"Each year across the world, kids of roughly the same age are packed into classrooms and confined to desks with the intent of learning from an adult teacher.

But is this how children were adapted to learn?

In today’s technologically dependent, economically complex world in which a particular subset of skills is critical, fact-based knowledge is no doubt best imparted from those with experience—which is usually adults.

But what about social learning? Humans as a species are set apart by their incredible dependence on one another; cooperation is at the heart of both an individual’s survival and a functioning society. So, how do children typically learn to cooperate?

Anthropological research in small-scale societies—including my work among with the Pumé of Venezuela and the Maya living in the Yucatan Peninsula—resoundingly suggests that they learn from one another.

Schooling and growing up in small nuclear families have been the norm for only the past century or so in industrialized

"Woodlands Early Education Centre, in Logan south of Brisbane, as well as nine others in the chain have recently overhauled their yards to increase children's exposure to risk.

...

While the new grounds may look dangerous — a towering fort (with open edges), 1.6-metre-high balance beams, and climbing walls (without a fall mattress) — the data shows the opposite.

There has actually been a 43 per cent reduction in reported injuries at the centre."

For the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo-sharing app affects its millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls.

“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls who experience the issues. “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” said another slide. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram, one presentation showed.

The whole article reads like a horror show. Corporate representatives use Orwellian language to justify and minimise the problem... The Head of Instagram is quoted in this section:

In May, Instagram head Adam Mosseri told reporters that re

"The bill grants the Australian Federal Police and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission new powers to combat serious crime enabled by anonymising technology using three new warrants: network activity, data disruption and account takeover.

With the warrants, both agencies can take control of a person’s online account to gather evidence about serious offences without consent, as well as add, copy, delete or alter material to disrupt criminal activity and collect intelligence from online networks."

Unbelievable....

A very emotional read....

Spotting drowning children, or people in general, is apparently very difficult.

The website shows some examples.

Relevant HN discussion

Excerpt:

"One of my four-year-old twins is obsessed with death. She wants to know everything about dying. Again and again, she asks me to tell her about what happens when people die. Initially, I was a little surprised by her fascination with ‘died’ people, as she calls them, but then it became clear that she was thinking a lot about this whenever she was quiet.

‘Will you tell me more about dying. What happens when people die?’ she asks me every night before bed.

‘Their bodies stop working. Their hearts stop working,’ I tell her.

‘Is this what happened with Naanaa?’

Naanaa – my father, their grandfather – died in November last year. The twins met him only once, just before their third birthday when we visited India in 2019, although we tried to speak regularly over FaceTime. We were due to visit again in early 2020, but then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and slowly he became more ill, more frail; the loneliness and isolation of the lockdown, and the lack of adequate healthcare dur

There are some good articles on the upcoming Euro 2020.

In particular I like the team guides, introducing each team with background, strengths and outlook

"In Zen we say practice is nothing other than your everyday activity. If we view the Dharma as something special – a particular activity we treat as more sacred, or a state we hope to attain that will be of an entirely different nature than the mundane existence we currently endure – we’re missing the point. At the same time, if we think practice is nothing other than just continuing our half-awake, habitual way of living, we’re also missing the point! What is the nature of our life and practice? Zen Master Dogen explores this koan in his essay “Kajo,” or “Everyday Activity.”"

Except the number is wrong and they are the leader...

"In newborns with a very low birth weight, continuous skin-to-skin contact immediately after delivery, even before the baby has been stabilized, can lower mortality by 25%. This is according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that was organized by the WHO on the initiative of researchers at Karolinska Institutet focusing on low- and middle-income nations.

One of the most effective approaches to avoid newborn mortality is to keep the newborn and mother in constant skin-to-skin contact, often known as “kangaroo mother care” (KMC). The World Health Organization (WHO) currently recommends that skin-to-skin contact begin as soon as a low-weight infant is stable enough, which usually takes several days for babies weighing less than 2 kg at birth. "

I thought this one is super interesting.

The fragrance of joss sticks hangs in the air, while in the background there is the constant murmur of monks reciting their mantras. When you experience a ceremony in the Golden Temple of Elista, you'd be forgiven for believing that you're no longer in Europe – but you definitely haven't left the continent. Elista is the capital of Kalmykia. The autonomous federal republic of Russia lies between the Caucasus and Caspian Sea in the southern Russian steppes, and geographically is part of Europe. It is the only predominantly Buddhist region – a piece of Asia on the European continent.

When I tell someone that I run a centre that brings philosophy into children’s lives, much of the time I’m greeted with puzzlement, and sometimes open scepticism. How can children do philosophy? Isn’t it too hard for them? What are you trying to do, teach Kant to kindergarteners? Or, somewhat more suspiciously, what kind of philosophy are you teaching them?

These reactions are understandable, because they stem from very common assumptions – about children and about philosophy. Central to our work at the Center for Philosophy for Children at the University of Washington is the conviction that we ought to challenge beliefs about children’s limited capacities, and to expand our understanding of the nature of philosophy and who is capable of engaging in it. As one seven-year-old put it: ‘In philosophy, we’re growing our minds.’

Most of our philosophy sessions with children are in public elementary schools; the aim is to discover what topics the children want to think about, and to foster

Modern mindfulness strips Buddhism of its spiritual core. We need an ethics of reincarnation for an interconnected world

I quite like the podcast and the thoroughness in referencing things. The podcast is certainly opinioned but it makes its stance pretty clear.

Intro to the linked episode:

"The emptiness of self is a Zen teaching that may seem rather abstract and philosophical, or even kind of nihilistic, depressing, or disorienting. Why does this matter? In brief, knowing the true nature of our self is what liberates us from fear and suffering.

First I’ll give a brief overview of the Buddhist teachings on the emptiness of self, and then I’ll explore what they mean to our daily life and practice."

"Most “free” websites subsist by selling ads or selling user data. Others do it by putting all the good stuff behind paywalls. Lichess doesn’t do any of that and never will. Almost 6 years ago, Lichess founder Thibault explained why Lichess is free - and what that means. A lot can change in 6 years but this is one thing that hasn't and never will.

This is our unbreakable promise to you, our users:

 undefined

        Lichess will never have ads.
    Lichess will never sell our user’s data.
    Lichess will always be 100% free of charge.

  

"

So when my kid was a bit over a year old, it became clear that there was an unprecedented sportsman in the making!

I immediately went out and bought a balance bike similar to this one:

Anyway, turns out that no amount of tape, even construction style one, was enough to keep the little one on the bike in an upright position at a reasonable speed. After a couple of bumps, I decided that the reasonable thing is to wait a little.

After what felt like eternity, but probably wasn't too long, he started to use it more and more. Jumps were made over garden hoses. Little hills were mastered, gaining more and more speed.

At about two / three years of age, my kid was pushing his balance bike with verve downhill on skate tracks!

He absolutely learnt to love it super quick and he still uses it now and then while learning how to use a peddle bike. The balancing side of the peddle

I've got very little lemmy experience in general, so this is a bit of an experiment for me.

The experiment is about sharing parenting experiences, and discuss how to survive and enjoy parenting while getting better at it.

It's also about managing partnerships that may have caused parenting and/or are impacted by it.

Let's discuss our problems, solutions, and breakdowns.

Parenting has been easily the most intense relationship I've had. It's enjoyable and fu**ing stressful. I wouldn't want to miss it yet I'd love it to be easier....

Can we work towards this?

Parents of lemmy, unite!