Richard Nantel

If their legs were long enough to reach the pedals of their parents’ cars, young children would be emptying their piggy banks for gas money and immediately relocating to Toronto, Ontario.

Why the move? The Toronto District School Board, the largest public school board in Canada, is proposing to eliminate homework for kindergarten children and ban homework for all elementary and high school students on holidays, including winter and spring breaks. In addition, homework assigned to students in higher grades would be restricted to no more than two hours per night.

According to a news report, the Toronto School Board is recommending that:

• “Students shouldn’t be penalized for handing in assignments late or incomplete.”
• “Students shouldn’t be assigned homework on scheduled holidays or other significant days.”
• “The amount of workload should be broken down by grade: Those in Grades 1 to 6 should only get reading assignments, those in Grades 7 and 8 should get no more than one hour of homework a night, and high school students should get no more than two hours.”

These recommendations come after the release of a report stating that the amount of homework assigned to some children is depriving them of leisure and family time.

What I see as a parent is that the amount of homework assigned has little to do with the individual needs of the child. Rather, two factors drive the amount of homework a child receives:

1. The teacher to which the child is assigned. You can have two grade three classrooms in the same school with children of similar abilities in each. One class will get minutes of homework per night; the other class will get hours of homework. It’s demoralizing for children in the class getting large amounts of homework to hear that their fellow grade three friends get away with so much less. We’re out to teach kids learning is fun, not that life’s unfair.
2. Pressure from parents. I’ve seen parents pull their child from one school and transfer them to another because the child was assigned to a teacher that gave little homework. Fearful that this would lead to a life of poor paying jobs and misery, the parents elected to transfer their child. I’ve also heard parents complain that their child was getting too much homework and threaten to change their child to another school if the burden wasn’t reduced.

I applaud the new Toronto District School Board homework guidelines and would add others:

• Homework, when assigned, should be fun. The plan is to get kids excited about learning. Ten pages of multiplication table exercises due the next day isn’t the way to do this.
• Homework should, when possible, encompass physical activity. Kids don’t play outside as boomers did when they were kids. Creative homework assignments encouraging physical movement would improve kids’ health and their academic results.
• Homework should never be assigned on one day and due the next. Children may not have time to work on the assignment on a given night due to other obligations.

National Public Radio recently aired an excellent This American Life episode called Human Resources. The first part of this documentary featured a story called “The Rubber Room,” which focused on a surreal situation in the NY City Public School System.

The rubber room is a place where hundreds of teachers facing disciplinary hearings for real, imagined, or fabricated offenses are sent to spend their days. They sit in this room drawing full salaries, at times for more than a year, waiting to have their cases heard and hoping to return to teaching assignments.

The rubber room does not bring out the best in people. Teachers become territorial, forbidding others from sitting in their chairs. Educators often divide themselves into ethnic groups, blacks in one area, Hispanics in another, whites somewhere else. Violence has broken out.

This is a terrible situation. Innocent teachers sent to the rubber room are soon demoralized, often becoming part of the 44 percent of teachers who quit their chosen profession after just a few years. Teachers who should be rightfully dismissed for incompetence or serious infractions remain on payroll, costing the school system $25 million per year.

What’s desperately needed is a way to quickly parse out the two groups, returning the good teachers to the classrooms while dismissing those that should never have been placed there in the first place. Having the parsing process drag on for years while teachers sit in “teacher prison” helps no one, least of all students desperately in need of skilled and motivated instructors.

You can download this podcast for 95 cents. This American Life makes its podcasts available for free for a one week period. So, you should consider subscribing to download a new episode each week. (Frankly, I would rate all This American Life podcasts as among the best content available on the Web.)

You can also find out more about this unfortunate situation at rubberroommovie.com and can view a trailer for a documentary film on the subject currently in production.

Last week, I wrote about a teen panel I attended that suggested that, except for a few small differences, today’s teens seem pretty similar to their boomer parents. Considering how differently these generations were raised, this is surprising.

When I was young, my favorite game was called stretch. My opponent and I would face each other, inches apart, and would throw pocket knives into the ground. My opponent would need to stretch one leg and place his foot where the blade entered the ground. Holding that position, it was his turn to throw a knife and make me stretch. Every once in a while, a knife would inadvertently pierce a foot, adding a significant element of danger to the game.

When were weren’t playing stretch, we were burning things using sunlight and magnifying glasses.

When we weren’t lighting fires with magnifying glasses, we were making guns out of clothespins and elastic bands that ignited and shot wooden matches 20 feet or more.

When we weren’t making clothespin guns to shoot matches, we were mixing our own dynamite and blowing things up.

When we weren’t blowing things up, we were making rafts out of non-buoyant materials to navigate rivers (even though none of us could swim).

Looking back, it’s a miracle any kid in the 1960s and 70s survived long enough to attain adulthood. Although those days were filled with danger, I think most boomers reflect on those experiences as among the happiest in their lives.

