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Jun 2009
Facebook Dangers: Parents can't control it all
June 30, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I have allowed my children, 16 and 14, to have Facebook pages. They have strict rules regarding Facebook plus my parental oversight. They’re well rounded and do get socialization by means other than Facebook. They attend church and are active in sports. They use discretion on Facebook and have demonstrated such to my husband and me. What do you think of Facebook and online social networking? Jan T., Clarksdale, Tn. |
Dear Jan: Did you know Facebook already has more than 200 million subscribers since it became available in February 2004? Obviously, social networking sites have great appeal to many.
It was not until 2007 that I ventured into Facebook. Initially, I thought it was a secure way of communicating easily with those I considered “Friends.” Before I knew it, I was being asked by acquaintances if they could be “Friends.”
I succumbed to the pressure and said yes. Suddenly I knew who was dating who, who was in their bed, who was going out to eat or to get coffee right then and there (like I care), and pictures of everywhere they go (some of which are nice, some I wish I had never seen).
The Assessment: Many people using Facebook are discarding all forms of social etiquette. While some offer warm messages, others zing insults. They broadcast everything about their lives I have no desire or business knowing.
We are becoming too comfortable as a society with the mundane and the downright disgusting. What ever happened to self-respect, dignity, privacy, and knowing social boundaries?
My social networking has boundaries as to what I say, do, and share publicly; with whom I choose to socially network; what I accept from them; and whether or not I see fit to continue socializing with them.
Yes, it is true that adults (not children) have the right to do as they please.
However, I wish parents were more like you and more involved in even the smallest activities in which their children participate. Yet I would caution, parents, still. You may think you can watch over your children on social networking sites, yet you cannot patrol the world.
Facebook and other social media has its positives: immediacy, quick linkage to people one wants to stay in touch with, and a sense of constant togetherness otherwise impossible.
What To Do: I have been in contact with Kathy Peel, who has a very good website entitled Family Manager. I encourage all parents to visit her site at http://www.familymanager.com/index.php.
You can subscribe to Kathy’s e-mails, which are a wealth of information. She offers parents many tips on many issues. She is also the author of 20 books, including the award-winning Busy Mom’s Guide to a Happy, Organized Home.
Interestingly, she has discontinued her Facebook page due to hackers.
Jan, this suggests that even your diligent and watchful eye over your children may not be enough to protect them on social networking sites from hackers. Hackers may use the information your children post as well as their pictures in a non-flattering, detrimental, or hurtful way as is the pattern with many of these hackers
So, let this be a lesson and warning to all parents that anything your children put on social networking sites can be compromised.
I want to share with you some things Kathy shared with me recently. She provided me data from her own research about the experiences of children regarding social media and online use. She has graciously allowed me to share with my readers. It is startling and should be a wake-up call to us all:
Jan, Facebook is not going to go away although as most communication methods, it will most likely morph into new formats, which means you have to be all the more diligent in parenting your children regarding changes.
My question to all parents is are you teaching your children to use Facebook without debasing themselves? Children should be taught that a good thing should not be used for bad activity. I see a lot of bad behavior on these social networking sites as well.
And do not forget this: In a global economy, your children will intersect with cultures that still expect social boundaries to be respected. I still expect people to regard social boundaries in my home. I also expect this from those that I call friends, even on my Facebook page.
As we protect first amendment rights, we should also defend our right to choose with whom who we associate. All parents should teach their children modicums of decency and how to behave, lest others through social networking teach them that vulgarity is appropriate and socially acceptable.
And, all parents should be as involved in their children’s lives as you are in yours, Jan.
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From Mess to Success
June 22, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: My child is a mess. When Tom comes home from school, papers are scattered everywhere -- stuck in books, clipped inside his notebook and wadded like bubblegum wrappers in the bottom of his book bag. As for homework and studying for tests, we scream and fight because he puts everything off until the last minute. I keep asking him over and over, “When are you going to study?” What can I do? Megan M., Scottsdale, Az. |
Dear Megan: While you may think you have Tom’s best interest at heart, asking him this question over and over just creates more stress than he can handle and makes Tom behave in the manner you described.
