Today’s news (seen while eating my lunch) brings two interesting articles about raising kids in today’s world:<\/p>\n
The first, in the Los Angeles Daily News<\/a> via the Associated Press, is about birthday parties. Specifically, it is about the tendancy today to overdo birthday parties. When I was growing up, I remember parties as a simple thing: you had a few friends over, you had a cake, you played “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”. Perhaps you went to a movie. There were no goodie bags (consolation prizes) for the non-birthday kids (the losers). Today, however, things have become more elaborate as parent (and kids) try to outdo other parents (and kids). For example: A birthday party for a 1-year-old featured a gift-opening that lasted two hours…and the child slept through most of it. At another party, seven-year-olds were picked up in stretch limos to attend the birthday party of a classmate. In still another case, a 6-year-old guest at a St. Paul birthday party didn’t like the contents of the gift bag and declared: “This is a rip-off.” To counter this, a new group has been formed called “Birthdays Without Pressure<\/a>“. I think it is an interesting notion, and hope they succeed. Next they can attack B’nai Mitzvah Receptions (or would that be Recepiyot?).<\/p>\n The second, in the New York Times<\/a>, is perhaps more interesting. It talks about a movement to do away with middle schools completely. There appear to be two ways of doing this: K-8 and 9-12 schools, and K-5 and 6-12 school. In other world, the middle schoolers either go with the younger or older set. Again, there is a genesis of an interesting idea in here: reducing the pressure that occurs in middle school. I’m not sure which approach is best. The K-8 approach would shelter the kids more from older peers, thus (hopefully) reducing the pressure to conform to more “adult” activities. On the other hand, it is a bad environment to stress academics and college prep, and could be bad for the honors students and high achievers. The grouping with the older kids has the opposite problems: it pushes the kids out of kid-hood sooner. Which is best? Should there be middle school at all? Was the Jr. High School (7-9) approach better? I guess we just have to stay tuned.<\/p>\n P.S.: Bravo! to the NYTimes for adding the “permalink” feature for articles. I wish other newspapers would do this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s news (seen while eating my lunch) brings two interesting articles about raising kids in today’s world: The first, in the Los Angeles Daily News via the Associated Press, is about birthday parties. Specifically, it is about the tendancy today to overdo birthday parties. When I was growing up, I remember parties as a simple Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[96,461],"class_list":["post-1987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lj-xfer","tag-education","tag-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}