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More than 2,500 still photos were taken to make this video. At first, you’ll wonder why they used stop-motion animation, but it soon becomes necessary. Then there are a few “how did they do that?” moments. If you like it, continue for the improved photographic stunts in the sequel. -via Metafilter
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Every year, we announce the results of Danielle Spencer’s Jell-O Turkey Mold Competition and for those of you who have been waiting to see the results this year, they’re finally up. Here’s the #2 winner, entitled School Lunch. Just look at that delicious vegetable serving.
Check out this collection of posters made for classrooms in the 1970s. The captions have been removed, and newer (and funnier) captions attached by Michael Roberts of Denver Westword. The caption for the above image is “I’ll bet I can make big bucks selling those chemicals on the side.”
This image has the new caption, “I’d do a helluva lot better in this job than he would — and be paid 60 percent of his salary.”
Link -via Boing Boing
The
schoolyard in Toronto, Canada, is safe again, thanks to the quick action
of a school principal who has banned the dangerous weapon of ... soccer
balls!
Before you deride the news as yet another example of school bureaucracy gone mad, won't you think of the children? They're an absolute terror when weaponized with hard balls:
Students at an east-end Toronto school are being told to leave their soccer balls — and other hard balls — at home.
The principal of Earl Beatty Public School banned the balls this week after a parent recently suffered a concussion from being hit in the head with a soccer ball.
The principal, Alicia Fernandez, banned hard balls, claiming they're dangerous. "Kids were coming in complaining of injury, or being scared," she said. [...]
Students can bring sponge or other soft balls to play with, but soccer balls, footballs, baseballs and even tennis balls are not allowed for safety reasons.
School buses in America are so boring, but in Japan, it’s a whole different story. InventorSpot has a collection of 10 different buses from the country and I have to say, they are precious.
How the KKK helped get children out of the factories and into the classroom.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan liked to think of themselves as white knights. And when it came to compulsory education for schoolchildren, believe it or not, they actually were. To understand how this bizarre heroism came to pass, you have to go back to the 1820s, when about half the laborers in America’s cotton mils were children under the age of 15. Adults had a serious hankering to get those kids out of the workforce -not because they were concerned for their well-being but because adults resented the competition. After all, employers could get away with paying children much lower wages, and the little ones had energy to burn. Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, vice president of the National Women’s Trade Union League, put the situation bluntly: “Wherever child labor prevails there is a corresponding decrease in employment for adults.”
In fact, getting rid of the kids was one of the first causes to unite the American label movement. When labor leaders realized they couldn’t just turn youngsters out in the streets to fend for themselves, they proposed a one-two punch of ending child labor laws and requiring school. Massachusetts was the first state to pass a compulsory education law. In 1837, its state legislature barred factory owners from hiring anyone under age 15 who hadn’t attended public school for at least three months during the previous year. The law was ignored, and factory owners kept hiring kids anyway. Five years later, Massachusetts passed a second law, which went after factories more directly, limiting the amount of time children could work. When this law was ignored as well, the state made education compulsory in 1852.
By 1884, 16 states had instituted laws that forced children to go to school. Business owners, enamored with their short, low cost labor pool, denounced the status as “communist” and “un-American.” But the percentage of children in the workforce in cotton mills fell nonetheless; by 1890 it was just 10 percent. And not coincidentally, adult workers were awarded higher wages and better working conditions over the same period. From 1840 to 1880, average wages rose as much as 150 percent, while at the same time, the average workday fell from 13-14 hours to 10-11 hours.
At the turn of the century, labor unions lobbied for compulsory education nationwide, and they soon found an unexpected ally. The Ku Klux Klan supported the idea of public schools as a way of forcing immigrants to conform to white, Protestant culture. By 1918, labor unions had succeeded in getting compulsory education laws passed in every state. Two years later, a Catholic organization in Oregon demanded that the laws be amended to include private schools. The KKK took a more outspoken stance, and its membership grew quickly in support of the public school system.
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Urban Prep, also known as “Hogwarts in the Hood,” is a charter school located in inner-city Chicago. According to its website, the similarities between Hogwarts and Urban Prep include school houses. Whereas the wizarding school has four houses–Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin–Urban Prep has six “Prides” that compete against each other for academic, athletic, and extracurricular points.
“We’ve been incredibly successful,” the founder and president of Urban Prep, Tim King, tells me. “All our students are African-American, about 85% are low income and 100% of our classes have gone on to college.”
