Private school, Axe body spray, and Halloween—here’s what you might have missed in news and thoughts related to student engagement, school climate, and the world that affects them.
1. “I tried holding him accountable to the rules, but after a while, all I wanted was to send him to the principal’s office so I could finish teaching just one math lesson that week.”
—Teach for China trainer Jessica Shyu, about why she likes disobedient children
2. “You are ruining children. You are killing their spirit. You are making them believe they are dumb because they can’t multiply and divide on the exact day that the module says they should be multiplying and dividing.”
—The mrsmomblog, on how testing for the Common Core State Standards is ruining her child’s educational engagement
3. “Reading Walt Whitman in 9th grade changed the way you see the world? Well, getting drunk before basketball games with kids who lived at the trailer park near my house did the same for me.”
—Slate contributor Allison Benedikt, on why parents should not send their children to private school
4. “Chris Brown and other black males who may have experienced similar situations may not think of themselves as victims. On the contrary, they value and relish the fact of asserting their malehood at an early age.”
—Black Culture blogger Zellie Imani, on misperceptions of sex within the black community
5. “It turns out that there is some Freudian window in which smelling like your mom is so beyond contemplation that they wordlessly gave it up altogether.”
—Slate columnist Dahlia Lithwick on getting her sons to stop using Axe body spray
6. “If one of the first phrases that springs to mind when trying to describe your Halloween decorations is ‘I’m not going to hurt kids,’ that’s a sign your Halloween decorations are too scary.”
—Gawker columnist Caity Weaver, on putting up Halloween decorations that won’t cause post-traumatic stress disorder in children