A data review done in Issue #8, 2016 of Psychology in Schools reports on the significant impact that divorce or father's death has on high school completion of the children. Bereavement and divorse are not among the highly covered topics in many health-personal-social development curricula. "Associations between parental loss and high school (HS) completion were examined in data drawn from 1,761 male and 1,689 female offspring born in wedlock to mothers participating in a nationally representative study. Multiple logistic regression models were conducted predicting HS completion by age 19 among offspring whose parents divorced or father died, compared to offspring of continuously married parents. Models were estimated without and with adjustment for correlated sociodemographic characteristics, including maternal education and age at first childbirth and offspring age at last assessment and race/ethnicity. In unadjusted models, parental divorce predicted a 41% decreased odds of HS completion for males, and paternal death predicted a 79% decreased odds of HS completion for females." In other words, even taking when discounting the economic impacts, the completion rate dropped by almost one-half for males due to divorce and by almost three-quarters for females for the death of their father. This study underlines the need for a full scope family studies program in schools. Read more >> (This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN)
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(From the ISHN Member information service) Home Economics classes, a part of many comprehensive approaches to school health and development (along with Health Ed & Phys Ed) have largely disappeared from the mandatory curricula of many countries, provinces and states in the last decade. It is ironic to note the recent report of the OECD on financial literacy among students, which is now part of their PISA evaluation program. This is the first international study to assess the financial literacy of young people. Around 30,000 students from 18 countries and economies* took the tests, which involved dealing with bank accounts and credit/debit cards, planning and managing finances, understanding taxes and savings, risk and rewards, consumer rights and responsibilities in financial contracts. One of the OECD summaries asked if 15 year olds know how to manage money. They summarized the results as follows: "On average 10% of students can analyse complex financial products and solve non-routine financial problems, while 15% can, at best, make simple decisions about everyday spending, and recognise the purpose of everyday financial documents, such as an invoice. " And we wonder why this generation of adults in so many countries have over-extended themselves with credit card debt, mortgages and over-spending? Read more>>
Project-based learning, based on a constructivist approach to education, is highly recommended in health-personal-social development (HPSD) education. So a recent post from Edutopia which describes four free web tools for creating student portfolios and projects inline will be of interest. Kidblog is unique among the web tools featured here because it is built by teachers for teachers. Kidblog provides teachers with everything they need to help students create their digital portfolios safely. It gives teachers administrative control over student blogs and accounts and the settings which are set as private by default, can be opened up to enable parents to view their children's work. If your school is fueled by Google Apps for Education, then using Google Sites to create student portfolios, or "Googlios," makes perfect sense. With Sites, students can create media-rich websites to display their work throughout the school year. Evernote can serve as a viable option for creating student portfolios. Evernote is the Swiss Army knife of organization. In other words, it does just about everything. It allows students to write, take photos, record audio, upload content and more with the ability to tag items, create notebooks for organization and share content socially. Something else that makes Evernote so versatile is that it can sync across multiple computers and mobile devices. Three Ring is worthy of consideration as well. As with Evernote, students can create and upload content from their own devices and tag, search and share their portfolios. However, what Three Ring offers that Evernote doesn't is teacher-created class accounts. Read more>> (An item from the ISHN Member information service)
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) A recent review published by the Sutton Trust in the UK has underlined the urgent need to re-introduce or improve the family studies/home economics education provided to students so that they have the necessary parenting skills and knowledge. In a time when an ever-increasing number of children are being raised by parents who themselves have not been parented adequately, where children are bombarded by advertising aimed at increasing their purchases, where their basic cooking skills are minimal,where young adults make poor decisions about mortgage loans because of low financial literacy, where we discard more and more consumer goods rather than repair them, there is a need to focus on the third core subject: family studies/home economics. Health/Personal-Social Development and Physical Education are important but so is this strand of basic literacy for life.
The research has found that " Four in 10 babies don’t develop the strong emotional bonds – what psychologists call ‘secure attachment’ – with their parents that are crucial to success later in life. Disadvantaged children are more likely to face educational and behavioural problems when they grow older as a result". The review of international studies of attachment, Baby Bonds, by Sophie Moullin (Princeton University), Professor Jane Waldfogel (Colombia University and the London School of Economics) and Dr Elizabeth Washbrook (University of Bristol), finds infants aged under three who do not form strong bonds with their mother or father are more likely to suffer from aggression, defiance and hyperactivity when they get older. Read more>> (An item from ISHN Member information service) Issue #5, 2012 of the International Journal of Consumer Studies has several articles re-stating the case for values-based financial education that promotes basic "financial literacy" and "sustainable financial behavior". Years ago, we used to call this "home economics" but in the intervening years, this curriculum has disappeared from most school systems. This has made young people and adults more susceptible to consumer advertising based on immediate gratification and myths about credit-based purchases. This, along with the growing number of children suffering from distracted and stressed parents who are, in turn, becoming parents without any form of positive parent role models, underlines the need for the immediate return of family studies/home economics curricula. Read more..
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