In 2010 and 2011, 100% of students who graduated from Urban Prep were accepted to college.
“It’s extraordinary when you think about it because the number of African-Americans who go on to college in our country, the numbers are really low.”
Another cliche is that the only way out for some kids is to become a rapper or a sports star.
Mr King says he wants to create role models who are engineers and scientists. Even getting a college degree makes a big difference.
“Education is key. It can become trite when you hear it, but it is really true,” he says.
Man’s best friend is getting a trial run as little-man’s best friend. Educators across the country are using canines to teach compassion and social responsibility, in efforts to curb school-age bullying.
Kansas City Schools have a program called No More Bullies, in which program volunteers, accompanied by trained dogs, teach kids about fairness, compassion, and integrity for one hour a day over five days. “The animals are the glue that helps the children stay focused and understand the message,” says Jo Dean Hearn, an ex-teacher who developed the program. “Children can easily identify with an animal. And it’s easy for them to transition when we ask them to consider how an animal feels (if ill treated) to how the kid sitting near them feels (if poorly treated).”
It’s a great program that’s showing promising results, and it isn’t the only one. Check out the rest of the story on The Week. Link
Fifteen years ago, Paul Lukas came into possession of school records for 395 students who attended the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in the 1920s. The records are more than just grades; they are snapshot of what like was like for young women in New York at the time, mostly daughters of poor immigrants.
Students did not receive their diplomas until they demonstrated a proficiency in their trade. The school helped them achieve this by establishing a job placement office that arranged employment for the girls after they finished their training. The girls were instructed to report back to the schoolabout their work experiences, and the employers were encouraged to report back on performance of the girls, and all of this information was recorded in the card packets. So these aren’t just scholastic records—they’re also employment records. Much like the teachers’ assessments, comments from the students’ employers run the gamut from encouraging (“Thank you for sending me such a smart little girl—she is all I would desire and does your school credit in every way”) to heartbreaking (“Terrific odor of perspiration, have to lay off”).
Lukas is in the process of finding the families of the women to share the information. In the first article of a series at Slate, he gives an overview of the records and the story of how he got them. Future installments will tell the stories of twelve of the women in the records. Link
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It happens every year -college textbook prices are so high that freshmen go into shock at the thought of paying $100 or more for a book. There are several reasons given for the high price of textbooks: some that the vendors will disclose and others they don’t. First off, texts are expensive to produce, compared to everyday novels.
There’s certainly some validity to this explanation. Yes, those charts and diagrams are expensive to produce, and the relatively small print runs of textbooks keep publishers from enjoying the kind of economies of scale they get on a bestselling popular novel. Any economist who has a pulse (and probably some who don’t) could poke holes in this argument pretty quickly, though.
In the simplest economic terms, the high price of textbooks is symptomatic of misaligned incentives, not exorbitant production costs. Students hold the reasonable stance that they’d like to spend as little money as possible on their books. Students don’t really have the latitude to pick which texts they need, though.
Read the real story behind sky-high textbook prices at mental_floss. Link
We’ve already linked to Mental Floss’ list of weird college courses, but if you can’t get enough of these strange course listings, then you probably ought to head over to Cracked and read about six more of these classes including Super Smash Bros. Melee Theory and Practice.
I’m sure just about everyone reading this was yelled at at least once in school for chewing gum, doodling, day dreaming or fidgeting, but as it turns out, science says those behavoirs are actually beneficial to your ability to learn. Learn how over at Cracked.
Redditor worstenememe snapped a picture of his nephew as the child modeled the outfit he plans to wear for his first day of school. This little boy’s teacher is in for a treat! Well, you know what they say, dress for the job you want, not for the job you have. Link
The people I know in college always add their favorite professors on Facebook, but if they were still in high school and happened to live in Missouri, that would be completely against the law. Granted, it’s a little questionable for a teacher and minor-aged student to be friends on the internet, but do you guys think it should be illegal?
Link Via Geekosystem
There are 16 states that help with back-to-school shopping by declaring “tax-free weekends,” meaning no state sales tax on certain items during certain days. States running the program this weekend include Alabama, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Iowa, Louisiana, and Arkansas, although exact dates vary.
Before you get too excited though, I should make note of the fact that most states place a dollar limit on what is tax-exempt. For example, Alabama’s tax holiday offers a tax break on any articles of clothing $100 or less. This means that a pair of jeans costing $125 would be taxed but a jacket for $99 would be tax-free, so be aware of any specific rules your state may have during tax holidays.
