Your mother has eyes in the back of her head. Chicago Public Schools sends parents a text message when their child is not in class or the kid's grades slip. Mayor Daley attends a demonstration. Chicago is not the only school district to use this technology. It's used in Calloway County, Kentucky. Memphis, Tennessee, and Saratoga Springs, New York, to name a few. It's not just used for monitoring your kids' grades. In San Antonio, you can also monitor the presidential propaganda that's fed to your kids! But what if you want to monitor the text messages your kids receive? Radar alerts you when a "suspicious" person texts, calls, or emails your kid.
posted by desjardins on Sep 18, 2009 - 36 comments

The Case Against Homework. Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary—especially when it takes away from reading time? And what is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas? Sara Bennett wants to stop homework. Here she explains why (pdf).
posted by lunit on Apr 9, 2009 - 180 comments

EducationFilter: California becomes the first state to mandate all 8th graders take Algebra; in part because U.S. students constantly trail their peers from other nations in mathematics. At least one person thinks it's a bad idea ("If only 25 percent of this nation ever earns a college degree, why insist that all children take algebra in eighth grade?"). Here's the algebra curriculum 8th graders will have to learn. [more inside]
posted by jabberjaw on Jul 10, 2008 - 124 comments

In 1961 Albert Bandura published a study titled "Transmission of Aggression through Imitation of Aggresive Models," better known as the Bobo Doll Experiment, in which young children were shown video of a woman beating up on an inflatable Bobo doll in various ways, the video of the woman and the results is quite interesting/shocking and sums up the general experiment quite nicely if you don't want to do too much reading.
posted by Del Far on Jun 1, 2008 - 29 comments

The Blurter. The Complainer. The Know-It-All. The Spoiled Darling. You can handle them all.
posted by mediareport on May 8, 2007 - 33 comments

Tomorrow's stars today If I had a hammer podcast. School children all over the world are creating original podcasts. They make for fascinating and fun listening.
posted by asok on Dec 31, 2006 - 6 comments

BusRadio has a simple dream: to improve the safety of school bus rides for all students. Or, wait, maybe the dream is to exploit our kids for profit. To be fair, they aren't the only ones who think this is a great idea. Thanks, Massachusetts!
via CommercialAlert, which we've talked about before.
posted by gurple on Jun 5, 2006 - 35 comments

Woman wins Orange Prize for novel "many people will hate" Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin is one of the few novels I've read in which the protagonist admits that she dislikes her child and is ambivalent (to put it mildly) about motherhood in general. In this case, she has good reason--the boy has a few problems, which culminate in a school gym massacre (preceded by something really grisly). (I'm not giving anything away by saying this, it's not a mystery novel.) Many people do indeed hate it; I personally thought it was fascinating. See also The Independent, The Guardian, ID Theory, Salon, and many more.
posted by scratch on Jun 8, 2005 - 58 comments

I enjoy being a girl boy. - 4th grader
posted by soyjoy on Mar 7, 2005 - 225 comments

What if we voted on issues? "They booed the results of their vote. They were upset that they had voted for the 'wrong guy'."
posted by GernBlandston on Sep 23, 2004 - 53 comments

Possibly 1,000 Hostages taken at Russian School. Earlier reports were 350, but an anonymous report claims total is much larger. So far more than one dozen hostages have been killed.
posted by Keyser Soze on Sep 3, 2004 - 65 comments

Safety Patrol, take note: It's back-to-school time all over the world, including the West Bank.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Sep 1, 2003 - 6 comments

Dressed as pieces of bologna, ham and cheese, Maryland 3rd graders sing corporate jingle and dance in Oscar Meyer contest...for school equipment money - $10,000 corporate checks for scarce school equipment, Dunkin' Doughnuts free doughnut coupons for students in exchange for homework...."Oakdale Principal Judy Sherman sees no problem with the Oscar Mayer and Dunkin' Donuts contests. No parents complained.... "It's great for the school as well as for kids who have to use their creative-writing and performing-arts skills, not to mention all those good social skills," Sherman said."

Oh my.
posted by troutfishing on Jun 23, 2003 - 93 comments

Children of the bean sing a catchy little ditty and have a theme park adventure. Something strange is going on at Edleston Primary School and I like it. Prepare for blastoff. (some links contain flash)
posted by snez on Jan 21, 2003 - 9 comments

Mix It Up Day is an effort from the people at Tolerance.org to get teens to sit with other social groups at lunch in the cafeteria today. Coming from a racially diverse "inner city" Midwest high school, I've seen how teens will naturally segregate themselves, so this seems like an interesting proposal. Kids who participated seemed excited about the opportunity, but will they keep "mixing it up" tomorrow, next week, as they become adults?
posted by katieinshoes on Nov 21, 2002 - 23 comments

in nineteen hundred and twenty eight
disturbed by an increase in the property tax rate
andrew kehoe, a deranged man,
blew up the school in bath, michigan

