Cutting sports for science

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a story called "Friday Night Lights (Out)." A small school district in Texas, on the verge of bankruptcy and in trouble with the state for low academic performance, has decided to cut its high school sports program to free up cash. Among the things the cash has to go for? A better science lab, as required by state standards.

High school sports are obviously a big deal in Texas (especially football). So the idea of cutting sports to support academics is novel, to say the least. In the case of this little town (Premont, about 150 miles south of San Antonio), the sports teams hadn't exactly been powerhouses. It's not like the town of Allen, near Dallas, which is opening a new $60 million stadium. (One wonders how many science labs in small districts could be created for the price of that monument to those Friday Night Lights). Still, win or lose, as the article notes, high school sports competitions are often the glue that holds a community together.

But, of course, one could come up with many things to hold a community together. Volunteer projects. Variety shows. I read multiple times the scene in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when, as a high school student, she recites a long historical oratory on a night in which the whole town has gathered in the school house. The article quotes someone from the PTA lamenting that education should be about the whole child (including physical fitness). Which is true. But with athletics, I've been pondering, lately, if our high school emphasis on team sports is part of our problem with an out-of-shape populace. To be athletic as a child is to be into team sports. That is the kind of athleticism that is valued. So I figured I was never athletic. But in my 20s, I started running -- an individual sport you can do your whole life, with little equipment. I'm not fast, but I turn out to have a fair bit of endurance. I finished the Big Sur Marathon in April 2010 and was in good enough shape afterwards to deal with an ER trip for my kid the next morning (long story) and to go hiking the next afternoon. I now run 5 days a week, and lift weights most days, something I'm guessing the vast majority of former high school athletes no longer do. If the goal is the whole child, emphasizing sports that the vast majority of people will no longer do after school -- like football -- doesn't seem to be the way to go.

That said, I wish this town didn't have to cut anything. I do wish, though, that all districts would go through the hard process of figuring out whether their budgets match up with what their priorities should be. The top priority should be producing students who can be good citizens and support themselves in the modern economy. Most likely, a good science program is a better bet than a formal sports program. Especially when you can send the kids outside to run for 30 minutes a day instead.

Too Many Gifted Kids?

Houston, we have a problem... too many gifted kids in the Houston Independent School District.

At least that's the gist of an article from Watchdog.org, pointing out that the HISD gifted rate of about 15% is double that of the state at large (closer to 7%).

This is, of course, one of the perils of giftedness being a concept without a clear definition. It is unlikely that there are twice as many students per capita in Houston who require the educational intervention that gifted education should entail vs. elsewhere. What we have is varying standards, likely looser in Houston than the rest of Texas. But what happens when a child who is gifted in one district isn't considered gifted in another?

This is yet another reason to keep one's eye on the ultimate goal of matching the education to the child. Because then the particular definition doesn't matter quite as much -- and those of us who care about this issue don't have to keep seeing the word gifted in quote marks, as Watchdog.org puts it, indicating how flimsy a concept they seem to think it is.

Scouting badges, challenges and rewards

Over at my other blog (the newly tricked out lauravanderkam.com) I posted the other day about the "Merit Badge Mindset." As a junior Girl Scout years ago, I used to love looking through the badge book and choosing projects that I could do without a huge field trip. There was something so neatly satisfying about undertaking a challenge, checking off different components of it, and then having some concrete proof of mastery.

Wouldn't it be nice if more of life was like that?

I've been thinking about the topic in the context of parenting. It's easy to have a neutral or sour attitude toward many of the challenges we face in family life. As parents and as kids. But when you've got a merit badge mindset, it's very different. You want to do a good job, and to proudly display your achievement (even if, to be honest, most other people don't notice. It's not like anyone was counting the badges on my Girl Scout vest!)

I've thought of a few merit badges I, personally, would like to display:

* The getting all three kids into the car by 8:45 a.m. without raising my voice badge
* The balanced meal on the table even though I didn't feel like it badge
* The still using a dramatic voice upon the tenth reading of Madeline badge
* The willingness to answer 15 "but why?" questions in a row badge

What about you? What kinds of merit badges would you want to display? What kinds of merit badges do you think your kids would want to earn?

Supporting homeschoolers

Districts and states take an incredible diversity of approaches to homeschooling - a practice that has grown considerably over the past 20 years. Some are actively antagonistic. Others figure that if you're opting out of the public school system, it's best if all parties don't have a lot to do with each other. But others have decided to offer support services to people who choose to homeschool, particularly on the enrichment front.

