sandy` Pentland.

ADHD

Dr Richard Saul has this to say about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder:

This so-called condition has apparently spread like wildfire across the globe in recent years, with a huge increase in its diagnosis and medication. More than 4 per cent of adults and 11 per cent of children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with ADHD - a leap of more than 40 per cent in the past decade. It's now the most common mental health disorder in the UK and affects around 2 to 5   per cent of school-age children.

Prescriptions for the stimulants used to treat it, including Ritalin, doubled for children and quadrupled for adults in the UK between 2003 and 2008. But these stimulants - so-called because they're designed to stimulate parts of the brain that are not thought to be working properly - frequently do not help, and instead cause a range of side-effects, some dangerous. They can even make symptoms worse.

To treat ADHD as a condition, rather than a set of symptoms, is doing a terrible, and dangerous, disservice to the children and adults who are diagnosed with it. There is no doubt that the symptoms - an inability to pay attention to details, fidgeting, interrupting, difficulty staying seated, impulsive behaviour - exist.

But to lump them together and turn them into a diagnosis of ADHD, then to treat this so-called condition with stimulants, is like treating the symptoms of a heart attack - such as severe chest pain - with painkillers, rather than tackling the cause of them by repairing the heart. It is dangerous, neglectful and wrong.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2577814/The-eminent-doctor-convinced-ad-hd-doesnt-exist-In-fact-says-Dr-RICHARD-SAUL-symptoms-routine-causes-drugs-harm-good.html

 Here is a common sense account written by a parent who questions whether or not the condition ADHD exists:  ADHD REPORT

There is no doubt that a case can be made for or against the diagnosis. All of this does bring into question what is likely to happen in Scotland if a `named person` in charge of the wellbeing of a child disagrees with a parent about such a diagnosis.  How are disputes to be settled? At the moment it is impossible to say.