So atheist are "brainwashing" college age adults as opposed to....preschoolers? Wow that's pretty evil.

Big red flag! This show was made for preschoolers. WTF

>> ^jimnms:
He was lucky indeed. I learned during my flight training that a public road is the WORST possible place to try to land in an emergency. For one thing, roads usually have these things called power lines that run across them, but most importantly you endanger the lives of people on the ground.


"WORST"? So you would rather land...
1) on a preschool picnic
2) on a munitions factory
3) on a preschool picnic on a munitions factory

I think this guy did a good job. No injuries, no damage to the aircraft. He had a view of the road when he made his decision so he could see about traffic and power lines.

jewish and arab kids playing? you mean, jewish and muslim kids? ... because otherwise you're surprised that someone who is arabic isnt a muslim because, obviously "they" all are???

fucking "news" reporter.

haha @ "We try not to bring politics into the preschool" .. - thanks?

well, they got one thing right.. "the problem isn't getting kids together.." hint hint

I hope people are still reading this.

I work in an English-only preschool in Taiwan, which gives me some authority on this subject. Here's the deal, you may think this practice is racist, but you're not seeing the big picture about names. First names like BoHao and JingMing (my Chinese name) aren't pronounced the way you're now thinking them in your head. They're not. Try all you want, and you will never pronounce it correctly unless you're a Chinese speaker and understand what tonality is. When Chinese people emigrate to English speaking countries, they mostly take English names because English speakers will either: a) make a big deal out of trying to learn the exact pronunciation of their Chinese names, which they never will do because they don't understand the rules; or b) butcher the name to such a degree that the person will be embarrassed, annoyed or otherwise put out. Furthermore, people almost always already have an English name, given during high school to use during widespread mandatory English classes, if not earlier (as in my three-year-old students' cases). English naming of Chinese people isn't racist, it makes natural sense. Names are a way of easily referring to an individual--that's why we have them anthropologically speaking. That's why people often insist you call them by their English names.

All that said, a law requiring renaming or an agency outside the family or the individual him/herself generating these names is, of course, racist. I'm not arguing that anything like that is acceptable. I'm saying that you can't just learn how to pronounce Chinese names (or Polish or Serbian for that matter) by reading them or mimicking what you think you're hearing. Many languages have distinctions that speakers of other languages just cannot hear or create with their mouths. People don't just get English names because they want/have to be more Western. They don't. Really. They do it because that's what the want to be called.

but does it have a watermark?

what do i guarantee? hmm.
i can safely shoot that card out of your hand with a shotgun, while blindfolded.
and even if i fail? i will also build a crowd.

25 years and he's got a very small popup book to show for it?
are his clients preschoolers?

^ Personally, I hope that the various non-progressive parties out there start realizing that they need to spend most of their time on outreach, rather than demonizing their adversaries.

I'd read a conservative blog that was focusing on telling people how they'd solve the problems we'd face in our daily lives, rather than screaming "socialist, communist, babykiller!" all the time.

I have no idea how to fix the media at large, but I see nothing produced anywhere on TV or in most newspapers that blankfist and I would be able to consistently call impartial.

I like the idea of more voices, but I'd prefer to see more depth. Right now everything is treated like a gossip column following the Washington elites, and there's little real reporting on the actual issues. They don't ask the bailed out banks what their plans are to try and fix their major problems, they follow them around and look for signs of excess spending with taxpayer dollars.

They've pretty much all pulled their reporters out of Iraq, so it's very hard to find out what's going on with the interplay between the various groups are, and let us try to reach our own conclusions about whether it's time for us to withdraw or not.

The oft-maligned Maddow has been one of the few to even raise the question about whether we should be pumping up troops in Afghanistan or not.

No one's trying to get a real conversation going about what the cause of our economic woe is. I'm pretty confident in my picture, but I've had to dig for it, and only PBS has bothered to try to explain it on TV. I know that picture is the majority view of mainstream economists, but we should shine some light on what the Republicans are saying, and while we're at it shine some light on what Austrians are saying.

I'm tired of media coverage being constantly dumbed-down to a preschool level. People in general are smarter than that, and most consumers of news are adults who need to make hard choices, and it'd be good if they were being given meaningful information, instead of a Washington politics reality show.

(And yes, I'm a big fan of that reality show, but people need to know the serious things underlying that reality show, and that there's major consequences when people get voted off the island.)

Just giving a student more attention doesn't automatically mean they're doing better and everyone else doing worse, and it doesn't automatically lead to the better students somehow missing out or getting held back. There's nothing inhibiting students from maximizing their potential, whatever that means. Making sure everyone passes the bar and gets a sound education is what school is about, not forcing everyone to know the same things regardless of their ability to learn. It's about giving everyone as similar an education as possible, which practically means as much personal freedom to pursue ones own goals.
Of course it would be better if there were more teachers and smaller classes. But the fact of the matter is that most kids who do well in school are doing well because they have their parents' and/or private tutors involved in their education, helping out at home and being active in the child's upbringing. You'd be surprised how even the playingfield is when it comes to talent.

