Children from middle-class families are not learning to talk properly because they no longer interact with their working parents, according to the Government’s new ‘communication champion’.

Telegraph | Jan 1, 2010

By Chris Irvine

Jean Gross, a former education psychologist set to take up the position next month, claims that because of working parents, children are subjected to second rate childcare, as well as lose out on traditional social interaction of family mealtimes and bedtime stories.

Mrs Gross, who is set to publish research showing how difficulties in learning to talk are an issue with all social classes, said half of children in some areas were starting school unable to form sentences together. In some cases, she says, she has seen native English speakers struggle as much as “a child who has Bengali as their first language”.

“All of us are so busy. Some middle-class families don’t sit down and eat with their children”, she said.

“Adults lead increasingly busy lives and many are not able to spend as much time talking to their children as generations before.

“Our brains have not evolved to learn from machines. Babies are primed to respond to a face, and to recognise their parents’ faces.”

Although Mrs Gross said she understood the “realities” of modern parenting, she said: “I still think parents staying home and looking after their own children is ideal, or making sure a grandparent or trusted person will give a child that one-to-one intense development of language.

“But it’s more to do with the quality of the setting than the structure.”

Daily Mail | Jan 1, 2010

By Laura Clark

Middle-class children are struggling to learn how to talk because working parents are unable to offer them the quality time which is crucial to their speech development, a key government adviser has warned.

They are often left in second rate childcare and no longer benefit from the social interaction of family mealtimes and bedtime stories, according to Jean Gross, the first ‘communication champion’.

Parents should avoid daycare for under-twos unless it has well-trained staff who offer plenty of one-to-one attention, she said.

Children tend to do best when looked after by their mothers or another trusted adult, she added, and those placed in centres which neglect early education may suffer delayed speech development.

A further impediment was the trend for youngsters to spend time in front of ‘machines’ such as TVs and computers instead of interacting with adults.

Mrs Gross, a former educational psychologist who will take up her new position next month, spoke as assessments of five-year-olds revealed 18 per cent – more than 100,000 – have fallen behind the expected level of speech development for their age.

She said 50 per cent of youngsters in some areas are starting formal schooling unable to link words together or even understand simple instructions.

In many middle-class homes, busy parents often struggled to find time to read bedtime stories or eat with their children, she warned.

Mrs Gross, who is preparing to publish research showing how difficulties in learning to talk span all social classes, said: ‘All of us are so busy. Some middle-class families don’t sit down and eat with their children.

‘Adults lead increasingly busy lives and many are not able to spend as much time talking to their children as generations before.

‘Our brains have not evolved to learn from machines. Babies are primed to respond to a face, and to recognise their parents’ faces.’

In other cases, families were reliant on childcare that appeared to be good quality but in fact concentrated on ensuring nappies were changed regularly and children were feeding, while failing to promote language development.

‘I still think parents staying home and looking after their own children is ideal, or making sure a grandparent or trusted person will give a child that one-to-one intense development of language,’ she said.

‘But it’s more to do with the quality of the setting than the structure.’

She said she understood the ‘realities’ of modern parenting meant many mothers could not afford to stay at home because of hefty mortgages and the cost of raising a family.

But parents should instead seek childcare with as much one-to-one interaction as possible.

Mrs Gross also emphasised some children had speech difficulties despite growing up in supportive homes with high levels of exposure to language.

These children needed more support from local authorities to overcome their special needs.

Mrs Gross said many white British pupils are like foreigners in the classroom.

‘I see children who are just as adrift as a child who has Bengali as their first language,’ she said.

‘There are children who are said to be native English speakers but they are not, their language is so restricted.’

Strange poll results and data security

bigbrotherwatch.org.uk | Oct 21, 2009

By Dylan Sharpe

There have been a few stories dotted around the media this morning linking to a poll conducted by IT company, Unisys.

The top line to come out of the research is that 75% of Britons do not trust the government to keep their data safe – a statistic that leaves you wondering who the other 25% of people asked were.

Indeed, data loss by government departments over the past 10 years has reached chronic levels and is a major weapon in the armoury of anti-database campaigners like ourselves.

However, as reported elsewhere, other results from the polling revealed that a surprising 56% of respondents were prepared to hand over biometric information to retailers and other institutions as a means of verification; including around 90% being ok with using fingerprint or iris recognition.

These statistics become more dubious when 64% of those surveyed admitted they didn’t have faith in private companies to look after their personal information and 83% were apparently worried about the unauthorised accessing of personal information.

