Re-living the 80s

The other week I picked up the first season of Mork & Mindy on DVD. I fondly remembered it from my childhood; especially the performance of Robin Williams. My hunch was that my 8 and 6 year old might enjoy it in a wholesome sort of way.

Well that turned out to be definitely true. They loved the humour. "Oh he keeps sitting on his head!" and of course, "Nanoo nanoo" which has become a new greeting around the home.

But what was more interesting was that they liked the storylines. When it comes down to it, they identify with Mork. He doesn't understand how the world works and is working it out as he goes along. Much of what he doesn't understand are things kids also have trouble with. How money works? Why people date? Why people lie?

Mork amusingly stumbles through this and eventually ends up with a little life lesson to Orson at the end of the day. It is hockey but right at their level. I can highly recommend it as family viewing all round.

The Cat in the Anniversary Hat

The Cat in the Hat was first published 50 years ago today (12th March, 1957). Here is the history and here is the celebration site. It remains one of the ten best selling children's books of all time.

For us it was The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (the 1958 sequel) that remains the favourite. It was read to our first born so many times that, at the age of 3, she was able to convince parents of other children that she could read. She would sit there and go through all 40 pages without error. Surely, only a reader could do that! But no, she had heard it so many times that she knew it by heart. And so, of course, did we.

What this meant is that by Child No.3, that book hadn't come back out. I noticed the other day when I looked for it that it was the 40th Anniversary Edition. How time flies ...

A little lesson on eBay

Our kids have an exciting couple of days watching us try to procure a computer game on eBay. The game in question is the now 'out of print' Pikmin 2 for the Nintendo GameCube/Wii. You may recall from an earlier post that Pikmin itself became a household obsession for us over the summer holiday. The Thirty-Six year old finally finished it yesterday. But the Six year old had been using his new found 'finder' (i.e., Google) on the computer to discover that there was a Pikmin 2. He also believed that it could be purchased from Target. Sadly, this appeared to be in the US and so out of our reach.

A hunt for Pikmin 2 ensued with the Thirty-Six year old favouring a new version but discovering that one we found would cost $100. I suggested eBay as an alternative where Pikmin 2 seemed to be selling for about $50.

This seemed like a good opportunity for some learning about how auctions and bidding worked for the kids. There was a mild budget constraint (the price of the new one) so that was an issue. Nonetheless, the notion of eBay as an alternative to bricks and mortar stores was a novelty.

The first auction closing was from someone who had some red flags in reputation. So we avoided that. The second, however, looked good (here is the link for as long as it lasts). You will notice that we were the highest bidder (at $37) until about an hour before the auction closed. The Eight year old was still up and so we deliberated over whether to up our bid above $50. I didn't want to as there was another auction closing the next day. It seemed to me that we could go for that with one fewer bidders and surely do better. That was the economist speaking.

The Eight year old was concerned we wouldn't get that one. So I decided to make a deal. I told her that we could bid on that auction. If we won, then we would look at the price tomorrow's auction closed at. My daughter would agree to pay the difference. I pointed out that there might not be any difference or tomorrow' might close for more. However, she didn't want to take the risk of forking out her own money and was now happy to wait a day. That auction closed at $55.

So today was a day spent in constant refreshing of the auction page. We had to go out so we put in a maximum bid of $60. For most of the day we were the highest bidder (at $41). We got home with 10 minutes to spare and were still winning. My daughter refreshed the page every five seconds as the tension built. Then, one minute before the end, the price started to rise. Someone was bidding against us. 30 seconds before the end we were trumped. The next bid was $61.

At that point I did something I probably shouldn't have. I decided not to let it go. I put in a bid at $65 (not enough) and then $66 (it was). That last bid was at one second. We had sniped the sniper. (You can see the bid history here for as long as the link is open).

To say there was much rejoicing is an understatement. The Eight year old has her own blog (it is open to family and friends only) but here is what she wrote:

Yay We Won Pikmin 2 !!!!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday there was an auction on ebay, we didn't win, because Dad didn't want us to.
But today there was another one, it was soooo...... close, but we just won!!!!
Me, my younger brother, and my younger sister were so excited!!!!!! Well my younger sister wasn't really excited she just pretended to. [Because we were].
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You will notice that there was a little re-writing of history there (you just can't trust those bloggers!) but the sense of the day is conveyed well.

Actually, the rejoicing did not include me. Had we gone for it yesterday we may well have been $10 better off. (It has hard to tell what some more competition would have pushed the price to). Suffice it to say, I should have got it for a little less today but didn't. Economic theory failed me this time around.

