23 May 2013
11 April 2013
07 April 2013
04 April 2013
To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts...
“‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end,
according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a
little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that
is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To
make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to
contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems,
our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this
and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.” - Roger Ebert
03 April 2013
29 March 2013
Study: Famous Adults offer Clues to Identify Gifted Teenagers
From Mark Twain to Woody
Allen, creative adults often say they were uncomfortable in school, and
educators have struggled for decades to find a reliable way to identify
gifted, but often quirky or rambunctious, creative students. A study
published last month in Creative Research Journal describes a University
of Kansas project that mined the biographies of such notable creative adults
to develop tools to help teachers identify and support creative adolescents.
Researchers Barbara Kerr and Robyn McKay analyzed biographies and interviews of famous creative types to distill the characteristics of creative giftedness at age 16. They then grouped those into six profiles in five areas of creative giftedness: verbal and linguistic skills, mathematics and science, spatial and visual skills, interpersonal and emotional skills, and music and dance.
"Very often these traits that feed their creativity, like openness to experience and impulsivity, get them into trouble," Ms.Kerr said. "And many of them said that they're only noticed in school when they're in trouble.
Creative kids tend to be a particular type of outsider, admired by their small cadre of friends for their art or coding abilities, but avoided by many because of their eccentricities." The researchers worked with academic counselors in schools across Kansas to identify 485 students who matched the profiles and brought them to the counseling laboratory for additional testing and interviews. A third of the students who fit the profiles for creative giftedness had never been identified for gifted programs, largely because their grade point averages were not higher than average, in part because those students tended to focus only on subjects that interested them. Those students also tended to respond better to academic counseling that encouraged a do-it-yourself approach, such as pairing science classes with technical classes for a student interested in becoming an inventor.
Business First, 3/13/13.
Researchers Barbara Kerr and Robyn McKay analyzed biographies and interviews of famous creative types to distill the characteristics of creative giftedness at age 16. They then grouped those into six profiles in five areas of creative giftedness: verbal and linguistic skills, mathematics and science, spatial and visual skills, interpersonal and emotional skills, and music and dance.
"Very often these traits that feed their creativity, like openness to experience and impulsivity, get them into trouble," Ms.Kerr said. "And many of them said that they're only noticed in school when they're in trouble.
Creative kids tend to be a particular type of outsider, admired by their small cadre of friends for their art or coding abilities, but avoided by many because of their eccentricities." The researchers worked with academic counselors in schools across Kansas to identify 485 students who matched the profiles and brought them to the counseling laboratory for additional testing and interviews. A third of the students who fit the profiles for creative giftedness had never been identified for gifted programs, largely because their grade point averages were not higher than average, in part because those students tended to focus only on subjects that interested them. Those students also tended to respond better to academic counseling that encouraged a do-it-yourself approach, such as pairing science classes with technical classes for a student interested in becoming an inventor.
Business First, 3/13/13.
24 March 2013
The Touch-Screen Generation
Young children—even toddlers—are spending more and more time with digital technology. What will it mean for their development?
from: The Atlantic
"...What, really, would Maria Montessori have made of this scene? The 30 or so children here were not down at the shore poking their fingers in the sand or running them along mossy stones or digging for hermit crabs. Instead they were all inside, alone or in groups of two or three, their faces a few inches from a screen, their hands doing things Montessori surely did not imagine. A couple of 3-year-old girls were leaning against a pair of French doors, reading an interactive story called Ten Giggly Gorillas and fighting over which ape to tickle next. A boy in a nearby corner had turned his fingertip into a red marker to draw an ugly picture of his older brother. On an old oak table at the front of the room, a giant stuffed Angry Bird beckoned the children to come and test out tablets loaded with dozens of new apps. Some of the chairs had pillows strapped to them, since an 18-month-old might not otherwise be able to reach the table, though she’d know how to swipe once she did.
Not that long ago, there was only the television, which theoretically could be kept in the parents’ bedroom or locked behind a cabinet. Now there are smartphones and iPads, which wash up in the domestic clutter alongside keys and gum and stray hair ties. “Mom, everyone has technology but me!” my 4-year-old son sometimes wails. And why shouldn’t he feel entitled? In the same span of time it took him to learn how to say that sentence, thousands of kids’ apps have been developed—the majority aimed at preschoolers like him. To us (his parents, I mean), American childhood has undergone a somewhat alarming transformation in a very short time. But to him, it has always been possible to do so many things with the swipe of a finger, to have hundreds of games packed into a gadget the same size as Goodnight Moon...."
-and-
“We live in a screen age, and to say to a kid, ‘I’d love for you to look at a book but I hate it when you look at the screen’ is just bizarre. It reflects our own prejudices and comfort zone. It’s nothing but fear of change, of being left out.”
(More)
from: The Atlantic
"...What, really, would Maria Montessori have made of this scene? The 30 or so children here were not down at the shore poking their fingers in the sand or running them along mossy stones or digging for hermit crabs. Instead they were all inside, alone or in groups of two or three, their faces a few inches from a screen, their hands doing things Montessori surely did not imagine. A couple of 3-year-old girls were leaning against a pair of French doors, reading an interactive story called Ten Giggly Gorillas and fighting over which ape to tickle next. A boy in a nearby corner had turned his fingertip into a red marker to draw an ugly picture of his older brother. On an old oak table at the front of the room, a giant stuffed Angry Bird beckoned the children to come and test out tablets loaded with dozens of new apps. Some of the chairs had pillows strapped to them, since an 18-month-old might not otherwise be able to reach the table, though she’d know how to swipe once she did.