Without seeing the polling questions I don’t want to be overly definitive in my response; but I feel that if the public are clearly worried about public and private bodies holding onto their personal information as demonstrated by the polling results, headlines such as ‘UK ready and willing for biometric fingerprinting’ might have jumped the gun somewhat.

A fingerprint is more precious than a pin number – we mustn’t be tricked into giving away our biometric data under false pretences.

CDC gives city water quality award

siouxcityjournal.com | Oct 15, 2009

SIOUX CITY — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Human Services have awarded the city of Sioux City’s Water Treatment Plant the 2008 Water Fluoridation Quality Ward.

The award commended city staff for its consistent and professional adjustment of water fluoride to optimum levels for oral health, Ricky Mach, water plant superintendent announced Wednesday.

“Consistent high quality fluoridation practice, as demonstrated by Sioux City’s water system, is a safe and effective method to prevent tooth decay, thus improving the oral health of our community residents of all ages,” he said.

The grand old man of letters Gore Vidal claims America is ‘rotting away’ — and don’t expect Barack Obama to save it

The “War on Terror” was “made up”, Vidal says. “The whole thing was PR, just like ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

London Times | Sep 30, 2009

A conversation with Gore Vidal unfolds at his pace. He answers questions imperiously, occasionally playfully, with a piercing, lethal dryness. He is 83 and in a wheelchair (a result of hypothermia suffered in the war, his left knee is made of titanium). But he can walk (“Of course I can”) and after a recent performance of Mother Courage at London’s National Theatre he stood to deliver an anti-war speech to the audience.

How was his friend Fiona Shaw in the title role? “Very good.” Where did they meet? Silence. The US? “Well, it wasn’t Russia.” What’s he writing at the moment? “It’s a little boring to talk about. Most writers seem to do little else but talk about themselves and their work, in majestic terms.” He means self-glorifying? “You’ve stumbled on the phrase,” he says, regally enough. “Continue to use it.”

Vidal is sitting in the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, where he has been coming to stay for 60 years. He is wearing a brown suit jacket, brown jumper, tracksuit bottoms; his white hair twirled into a Tintin-esque quiff and with his hooded eyes, delicate yet craggy features and arch expression, he looks like Quentin Crisp, but accessorised with a low, lugubrious growl rather than camp lisp.

He points to an apartment opposite the hotel where Churchill stayed during the Second World War, as Downing Street was “getting hammered by the Nazis. The crowds would cheer him from the street, he knew great PR.” In a flash, this memory reminds you of the swathe of history Vidal has experienced with great intimacy: he was friends with JFK, fought in the war, his father Gene, an Olympic decathlete and aeronautics teacher, founded TWA among other airlines and had a relationship with Amelia Earhart. (Vidal first flew and landed a plane when he was 10.) He was a screenwriter for MGM in the dying days of the studio system, toyed with being a politician, he has written 24 novels and is hailed as one of the world’s greatest essayists.

He has crossed every boundary, I say. “Crashed many barriers,” he corrects me.

Last year he famously switched allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama during the Democratic nomination process for president. Now, he reveals, he regrets his change of heart. How’s Obama doing? “Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.” America should leave Afghanistan, he says. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.” The “War on Terror” was “made up”, Vidal says. “The whole thing was PR, just like ‘weapons of mass destruction’. It has wrecked the airline business, which my father founded in the 1930s. He’d be cutting his wrists. Now when you fly you’re both scared to death and bored to death, a most disagreeable combination.”

His voice strengthens. “One thing I have hated all my life are LIARS [he says that with bristling anger] and I live in a nation of them. It was not always the case. I don’t demand honour, that can be lies too. I don’t say there was a golden age, but there was an age of general intelligence. We had a watchdog, the media.” The media is too supine? “Would that it was. They’re busy preparing us for an Iranian war.” He retains some optimism about Obama “because he doesn’t lie. We know the fool from Arizona [as he calls John McCain] is a liar. We never got the real story of how McCain crashed his plane [in 1967 near Hanoi, North Vietnam] and was held captive.”

Vidal originally became pro-Obama because he grew up in “a black city” (meaning Washington), as well as being impressed by Obama’s intelligence. “But he believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star. Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.”

Full Story

Named after the all-seeing Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel 1984, the programme enters its 11th series in the United States this year and its 12th in Britain. Ironically, De Mol says he is camera shy and insists he could never subject himself to the type of scrutiny popularised by the show.

