Equity and Gender

My junior year of college I completed my literacy practicum at one of the local elementary schools. We were there to apply the principles that we had been learning in our literacy classes in order to help children learn how to read and write. One of my classmates and myself were assigned to a kindergarten teacher who was not much older than we were. Although we did not do much direct instruct in regards to reading, I have never been in a kindergarten classroom that I thought was more developmentally appropriate for children. Every day the children would work at centers. These centers were a variety of activities to help children learn something. A few of the activities could be numbers. The others were letters. Some were life skills and others were a mix in between all of them. Each geared to help teach the children many different ways.

To some this might seem like a waste of time, energy and resources. Would it not be far more efficient to just have one or two activities that teach one principle?

NOPE!

Efficient, maybe, but effective. Not likely. Anyone who has interacted with children……wait, no, scratch that….anyone who has interacted with PEOPLE know that no two people are exactly alike. We all have different skin, eye and hair color. We all have different personalities. We all think different thoughts. We all have different likes and dislikes. So it should come of little surprise to know that the way we each learn is different as well.

What this kindergarten teacher was doing was making sure each child was able to learn in the way that they learn best. They were receiving an equitable education. No equity does not mean the same as equal. A post by Shane Safir defined both in simple terms that I feel explains them well. “If equality means giving everyone the same resources, equity means giving each student access to the resources they need to learn and thrive.”

So what does this have to do with gender?

I am glad you asked.

Gender is yet another one of the many traits that sets us apart. Yes, ladies and gentleman, females and males, men and women, boys and girls, the two sexes are different. And yes I say two because regardless of what gender you identify with or call yourself children are born into this world, except for one or two very, very rare exceptions, as either male or female.

There, now to further express my opinion on the controversial topic, yes, I do believe that man and woman are equal. I do not think that means we are the same. I do believe in equal opportunity however I believe it is important to acknowledge our limitations as well as our strengths.

Because of the way men and woman’s brains are wired, not only to we think differently. We learn differently. If we truly want to be able to give both men and woman equal opportunity we need to teach them differently. The first step to that is to acknowledge that the two are different. For example men, because of the way they think and the process, tend to be better at math. This does not mean girls cannot be but statistics of SAT and ACT scores do show that males tend to get higher scores. Well, at least male learn math better the way we traditionally teach it. A few schools have tried math classes just for girls and have found they are far more likely to truly learn when they are working together in a group.

Of course there are exceptions in every case. Just as I started out saying, every child is different. That includes gender. I feel that as a society by refusing to acknowledge our differences and use our own unique strengths because of it, we are holding ourselves back as a society.

What Makes a Culture Valid or Invalid?

Okay, okay, please don’t bite my head off for this one. I know this is a controversial topic.  Hey, I am study family, which has been the main topic in controversy for the past couple years. But it was an interesting question posed in one of my classes this week. Is there such think as valid or invalid cultures? I was honestly a little taken aback by the question. Since a young age I was fascinated by other cultures, especially ancient ones. Culture is part of identity. It creates rich and amazing variety in our world. In a world that is striving to be more and more accepting of walks in life, is there such thing as a valid culture?

Well first let’s address what culture is? It is more than race. The clothes that are worn. The language that is spoken. Culture is interwoven into so many aspects of a group and has so many layers it can be often difficult to discern what aspects are part of a collective culture or not. Culture is the customs, rituals, rules and traditions of a society. Culture even goes as deep as philosophy, the way people think about and view the world around them.

Valid is for something to have sound basis in logic and fact. To have reason.

Are there some cultures that are not reasonable?

Yes, honestly, I think there are.

The family is what I base my value of a society on. I believe that the family is “the fundamental unit of society.” (The Family a Proclamation to the World). As such that is what I base my ideas on whether or not a culture is valid is by asking a question. Does that culture, promote, protect and strengthen the family?

