You know all those ads that say “Make $2000 a month from home!” They are not lying, but it’s a minimum wage job doing work on the phone that requires almost no skill except to sound like you live in the US.
Which is to say those jobs are terrible. Read more
Research is turning up more and more data to support the idea that people become addicted to drugs because of the environment they are in. And it’s compiled nicely in Johann Hari’s book, Chasing the Scream: The first and last days of the War on Drugs. Read more
One of the big reasons that super smart kids do not do well in the work world is their limited executive function—the skill that tells you to stop eating berries and run away from a lion. Natural selection has made us into executive function geniuses (though we still cannot multitask with any competence, at least we know what to do first.) Read more
This is a guest post from Karelys. She is one of my favorite commenters. And it’s amazing to me that she writes guest posts when she has a brand new baby.
Plenty has been said about the merits of homeschooling (even if it’s just done as simply as transferring traditional classroom material to the home), but even more about unschooling or self-directed learning. It’s just clearly the best way for children to learn. Read more
Coke sponsored a contest to see who could come up with a new bottle top to make an empty Coke bottle useful again. Read more
It’s common for parents to say they have chosen to give up income when they began homeschooling.
I disagree—there is really no lost income, and here’s why: Read more
There is big debate among academics about whether patriotism and nationalism should be a goal of public education. On the surface, the debate is whether nationalism leads to nefarious practices (war, for example), or whether nationalism is a prerequisite for making a sacrifice to the community, which is a prerequisite for distributive justice. Read more
It’s never really been clear to me how I ended up in special education classes my freshman year of high school. But there I was: Algebra for the slow learners (confession: I could barely keep up with them). Read more
Time magazine has a great article about why schools can’t teach sex ed. The bottom line is that public schools can’t go near the type of information kids are looking for. And any school that depends on parents writing tuition checks is going to stay as far away from useful sex ed as they can. Read more
Here are a few random things I learned during the holidays:
1.You can cook on a hotel iron. Also, I really like that I got this information from a site that reviews consumer products. The photos on the site are great. Each iron has its pros and cons as a skillet. I had never imagined an egg on an iron, but it turns out it’s not that far-fetched, and people also cook with hair driers. Read more