Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

This article is interesting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6209308.stm

It starts with the premise that teens all over the world are getting more rebellious, and hypothesizes that it’s Western culture (ie: tv images, rock music from America) that’s causing it.

During the article they cite studies and interview two different “academics” here in the US who clearly state that:
1. The teenage prefrontal cortex is not advanced enough yet to make rational adult decisions about behavior, and
2. The influx of governmental schools which segregate based on age make this worse by isolating kids from adult models and giving them only their own (similarly disfunctional) age-peers to model from.

To back up the claim that it’s Western culture, various families from around the world are quoted, citing how American culture has seeped into their lives, but they also say “it used to be different, you used to respect your elders”. Well yes, you used to spend more TIME with your elders! Now as a teen, you spend the overwhelming majority of your time with other confused, irrational teens!

The author revisits the logical school-caused age-segregation reasoning later in the article, yet still tries to lump the “cause” of this global misbehaving on American tv shows and American rock music in the end summary.

It’s just rather funny when you look at it; how the institutionalized education machine has put blinders onto people and they can’t see the forest for the trees. The logical answer is right in front of this author and he/she still ignores it. After all, education is a good thing, right? How could it possibly have anything to do with this global misbahaving?

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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One thing that homeschoolers commonly agree on is the value of audiobooks.
With books now available on CD and many libraries (here in VA, at least) stocking up on CD audiobooks, plus services online like Audible.com, it’s very easy to give your child some quality listening material and expose them to a much broader vocabulary than they’re likely to hear otherwise.

My local homeschooling list was recently lauding the iPod as the must-have holiday gift to carry these audiobooks around. They can plug into speakers, they can plug into the car stereo, they can be listened to quietly with headphones.
Well, the main drawback to the iPod is its price. I mean, egads. $250 for a 30-gig flash card mp3 player? You’re kidding, right?

Luckily, being a technophile, I know that there are alternatives, and am not bound to the hype and fad of current “must-have” brand names.
ANY flash-drive mp3 player will do when you’re looking for audiobook portability. For those of you with tighter wallets than some of my homeschooling friends who buy iPods in bulk for all of their family members, you will want to take a look at this (click to see product details):


Power Up 1GB MP3/WMA Player and USB Drive Silver

It’s a 1-gigabyte flash drive mp3 player and voice recorder.
It has a USB interface so you can easily plug it into your USB port and drag/drop your audiobooks right onto it. It has a headphone jack so you can listen to it with phones or plug it into external speakers or your car stereo. It’s got a backlit display so you can see what you’re listening to.

The only drawback is the size of the drive. At 1 gigabyte, you’ll need to change out your audiobooks more often. To me, this is no big deal; but some people like to simply keep *all* of their audiobooks on their portable players at once.

It also has one very distinct advantage over the iPod… its size. This is very small and can easily be hidden in a pocket or clipped onto the inside of a jacket. Quite simply, it doesn’t attract the negative attention that an iPod does. Remember kids being beat up and having their lunch money stolen? It’s still going on, only nowadays it’s their iPods being stolen.

The best part about it, though, is the price… until Dec. 15th this little baby is on sale for just $9.99 after rebate. Quite a difference than the $250 iPod. Price before rebate is $50, and you won’t get your rebate money back in time to spend on other holiday gifts, but it’s more than worth it. Especially if you’re not sure if your child is ready for a gift like this and have nightmares of them carelessly dropping that $250 iPod onto the floor to shatter into a million pieces.

Happy listening!

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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