Throughout this week, in a few of my classes, we studied cultures and its effects on families. I was curious about whether or not any culture, based on my question, was better than all the others. If there was a culture that validated and promoted the family the way that I see it. I was a little disappointed to find that there was not one culture that seem to satisfy me. Yes, there were many parts of different cultures that I thought were amazing in their regards to family. One culture emphasizes the importance of the mother in the home. Another the importance of having a father in the home. Many of them shared good ideals. However, in each culture, I would often find an idea that affected a family in ways I felt were harmful. My teacher actually said in class “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just take part of this culture here, a part of that culture there and put it all together to create the ideal culture?”

I am not saying that every culture, that every people needs to be the same. I feel that the traditions and rituals often performed by a group of people often creates unity. In family, in a community, and then in society as a whole. However, there are some practices I feel that either distract or detract from the family. In the US today, for example, a cultural norm has become the idea that it is better to become established in a career before you get married. Or at least before you have children. As a result it often causes people to put their jobs and money before their family members causes great harm.

One of the hardest things to acknowledge this week was that the perfect culture that puts the family at its center does not exist. At least not perfectly yet. It is an ideal. A standard. A utopia many are striving to reach for, but with so many ideas and paths to follow I am afraid we all become a little lost in the search.

Everyone is of course entitled to their own opinion and have the freedom to make their choices. In my opinion there is a document, presented in 1995 by the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, that perfectly lays out the ideals of the family. I believe once the ideal of family is firmly understood for what it is meant to be, only then can a culture or society center itself around it.

 The Family: A Proclamation to the World

Tik Tok Goes the Family Clock

Now I don’t know about you guys but when I hear the word system what usually comes to mind is some kind of assembly line. A machine. At the very most a series of routines that a company or group has in order to get through certain situations. But have you ever thought as the family as a system? A series of interwoven pieces that are all connected. One cannot move without affecting the others and, a lot of the time, if one piece breaks down or is misplaced, the entire thing can break down. That or it needs to be rebuilt in such a way that it can function without it’s missing piece.

Wow. Not sure where that came from. My fingers are doing the talking at the moment more than I am. Anyway, that is what we have discussed in my family systems class for the last week. Basically there are two types of families. A highly integrated family and an unintegrated family. An integrated family, is the family that is close knit. They have rules both spoken and unspoken, rituals, and traditions. The unintegrated family well…..it lacks those characteristics. The family does not usually function as a unit but rather as individual pieces.

My family is a pretty good example of a integrated family. We had rules, rituals and traditions. Some of them were openly addressed or spoken of, some of them were not. For class one of the challenges were to write down rules that we could remember from our family, both ones that were openly taught and ones that were silent in other ways. Hmmmm, let me see if I can think of some good examples. A known and addressed rule in my family was, no curfew. As long as we let Mom and Dad know where we were, who we were with and what we were doing we were fine. I am sure if any of us had pushed those boundaries, such as staying out all night on school nights of being out multiple nights in a row those rules would have been added on but that was the rule. An unspoken rule was, as kids, if you were sick, you slept on the couch. Honestly this was not something I really thought of, it was something we just did. Only later did I realize that we did it so we could be close to Mom since her and Dad’s room was just on the other side of the living room wall. She was never far away.

As for rituals and traditions, there are the more common ones. Holiday and birthday traditions. But have you ever stopped to think of the ones that are not outright acknowledged. For example the way some families do their morning routine. Who goes first? Many members of a family brush their teeth in similar ways because they learned it from each other.

For these unaddressed or unspoken rules much of the way we learn them is through feedback. Often times this feedback is not spoken. Sometimes the person giving the feedback might not even be aware that they are doing it. They are simply unconsciously imitating behavior that was shown to them. For example a disproving look when someone steps out of line. A clearing of the throat. In my family, it was silence. I am not even sure how this got started but much of the time, when we became upset for some reason or another, we went silent. Not sure it was the healthiest method of dealing with things but it is what we did.