That's what seems to be going on in the Lewis-Palmer School District 38 in Colorado. According to this article, the district will be opening an enrichment academy that, one day a week, offers the "fun stuff" -- art, music, P.E.

I think this is a cool idea. Obviously, some people who are homeschooling for political reasons may want nothing whatsoever to do with a public school system, but many families homeschool for other reasons. I know many Gifted Exchange readers do simply because it's the best way to deal with their child's particular learning style and needs. Need college math, 6th grade English, and your kid wants to learn 3 different languages because he's really into that? Yeah, good luck with that in most institutional settings. But that kid might still like to do normal art class and PE. So why not serve all the children in one's community the best that you can?

If you're homeschooling, does your district offer any support services?

A 'Life with Little Ones' Journal

A while ago, I started a new project: keeping a journal specific to my kids. I keep a journal about my life in general (something I started doing when I was 13) but I figure my kids won't want to wade through that to find the fun parts about them when they haul these books out of my attic after I'm gone. And there are parts I don't want my kids reading -- even if I won't be around to deal with the aftermath!

Every week or two, when my kids do something cute or memorable, I write it down in my "Life with Little Ones" journal. I had forgotten when I'd started it -- I'd thought a few months ago -- so imagine my great surprise (and happiness) when I realized I'd actually started in August 2010. 16 months is a lifetime when you have a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old and a baby. I got to read about Sam's first words, his first steps, and Jasper's various stunners. Like when we talked about moving to our new house, one night he called me into his room and said "I'm sad." I sat next to him and said, sympathetically, "yes, it's sad to leave your friends." And then he said, "No, I'm sad because I want you to bring me water." Ah.

Anyway, it's been a small investment of time to keep the diary, but hopefully a big payoff in memories. It also helps me remember how and when my kids have learned various skills -- Jasper in particular with writing letters and numbers and then his current interest in math. Children take up a lot of energy, and so often it's hard to remember specific things, but writing them down has the memories flooding back.

How do you preserve memories of parenthood?

"Not a one shot event"

I was reading Scott Barry Kaufman's post on gifted education over at the Huffington Post, where he mentioned a report that will be soon published in the Journal of Applied School Psychology. The report surveys gifted policies in the various states, and makes recommendations.

One? The very sensible idea that gifted identification should "be a recurring phenomena, not a one-shot event." The old idea that you test once at third grade has a lot of holes in it. For starters, the "third grade" idea seems quite late to me. Apparently people were concerned that some kids learned more at home or went to pre-school, but by third grade, this would all come out in the wash. How arbitrary. Why not 2nd grade, or 4th grade? If gifted identification is about school accommodation (as it should be) then kids should be tested as they're starting school. That is, around kindergarten. If people really think everything will come out in the wash by third grade, then keep testing. And why not after that too? There's nothing magical about third grade.

Personally, I like the idea of individually-matched curriculum and pacing, as is becoming more possible through digital learning. In this case, you're constantly testing and figuring out what a child needs. You can also move at different paces for different subjects. Much of our approach to education is stuck in old mindsets, but here's hoping this is the year this starts changing.

As we start another year with Gifted Exchange, I'd love to hear what people would like to see covered. My oldest child will be starting kindergarten in the fall so, after years of shooting off my mouth about schools and curricula and testing and the like, I'll finally have some personal experience with it. Digital learning will be a big topic this year, and possibly education policy too, with it being an election year. Ideas are welcome!

Are Legos for girls?

BusinessWeek ran a cover story this past week on whether Lego is for girls. A note of explanation, before anyone leaps to certain conclusions. The classic Lego blocks are, most emphatically, for either gender. However, in recent years, Lego has figured out that there is far more money to be made selling kits based on different themes. So which themes? While Harry Potter has been pretty gender neutral, most of the other themes are pretty over-the-top boy: battles, Ninjas, etc. I wish the laws of economics didn't point toward kits (talk about stifling creativity, to dictate how a toy should be played with, and assigning a story line already...) but it does.

So why not some kits aimed at girls? Sounds simple enough as a way to build market share. But what should those kits look like?

To the credit of Lego, it sounds like they are not simply making the blocks pink. The soon-to-launch Lego Friends line is based on studies of how girls play -- packaging kits so you can start playing before you've totally assembled the kit, since girls seem to be more into enjoying the process than boys (who tend to race against the clock to complete a kit). It seems to be like a reasonable compromise to make Legos more appealing to girls so they can get the spatial reasoning benefits of playing with these little blocks... but I'm curious what Gifted Exchange readers think.