There's simply no validity to the saying that putting extra effort in helping the students who have a harder time learning leads to the students having an easier time learning would somehow lose part of their intelligence or are robbed of education. To be more precise: what is it those gifted students are missing out on? Because I still don't really understand what it would mean for a school to "maximize each individual's potential". As you know, school is for teaching kids broad, basic, general and useful information, to give them an understanding of the world and their surroundings and get them in an environment where they get to interact and cooperate with others. In that regard there is no such thing as lowering the bar when it comes to making an effort to get as many kids as possible to pass. In that regard there is only teaching as many as possible what they need to learn, and actually have them learn it. In geography they need to know what continents are located where, major countries and capital cities etc. In music they need to have tried playing a couple of instruments, sung a couple of songs and learned the basics of music creation. By "maximizing their potential", would that mean making them memorize all countries and cities, make them compose music and become proficient in several instruments?
This doesn't mean that because one kid is done with its calculus and another isn't, that the first will sit on its behind until the second is done aswell. That's a ridiculus proposition and one which we all know isn't how schools work. There's advanced calculus, trigonometry and a host of other things for them to learn. But there are base skills that needs to be known by a student,
things that have been agreed upon by society that a student has to have a grasp of. That's why students struggling to learn them need to get extra help, not because they're raising hell and causing a ruckus.

I'd like to point you to a form of education called the "Montessori method", which has shown great potential and results thus far in preschools and gradeschools, and where the students are encouraged to learn by themselves by teachers changing the dynamics of the classroom aswell as have them take on a different role from the standard lecturer. It's shown that children can not only learn faster and more qualitatively by doing, but they're also improving their own knowledge by helping their friends and classmates learn. Your statement about forcing students to become assistant teachers is not only flat out wrong, it shows a lack of understanding of the subject.

There's also university, where people generally go to maximize their potential. That's where they narrow down their education to one or a couple of fields, and develop their personal interests and/or potential into a profession and hopefully a career.

In the case of the Beatles, who's to say the school McCartney and Harrison went to didn't foster their musical creativity? This guy has unrealistic expectations of a school's goals and what it should accomplish with its education. I'd go as far as to say they're elitist at best.

I can tell you from my own experience working at schools that the myth of "troublemakers get all the attention" is flat out wrong. Again from my experience. The same goes for "those who could be great" being consistently missed, what does that even mean? There's nothing speaking for that statement being in the least true, but even if a teacher doesn't abandon his class to go foster a child prodigy's ego, it won't mean that the child prodigy would suddenly lose its gift. There's this little thing called parents who also have a responsibility to help raise and educate their children. But then again I don't really understand what the whole "those who could be great" thing means, or why that should be the case.
Try giving the teachers classes of fewer than 30 students and fewer classes each semester aswell as the time and funding they desperately need, and you'll see the level of educational standards raised significantly. Because most teacher working full-time have over a hundred different students to teach each semester, all with different levels of knowledge and various abilities to learn. That means it's simply impossible to give every child full attention all the time. It would be wonderful if each student could get all the help they wanted at every moment of the day, but for a democracy to actually function properly you need citizens who can make informed decisions and not just decisions, which is why you can't just discard the numbskulls and focus on the gifted ones.
The guy in the video kept whining over that McCartney wasn't "discovered" in school as if the school itself should've somehow made sure he went and became a Beetle. That shows he fundamentally misunderstood what the goals of the school were. It also shows he was completely oblivious to the fact that McCartney went into music in a community which at the time was heavily biased against the arts, which very well could be attributed to him being subjected to music in school.

Also, there are more than one method used in schools, not only between countries but also between educational systems. But none of them ignores gifted students in favour of troubled ones. Generally, they all subscribe to the idea that we shouldn't actively work to create an educational class system but instead give all children the opportunity for an equal education. That does not mean they're in any way inhibited to go beyond the basic education, in school or after, but instead of ignoring the struggling children there's this crazy idea of leveling the playing field and raising the bar not for a select few but for everyone.
One of the most successful educational forms shown in preschool and gradeschool is with mixed classes of grades 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9, where the students aid the teacher by helping out in teaching each other.

BillO owned by a preschooler. That's got to sting.

Why is the father in Peter Pan talking to himself:
Father:"Do you know what's happened to my tie"
Father:"No I don't, perhaps it's in a draw"

And definitely on the Disney, well, and pretty much any other successful kids movie. We have land before time, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Lion King.