To help out, BargainJack has assembled a handy chart detailing the dates and limitations for each state, with links to government information. Link
When I was in school, the only things you could do to show off your originality was to switch up your clothes, hair and make up. One Russian school decided to let the kids have a little more fun by allowing each one to draw up their own background on the chalk boards. The results are delightfully fun so be sure to check out the other pics at the link.
When I was in high school we actually built giant sling shots in our physics class. These days though, kids are learning from sling shots in video games. Really though it was only a matter of time before Angry Birds entered the public school system.
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It sounds strange, but it’s true. One of the vulgar humor site’s recent article dives in to five simple ways to make our kids smarter, which involve surprising simple things like starting school later, adding more windows to classrooms and taking kids out for a walk before they take a test. While the article is filled with typical Cracked humorous quips, it is surprisingly free of curse words, making me wonder what the site is up to these days.
Rain Price of American Fork, Utah rode the bus to school every day. During the past year, the bus drove by his house after picking him up at the bus stop. And every day, his dad would be there in front of the house, waving.
“When he did it the first day, I was in shock,” Rain said. “It’s my first day of my sophomore year.”
The embarrassment was a thrill for his father.
The second day of school, there he was again, only this time Price was wearing a San Diego Chargers helmet and jersey. Day three, it was an Anakin Skywalker helmet, and the next day, swim trunks and a snorkel mask.
Other kids started to take note.
“Most of them like it, and we roll down our windows and wave. It’s fun,” Rain said.
His dad admits it took a lot of effort to keep it up, but said it was “a way of letting him know that we really care about him, but do something a little different.” He described it as “a father’s way” of saying I love you.
Rain’s father wore a different costume almost every day of the school year, including a white wedding dress once. Link to story. Link to website. -via Metafilter
First they blew your mind when they told you Pluto isn’t actually a planet, then they told you that not only is Atlantis real, it’s been sitting in the bottom of some mudflats in Spain for a few thousand years. It seems history and science keep changing right in front of our eyes and pretty soon, nothing we learned in school will be true any more. Well, if you can’t deal with change, then you aren’t going to like these four things you learned in school are actually completely bogus.
If you learned one thing about Egypt in school, it was that the pyramids are marvels of ancient technology…and that they were built by slaves. There are movies based around slaves working on the pyramids and every one has seen at least half a dozen pictures of the poor workers straining under the hot sun as their cruel masters wait, whip in hand, for someone to slack off.
But working on the pyramids might not have been so bad after all. While it was still hard work to construct the massive monuments, recent research has shown that the workers were more likely skilled masons who had the right to leave whenever they wanted. Evidence to back this claim is supported in the fact that the workers had their own tombs right beside the pyramids. Egyptologists point out that someone that low on the social ladder would never have been buried so close to the pharaohs.
Image via anniemarieangelo [Flickr]
Ok, maybe not everything you learned about dinos back in school was wrong, but a lot of it sure was. For one thing, there is no brontosaurus. Yeah, that giant lumbering monster we all learned about in grade school was actually an apatosaurus with the head of a camarasaurus. The worst thing about this inaccuracy is that it was discovered over a century ago, but up until recently, everyone (including a lot of elementary school teachers) still insisted on calling apatosauruses brontosauruses.
I guess one mislabeled dino isn’t that big of a deal…but the incorrect visual representation of just about every dinosaur imaginable is. By now, you’ve probably heard that many dinosaurs probably had feathers, a huge change for those of us who grew up thinking about giant lizards roaming the prehistoric plains. But even those that probably didn’t look like giant birds still looked way cooler and more versatile than the oversized iguanas popularly imagined. These days, we even know what color some dinosaurs were, and they are a far call from the multitude of green shades we once imagined. If you really want to know just how different dinosaurs were compared to what we were taught, check out this great article on Listverse, about the Top 10 Dinosaurs That Aren’t What They Were.
Image via Geoff S. [Flickr]
If you learned chemistry or biology in high school, you were probably taught that there are six chemical elements known as the “building blocks of life.” They are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. These components make up the chemical composition of DNA and without them, life isn’t possible…or at least, we thought it wasn’t possible.