Now the thing that we need to be careful about with these unspoken rules is called pathological communication. A way of telling a rule that can easily be misunderstood. For example if a teacher says there are no such thing as stupid questions, but when a student asks a question that the teacher thinks is not credible she will huff, roll her eyes and tap her foot in impatient. She says one thing but her body language, the pathological communication is saying another. To put this in a family setting a father might tell his children it is not okay to hit but goes home and hits mom when he is drunk. Often times the message that we do NOT intend to send speaks louder than the ones we do.

All these rules, rituals and traditions, it is what binds the family together. Makes them move as a unit rather than simple, wayward pieces. Of course this does not mean that there is no individuality within the unit, it just means that, often times, they are interconnected. What one pieces does, affects the other.

Until next time my readers,

Population is Exploding.....or Is It?

One of my favorite movies to watch as a child was the 1989 version of Saturday’s Warriors. I used to watch that recording almost every Sunday. Even then I was a sucker for movies with fun music in it. One of the more upbeat, catchy songs was called “Zero Population.” The main character, Jimmy, has a group of friends who don’t believe in the same values he has been taught his entire life. The importance of family being one of them. That particular song, sung by his group of friends, is about how people should limit the number of children they have because there are only so many resources to go around. Their contempt for those who do have many children was quite clear.

At the time I was not able to understand the full implications of what they meant other than to laugh out the screen and say. “You are part of the population, stupid. If there was zero you would not be around to talk about it.” Yeah, debate skills of a regular genius, I know. But even at that young age I was disturbed by the message. Family has always been a prominent part in my life. I was raised where I was surrounded by the support and care of aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends. Though my immediate family was not the largest I knew, not even close, we were a fairly good size with five children. The thought that we were unintentionally causing harm simply by the desire for a full, and complete family, was unsettling to me. I could not nor can I imagine a life without one of my siblings. If my parents had decided only to have a couple of us, there would be three precious members missing. More than that my mother was the youngest daughter of a family of twelve. Would our family even exist if my grandparents had decided to stop at four, or seven, or even ten?

However, I can also understand the concern people have on overpopulation. I too have had social studies classes where I have seen the enormous amounts of resources consumed by the world on a daily basis. I have seen the graphs that show the sharp upward curve of the world’s population in the last few decades alone and I felt the dread of wondering if we were rapidly heading to world that could not sustain its growing population.

This was the topic that we discussed in my Family Relations class this week but this time, it showed a new side that I have never seen before. We watched a show called The Demographic Winter. You can find both parts on YouTube if you are so inclined. It starts out by pointing out the increase in population. It started mostly after World War II. The seemingly endless war was over. Life was hopeful and many were starting anew. One of the many results is what is known as the Baby Boom. In fact, studies show that the amount of children born was really that large at all. The fundamental difference was that people are not dying like they used to. World War II gave birth to a multitude of modern medicines. Which has extended the life of thousands. Children were no longer replacing and adding to the population, they are adding onto the population that is already there.

The research also pointed out a fact that I had never heard before. That, unless some change is made, the population will decline in the next few decades if not sooner. The reasons for this? The amount of births per woman, known as the fertility rate, has dropped. More and more woman are have fewer children, usually later in their lives, or not have children at all.

Some might view this as a good thing that the population will slow and start to decline but is it. The rising generations will become smaller and smaller while the retiring generation stays large. If there are not enough of the rising population with the elderly be able to receive the proper care they need in their later years. Also, the US in particular, has shown a decline in education, will they be trained enough to take on the jobs their predecessors will leave behind.

The show words it far better than I can. It is hard to predict what will happen in the future but every path leads somewhere. It is just a matter of what will be on the end of it.

I strongly encourage you to watch the shows. They explain it far better than I can.

The New Economic Reality Demographic Winter Part 1

The New Economic Reatlity Demographic Winter Part 2

Until next time,

Sapphire

Assessing Research with a Studied Eye

Hello Readers,

I know, looooooooong time since my last post. Once again it is an assignment for a class and I just hope I do better than I did last semester. Also hoping it becomes a habit because one way or another I know that I am going to be involved in child development for the rest of my life so I should always have something to write about.