The 54-year-old tycoon said the idea for the programme hit him one night in 1997, as he was unwinding with colleagues after a fruitless brainstorming session for a new programme for Catholic public radio.

tonight.co.za | Sep 30, 2009

Laren, Netherlands – John de Mol, the Dutch creator of the voyeuristic Big Brother reality show that turned 10 in September, never doubted his late-night flash of inspiration would change television forever.

“I told my team, even before the first episode was aired: there will come a time when people will talk about an era in television before Big Brother and one after ‘Big Brother’,” the billionaire media baron told AFP recently at his office in the affluent town of Laren in the western Netherlands.

“They looked at me like I was mad.”

The money-spinning series, now synonymous with the phenomenon of “reality television”, has seen tens of thousands of hours of footage filmed and broadcast in more than 60 countries including the United States, in Asia and across Europe, Africa and the Arab world.

Participants in Big Brother, currently on air in 36 countries, subject themselves to 24/7 camera scrutiny while locked up together in a house for about 100 days – even their ablutions are not private.

Among the show’s strongest drawing cards are the “shower hour” and occasional sexual interludes – all filmed as the “housemates” navigate a mine-field of social intrigue vying to outlast their competitors and take home a cash prize.

“There is a bit of a voyeur in each of us,” De Mol offers as part of the reason for the show’s success.

“When you walk in the street tonight and there is a lounge with the curtains open, you will look inside. Everyone has that. Call it voyeurism, I call it curiosity.”

The 54-year-old tycoon said the idea for the programme hit him one night in 1997, as he was unwinding with colleagues after a fruitless brainstorming session for a new programme for Catholic public radio.

He set up a working group codenamed Project X to flesh out the idea in the utmost secrecy. “I was afraid it would leak out,” he confessed.

It took a year to put together a workable show format and solve the technical and financial constraints – another year to find a willing broadcaster.

“It was very expensive, and few dared to do it,” said De Mol. “It was very controversial. There was a lot of negative publicity: people saying you can’t do this, you can’t lock people up for 100 days, you can’t put cameras in the toilet… all that nonsense.”

Despite widespread moral outrage, more than 10 000 people applied to take part in the first series broadcast in the Netherlands from September 16, 1999.

De Mol, a co-founder of entertainment company Endemol which has produced other hit reality programmes including Deal Or No Deal, Fear Factor and Extreme Makeover after Big Brother’s success, dismissed what he called “conservative” criticism of the concept.

“To participate in Big Brother, and to win, you need a form of social intelligence, a special way of interacting with people. Everyone can learn from that.

“I think you learn more about life from watching ‘Big Brother’ than from reading a book,” said De Mol, who has since left Endemol to start a new company, Talpa Media, producing reality programmes like Dating In The Dark.

Jaap Kooijman, media academic at the University of Amsterdam, sees Big Brother as “a turning point for reality TV” – early versions of which included such programmes as Candid Camera, in which hidden cameras filmed ordinary people reacting to unusual, scripted scenarios.

“One may have criticism of the ethical questions, of the so-called degradation of society’s values,” said Kooijman.

“But there are such diverse things on offer on TV that it would be difficult to argue that one genre alone is dragging down the standard.”

Highlights of Big Brother around the world have included a contestant giving birth, a race row and a housemate threatening another with a knife.

Does this go to far? “Yes and no,” said De Mol. “These things also happen in real life. And this is called reality television… a mirror of the world.”

Ironically, De Mol says he is camera shy and insists he could never subject himself to the type of scrutiny popularised by the show.

“I prefer not to be in the spotlight.”

According to Forbes magazine the programme helped make him the world’s 334th richest man in 2009 and puts his wealth at two billion dollars, though in good Dutch Calvinist fashion De Mol says he prefers not to talk about money.

Named after the all-seeing Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel 1984, the programme enters its 11th series in the United States this year and its 12th in Britain.

“Big Brother is synonymous with a genre of television that will never disappear,” said De Mol.

“If you ask me what I am proud of, that is it: I created the genre of reality television.” – AFP

JADA Study Proves Fluoridation is Money down the Drain

PRNewswire | Sep 29, 2009

NEW YORK, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Children’s cavity rates are similar whether water is fluoridated or not, according to data published in the July 2009 Journal of the American Dental Association by dentist J.V. Kumar of the NY State Health Department(1), reports NYSCOF.

In 2008, New York City spent approximately $24 million on water fluoridation ($5 million on fluoride chemicals)(1a). In 2010, NYC’s fluoride chemicals will cost $9 million(1b).