A Bold Step?

Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, director of Northwestern's Center for Talent Development, recently took over the reigns of the National Association for Gifted Children. In her first address, she called on the field to take a "bold step" toward focusing on talent development, rather than giftedness. Focusing on "giftednesss" has led to marginalization, she says (and given that the spell check on this blogger software doesn't even recognize "giftedness" as a word, I'd have to agree that the field is not exactly central to much of education).

This announcement has been controversial for several reasons. One is that parents of highly gifted children often have to fight to convince schools that there is anything different about their children and their children's learning styles. Olszewski-Kubilius's point is that the field has been focused too much on identification -- sometimes a bit of an angels dancing on the head of a pin type question of whether a tested IQ of 129 vs. 131 means anything, and on which test, and at what age, and then nothing happens to the kid anyway except getting 45 minutes of enrichment once a week. But after decades of work, at least many school districts now try to identify gifted children. Clearly, people would be a bit miffed to have the head of NACG say that's not so critical.

I have mixed feelings about this myself. Regardless of whether children grow up to do anything remotely high-achieving as adults, they deserve to have their educational needs met. Sure, some gifted kids grow up to win Nobel prizes, write great symphonies, etc., but others live quiet and normal lives. One's temperament has a great deal to do with these things too -- one's level of ambition, one's level of self-discipline, competing priorities like family obligations, etc. I don't view the quiet and normal types as failures.

On the other hand, Olszewski-Kubilius is correct that identification is only the very, very start. Personally, I'd rather live in a world where there was no identification, but all children were challenged, stretched, and had their talents maximized, vs. a world with perfect identification but none of the above. The question is whether this "all children challenged" vision is too utopian for the world we do live in, where the educational establishment likes to ignore high-achievers as a matter of policy with NCLB, and sometimes just for sport (cutting down the tall poppies and all).

What do you think? Should the field talk about "giftedness" or "talent development"? Is there much of a difference in focus, or is there plenty of room for both?

Be careful with "no"

(cross-posted with My168hours.com)

I've been pondering lately the question of "what have my children taught me?" (Asked by the facilitator of my parents' group). One lesson I'm working on learning is to be careful with my "nos."

Here's the thinking: Whining is hell on earth. Listening to children whine makes one irritated, tense, embarrassed. Why do children whine? Well, we tend to encourage it. Many of us say "no" reflexively to whatever random thing a child is proposing. Then, the child starts whining or throwing a tantrum and we eventually say "yes." Because we probably didn't really care. Yes, you can play for 5 more minutes. I only wanted to leave the playground because I was bored. Yes, you can have jam on your pizza crusts. Why not?

The lesson the child learns is what any good negotiator (or dungeon master) knows. Don't take the first offer. Torture produces a much better confession. Find out for sure what the parent cares about and doesn't care about. Whine enough and "no" turns into "yes."

So what is a parent to do? Grow a spine, perhaps -- but the best negotiators know that confrontation often leaves your opponent with no choice but aggression. Here's another framework:

If you are going to say no, be willing to defend it to the death. Well, not death, but to the point of a public, grocery-throwing temper tantrum.

Otherwise, consider a "yes." Or at least pause before you automatically say "no." Stall by asking "why do you think that would be fun?" or "tell me more about that idea." Because if you're going to say yes eventually under duress, you may as well say it before the kid realizes that screaming is the way to go. In other words, be careful with each "no."

This is obviously easier said than done. But I am trying to be judicious with my flat-out refusals. Sam, my 2-year-old, got himself out of his car seat straps last night. That was a definite "we are pulling this car over" no. But when he wanted to have a bite of my birthday cake before lunch, I realized this was going to escalate rapidly, and wasn't that big a deal. He's a good eater, shoveling in tomatoes, oranges and other foods that his 4-year-old brother won't touch. When I realized that I didn't care enough about lunch order enforcement to endure a temper tantrum during my birthday lunch, I went ahead and said yes fairly quickly. After all, I have been known to eat junk food before meals as well.

When do you say "no" and when do you say "yes"?

What have your children taught you?

That was a question posed recently in a parenting group I've joined. I imagine that broadly, people would say things like "patience" or possibly "humility" (something I was thinking, the other day, upon learning that a couple expecting their first child had chosen a parenting manual they intended to follow exactly...as if children follow operating instructions).