Last year, scientists discovered a bacteria species living in a salt lake in California that was missing one of the building blocks of life, phosphorus, and instead had arsenic in its place. For some people, this might not seem like such a huge deal, particularly considering that arsenic is very close to phosphorus in its physical and chemical properties, but it’s a huge deal to scientists who suddenly saw a massive expansion in the scope of potential living things. It really makes a difference in intergalactic research, since the discovery opens up whole new planets as potential life-supporting ecosystems.
Image via Artful Magpie [Flickr]
Maybe this wasn’t the case for all of you, but when I was in school, the teachers seemed overly fascinated with telling us how much better humans are than other animals. They’d tell the class, “we’re the only animals who have complex emotions,” “no other animal is self-aware like we are,” “humans are the only creatures who use tools,” “we are the only species to communicate through complex language,” etc. I don’t know why they felt our fragile homo sapien egos were so threatened by other creatures, but I always thought that was a little strange. As it turns out, it was completely incorrect too.
Recent studies show that elephants mourn the loss of their companions and many animals, particularly dogs (who have evolved in the companionship of humans), have far more complex emotions than scientists had ever imagined. And chimps don’t just have emotions; they also are self-aware enough to understand how their own actions will affect those around them.
Well, we still have our intelligence to set us apart from the beasts right? Not so quick you homo sapien- supremacists. Actually, there are a lot of intelligent animals out there, many of which use tools and converse amongst themselves. Chimps have used spears to hunt for thousands of years, octopuses use coconut shells as both camouflage and as protection, and dolphins use sponges to help uncover fish that are hiding in the sand.
As for language, bees have an incredibly complex language system allowing them to communicate what type of flower is located in a given place and how to get to that location. Monkeys not only communicate with one another vocally, but they even understand grammar rules. In fact, in some ways, animals are actually ahead of us in the language game. While humans cannot yet speak the language of any other animals, primates can be taught sign language so they can communicate with us in our own language.
Image via Mundoo [Flickr]
If this crushed your memories of grade school, I’m sorry, but now it’s your turn to get revenge. What have you learned isn’t true even though they told you it was a “fact” back in school?
Like many soon-to-be graduates, two seniors of Westfield High School in Westfield, Mass., decided to pull a little senior prank during lunch in their high school’s cafeteria. The two staged a mock lightsaber fight, “battling” for about 30 seconds in front of a packed lunchroom before ending to a standing ovation from the crowd. The principal didn’t find the homage to Star Wars as impressive as the students did, however, and suspended the two seniors from school, adding that they won’t be able to walk in their graduation next week. The incident is currently under review and the decision may be reversed after a hearing next week. There’s a Facebook group petitioning the school to allow the pair to walk, if you care to add your support.
Link via Geekologie
Summer is coming, and for some students this means the long days of vacation, filled with fun and creative activities, whereas for others, it means long days of studying at summer school. Which ones make for better students?
Teresa Watanabe explores the tale of two students – both successful students – with two very different summer plans:
Summers for eighth-grader Jade Larriva-Latt are filled with soccer and backpacking, art galleries and museums, library volunteer work and sleep-away camp. There is no summer school, no tutoring.
"They need their childhood," says Jade’s father, Cesar Larriva, an associate professor of education at Cal Poly Pomona. "It’s a huge concern of mine, the lack of balance from pushing them too hard."
For 10th-grader Derek Lee, summer is the time to sprint ahead in the ferocious race to the academic top. He polishes off geometry, algebra and calculus ahead of schedule and masters SAT content (he earned a perfect 800 on the math portion last fall). This year, he plans to take college-level courses, maybe at UCLA or Stanford.
"You give your kids pressure so they can learn to handle it," says Derek’s mother, Meiling Lee, smacking her fist into her hand. "Because finally they have to go out into the real world, and the real world is tough."
What do you think? Which is the better summer plan? Link (Photo: Anne Cusack / LA Times)
Gaby Rodriguez of Toppenish High School in Washington state spent most of her senior year pregnant. Except she wasn’t. The 17-year-old wore a bulge of wire mesh and fabric as an experiment to see how other students reacted for her senior project. Read more about this story at NeatoBambino. Link
Saggy pants? Not in Principal Bobby White’s school. The Memphis educator has enacted “The Urkel Initiative,” a program that secures those droopy drawers up around the offending student’s waist with zip ties through the belt loops.
He says it has cut down the number of kids being sent home or receiving citations for inappropriate dress from more than 80 per week to about five.