Fluoride in water at “optimal” levels (0.7 – 1.2 mg/L) is supposed to reduce tooth decay without creating excessive fluorosis (fluoride-discolored and/or damaged teeth). Yet cavities are rampant in NY’s fluoridated populations(1c).

Attempting to prove that fluorosed teeth have fewer cavities, Kumar uses 1986-1987 National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) data which, upon analysis, shows that 7- to 17-year-olds have similar cavity rates in their permanent teeth whether their water supply is fluoridated or not (Table 1).

In 1990, using the same NIDR data, Dr. John Yiamouyiannis published equally surprising results in a peer-reviewed journal. He concluded, “No statistically significant differences were found in the decay rates of permanent teeth or the percentages of decay-free children in the F [fluoridated], NF [non-fluoridated], and PF [partially fluoridated] areas.”(2).

Kumar divided children into four groups based on their community’s water fluoride levels:

Less than 0.3 mg/L where 55.5% had cavities

From 0.3 to 0.7 mg/L where 54.6% had cavities

Optimal 0.7 to 1.2 mg/L where 54.4% had cavities

Over 1.2 mg/L where 56.4% had cavities

“Dr. Kumar’s published data exposes more evidence that fluoridation doesn’t reduce tooth decay,” says attorney Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation.

“It’s criminal to waste taxpayers’ money on fluoridation, while exposing entire populations unnecessarily to fluoride’s health risks, especially when local and state governments are attempting to balance budgets by cutting essential services,” says Beeber.

Analysis of Kumar’s data: http://tinyurl.com/MoneyDownTheDrain

More information about fluoride and tooth decay:

http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/teeth/caries/fluoridation.html#surveys

Kapiti residents start anti-fluoridation petition

wellington.scoop.co.nz | Sep 26, 2009

A group of concerned Kapiti residents have chosen to start a petition to ask the Kapiti District Council to stop the fluoridation of Raumati, Paraparaumu and Waikanae.

“Fluoridation has got to stop. It is harmful to health and a violation of human rights” says Daniela D-Ronberg, spokesperson for the newly-formed Kapiti Fluoridation-free Campaign

“I am particularly worried that we are still allowing this when the American Health Authorities are advising that babies are getting too much fluoride through the normal tap water when making up baby formula. Fluoride cannot be boiled out.” says Daniela D-Ronberg The last two studies[1][2] in New Zealand that looked at dental fluorosis (the first outward sign of fluoride poisoning) showed that 30% of children in fluoridated areas had some form of dental fluorosis as compared with only 15% in non-fluoridated areas.

This petition has come as a result of Tuesday’s film night where residents were able to watch two half hour videos on fluoridation. These videos consisted of an interview with an award winning BBC journalist and an overview of fluoridation by professionals such as doctors, dentists and scientists from around the world.

Daniela D-Ronberg says “All of continental Europe does not allow water fluoridation. Anyone supporting fluoridation needs to watch these two videos before they can consider themselves to be making an informed decision. Otherwise they are coming from a position of ignorance.”

The group intend to circulate both an electronic and a paper-based petition over the next few months which they will present to Council at the end of the year.

AP | Sep 8, 2009

By CRISTIAN SALAZAR

NEW YORK — Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined Sept. 11 family members and college professors on Tuesday at a hotel blocks from the World Trade Center site to unveil a plan to teach middle and high school students about the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The 9/11 curriculum, believed to be the first comprehensive educational plan focusing on the attacks, is expected to be tested this year at schools in New York City, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.

It was developed with the help of educators by the Brick, N.J.-based Sept. 11 Education Trust, and was based on primary sources, archival footage and more than 70 interviews with witnesses, family members of victims and politicians, including Giuliani and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a New York senator at the time of the attacks.

The curriculum is taught through videos, lessons and interactive exercises, including one that requires students to use Google Earth software to map global terrorist activity.

One of the main goals is to help students entering middle and high school, who may been too young to have strong memories of the attacks, to develop a tangible connection to what happened.

“In a few years, we will be teaching students who were not even alive at the time of the attacks,” said Anthony Gardner, the executive director of the Sept. 11 Education Trust.

The nonprofit group is run by victims’ families, survivors and rescue workers who worry that educators don’t teach about the attacks because they don’t have the educational tools to do so.

Giuliani said that the curriculum can help students to think critically about the attacks as both a historical event and one that shapes the present, noting the continued threat of terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“This is one of the critical subjects on which young people should develop some ideas and thoughts. They’re going to have to live with this for quite some time,” he said. “It gives young people a framework in which to think about Sept. 11, all that it meant and all that it means to the present.”