But the first answer that popped into my head was actually literal. My 4-year-old is currently obsessed with how many letters are in different words. So I now know that "Philadelphia" and "Pennsylvania" both have 12 letters. I also know that 2 "Jasper"s make a "Philadelphia." These are definitely things that I never pondered before.

My children have, perhaps, tried to teach me patience in their often aggravating fashions. But I do know they have taught me a lot about time, and whether I am spending it on things that matter or not, and that you can do quite a bit in small bits of time. Someone was describing to me the other day that they need long, uninterrupted periods to write. My children have taught me that, at least for me, this is not the case.

What have your children taught you?

Can you change your IQ?

I keep reading articles about new research (published in Nature last month) finding that IQ is malleable. The sample size of the study (33 British students) was quite small, which means that outlier findings need to be taken with a grain of salt. One student's IQ rose from 107 to 128, and another's fell from 114 to 96. The trumpeted finding is that 9% of students showed a change of 15 points or more, but of course 9% of 33 is 3 kids. The most interesting finding is that MRI scans showed actual brain changes in the kids with the big IQ changes, which suggest that it might not be total measurement error. The idea is that one can possibly change IQ, on the margins, through certain brain exercises.

Some people will no doubt trumpet this as evidence that giftedness is some sort of made up concept, just capturing a snapshot in time among kids whose parents have trained them more than others. But one certainly doesn't have to draw this conclusion. I am comfortable believing these two things at once:

1. I am not nearly as athletically gifted as many other people and never will be and
2. If I practiced hard in any given sport, I could become better at it over time in a way my body might actually physically reflect.

These two beliefs also do not lead me to believe that we should get rid of varsity basketball teams, or camps for children who've shown promise in basketball or that athletic ability is some sort of social construct. So I'm not sure why the idea that IQ might change by one standard deviation in a small number of children would lead anyone to believe that there aren't children who learn differently and need more challenge than others of the same age.

Children and Rituals

The holidays are approaching, and they are always a time for traditions. This will be our first Thanksgiving and Christmas in our new house, and our first with three kids, and our first with any sort of space. As we start to put down roots, we can start to choose which rituals and traditions we will do, and hence our kids will someday think of as "normal." If you think about it, this is a heady amount of power.

Families raising gifted kids have the additional element of the constant "whys." When it comes to rituals and traditions, these are often good questions -- from both the mundane to the profound. Why do we have hamburgers and hot dogs on Sunday nights? (Because it's easy and your father grew up having that for Sunday dinner. That's why). Why do we give gifts? Why do some kids celebrate different holidays? (and this at an age where you didn't think you'd be explaining such things). Why were the pilgrims so thankful for food? Did they not have food? Why? What happens when you don't have food?

I think this year will feature some sort of write-up of what we're thankful for, some Christmas cookie baking, a decorated tree with lots of kid-made ornaments, an Advent calendar, and such. I'd like to take the boys shopping for another child through one of the non-profits around here, but I'm not sure how that will go. I'd love to hear from people about what rituals and traditions they've introduced or kept up in their families, what their kids think and ask about them, and how you've figured ways to celebrate the meaning of the season with small kids.

Fluctuating IQ in Teens

A new study in Nature this past month indicated that the teenage brain is fairly plastic; that IQ can change a reasonable amount during those years of rapid physical change (You can read one write-up of the study here).

As usually happens, some of the commentary on this study has raised the question of whether giftedness exists, or if it just captures a moment in time. But I think this misses the point -- while IQ may not be absolutely constant, a child whose IQ measures at, say, 150, is unlikely to then measure at 100. And just because IQ can change doesn't mean that giftedness shouldn't be accommodated. Gifted education is an intervention for children who need it. If one doesn't view it as a reward, then there's no reason children couldn't move in and out of needing services over time. It's something to consider.

Glaring Asynchronous Development

One of the challenges with gifted children is asynchronous development. This means that physical, emotional and intellectual development are not proceeding at the same pace. Sometimes this can be downright jarring. You can be having a real, fluent conversation with a 5-year-old about something, but she then proceeds to scream or cry because she's tired or hungry. A 3-year-old might be reading words on a box of his own diapers. You get the drift. What are some particularly glaring examples of asynchronous development that you've seen? How has this affected your parenting?

