It’s that time again, isn’t it? How well I remember my own
childhood’s August curse — that increasingly prominent feeling of
incipient doom and apocalypse that gradually sapped the life out of
one’s dwindling stocks of joy and freedom. I realize a lot of kids
actually like school, and more power to them, but for me I must say it
was a source of inexhaustible dysphoria. (That’s, like, you know, the
opposite of “euphoria,” guys. Stay with me here.) Nevertheless, will
they or nill they, school is where the kids are headed shortly — if
they haven’t already made landfall, that is. I never started until after
Labor Day, but I see in the news where Columbine High has already been
reopened for a week or two, and I suppose that in this age of
overcrowded school systems early starts are becoming more widespread.
Here’s a site or two you might want to keep in mind as the school year
swings into gear.
Because kids deserve to read
WND readers with the ill luck to have young children at a school
infected by the corrosive deep rot of
whole-language reading
“instruction” [sic] will want to do something to pick up the slack where
it counts, which is in
phonics. One
good way to go is to order materials from Hooked on
Phonics!. You don’t have to be a
full-time homeschooler
to appreciate this program’s power in teaching real and substantive
reading skills.
Academic reinforcements
Online homework aids in your arsenal this year should definitely
include the excellent Ask Dr.
Math for K through 12. For
American history and social studies, the Social Studies Help
Center, run by an enterprising high
school teacher in New Hyde Park, N.Y., for his own students, may be
useful. Mr. Miller gets results; 99 percent of his students passed the
demanding New York Regents exam last year. For a decent general science
resource, visit the online arm of the Discovery
Channel. If you have a fourth grader who
hates science, you may just be able to change his mind about that by
letting him visit the Yuckiest Site on the
Internet, particularly if you pretend to loathe
it violently. It uses all the gross, slimy, crawly bits of nature,
insects and slugs and jellyfish and such, to entice kids into a fondness
for biology. Just count me out of dinner at your house for the next
month.
Serious general homework help for all can be found at Homework
Help, a Twin
Cities-based service that deploys actual human volunteers who assist
kids with their projects — without doing the work for them.
Teacher’s aide
Those involved directly in teaching may be interested in
EduQuery.com, a resource for educators
that seeks to provide information to teachers, professors, and graduate
students in education. Its
EduNews department collects
articles of interest regarding education from the media, and also
produces a few such articles of its own; its links pages (look under
both “research” and “links”) can be useful. They provide a link to
WorldNetDaily, which speaks volumes about their taste, not to mention
good sense. Other site features include product reviews, discussions,
and a Tips for Teachers page
(contributions are welcome).
The right stuff
Definitely take a look at
SmarterKids.com for educational
products of all sorts — toys, books, and games as well as learning aids
— along with a resource center containing
articles, tips, an activities archive and thoughtful site guides on
special topics such as homeschooling and advanced students.
FamilyPC magazine’s suggestions for the ideal
back-to-school-gear for ages 3-15 can be found here. I
wouldn’t put too much stock in their encouraging you to shell out for
your child’s age-ideal computer system, because I figure if you can read
this column at all you’re probably doing OK in that department, but they
do have a few nice steers in software and durable clothing.
One of the nicest things about the age of the Internet is that the
middle-class American household no longer requires a great heavy ugly
set of encyclopedias in the living room. Human-directed search engines
like the Britannica Internet Guide and
About.com have picked up a lot of the slack
in that regard. You can even get access to the actual 32-volume
Encyclopedia Britannica itself
online for a monthly subscription fee; a generous 30-day free trial
period is currently on offer. It beats letting all those volumes hog
your perfectly good shelf space, particularly since they’ll only
constitute a worthless and troublesome white elephant when you move in
20 years’ time. (Ask me if my parents went through this.)
Fill that shelf space with something that will actually benefit your
kids: good children’s literature like the
Narnia
books, or this Madeleine
L’Engle
classic. Treat your middle-school son to a good Jack
London
or your high-school daughter to “Jane
Eyre”
— or vice versa, for that matter; I may be a girl, but I wasn’t immune
to Jack London. Or to that other “boys'” classic,
Kidnapped,
either. Mmmm: Alan Breck Stewart — I’d forgotten about that little
crush. …
I have to go now. There’s a children’s-book section at the local
bookstore that’s calling me. Catch yawl next week.