As Tom keeps waiting later and later to study, he becomes stressed and panicked over what he needs to learn. I’ve seen this procrastination in many children during my twenty-plus years in education counseling. To the casual observer, Tom appears lazy, unmotivated and irresponsible.
The Assessment: First, we must identify the real problem. Labeling Tom lazy or a procrastinator is what many tend to do but this does not help and is probably not true.
The question is why does Tom delay studying? (If Tom were using my strategies, he wouldn’t have to study but that’s for another column).
The answer goes back to Tom’s disorganized school papers. Tom does not know how to get organized to have what he needs for each of his classes. He probably doesn’t save any previous quizzes, tests, homework or other graded papers so that he can review when test time comes.
Since he can’t refer to these papers that show him what questions he missed, Tom has no idea what he still needs to learn. As such, he knows he must study everything, even what he has already mastered. This causes studying to become an overwhelming task for Tom because he hasn’t developed strategies to help him fill the gaps. And, the bigger the studying task, the more paralyzed Tom becomes.
Without papers to use as study guides, Tom is dependent on the teacher giving out study sheets or pointing the students toward the material that will be on the test. Rather than becoming an independent learner, Tom is overly dependent on his teacher to tell him what to study.
If not corrected, when Tom becomes an adult, he will be overly dependent on his boss or supervisor to tell him what to do on the job. People like Tom are generally the first to get pink slips when the economy takes a downturn if they are even capable of hanging on to their jobs before the downturns.
What To Do: In Tom’s case, the academic prescription is fairly simple.
When shopping for school supplies, you should buy Tom file folders to use for an at-home filing system and a set of pocket folders that traveled with him to and from school for each of his classes or subjects.
In these travel folders, Tom should organize papers by purpose and label his folders as such. Here are some labels that he can use:
Due Today
Papers to file
Plan/Due Later
For Parents
Extracurricular Activities
Travel folders will help Tom keep his books and book bag neat. This also provides a quick transition to Tom’s home filing system.
At home, Tom may want to label his at-home files by subject. He also needs to decide whether or not using different colored folders for subjects will help him. Tom may want to have files within a subject file. For example, he may label a blue file folder English and then want to have dividers or smaller files within his English file folder to organize according to the type of paper. He may choose to have a sub file for the class syllabus, one for tests, one for quizzes and even one for homework.
The bottom line is this: Tom should find his own way to file. The key is to find the best way according to purpose of the paper Tom is filing.
Organization is the first step in developing strategies for learning how to learn. We adults recognize the value of an organized person in the working world, and we each have ways of organizing everything from our time to the grocery list to collecting coupons. So why should it seem out of place to help our children, from the earliest grades, become organized?
A filing system is a simple, inexpensive first step toward organization. Once that system is established, carrying out the daily filing is less of a chore for a student of any age.
Let Tom help you shop for the filing system and allow him to devise it himself.
Lend your help and support to Tom as he sets up a filing system that works, but remember, it’s a student’s job to learn, an educator’s job to teach and your job as a parent to monitor.
Parents are not responsible for filing papers each day and studying from those papers; that’s the student’s job.
However, parents should make sure their children empty out their purpose folders each day and file their papers at home.
As you watch, Tom’s organization habit will grow.