Life With Gifted Children (New Series Idea)

One of the goals of Gifted Exchange is to cover parenting topics, as well as educational policy. To that end, I'd like to start a regular series called "Life With Gifted Children" to provide an outlet for parents to share stories about the unique challenges of raising gifted young people. I'd like to focus on parenting advice that could possibly help other people, but I also want to provide a place for people to talk about their kids (albeit anonymously if you'd like!) knowing many of the people reading it are also raising gifted kids. In other words, they won't think you're just bragging when you mention that your 8-year-old is way into Shakespeare.

Various topics come to mind:

* How do you stay calm after the 20th question related to the same arcane topic?
* What to do when your children don't like to sleep (and don't seem to need it)
* Discipline -- what is age appropriate behavior when a kid often acts older than her age?
* How to find books that are challenging but age appropriate
* How to prepare a child for an acceleration
* How to speak positively about your child without alienating friends/family/neighbors
* Teaching respectful behavior when a child is bored in school

And so forth. Please email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com if you'd like to share what you've learned along the way, or any particular challenges you'd like input from others about.

A Davidson Fellows Media Round-Up

I missed the Davidson Fellows award ceremony last week due to Ruth's arrival that afternoon. So, in lieu of writing about the winners of this award (scholarships of $10,000-$50,000 for important original works in fields from math to the humanities), I thought I'd share some of the news clips from other places about the fellows.

Arjun Aggrawal, 17, of Lexington, SC, won a $25,000 scholarship for building a robot that tells jokes and gives hugs. He built the robot in his garage and spent about $2800 on the project, which sounds like a pretty good return on investment! You can read more about Gnut III here.

Lucy Wang, 17, who lives in my neck of the woods (PA), won $25,000 for a project that used the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (from the CDC) to try to predict adolescent depression. Her statistical model accurately predicted which young people would have symptoms of depression more than 80% of the time. You can read more about her here.

Caleb Kumar, 15, of Blaine, MN, won a $25,000 scholarship for his work developing an algorithm that automates the diagnosis of bladder cancer. You can read more about him here.

It's always fun to see high-achieving students in the news, and every year the Davidson Fellows remind me just how much young people are capable of... when they are challenged and given opportunities to develop their talents.

Say hello to Ruth!

I had to miss this year's Davidson Fellows awards in DC because I was otherwise occupied here in Philadelphia, giving birth. Please say hello to little Ruth, who arrived on October 5 at 3pm, weighing 7lbs 12 oz. She joins big brothers Jasper and Sam, and will no doubt provide lots of fodder for future Gifted Exchange posts.

The Case Against Delaying Kindergarten

In New York City, where I used to live, the cut-off to start kindergarten is to turn 5 in late December. I find it interesting to ponder whether my life would have been different if I grew up there; my birthday is December 5, and so I could have been a grade ahead of where I actually was in school. Here in Lower Merion, PA, where we recently moved, the cut-off is September 1. Thus my son, Sam (9/24) and soon-to-be-born baby daughter (around 10/5 or so) will always be among the oldest in their classes.

I really wish they'd be the youngest instead. It's become common for parents to "redshirt" their 5-year-olds, delaying kindergarten for another year, particularly for boys. Schools let parents get away with this, but for some reason, going the other direction (starting kindergarten early) is fraught with the same angst that grade-skipping in general evokes in some people. Sure, some kids aren't ready. But others are. If a kid can read and write, which many gifted 4-year-olds can, what purpose is served by keeping them in preschool another year?

So I was fascinated to see an op-ed in the New York Times this past week from Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt called "Delay Kindergarten At Your Child's Peril." The gist of the piece is that any advantage that children get by being delayed a year disappears rapidly, and that school, in general, is good for children. It helps their brains grow and develop. Some data has found that disadvantaged and advantaged children make similar gains during the school year, but disadvantaged children slide during the summer break, when they're not exposed to lessons. Enough summers can make a pretty big gap. It's not a huge stretch to believe the same would be true for starting kindergarten. The earlier disadvantaged children can get into full-time school, the better.

Gifted children likewise would benefit from more flexibility in when kids start kindergarten. While, again, I think the angst about grade-skipping is overblown, it can be harder to pull off to go from, say, 1st to 3rd grade in the same school. But when you start kindergarten early, it doesn't have to be a big deal.

I'm curious if anyone has successfully challenged a school district's cut-off date and been able to enroll a child in kindergarten early.