Having completed all my generals, every one of my classes are related to child development this semester. So don't be too surprised if I talk about things from multiple classes and I will not always specify which class. Partially because there is so much information swirling around in my brain I sometimes forget where I got it once it is in there. :) Hey, a girl can only remember so much, some information has to go.

The class that this blog has now become an assignment for this semester is called Family Relations. This week was mostly just introduction. Learning what we can expect from the class and so on. I have a good feeling about the class so far. It is not going to be easy. Looks like there is going to be some work involved but the teacher is knowledgeable and fun.

This week our discussion centered around discerning truth. This time in our history is filled with information so readily available to millions around the world. However I remember my Dad once saying that it was also the period of misinformation. Untruths mingled and sometimes blended right in with truth. So it is important to learn how to sort them out.

Over the years, as my teachers have repeatedly tried to teach me how to write good research papers I have learned a few things about making sure a source is credible. Check who the writer is. Check when it was published. Check the website, etc. etc. etc. This week we took it a step further in actually taking apart a credible research document and I learned a few more tricks.

One, always watch out for bias. When I was in high school I learned the best way to ensure you are not getting all your information from a biased source is to look up multiple and opposite views on a particular topic. We all have our biases, whether we are aware of them or not. Researchers are no exception. Just something to be aware of. During class I found myself wondering how to avoid bias and I suppose the best way would be to have researchers from both sides of an idea come together to work on the project.......not sure how well that would go though or if they would be able to work well together.

Two, make sure to look at the statistics. Surveys are a common theme in research. However, surveys are not always very effective. Those taking them can be led to answer by the wording of the question. Sometimes the number of people surveyed are not a large enough in order to get an idea of what the rest of the population in the group is like.

Three, the importance of a control group. A control group is basically taking a normal group of people in order to see how it compares to the group that is being surveyed. For example. If you wanted to test whether or not a new teaching method is going to be effective. You have several schools that agree to start implementing this new teaching methods and then you survey throughout the year to see if it is having an affect on the children's learning. At the same time there should be other schools that should be put under the same survey that have not applied the method so you can compare the two.

Makes me realize how much trust I have put in my teachers over the years who supply me with research articles to read in order to teach me a certain theory or idea. I rarely looked at who it had been written by, the statistics or other matters of the case. I simply took it at face value and that was that.

I think my writing of research papers just became a whole lot harder. Not only is there finding good sources, not I am going to be wondering how accurate they are.

Alright, I think that is it for now, catch you all later.

Family Project

And I am back,

For a good portion of the semester my group and I have been working on a family project. In this project each group in the class was assigned a family scenario based off of real life family stories. In each one or more of the children had special needs. One family had cleft lip as well as a hear condition. One child had ADD that was never officially diagnosed. Our family had two children diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta. This is more commonly known as Brittle Bones Disease.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta (and for the sake of my fingers will now be stated as OI) is rare genetic disorder. It's most common symptom is a fragile skeleton but, depending on the severity, affects bone strength, structure and other tissue as well. Their bones break and fracture very easily, so easily that one documentary I watched called them "Children of Glass." Here is one such video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-oor-pz1xo

I will write more about what we have learned about OI in another blog post. This week was finding resources for our family to use. Support groups, physical and occupational therapists, play groups that were safe for the children to interact with peers their age safely. At the beginning of the project we chose a city that our family to live in and our professor suggested that we pick a large one otherwise it would be difficult for us to find the adequate resources in our families area. It was a good thing she did too. We ended up choosing Houston, Texas. As we thought of concerns that the family would have and found resources to address those concerns, I kept thinking back to my home town. Though my job in an Early Learning Center really opened my eyes to the resources and programs in the valley for children and families I still doubt that there would be enough for a family raising two young children with OI.