Man, how do they sleep at night knowing that unsuspecting parents have bought their kids these games and those kids have been forever traumatized.

Horrible.

I had a similar gaming experience just recently. Myself and my kids were given a Wii for Christmas (huzzah), and so I was out looking for a budget game to add to Wii Sports. Well, I couldn't find anything that I'd seen a good review of, so I stupidly purchased something that was budget priced and looked like it would give the kids some fun little games to play like they do with Wii Sports (they're 4 and 5 yrs old)... well... I was stupid.

I bought this game and got it home... and then was STUNNED at the abysmal quality of it.

Something I thought would be really easy for them is the old slam the hammer on the thing to ring the bell game... NOPE. First you had to do a pumping motion really hard with the nunchuck, then you had to press a button the wiimote, then you had to spin the wiimote around and around to erm... charge up something, then you had to press another button and do a downward motion with the nunchuck.

HOW HARD would it have been to just have it be a swing down motion with the bloody wiimote?

And pretty much every game was either overly complex or just INSANELY difficult.

Then the story mode was of the same ilk as the ones in this video... stationary pictures with a few cutouts moving across the screen with no animation, and piss poor voice work.

So, because of that I will NEVER buy a game made by 'Play Zone'.

I was just glad it was the first game I'd ever bought from an EB games, because they take returns just because you thought the game was crap.

Thank god for that!

If you ARE after a good game for preschoolers, can I recommend Diego Safari Rescue. Awesome game that my kids love AND can control really easily, and yet has a large range of different wiimote actions that fit in with the things they're doing onscreen... really well made game.

This is what everyone else preschool was like right?

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Red Cross and the Salvation Army do not have the institutional might, experience or resources to handle education.


It wouldn't have to be a nationwide non-profit. They could exist at the state or county level. You happened to grow up in a governmentally run education system. Out of the three options: state-run, private, and non-profit, don't you think its a coincidence that the one you support happens to be the one you grew up with?

thousands of americans receive a private education from preschool to phd, so I don't see how you can argue that its not a viable option.

i just dont see how you can make an argument for forcing me to pay for your childs education. if you cant afford private school, or don't have the time to home school your child, maybe you shouldn't be having a child? how did your child become my responsibility? it seems easy to justify when you are just taking money out of my paycheck--because the reality of the situation is hidden--but it is equivalent to walking into my workplace, putting a gun to my head, driving me to your house, and forcing me to teach your child algebra.

President shit-for-brains, lol! 150 of these people work for/in the White House? Only slightly more surprising than if they'd been preschoolers.

Look, you're obviously of the opinion that exposing your children to this level of violence at this age it ok. I completely disagree.

As I said in a previous post, people can grab stats to back up almost any viewpoint, but here is a roundup of many studies on the effects on children of violence.

It has some very choice experiments:

"In 1956, researchers took to the laboratory to compare the behaviour of 24 children watching TV. Half watched a violent episode of the cartoon Woody Woodpecker, and the other 12 watched the non-violent cartoon The Little Red Hen. During play afterwards, the researchers observed that the children who watched the violent cartoon were much more likely to hit other children and break toys.

Six years later, in 1963, professors A. Badura, D. Ross and S.A. Ross studied the effect of exposure to real-world violence, television violence, and cartoon violence. They divided 100 preschool children into four groups. The first group watched a real person shout insults at an inflatable doll while hitting it with a mallet. The second group watched the incident on television. The third watched a cartoon version of the same scene, and the fourth watched nothing.

When all the children were later exposed to a frustrating situation, the first three groups responded with more aggression than the control group. The children who watched the incident on television were just as aggressive as those who had watched the real person use the mallet; and both were more aggressive than those who had only watched the cartoon."

You think that this does nothing to him, and he is a well rounded kid. And he may well be... but why does he need to be exposed to any of this stuff in the first place? Why are you playing these games when he is awake and able to see and join in, why is he being exposed, even unintentionally to horror films?

I really hope that he turns out to be a great adult, but you're stacking thins up against him. You, and others here seem to forget just how young 4/5 really is, and seem hell bent on them growing up as quickly as possible.

Others too here are all on about 'you can bubble wrap your kids and protect them from everything'. Well, duh, of course you can, let them play, let them get hurt, let them experience play with other kids and the conflicts and such that come out of that, but do they really need, AT FIVE, to be exposed to violent games? Really? You think that in his mind he doesn't see people getting shot? OK then.

There seems to be a pretty good split here on those who think this is awesome, and those who don't... but I think a bunch of those that think it's awesome fail to realize how young 5 really is. That's my point... 5, (and 4 from your other video) is too darn young for these games, nothing of the sort of 'violent video games are evil' or anything like that. Just you need to be old enough to be able to handle them properly, and I don't think you can do that until you're much older than 5.