children
sastyk | February 13, 2012One of our families favorite things to do is check out old cemetaries - my kids love to read gravestones and talk about the stories that came behind them. I love cemetaries - I find them comforting in an odd way, although I'm not fully sure I can explain why, and I'm glad that my children have the same passion for historical records and also the same pleasure in knowing something about lives before ours.
Walking in old graveyards is also always a reminder of how fortunate I am. Most graveyards have a "children's" section, or family stones record the brief and incredibly short lives of…
aardvarchaeology | January 1, 2012The Swedish Skeptics, of whom I am the chairman, have just announced their annual awards for 2011 [a - b].
The Swedish public TV show Hjärnkontoret receives the Enlightener of the Year award,
"...for their excellent science coverage directed towards children. Hjärnkontoret has aired for 16 years and thus contributed to the upbringing of the entire current generation of students and young scientists at Swedish universities. Thanks to its welcoming format and accessible time slot on public television, Hjärnkontoret reaches out to children of all backgrounds, thus widening and democratising…
lborkowski | October 27, 2011The Obama administration has asked a federal advisory committee, the National Biodefense Science Board, to make recommendations about testing the anthrax vaccine in children. The vaccine has been tested in adults, administered to military personnel, and stockpiled so it can be administered quickly should an attack occur in the US. The Washington Post's Rob Stein reports that a federal simulation of an anthrax attack got federal officials thinking about how to handle children. If an actual attack occurs, would be easier to make the call to vaccinate children if we had already conducted…
aardvarchaeology | September 19, 2011
Bamse magazine is one of Sweden's most beloved childrens' publications, with a readership mainly about age 10. Its title character's name does mean "The Big One". But still, I must say that I was as surprised as Bamse himself and the squirrel when I saw what that troll is doing with such glee to the cow on the cover. Also, I wonder if those are silicone udders.
peconomy | June 24, 2011I am just now recovering from last week's Art of Science Learning conference in San Diego. For something that lasted just one-and-a-half days, there was an almost overwhelming amount of great presentations, great information sharing and exchange, and -- above all -- great people dedicated to moving the idea of the Art of Science Learning forward.
When I first made plans to attend, I did so as an observer. However, soon after the presentations began on the first morning of the conference, I became an active and engaged participant. Each presentation provided me with a deeper understanding of…
aardvarchaeology | June 13, 2011
Fecal sample submission window.
Dan, be cake. Because the Danish-Belgian Cake Company says so.
"Busen" means "breasts" in German and "the naughty one" in Swedish.
No appointment needed. Come whenever you lie fallow.
"Shroff" means "tariff" in Engrish. Maybe.
Porular blog Aardvarchaeology a rad.
aardvarchaeology | May 3, 2011Funding trips for classes of school children is a complicated business in Sweden. This is due to two commonly held conventional ideas. One is that it would be unfair to ask each family to simply pay for their kid, since not all families may be able to afford the trip. The other is that the kids should somehow prove themselves worthy of the trip through work. Typically, this will lead to a great number of schemes and events to collect funds for each trip. And these fund-raising activities have a few things in common: they pay poorly, most of the labour is put in by a few parents (not the kids…
aardvarchaeology | April 26, 2011
[More about photography, children, childpornography, pornography, porn; fotografi, barn, pornografi, porr, barnporr, barnpornografi.]
In issue 2011:1 of Fotografisk Tidskrift, the journal of the Swedish Photographer's Association, is a fine essay in Swedish by Jens Liljestrand (Twitter @jensliljestrand) about current attitudes to images of children and the definition of child pornography. Before the piece could be printed with the accompanying photographs, the journal's editor, my friend Jenny Morelli, had to clear its contents with the rights holders, who don't know Swedish. So she asked me…
peconomy | March 24, 2011I can still remember how excited I got in junior and senior high school when it was science fair season. My friends and I would kick around ideas and make elaborate plans for what we were certain would be that year's shoo-in winner of the school fair. And once we captured the school's top prize, we would surely breeze through the city, county, and state prizes -- all the way to the nationals. But while we never made it to the nationals (nor to the state, county, or city competitions), we still couldn't wait to work on our science fair creations each year.
One year I used some little-known-at-…
hcarmena | March 16, 2011Have you recently assessed how your students relate to science? I clearly remember when I was young watching old movies and television shows that depicted scientists as older men with glasses, crazy white hair, and lab coats. Have today's students' images of science changed? What about artists? Do they all have mustaches and paint on white canvases? These questions arose for me and my colleagues when working with upper elementary students on science, art, and literacy integration. When asked fourth grade students to illustrate and articulate their understanding of science and art, the results…
aardvarchaeology | March 14, 2011Juniorette is a precocious seven years old. Here's her rendition of Leonard Cohen's 1984 song "Hallelujah", with the Swedish lyrics by Py Bäckman. The performance is influenced to a certain degree by another young Swedish singer's version, Molly Sandén's on her 2009 album Samma himmel.