One of the resources I found for our family was a therapy center that had various services available. I was very excited about it because it had much of what our family needed or could need as the children grow up. They had physical therapists to help the children strengthen their bones and muscles to help prevent injury. There are occupational therapists to help them gain their full physical potential and accomplish every day tasks. There are language therapists to help one of the children who had severe hearing loss because of his OI. Anyway, long story short it was an amazing facility that was family oriented. It is exactly the kind of place I would hope to be in my area should my children ever need such aid.

To say the least it has been quite the project. We all had our rolls and tasks and then would come and present them to each other before putting it into the project. I think we all learned something new and learned from each other. Sometimes it was a struggle to really understand OI and the need of the hypothetical family because we were scrambling to fulfill the requirements for the assignment. However, if we were truly people there to help the family we would need to learn all we could. In order to learn more I feel it would have been beneficial to interview an individual or individuals with OI. Or watch more documentaries on the matter. The recourse I felt was the most informative and beneficial would be The Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation (http://www.oif.org/site/PageServer). It had so much information from what OI is, the various levels, treatments, contact information for support groups, medical specialists, and so much more information. I wish there had been more time to read and explore the site.

One thing this taught me and has prepared me for is that to find good, quality resources, you have to be ready to dig deeper than simply the first results that pop up on a search engine. I have no doubt that at some point in my life I will be working with a child that has some disability. After this project I feel a little more prepared to do research to help me understand the children who will be under my care better as well as how I can best help them and their families.

Weekly quote:
"It takes a village to raise a child." ~ African Proverb
I mentioned this in one of my other posts but it kept coming to mind as we were going through the project because it indeed takes a group of people to help special children reach their full potential, regardless if they have a disability or not.

Higher-Wider-Deeper Project
For my higher wider deeper project on Dance and It's Affects on Children, I went back to a research paper I wrote when I was a sophomore in college about music and how it affects children's brains. I reread my research paper and from what it has told me that the area of the brain that develops with music overlaps with the area where language develops as well. So to develop one helps develop the other as well. Furthermore if one area is neglected, such as music, then the other area cannot fully develop. I reread a couple of the articles to confirm this and will be rereading the rest this week to see if there are any more areas on the topic that I feel I am lacking in.
Recourses:

Bannan, N. (2008). Language out of Music: The Four Dimensions of Vocal Learning. Australian Journal Of Anthropology, 19(3), 272-293.

Brandt, A., Gebrian, M., & Slevc, L. R. (2012). Music and early language acquisition. Frontiers In Psychology,3doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00327

Have a great week everyone, keep smiling

Sapphire

Look How Far We Have Come

Hello again,

Well aren't you guys lucky.....getting to hear from me twice in the same day. You can thank my tendency toward procrastination. A terrible ailment not matter who has it.

Last year in my creative writing class one of my teachers made a statement that I will never forget and that have often thought on. He said that people often get so caught up in how terrible the world is becoming. The amount of crime that has risen, the devastation and the poverty. The indifference and uncaring nature many people seem to exhibit. He does not see it that way. Instead he looks back on how much progress we have made. That in many countries people rights are protected. The advancements in medicine that saves millions of lives on a daily basis. The knowledge so readily available for thousands. I thought back on that again this week as we read about the progression of the disability laws.

Not that long ago, children with disabilities were not allowed to go to school with the children their age. Any education facility was free to reject whatever child they wanted, be it physical disability such as being confined to a wheel chair or diabetes, they did not have to teach that child. The Civil Rights movement kicked started the change that we now see in our schools today. With Brown vs. Board of Education allowing African American schools, other minorities began to realize it was possible for them to have their rights acknowledged as well.

It took time and for the law to change and take on another form several times, but it eventually evolved into the education system we have today. It is not perfect and will continue to improve in the future. As my teacher said in class this week, sometimes the court cases are pointless and a waste of time and money, and then there are the times when it is the only way to get some much needed changes.

We went more in depth into how special education is now set up, learning about Individual Education Plans and how they are different from from Individualized Family Service Plan.

Well, be back next week with another blog on what I learned, maybe you will hear from me before that.
Sapphire