Not that long ago, there was only the television, which theoretically could be kept in the parents’ bedroom or locked behind a cabinet. Now there are smartphones and iPads, which wash up in the domestic clutter alongside keys and gum and stray hair ties. “Mom, everyone has technology but me!” my 4-year-old son sometimes wails. And why shouldn’t he feel entitled? In the same span of time it took him to learn how to say that sentence, thousands of kids’ apps have been developed—the majority aimed at preschoolers like him. To us (his parents, I mean), American childhood has undergone a somewhat alarming transformation in a very short time. But to him, it has always been possible to do so many things with the swipe of a finger, to have hundreds of games packed into a gadget the same size as Goodnight Moon...."
-and-
“We live in a screen age, and to say to a kid, ‘I’d love for you to look at a book but I hate it when you look at the screen’ is just bizarre. It reflects our own prejudices and comfort zone. It’s nothing but fear of change, of being left out.”
(More)
the world's problem...
"If (Benedict) wasn't what the modern world wanted -- if he wasn't prepared to
bend every principle or rule to appease all the people all the time --
then that's the world's problem rather than his."
(from)
(from)
Benedict: A pope aware of his flaws
by: Sister Mary Ann Walsh
(CNN) -- One of the Bible's paradoxical statements comes from St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians: "Power is made perfect in infirmity."
(CNN) -- One of the Bible's paradoxical statements comes from St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians: "Power is made perfect in infirmity."
The poetic statement proclaims that when we are weak, we are strong. Pope Benedict XVI's
stepping down from what many consider one of the most powerful
positions in the world proves it. In a position associated with
infallibility -- though that refers to formal proclamations on faith and
morals -- the pope declares his weakness.
His acceptance of frailty
speaks realistically about humanity: We grow old, weaken, and
eventually die. A job, even one guided by the Holy Spirit, as we Roman
Catholics believe, can become too much for us.
Acceptance of human frailty has marked this papacy. We all make mistakes, but the pope makes them on a huge stage.
(more)
Peter's failures... enabled him
"...And after some days of reflection, they will enter the Sistine Chapel to elect a successor to Peter.
What keeps me going these days is a remembrance of Peter, a personal friend of Jesus of Nazareth, who had to remember his own failures as he undertook leadership within the church.
Rather than incapacitating him, his remembrance enabled him to be a merciful and compassionate leader. Peter learned his lesson well; he would imitate Jesus the rest of his life even to the point of giving that life as a martyr, dying upside down on a cross on the Vatican hill. The last thing Peter would have seen before dying was the obelisk that now stands in the middle of St. Peter’s Square.
This reality we call Catholicism does not rest on some kind of pious myth, a pie-in-the sky story from long ago.
It is a story that has weathered many storms, and withstood the fury of the gates of hell.
It is a story about real people and real things that happened to them. People who staked their lives, and continue to do so, not on fables and fantasies, but on what they came to understand as the truth.
It is that same truth that we are trying to serve these days as we tell the world an ancient, at times incredible story that continues to excite and entice the whole world. It’s ultimately about Peter and the one he loved so much that he gave up everything to follow him."
(From)
What keeps me going these days is a remembrance of Peter, a personal friend of Jesus of Nazareth, who had to remember his own failures as he undertook leadership within the church.
Rather than incapacitating him, his remembrance enabled him to be a merciful and compassionate leader. Peter learned his lesson well; he would imitate Jesus the rest of his life even to the point of giving that life as a martyr, dying upside down on a cross on the Vatican hill. The last thing Peter would have seen before dying was the obelisk that now stands in the middle of St. Peter’s Square.
This reality we call Catholicism does not rest on some kind of pious myth, a pie-in-the sky story from long ago.
It is a story that has weathered many storms, and withstood the fury of the gates of hell.
It is a story about real people and real things that happened to them. People who staked their lives, and continue to do so, not on fables and fantasies, but on what they came to understand as the truth.
It is that same truth that we are trying to serve these days as we tell the world an ancient, at times incredible story that continues to excite and entice the whole world. It’s ultimately about Peter and the one he loved so much that he gave up everything to follow him."
(From)
Humble, Authentic.... Credible
By Christopher M. Bellitto
(CNN) -- For an institution that moves glacially, instant analysis is as impossible as it is unwise. Yet first impressions are important. Our initial glimpse of the new pope was curiously disconcerting. He stood there impassive and unemotional. He looked stunned, without almost any reaction at all except, perhaps, awe or even fear of the moment.
With the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as pope, the Roman Catholic Church enters the next chapter of her history. And yet, as often happens in the church, she turns to her past for inspiration and even innovation...
(more)
(CNN) -- For an institution that moves glacially, instant analysis is as impossible as it is unwise. Yet first impressions are important. Our initial glimpse of the new pope was curiously disconcerting. He stood there impassive and unemotional. He looked stunned, without almost any reaction at all except, perhaps, awe or even fear of the moment.
Suddenly, his eyes seemed
to open wide, as if he was really seeing the position for which he had
been chosen less than an hour before. And then he spoke, not with the
power of physical force or energy but with something stronger: humility.
With the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires as pope, the Roman Catholic Church enters the next chapter of her history. And yet, as often happens in the church, she turns to her past for inspiration and even innovation...
(more)
For most popes...
Pope Francis met his predecessor, which for most Popes, is very bad news.
— Paula Poundstone (@paulapoundstone) March 23, 2013
Eternal Consequences
"Never lose hope.
Never get discouraged.
And be willing to fight.
Because your love has consequences,
Never get discouraged.
And be willing to fight.
Because your love has consequences,
and those consequences are eternal."
~Fr. John Hopkins
~Fr. John Hopkins
(c/o)
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