For the professors who helped to develop the plan through the Taft Institute for Government at Queens College, creating that framework to understanding how 9/11 affects today’s policies was critical to the endeavor, and part of the challenge.

“The real trick is to get kids to see that it’s not just a dramatic event like 9/11 that connects them to these issues, it’s connected to their lives in the everyday, said Michael A. Krasner, a political scientist at Queens College. He said a range of viewpoints are reflected in the curriculum, including from Muslim scholars, to enrich the discussion.

The curriculum was designed so that teachers could tailor it to their own classrooms, but it gives an open-eyed view of 9/11, Gardner said.

“We’re not sugarcoating the event,” said Gardner, whose brother died in the World Trade Center. “We’ve included images that are challenging.”

Students and professors are invited to participate on a Web site developed around the curriculum, where they can share their own videos, lesson plans and discuss the questions raised in their classrooms.

The curriculum was tried out in 2008 at the River Dell Regional High School, a roughly 1,000-student high school in Oradell, N.J., about 20 miles north of Manhattan.

It costs $99 per license through Sept. 18, 2009. After that, it will cost $129. The money will go toward the development of more teaching materials on 9/11.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has also developed educational materials for high schools, which are intended to augment classroom discussions, not to serve as an in-depth curriculum.
On the Net:

* http://www.sept11educationtrust.org
* http://www.learnabout9-11.org/

Western Mail | Sep 8, 2009

by David Williamson

OPPOSITION to genetically modified food may be weakening, major research from Consumer Focus Wales suggests.

But researchers for the consumer watchdog also found that confusion is high and Wales suffers from an “information drought”.

Nearly half of people questioned (48%) did not feel confident enough in their knowledge to give an opinion.

Opposition to GM foods was highest in Mid and West Wales where 40% of respondents wanted the products banned. This fell to 24% in Cardiff and South East Wales.

People were most open to GM foods in the Valleys and the Swansea, Bridgend and Port Talbot areas, where only 19% wanted a ban.

Vivienne Sugar, the organisation’s chairwoman, said: “Consumers should be able to make an informed choice about eating GM food. Our survey has found the majority of people still don’t feel they know enough about GM issues to form an opinion, so the need for clear, impartial and readily available information on GM is paramount. One of the main findings of our research was that people want to be able to choose whether they eat GM food or not – more than eight out of 10 people want such foods to be labelled, even if they only contain a tiny amount of GM material.”

Lindsey Kearton, the author of the Consumer Focus report, Seeds of Confusion: Consumer attitudes to GM foods, said products such as milk and eggs which came from animals that had been fed modified food were not required to have the GM logo.

At present, food products do not have to be labelled if they contain 0.9% or less GM material caused by unintentional or “unavoidable” mixing of crops during the farming process.

Just 3% of people did not think such products ought to be labelled.

Concern about the impact on the environment has also fallen.

The proportion of people who described themselves as “worried” about the environmental impact has fallen from 51% in 2003 to 41% today. Only 35% of people in Cardiff and South East Wales were in this group, compared with 48% in South West Wales.

More than a third of consumers (37%) believed GM crops were needed to avoid world food shortages in the future; just under a quarter (23%) disagreed.

One in three said they would support genetic modification if it kept food prices down – with just 31% disagreeing.

Wendy Sadler, founder of Cardiff-based Science Made Simple – an award-winning enterprise dedicating to popularising science – said that giving greater information to consumers could result in wider acceptance of new techniques.

She said: “I see a lot of openness to new technology provided people are given the information to make their own decision and don’t have those decisions forced upon them… I think it’s the element of choice that makes a difference.”

She also noted that when people first became aware of GM crops worst-case scenarios were envisaged which have not happened.

Mike Reddy, an expert in future technology at the University of Wales, Newport, believes that in the current climate people’s food choices will be governed by the price of a product and not the fact it has been genetically modified.

He said: “We are in a credit crunch. So long as they can prevent people focusing on it, people will see the price and go, ‘Oh! That’s cheaper.’

“So long as people aren’t really having their noses rubbed in it they won’t really care.”

However, he is doubtful that in the long-term GM agriculture will prove financially or environmentally sustainable.

Steve Garret, chair of Riverside Community Market Association, has seen a weekly farmers’ market held opposite Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium grow to have an annual turnover of around £1.5m.

He said that many shoppers were concerned about GM foods combined with alarm at the distances many foods travel before reaching supermarket shelves.

But he added: “It’s not about being righteous. It’s about the pleasure of eating, looking, tasting and buying.”