This week on the web...

Pick of the week: Quinioa and Friends- hilarious!! You have to read the comments the actual pinner made with each pin.

I agreed whole-heartedly with this list about introverts.

I don't watch the news. I heard about Robin Williams though and was deeply saddened by this loss to the world. I feel ashamed to be a human on the days when my fellow men and women are trolling the internet and causing further grief to those suffering due to his loss. I liked what Brene Brown had to say about it.

The lack of news meant I never heard about Michael Brown either. It was actually Kieran that told me. And I was led to this piece which I think is just so good. The whole blog is pretty lovely actually.

One of the things I'm considering doing when the kids are fully in school and I need a job is going into Youth Corrections with a view to helping not just doing... I worry that I'm too much of an idealist for it but then I see this and I think maybe it'd be possible: Meaningful Lives.

I've read two posts on Momastery this week, not my usual fare but, this post about Glennon's Gratitude Perspectacles is a gem.

This board called 'Childhood and Education' on pinterest also caught my eye.

My favourite Teacher Tom Post for the week has this particular paragraph of brilliance:

"I'm not here in Australia to talk to teachers about this bizarre notion of "school readiness," but every place I've been the subject has cropped up in the discussion. "School readiness," often translated in the US as "kindergarten readiness," is essentially code for reading. It seems that the powers that be in our respective nations have decided to sell parents on the snake oil that if your child isn't starting to read by five-years-old she is "falling behind." They are doing this despite the fact that every single legitimate study ever done on the subject recommends that formal literacy education (if we ever even need it) not begin until a child is seven or eight years old. They are telling parents and teachers that children are "falling behind" despite the fact that every single legitimate study ever done finds that there are no long term advantages to being an early reader, just as there are no long term advantages to being early talkers or walkers. In fact, many studies have found that when formal literacy instruction begins too early, like at 5, children grow up to be less motivated readers and less capable of comprehending what they've read. That's right, if anything, this "school readiness" fear-mongering may well turn out to be outright malpractice."

And yes you read that right Teacher Tom was in Australia... he was in Perth last Wednesday and I totally missed it. Gutted.

In a similar line this article is awesome and there is so much in it that is great and wonderful that I could quote into eternity. It's long but worth the read if you have any interest in children, learning or life. This quote I loved:

"It is not up to our children to accept a disability label in order to “qualify” for an appropriate learning environment; it is up to adults to provide learning environments which are flexible enough to accommodate the natural variations in our children.  We can accommodate children who read later and/or more slowly not as a special service for the disabled, but simply as a normal everyday matter of courtesy and respect for our fellow humans, who have a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses as we all do."

I forget the 'development' and 'education' as we see it are not for everyone, forgetting is not as bad as knowing and ignoring or completely dismissing I guess....

Development, at least for most tribal peoples, isn’t really about lifting people out of poverty, it’s about masking the takeover of their territories. The deception works because the conviction “we know best” is more deeply ingrained even than it was a generation ago; Victorian-era levels of narrow-mindedness are returning. As a Botswana Bushman told me: “First they make us destitute by taking away our land, our hunting and our way of life. Then they say we are nothing because we are destitute.”

I think Schooling The World is quite possibly the most interesting and stimulating website I've found this year!

One of the most interesting things I learned this week is that in Singapore and Taiwan they are working to reverse the effects of too much 'close work' done too soon... what are the effects you ask of little children doing too much book work, too much time in front of an electronic screen and spending too much time inside? 

65 percent of Primary 6 children (11 & 12 year olds) in Singapore have myopia (short sighted). Whereas at that same age, just 12 percent of children in Australia and about 30 percent in the UK are myopic. Myopia prevalence further rises amongst our youth: 70 percent of students leaving secondary school, and 80 percent of National Servicemen have myopia. 81 percent of Taiwanese 15-year-olds are myopic.

 In our now almost sugar free house- this looks like it could be a good treat for our lunch boxes.

Silly ideas are the best... like proposing to a princess or 4.

This made me laugh, especially the last line......