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Tainted Standardized Tests
June 09, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: High School
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I have just received my son’s achievement test scores. I am in shock. My son has been reading since before he started school. Reading has always been one of his best subjects. He is always reading and saying he is going to be a doctor. Now he cannot go to the school for good students because of his score in reading comprehension. Next year he will go to a middle school that is a mess – guns, sex, knives, cursing. He is scared of going there. He is an A student. What can I do? |
The Assessment: Teachers absolutely work themselves to death preparing students to take achievement tests, but in reading all they can do is hope that the content of the reading passages isn’t intended for suburban higher socioeconomic kids who get to learn not just through school but by the vocabulary their educated parents use, the trips they can take, the camps they attend, the extracurricular activities their parents can pay for, weekends at the lake house, water skiing, and the computer and internet access they have allowing for seeing and reading about the world over – and that’s just the short list of advantages many suburban children have. Most children do not have these advantages and yet both sets of children are measured by the same test without regard to how affluence or lack of it affects learning.
There is no better synopsis of this horrible injustice than that written by E.D. Hirsch Jr. this past March 23, 2009 in The New York Times. “These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/opinion/23hirsch.html
The result of such tainted tests, which favor the “haves” and penalize the “have-nots” should not be accepted or taken lightly.
What To Do: Take a copy of Hirsch’s article to the person in charge of setting policy as to who gets into the better school. All too often these programs continue to be lily white while the leftovers are for the rest of the colors. Notify your school board and if need be the NAACP and your newspaper. Insist on your child’s report card to be taken as proof of his intellectual ability. He needs no further testing unless the school board wants to infer that your son’s teachers gave him his grades.
Standardized testing continues to be the only measure that our antiquated school systems use to determine the value of a mind. Whatever you do, do not give up. If the public school system chooses to embarrass itself by its ignorance and moral ineptitude, then go to private schools and ask for a scholarship. Search for a charter school, or find out if your district has a plan based on parents’ choice. Be the first one to apply.
Everyone reading this column, please write to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and tell him to quit spending money on tests that serve to keep the poor in schools of cognitive oppression. I am sure he will, during a speech or any suitable opportunity, put forth the token few that get through to the “good” schools. May his conscience move him to get his head out of the sand called standardized tests. He will hold the future of our children and country hostage if he continues to take away our children’s hopes, rendering them helpless while purporting to educate them.
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Losing 'I-Would-Never-Do-That' Teachers
June 02, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I read your column concerning homework. I am a teacher with 16 years experience. Believe me, teachers today would never give homework just to create busy work and aggravation for parents. The premise of homework is to give students the opportunity to practice what has been taught in order to help the teacher know what needs to be re-taught and which students may need extra help. Teachers do not have time to correct/check work unnecessarily. Most teachers at the elementary/intermediate grade levels assign, as a guideline, 10 minutes of homework per grade level, i.e., 30 minutes for a third grade student. |
The Assessment: “I-would-never-do-that” teachers like you are part of a dying breed, sad to say. Only elementary school teachers who teach all of their students’ subjects can monitor how much and what kind of homework goes home.
When my son went to first grade, just prior to winter break, we went shopping for a gift for his teacher. “I need seven presents,” he told me because he had a reading, language arts and social studies teacher; a math teacher; a science teacher; a music teacher; an art teacher; a physical education teacher; and a library teacher.
His teachers did not converse to determine what or how much homework they gave each day, which should have been preponderant to assigning homework. I came home some days and all his work was done; other days I would have to put a stop to some assignments that were ridiculous and interfered with our family time.
There may be schools where teachers do consult. However, my experience is that while they may discuss long-term assignments, they fail to discuss daily homework assigned.
As cautious as you are about the homework you give, I wonder if you have ever sent work home that the child cannot do without help from a parent. If so, I would expect such homework not to be graded as the child is still in the process of learning; otherwise grading serves no purpose but to penalize those who have not mastered work yet simply need more teaching.
What To Do: Parents, be vigilant. You know how much homework is being given and the pain it may be causing between you and your child. To avoid this from happening, set up some rules in elementary school:
Once your child has more than one teacher, it will be very difficult to expect the 10- minutes-per-grade-level rule to prevail. Insist from all teachers that they honor your parenting role and family time at home while they do the teaching at school.
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