News stories of abductions and pedophiles turned boomers, who grew up enjoying unbridled freedom, into overprotective parents. “Go out and play” was quickly replaced with “shall I call your friend Sammy and arrange a play date?”

Consequently, the children in my neighborhood are experiencing a very different childhood than the one I enjoyed. I never see them running free like coyotes. They never ring my doorbell and run away, leaving a bag of burning dog droppings at my door. I suspect most have never seen a shooting star.

Gever Tulley is attempting to change all that. He’s writing a book called “50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.” He’s also the founder of The Tinkering School, a summer program where kids are provided with the opportunity to explore, build things, and learn about danger.

At the Tinkering School, kids as young as seven use power tools. In fact, they get to bring home their own power drill upon finishing the program.

According to Mr. Tulley, “if you send your kids to the Tinkering School, they’ll come back bruised, scraped, and bloody.” They’ll also be more creative, self assured, and will know how to interact safely with the environment around them.

The Tinkering School is all about discovery and exploration. It sounds like the best possible environment for learning.

Check out this presentation of Gever Tulley on the TED Web site.

The Tinkering School Web site is located here.

I’m not at all in love with my laptop.

It was purchased just over a year ago for about $1,200. It has a battery that lasts about 2.5 hours, which gets me about 30 percent of the way on most of my business trips. And, although it was marketed as lightweight, it feels like I’m carrying a bag of potatoes, especially when you factor in the weight of the shoulder bag, power cord, power-bar, etc. that I also need to lug around.

This laptop is also loaded with big, bloated software applications, most of which I don’t need when traveling. All I really need is a Web browser, an e-mail client, a simple word processor, and perhaps a spreadsheet.

Hardware makers seem to have clued into the fact that there’s a huge market for lightweight, low-cost laptop computers. Interestingly, most of these new products are being designed for learning in the K-12 academic world. But, they would certainly appeal to travelers and business professionals.

Some of my recent posts have been about the $199 XO laptop designed for the One Laptop per Child initiative. Mine hasn’t arrived yet, but, if I can get it out of my daughter’s hands, I’m excited about the prospect of getting a computer that will free me from having to sit on the floor at an airport between flights sharing the one power outlet with four other travelers waiting for our laptops to charge. With the XO laptop, I’ll simply turn a crank by hand to charge the super energy-efficient device. This will also be the greatest gadget to have next time the power goes off during a storm. By the way, the Give One Get One promotion has been extended to December 31st, so you still have a chance to get one.

Intel’s Classmate PC is another addition to this market. This is a small, rugged Windows machine, again designed for K-12. It’s currently in mass production and will be made available in various markets as pilot launches. No news yet whether consumers will be able to get one. The laptop has an advertised battery life of four hours.

Asus has also come out with a relatively low-cost, lightweight laptop. The Eee PC 4G weighs less than two pounds and starts at $399. But, it has a conventional battery that lasts about three hours. This machine appears to lack the ruggedness of many computers currently being designed for younger learners.

The innovations taking place in the design of laptop computers for K-12 education will spill over into consumer products. The result will be machines that are easier on our backs, shoulders, and pocket books, as well as devices that free us from having to be near power outlets every three hours.

Between November 12 and November 26, One Laptop per Child is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. Buy two laptops, and one will be sent to a child in a developing country. You get the other for a child in your life.

This is a revolutionary machine. Here’s a demo.

November 12, 2007 is the official launch of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative.

It’s been less than two years since Nicholas Negroponte presented at the World Economic Forum the idea for a $100 laptop that would be distributed to children in developing countries. High profile companies, including AMD, News Corp., Google, and Red Hat, quickly joined the initiative to help create a rugged, low-cost, Linux-based laptop.

Although the final cost is $199 per computer, the technology looks amazing, right down to the crank-powered electrical supply.

I can’t see any story being bigger than this in the world of learning in 2007. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, sums up the benefits of this initiative as follows:

“This is not just a matter of giving a laptop to each child, as if bestowing on them some magical charm. The magic lies within—within each child, within each scientist—, scholar—, or just-plain-citizen-in-the-making. This initiative is meant to bring it forth into the light of day.”—Kofi Annan

Would you like to support this initiative? Starting next week, buy two laptops for $399. One will be shipped to a child in a developing country. You get the other. Or, you can make a donation here.

Mr. Negroponte: thank you for reminding us that we each have the power to change the world for the better.

Canada AM this morning had an interview with Oxford’s Dr. Alexandra Richardson about the positive effects of omega 3 fatty acids on children experiencing learning difficulties in school. In a recent double blind study, children given a half gram of omega 3 supplements showed significant improvements in reading, writing, concentration, and behavior compared to children who received a placebo.

According to Dr. Richardson, omega 3 fatty acids are “essential brain nutrients.” These fatty acids also benefit the circulatory system and our vision, and they ward off depression. Unfortunately, hydrogenation in processed food has severely reduced the amount of omega 3 we consume. So, unless you live next to a fishmonger or sushi bar, supplements are probably a good idea.

The interview is available here.