While Cohen's beautiful lyrics deal mainly with broken love affairs through biblical allusions (compare the Pixies' "Dead" and "Gouge Away"!), Bäckman's lyrics are a bit too churchy for my taste. "[The song] has something that takes hold of you / And leads you from night to day / And suddenly you want to…
aardvarchaeology | March 3, 2011Sweden is shaped like a ski, and people live mainly in the southern quarter, but in the other three-quarters there are many skiing resorts. I've been going there every few years since I was three. I'm not a competitive or particularly elegant down-hill skier, but I enjoy it and I can get down all kinds of slopes and I rarely fall.
In recent years my wife and I have taken the kids to one of the country's southernmost skiing resorts, simply because if one of you is going to spend most of their time on the kiddy slope with a neophyte, then there is little reason to drive for seven hours one way…
aardvarchaeology | January 10, 2011East Asian child rearing is notorious for the heavy pressure put on children, but also famous for the great feats of technical brilliance and hard work many people who grow up under these conditions perform. Kids are sent to evening classes, weekend lessons, hardly have any free time. And then many graduate at the top of their years.
Professor Amy Chua of Yale Law School has recently published a book promoting this kind of strict and achievement-orientated parenting. I read an extract on the Wall Street Journal's web site, and I find Chua's child-rearing practices counterproductive and…
aardvarchaeology | December 13, 2010A re-run from 12 December 2006.
Tomorrow's the feast-day of St Lucy, and my son's school started off the celebrations a day early. So this afternoon, along with a lot of other parents, I had saffron buns and watched kids in Ku Klux Klan and Santa outfits form a long line and sing Christmas carols. One end of the line was mostly a few bars ahead of the other.
As a pretty recent tradition, the morning of 13 December is celebrated in Sweden with quite a bit of ceremony. It involves white-robed, predominantly young female carolers led by a candle-crowned girl, performing a specialised repertoire…
aardvarchaeology | October 19, 2010
Asked by her teacher to write five things she's good at, and to illustrate them, 7-y-o Juniorette just produced this.
The speech bubble reads "Yes I win". Then "I'm good at writing running putting my hand up eating candy and not liking liquorice."
Next term she's scheduled to chair the student council.
I wonder if I may have been a little lax in fulfilling my patriarchal misogynist duties with this child.
aardvarchaeology | October 3, 2010A buddy and namesake of mine has a father who is a literature scholar. He wrote his thesis on absurdist drama, Beckett and Ionesco, that sort of thing. This influenced his son's vocabulary. Once about 1970, when the scholar was out on a walk with his little boy in a stroller, they passed a large tractor and a group of people. The boy was greatly impressed by the tractor, pointed to it and exclaimed, "Absurd tractor!". The bystanders stared in amazement.
sastyk | September 17, 2010During a three month period, between September 9 and December 16th, we have Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchas Torah, Asher's birthday, Simon's birthday, Thanksgiving, Isaiah's birthday and eight nights of Chanukah. It was manifestly poor planning on my part to produce three kids between Rosh Hashana and Chanukah, but it also means I don't have the luxury of slacking off on holiday prep - not if I want to do them sustainably.
Now on the one hand, I think most of us realize that the traditional Western holidays and birthdays are kind of ridiculous. Less is good for our kids, good for…
aardvarchaeology | August 27, 2010I've spent three days with my son's class at Ãngsholmen summer camp where the 12-y-os got a chance to reaquaint themselves after the summer and do some fun stuff together. My job, like that of the other three parents who came along, was basically crowd control and security. The camp is on a small U-shaped island, a former base of the coastal artillery, which once defended the Gällnö port narrows on an important shipping lane. There's a sizeable decommissioned underground fort at one end, probably dating from the inter-war years. The kids swam, canoed, sailed Monark Avanti skiffs, did…
aardvarchaeology | August 23, 2010Reports Swedish Broadcasting, Dagens Eko:
When two school girls in the 13-16 years age bracket found a lost key ring for their school's teacher break room, they had an idea. They bought simple audio surveillance equipment in a tech store, waited until everyone went home, and installed the bugging gear in the break room.
Their idea was to snoop on a grades conference planned for the following day, thereby to glean information that they might use to improve their grades.
The plan failed, as one of the girls happened to reveal it on Facebook.
Instead of secret information and raised grades, the…
aardvarchaeology | August 14, 2010I used to play a lot of computer games, and 12-y-o Junior loves them. His gaming experience is of course different from mine back in the day, not only because the games look much better now, but also because of on-line interactivity. There are a couple of developments that surprise me a great deal.
One is the Let's Play film clip. These are clips on video sharing sites where someone plays a computer game while commenting on it, and they're really popular with kids. You don't have to be extremely good at the game or record clips of hidden or hard-to-reach areas. You don't have to say anything…