Julia Steiny: Winning the Discipline Wars Takes Restoration
(Photo: Youtube, Creative Commons) By Julia Steiny In Fordham Institute’s weekly Flypaper blog, David Griffith offers a tantalizing hope in a piece called “How to end the discipline wars.” He asks, “Is there a more annoying manifestation of our political and cultural divisions than the debate over school discipline?” Good question. He outlines what he […]
Julia Steiny: Online Interactions Are Cultivating Anti-Social Boys
(Photo: Creative Commons) By Julia Steiny The boy shrugs off a question for maybe the 10th time that afternoon. He seems incapable of simple human interaction. Mom tries to talk for him as he wriggles and writhes at the table in her impeccable kitchen. No, she’s told, he needs to be accountable for himself. This […]
Julia Steiny: Only America Refuses to Sign the Children’s Rights Treaty
(Photo: Ilyas Ahmed, UN Photo) By Julia Steiny I can’t imagine a clearer set of ideals for the modern world than those set forth in the United Nations’ 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. The document’s 41 Articles are the conditions of a treaty among nations aiming to focus governments on creating healthy […]
Julia Steiny: Without Strong Communities, Schools Will Fail
(Photo: In the Hive, 2012) In the world of school reform, there are two ways of thinking about kids’ families and backgrounds. A 2013 movie called In The Hive shows why we need a third. Approach #1: Focus all possible energy and resources on the kid herself. Working with families can seem like a black […]
Julia Steiny: How Governments Abuse and Neglect Kids
(Photo: George Hodan, Creative Commons) By Julia Steiny When still young and blissfully naive, I was appointed to the Providence School Board. I was sure my clever, well-informed interview with the outgoing Mayor had knocked it out of the park. I later discovered I was merely a goad to the in-coming Mayor. No big deal; […]
Julia Steiny: School Suspensions Model the Wrong Behavior for Students
By Julia Steiny Last week we looked at reasons why kids misbehave — how sometimes they can’t or they won’t act in community-appropriate ways. Whether it’s a choice for them or not, it’s always a big pain for the people around them. So this week we’ll look at the most common response to misbehavior, which […]
Julia Steiny: Instead of School Suspensions, Let’s Listen to Kids
By Julia Steiny Allow me to say right off the top that I believe each out-of-school suspension is a symptom of a mental or social issue. I’d call them symptoms of disease, but some are more like sniffles. In 2014, President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper sparked awareness not only of the frequency of suspensions, but […]
Julia Steiny: Mental Health Does Not Mean Mental Illness
By Julia Steiny I’m sure the ex-Congressman Patrick Kennedy had little to do with the copywriting for his new website, One Mind. But I wish he’d read it more closely. Kennedy has done great service lending his celebrity to advocating for the mentally ill in a number of ways. He’s making the talk show rounds chatting […]
Julia Steiny: Christmas Is About Belonging to the ‘We of Me’
By Julia Steiny In one of my favorite plays, Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding, 12-year-old Frankie is frantic with loneliness. She calls herself “unjoined.” Her mother died in her childbirth; her father has little attention for her. She craves membership in a clique of older girls who shun tomboys like Frankie. The play aches […]
Julia Steiny: Why the Every Student Succeeds Act Will Never Work
By Julia Steiny Given the battlefield that is our current Congress, congratulations to them are in order for agreeing on anything. Together, miraculously, they revamped the old 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB was loathed from the get-go. It was a set-up for failure, since it was and is still statistically impossible to […]