Reading The Economics Laws of Scientific Laws rocked my world on this topic. Tldr is that the basic to applied science pipeline proposed by Francis Bacon and now assumed as physical law is a fiction that legitimizes the state, wastes taxpayer money, and retards science.
More science will happen with less government funding (see crowding out effect). This is why it's important to look not just at the intention of a policy, but at the actual outcome.
This author has the tail wagging the dog. I'd rephrase it... more startups, more science.
Very nice strains! There was a lady in, I believe Latin-America, who had terrible oral hygiene and yet never had a cavity. So they analyzed her saliva and found this specific strain. I just spent 30 minutes looking for the study that I'm referring to but I can't find it for the life of me, apologies for that. I believe it was one of the streptococcus salivarius strains that you already included though :)
Thank you! Definitely recommend still brushing and flossing while using Peak. We do 3 sprays and brush just like we’re using traditional toothpaste. We’ll clarify on the site!
Ahhh that makes sense, I think I was imagining just a breath freshener since that's the most common form of "thing you spritz in your mouth". Definitely worth including on the site that it's for brushing with, not just spray and go.
Go look at what privatization did to water and trains in the UK.
It's turned into absolute trash. Utter, absolute disaster. Everything privatized by the Tories has been a complete civic disaster.
Massive sewage discharges, foreign shareholders stripping assets with zero investment for the future, late trains, bad rolling stock.
A complete disaster. Like American healthcare.
Don't wish this shit on your worst enemies.
Anyone arguing otherwise is either a rich grifter trying to sponge from the public purse or a poor moron who's been convinced by the rich grifters to vote against their own best interest.
Capitalism does not work on utilities like schooling, healthcare, energy, water, public transportation, etc. at all. It's used as a way to strip public funds by corruption and bribery. Just like we know communist governments don't work, we also know privatising public services don't work.
Government services work just fine in other countries where there isn't one party that gets into power to make sure the service fails so they can pocket the tax money instead.
Core knowledge. Create an environment that encourages a love of reading as soon as possible and help them develop core knowledge about the world around them. This includes both language and facts/concepts about everything from ancient history to the solar system.
Domain-specific background knowledge is incredibly important. It turns out (for the most part) there are no general purpose cognitive skills... it's all domain specific. A student that knows about baseball will comprehend an article about baseball much better than one that doesn't have the core knowledge of what a run, base, double, home run, etc. means. Decoding strategies be damned.
Helping your young child develop said background knowledge will put them in a fantastic spot as they enter school. They'll 'get the joke' - it's a bit like velcro for the brain. Nothing sticks for the students that enter school without the cognitive velcro that is domain-specific background knowledge.
I know this sounds completely contrary to the progressive education philosophies that domain our culture about teaching kids how to think vs what to think... no memorization, etc. It surprised me too.
Check out the work of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, Natalie Wexler (The Knowledge gap is a great book) or E.D. Hirsch for a deep dive.
Domain-specific background knowledge is incredibly important.
You see that when you hand word problems with more than one step to the poor kids. They use "solution strategies", that is they circle numbers and what they think are keywords, and they full well don't know what those words mean.
They circle "concentration", and they even can calculate a concentration given a mass of solute and volume of solvent, but they never thought about solutions and what solutions of different concentrations might do for you.
There is a paper somewhere in the Journal of Chemical Education where they handed numerical and conceptual questions to kids from Yale and FAMU. Quite contrary to expectations, the Yale kids did much better on the number questions, but on the questions what it all means both cohorts did equally lousy - 1/3 of kids at either school had an idea what those numbers they just calculated meant.
> It turns out (for the most part) there are no general purpose cognitive skills
There has to be at least one, even on your own account: knowing how to learn the domain specific knowledge for a new domain.
I would also add another: knowing how to spot and make use of common features between domains. But it's true that this skill can't even be developed until you've learned the domain specific knowledge in quite a few domains.
I am in no way saying you are doing this, comment is for the thread as well as you.
As others have mentioned in this discussion, I think giving the child both a sense and actual control over what they work on is one of the keys.
Children want to please their parents, so they might work on things that they think you would like. They are extremely good at reading people even if other actions seem uncoordinated. It is best to listen, in all senses of the word, to child and find out what they really like. Once you have found that, you have to make enough space for it to bloom.