Link via Best Week Ever via AV Club
by Mike Adams
Department of Biology
Eastern Connecticut State University
Willimantic, Connecticut
It has long been theorized that the week prior to an exam is an extremely dangerous time for the relatives of college students. Ever since I began my teaching career, I heard vague comments, incomplete references and unfinished remarks, all alluding to the “Dead Grandmother Problem.”
Few colleagues would ever be explicit in their description of what they knew, but I quickly discovered that anyone who was involved in teaching at the college level would react to any mention of the concept. In my travels I found that a similar phenomenon is known in other countries. In Eng- land it is called the “Graveyard Grannies” problem, in France the “Chere Grand’mere,” while in Bulgaria it is inexplicably known as “The Toadstool Waxing Plan” (I may have had some problems here with the translation. Since the revolution this may have changed anyway.) Although the problem may be international in scope it is here in the USA that it reaches its culmination, so it is only fitting that the first warnings originate here also.
The basic problem can be stated very simply:
A student’s grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of year.
While this idea has long been a matter of conjecture or merely a part of the folklore of college teaching, I can now confirm that the phenomenon is real. For over twenty years I have collected data on this supposed relationship, and have not only confirmed what most faculty had suspected, but also found some additional aspects of this process that are of potential importance to the future of the country. The results presented in this report provide a chilling picture and should waken the profession and the general public to a serious health and sociological problem before it is too late.
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Doodling a robot elephant is so much more fun than etoecology! -via Buzzfeed
This picture shows a school restroom stall on which someone has written the entire first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Schools have much nicer restrooms now than when I was a student. Link -via The Daily What
How true are these stereotypes? I have accounts at a half-dozen of these networks, but since I don’t spend much time at any of them, it’s hard to keep up with trends. Found, of course, at a Tumblr blog. Link -via Buzzfeed
Just ask any mother: what would you do to provide a better education for your children?
Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single mother who’s going to college and working as a teaching assistant (and who has no prior criminal record) while living in a housing project, claimed that her two daughters live part time with their father who lives in a better school district.
The school disagreed, and hired a private investigator to film her dropping off her children. They wanted to charge her $30,000 and when she refused, the case went to court and the jury convicted her. The judge sentenced her to 5 years in prison, but suspended all but 10 days, with community service and probation.
Williams-Bolar’s father, Edward Williams, told CNN affiliate WJW-TV that the children did live with him, so he believed the family was within the law.
He said his daughter’s Akron neighborhood – where she lives in government-subsidized housing – isn’t safe.
"She had 12 police reports that her house had been broken in, so what am I supposed to do? Just leave them there?" Williams said to WJW-TV. "I mean, I can protect them better if they was with me."
Williams-Bolar, a single mother, works as a teacher’s aide at a high school in Akron and is just 12 credits away from earning a teaching degree at the University of Akron, according to the Beacon Journal.
Her felony conviction will bar her from being licensed to teach in Ohio.
The school, obviously, disagreed:
Copley-Fairlawn Superintendent Brian Poe told WJW-TV the case cost the district $30,000 in two years of lost tuition and $6,000 it spent on the investigation. [...]
"The way I look at it is, the bottom line, you need to follow the law," he said. "If you choose to step outside of the law, what’s going to happen at that point is you are going to have to face the consequences for that."
Oh, and to make matters a bit muddier, Williams-Bolar is black and the school district is predominantly white.
Link – Thanks Tiffany!
"Fraud is fraud" or do you think that it’s a heavy-handed punishment for someone trying to make better lives for their children?
Every year you get “the list” of supplies your kids need for school. Crayons, glue, stapler, 3-ring binders… where did all this stuff come from? Rob Lammle gives us the origins of these back-to-school gadgets and supplies that schools can no longer do without. For example, the lunchbox:
In the early part of the 20th Century, most kids packed their school lunch in an empty cookie, biscuit, or tobacco tin. In 1935, a company called Aladdin tried to create a market for specialized lunch boxes by putting Mickey Mouse on the cover of their tin box. But even The Mouse couldn’t convince kids to buy en masse. Aladdin didn’t give up, though, and they had their first bonafide lunchtime hit in 1950 when they released the Hopalong Cassidy lunch box to young baby boomers. Available in red or blue, the box and thermos combination featured a crudely drawn picture of the popular TV and radio cowboy on one side.
Read more about lunch boxes and other school items at mental_floss. Link