Now, of course, came the news they would have to wait some days for the item to be shipped from Tasmania. A clear disadvantage to eBay.

But this all brought the realisation that we could sell stuff on eBay and get money. The Eight year old, however, is currently reluctant to part with any of her stuff.

It is not whether you praise, but what for

This is a just a pointer to an excellent article in New York magazine on praising children. The bottom line: don't praise them for being smart, etc., but for hard work, diligence and effort.

[Update: more commentary in Slate.]

Childrens' rationality

Apparently, children are impatient and probably not rational according to Eric Bettinger and Robert Slonim in an article published in the Journal of Public Economics (Feb 2007). The abstract is below. The most interesting thing is the lack of a relationship between mathematical ability and discounting.

Recent policy initiatives offer cash payments to children (and often their families) to induce better health and educational choices. These policies implicitly assume that children are especially impatient (i.e., have high discount rates); however, little is known about the nature of children's patience, how it varies across children, and whether children can even make rational inter-temporal choices. This paper examines the inter-temporal choices of 5- to 16-year-old children in an artefactual field experiment. We examine their choices between varying levels of compensation received in 2 or 4 months in the future and in 0 or 2 months in the future. We find that children's choices are consistent with hyperbolic discounting, boys are less patient than girls, older children are more patient and that mathematical achievement test scores, private schooling and parent's patience are not correlated with children's patience. We also find that although more than 25% of children do not make rational inter-temporal choices within a single two-period time frame, we cannot find variables that explain this behavior other than age and standardized mathematical achievement test scores.

Movie ratings for kids

I came across an interesting website, "Kids-In-Mind" that provides movie ratings that might be useful. Like most countries Australia has a one dimensional ratings system designed to tell you which age groups should watch what. However, I have found it almost useless in really giving parents information in terms of what their children should see.

To see this, the first thing we have to note is that parental preferences are different. I do not feel the same way about profanity and some forms of violence than other parents do. I would prefer to avoid sex scenes if only to avoid questions that just do not need to come up yet (for 8 year olds or under). So I struggle in that there are some M movies that I am happy for my 8 year old to see (including Star Wars III, Superman Returns and any Harry Potter) but there are PG ones which I am not sure are suitable.

Kids-In-Mind cuts through that with a three dimensional rating system. Here is what they say:

Our ratings reflect objective categories of potentially objectionable material. Unlike the MPAA, we do not assign a single, age-specific rating. Instead we assign each film three distinct, category-specific ratings: one for SEX & NUDITY, one for VIOLENCE & GORE and one for PROFANITY. Each rating is on a scale of zero to ten, depending on quantity (more F-words, for instance, will mean a higher PROFANITY rating, and so on) as well as context (especially when it comes to the categories of sex, nudity, violence and gore, since they are not as easily quantifiable as profanity). Hence, two movies which have received the same rating -- let's say a 9 in VIOLENCE & GORE -- will not necessarily contain an equal amount of violence; they are only similar in the level of violence they contain. Plus, like most numerical rating systems, the numbers are inherently approximations (think of them as plus-or-minus-one). Only the detailed descriptions we provide with each review will give you the proper context.

So Star Wars Episode III gets a 2.7.0. Lots of violence, little sex (actually 2 seems alot) and no profanity. Superman Returns gets a 3.6.2 while Harry Potter 4 gets a 3.6.3. On those scores, that is fine by me. We were thinking of taking our eldest to Dreamgirls. It has a 4.3.5 so I am a little more uncertain but this suggests that it is probably OK but last year's the Da Vinci Code with 5.7.4 was probably good to miss. Although that one raises another issue -- historical and cultural knowledge required for the movie to be understood -- something that would make a good 4th dimension.

This system also allows us to tailor things to the child. Child No.2 gets scared and so anything above a 3 on the violence dimension is surely out. But Child No.1 loves it. I remember taking her to see the second Harry Potter movie (1.4.3) when she was only 4. Kids in that movie were balling their eyes out (with the spiders and such). My daughter's only concern was when a scary thing appeared her popcorn would go flying everywhere. That issue got resolved as the movie progressed. But suffice it to say, three dimensions of ratings (and accompanying reasons) is much more information than one letter.

Who is monitoring whom?

Apparently, Texas is considering making parent-teacher conferences mandatory. Parents who didn't show would be fined.

There are two reactions to this. First, what makes parent-teacher conferences so painful that you won't show up? Second, what use are they anyway? Emily Brazelon in Slate takes a crack at answering the latter. I'll come to that in a second. Let me start with the former.