15 Minutes Outside

I've been paging through Rebecca P. Cohen's new book, 15 Minutes Outside: 365 ways to get out of the house and connect with your kids. There is plenty of research finding that getting outdoors can boost one's mood, and kids who spend time outdoors are highly likely to get more physical activity than those who don't. So those are two big reasons to get out there.

Of course, the question for modern children, accustomed to video games and such, is what you do once you get outside. One can always hit the playground, and we do this fairly frequently. But this is often not terribly relaxed, partly because of the Intense Other Parent Factor (at a playground just outside Washington DC earlier today, I kept having parents apologize for their 2 and 3-year-olds taking our ball, as if children that age have much concept of other people's stuff anyway. Sometimes I want to hang a sign saying "Chill out! I'm not going to judge you!") Cohen's book lists hundreds of activities for kids to do outside during all types of weather. The idea is that once you get them started on something, they'll probably come up with something else, and eventually move to the unstructured free play that is the holy grail of child development.

Among my favorite ideas:

* Do homework outside. If you have to do a boring worksheet, it's still better while lying on a blanket on the grass.
* Find wonder in a small pail. Have kids collect whatever they like (blades of grass, acorns, etc). in a pail and then look at them under a magnifying glass.
* Give your kid a place to dig. Digging is just plain fun. So why not give kids a patch of dirt in the backyard where they can go to town?
* Play leaf tic-tac-toe with autumn leaves of the same color as Xs or Os. Or just use different species of trees at any point in the year.
* Track an animal. A lost human skill, if you think about it.
* Get the kids to weed and rake!

Of course, by the time you get to 365, some ideas seem not so fabulous. It also bothers me that Cohen buys, hook-line-and-sinker, into the idea that picky eaters will eat their vegetables if they plant them themselves. It's fine to keep a garden if you're into it, and kids often like plucking tomatoes and peppers and the like. But my own experience with this is the exact opposite of her claim that "One of the best things is to get your kids involved in growing and harvesting the vegetables. They are more willing to try new foods if they can proudly boast, 'I grew that!'" Maybe if you don't have a truly picky eater. But despite this as an overarching theme of essays in numerous parenting and women's magazines, I'm not convinced it's the case. My 2-year-old eats lots of things and eats the tomatoes we grow. My 4-year-old loves picking tomatoes, but will not eat them, or our acorn squash, no matter how many bushels he picks. Picky eating is not really about your parenting (or you wouldn't have kids in the same family behaving so differently). It's about some kids being more sensitive to tastes than others.

But I digress. In general, coming up with ideas of stuff to do with kids is tough. It's always easier to turn on the TV, but watching television for hours isn't terribly fulfilling, and probably won't create the kind of memories that splashing in mud puddles will. So it's good to read a book reminding us that the latter is an option.

(Cross-posted at My168hours.com)

Content vs. Skills

E. D. Hirsch Jr. waded into the story of declining SAT scores this week with an op-ed in the New York Times on "How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores." Hirsch claims that the drop stems from a move away from content-rich elementary school reading curricula and toward an emphasis on reading and writing skills, divorced from anything larger.

This is the whole anti-worksheet sentiment that rears its head fairly frequently in education circles. I can, of course, sympathize. Especially since I write content! There are amazing writing and vocabulary lessons to be gained from reading interesting books. Reading books also allows you to absorb a lot of core knowledge about history, civics, science, etc.

However, just like the widespread progressive educator idea that children will simply discover the rules of mathematics by looking at different problems and talking them over, I know from personal experience that this doesn't always happen. I read everything under the sun as a kid. What actually allowed me to make a living as a writer, and make writing feel easy, was learning rules of grammar and why they exist. I'd look at incorrect sentences and correct ones and see why certain things worked better. I memorized these rules. And while I break them all the time (I just started this sentence with an "and"!) I know I am choosing to do so and generally do so for effect.

The reality is that as people learn, they need both content and skills. This doesn't have to be a battle over every individual class. I was thinking of this while pondering Princeton's relatively recent writing requirement. The problem was that even young people who were capable of getting into Princeton arrived unable to construct an academic paper. So the freshmen writing seminars would give them the skills necessary to do this. The problem that such a program always struggles with is that the professors who teach these courses want to teach specific content areas -- their areas of expertise. So is the emphasis on the subject matter or the writing skills?

Ideally, people should get both. The Hirsch argument is that many disadvantaged children never get the core knowledge that their more advantaged peers show up with. Skills are useless apart from that. But content without skills isn't that helpful either -- as anyone who's struggled to write a paper that actually expresses what she means to say knows.