One example for me was in getting my very adventurous athletic child to ride a scooter and a bike. I thought she would be one of those badass three year olds skating around with the big kids. She didn't really take to it, I tried to push it a little bit and I found myself a little deflated when said she didn't like it.
I sat back and figured out that I wanted it, and it wasn't fair for me to put that on to her. A smile isn't always a smile and encouragement is always what it seems. i backed off, would ask about it once in awhile but didn't pressure her again.
About 6 months ago she asked to ride the bike again, that she really wanted to learn. I told her she is gonna crash, it might hurt, but that anyone can do it. In 5 days of two 20-30 minute sessions a day, she was starting, stopping and turning all on her own. She was so excited to have learned it, I could see the accomplishment on her whole being.
Humans are wonderful all purpose devices, the spark that guides us the leads to our differentiation is the interest reward function. Capabilities are one thing, but interest, genuine interest is where the magic lies. The most interesting people are to me are the ones that ask the best questions, or give the answer you weren't expecting.
Our job as parents, I believe is to be a social and metacognitive mirror so that everyone can get a different perspective to explore and understand the world.
>Children want to please their parents, so they might work on things that they think you would like.
I think this is known as the Pygmalion effect. It is very powerful, and we as parents/teachers have to be very careful with this.
Knowing what each of us really wants is a difficult question to answer.
I often wonder how much of what my parents were and were not shaped what I have become.
My daughter actually just taught herself to ride this past weekend. Her biggest hurdle was getting over the fear of crashing. She started out balancing for a few days before she just magically started pedaling.
Riding a bike is hard. It is a lot like swimming, so many motions at the same time. The body has to think it, not the cortex. There is this great smarter everyday segment on a reverse bike. I recommend it for everyone.
My kids first word was, "no". Her first sentence was, "help me no". I use those as guides to maintain the distance she desires.
Athletics like art are one of those accomplishments and outlets that kids can embrace at a young age w/o having the "when I grow up" statements. They can start living their lives in the now w/o adults putting it off to a later date.
Watching a kid finally get riding a bike is a wonderful thing.
"The average homeschooled kid is much more likely to miss social cues, stumble through a difficult interaction with feckless ineptitude, or even parrot their parents own myopic stereotypes or falsehoods."
Curious if this is something you have direct experience with/referencing a study or if you're just repeating the commonly held trope. I work at a school that has welcomed a large number of former home schoolers and I find your comment contrary to my experience with dozen of home school kids.
Additionally, describing public schools as a place where empathy, listening, and conflict resolution happens is counter to my experience working with public school districts. Genuinely interested to learn where you're coming from with your comment.
As a homeschooling parent, we hear this trope all the time and it has not been borne out by our experience at all. My wife and I probably both have above-average social skills, but our kids are all well-spoken, empathetic, and kind for their ages, and we tend to have to help them unlearn the social "skills" they learn from their friends who go to public school.
And we're not really sticklers when it comes to behavior, we mostly just want them to not be rude and to think about other people when they do things that impact other people, and we have not found that kids who attend public school are especially likely to possess those qualities. (I also went to public school and spent a good part of my early adulthood unlearning crappy social behavior that was learned in school).
As a former homeschooled child (K-10, I started attending community college in 11th grade) who is still in contact with many dozens of friends I met through homeschooling, I would agree. I would say that my homeschooled friends probably average just a bit better in the social skills department than my friends who attended private and public schools. That said, my homeschooled friends almost all came from middle-class, two-parent households from the suburbs, so my guess is that any advantage in those skills was more likely to be due to that than their schooling.
If you keep your kids locked at home 24/7 they will certainly have difficulty learning how to talk to other kids and adults, but nearly nobody does that. Most homeschooled families were involved in organized classes and activities with other families, even 20-30 years ago and my impression is that those experiences have only increased.
As an educator, Zoom is clunky and not designed for the use case. We built an interactive live streaming platform during COVID-19 that we've found powerful. A few keys features have been moderated chat, the ability to invite students to join via video, embedded quizzes, and various screen sharing layouts.
More science will happen with less government funding (see crowding out effect). This is why it's important to look not just at the intention of a policy, but at the actual outcome.
This author has the tail wagging the dog. I'd rephrase it... more startups, more science.
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