Something that I didn't expect when becoming a parent is that I would dread parent-teacher conferences. Now, you are obviously assuming that the main reason for this is that we are greeted with a long list of problems with our children. That would make sense except it isn't true. Instead, from our perspective they are better characterised as a "love fest" (mostly). I actually don't think it is because our children are so special. It is just that there are no long standing problems that are not dealt with at other times. If there is a real issue, and we have not been free of those, the teacher does not wait until the parent-teacher conference to let us know. Usually an immediate phone call at work are straight after school is the ticket. So we go into these conferences expecting the love fest.

The issue is this. As a University lecturer, I symphathise with teachers and their dealings with students. As a lecturer to MBAs, I sympathise with teachers and their dealings with parents. For them, having to deal with parents is a route to criticism. They face all the issues I do. First and foremost, trying to work out who the student is and whether there have been any past issues. How can they expect to know this?

Actually, at pre- and early-school, teachers do pretty well remembering who students are. For specialist classes that drops off and I have sat in discussions with a music teacher and they are clearly winging it. That actually amuses me and so those are fine but ultimately useless.

So when we go to these meetings, both of us sit there mute. I feel like we are drooling and I definitely get the impression that the teacher is thinking, "are these really this child's parents?" I just do not know what to say. I don't want to be pushy. I happy to hear good things. And rarely do I have some sort of agenda.

The teacher doesn't know what to do with us. They look for a fight. They expect to have to write down some action list. But in the end there is nothing. We go away thinking how awkward that all was and wondering if we should have an agenda. Indeed, we come up with a list of at least trivial concerns. Things like: child no.1 is having trouble finishing her lunch on time, can you allocate a few more minutes to that? Child no. 2 thinks there is too much time for lunch and he bored sitting there. Then we can really achieve something.

So I can understand why parents might not like to turn up to these things at all. But that is a different thing from making them show up.

The question is: what is the purpose of this conference? With more continuous communication between parents and teachers throughout the semester, the real problems are addressed elsewhere. Brazelon gets interested in the "three way conference."

The parent-teacher conference can serve to reinforce the enmity, especially if it takes parents back to their own miserable school days. (Those little chairs are nothing if not infantilizing.) The conference can also cut through the adversarial posturing—especially, perhaps, if it takes the form of a three-way conversation: teacher, parent, and kid. Lawrence-Lightfoot thinks this should be the rule, not the exception. And not just for older students. She has seen 6-year-olds talk about themselves at a conference with "insight and discernment."

I ran this idea by my sister, a doctoral student in education at the University of Pennsylvania who taught for five years at a public school in the Bronx and at a charter school in Los Angeles. She liked it. From a teacher's perspective, conferences are useful because they push you to reflect on each kid and her schoolwork. To go through a child's portfolio with her, and talk together about her academic progress and behavior, would be all the more meaningful. And if the teacher needs the parents' help with an unruly child, "It's definitely better for the student to be there," my sister said. There's no confusion about who's saying what. Plus, the only people who know what the child is like both at school and at home are present, not absent.

One study of four schools with conferences that included students, by Diana Hiatt-Michael of Pepperdine University, found close to 100 percent parent participation.

Our school instituted this last year for our 5 year old in Prep. Suffice it to say, I couldn't make it (first time ever, so much for participation). Anyhow, by all accounts, it didn't really serve any function at that age. Everyone talked about what child No.2 needed to improve including child No.2 but there was no information really exchanged. Maybe it will be more useful for older children.

The key issue is: who is supposed to be learning what? The parent learns little about the children at these things (that is dealt with by other means). The parent learns a bit about the teacher but the bilateral nature of these conferences suggests that that is less efficient than a group session where a bunch of parents meet the teacher.

No, the only thing left is for the teacher to learn more about the parents. And there are good reasons for this to be important. Let's face it, the parents and perhaps siblings would be the best way for a teacher to understand the circumstances of the child; especially for younger children. However, our conferences are not ideal for that.

First, they take place in the teacher's domain -- the classroom. With the parents out of context, not much can be learned. From us, by the way, we give away nothing but the impression that little conversation goes on in our household except that we do lots of smiling and nodding.

Second, the teachers are not interrogating the parents. They are usually reporting to them. The flow of information is not in the right direction.

Finally, parents clearly would not expect an interrogation.

Let's face it: this isn't going to increase participation if we take these conferences for what they should be rather than what they are. However, they might prove more useful is the conferences take the form of home visits by the teacher. Then again, I am pretty sure we will have a new issue -- getting teachers to participate! It is like 'wack a mole' but then again so is much that comes with performance evaluation.