Suprisingly, not many people know about the worst school related attack in US history. Do you?
posted by Degaz on Oct 24, 2002 - 29 comments

Expelled for Blogging? Kid threatened with expulsion after having the nerve to blog from school. I assume his high school had nothing else to crack down on other than the gangs of bloggers up to no good like keeping a tech journal.
posted by Coop on Sep 26, 2002 - 33 comments

This is the story of what happens when a naïve 15-year-old prodigy collides with an upward-reaching football program, some of whose players feel like they own the campus. Brittany Benefield started college at age 15 with the dream of finishing law school before she turned 21. Didn't quite work out that way, and hers is an amazing story. Take the time to read this, and think about it. Would you fault her parents, for letting her get into something she wasn't ready for; the university, for letting this get out of control; the football program, for running roughshod over the school; or Brittany, for her own decisions?
posted by msacheson on May 31, 2002 - 45 comments

Mother jailed for girls' truancy A question for our British gang, is truancy such a problem in the UK now that this is really necessary? When I went to school in England, lo those mumblemumble years ago, I don't remember it being this bad. For the rest of the world, do you think truancy in your country would justify locking up the primary caregiver or is this punishing the wrong person? Can parents be held responsible for everything a child does? And better said, should they? When should we grant children the priviledges and penalties of their own autonomous actions?
posted by dejah420 on May 13, 2002 - 27 comments

He needed it to cut an onion. Under normal circumstances I would have shook my head and said, "Oh, those silly americans". This story, however, is about my 12-year old brother who's facing a 1 year expulsion after bringing a (small) kitchen knife to school for a science assignment. Zero tolerance - or zero interest in what's best for the kid?
posted by mschmidt on Apr 6, 2002 - 80 comments

Schoolchildren Strip-Searched for Lost $5 This, from the same school district that overruled a teacher who failed cheating students. I dunno about you, but making a bunch of 3rd graders get naked in school seems a little out of bounds. Feel free to tell the school board what you think of this little exercise in pedophiliac totalitarianism.
posted by dejah420 on Mar 22, 2002 - 56 comments

Pennsylvania school sends notes home if kids are overweight My paper ran this story Sunday, and it's starting to make its way around the Internet. But still: should schools warn parents if their kids are too heavy? And who decides 'too heavy'?
posted by krewson on Mar 21, 2002 - 69 comments

Missing school bus found near D.C. Berks Academy administrator Robert Becker said: "I am totally relieved and thankful to the Lord for protecting these kids." Um, excuse me?
posted by hitsman on Jan 24, 2002 - 33 comments

I hate when this happens over and over again. Kid suspended for drawing exploding skyscrapers, and when asked why he did it "grinned."
posted by HoldenCaulfield on Oct 6, 2001 - 29 comments

The Dead Zone all over again? Lucich said the boy approached his teacher on the afternoon of Sept. 10 and casually told her: "Tomorrow, World War III will begin. It will begin in the United States, and the United States will lose." eerie little story about a 5th grader in Dallas
posted by LeLiLo on Sep 20, 2001 - 17 comments

Belgium schoolchildren give up lunchtime milk, pop, and fruit drinks for low-alcohol beer. Once I got over my "American sensibilities" this seems like a good idea.
posted by skallas on Jun 28, 2001 - 29 comments

warning! too much testing is hazardous to your health! is it just me, or is this silly?
posted by fuzzygeek on Apr 26, 2001 - 30 comments

A FIFTH-grade girl at Cincinnati's Mount Airy School says at least 15 boys have been trading soda and cash for sex with at least five girls, according to WLWT Eyewitness News. Police and school officials are looking into the allegation, which claims the students -- some as young as 10 -- were sneaking into closets to do it.
posted by mgtrott on Apr 9, 2001 - 26 comments

"Chicken, the deadly white meat." An 8-year-old boy was suspended from school for 3 days after pointing a breaded chicken finger at a teacher and saying, ``Pow, pow, pow.''
... What else do I have to say?
posted by Hackworth on Feb 1, 2001 - 16 comments

Teenager jailed for his 'imagination.' A 15 year-old boy is beaten repeatedly by school bullies. His parents complain about it, but no one does anything. He writes a short story describing a bullied boy blowing up his school. Rumours swirl. Police raid his house but find no weapons or bomb-making stuff. Regardless, the boy is charged with "uttering a death threat." Today he was found guilty and sentenced to thirty days in jail.
posted by tranquileye on Jan 8, 2001 - 36 comments

Private school ejects Sailor Moon fan for inadvertently accessing an "adult" Sailor Moon site. The kid didn't know what the site was ahead of time, the site slipped through the school's content filters, and the boy "immediately logged off after less than a minute on the Web site". I don't know if this qualifies as a zero tolerance issue, but it's definitely an overraction, not to mention an ugly failure of blocking software. [via Ribbit]
posted by harmful on Oct 4, 2000 - 16 comments

It is the first week in school for a lot of students. What can I say - some obviously handles the change better than others ;-)
posted by joedrescher on Aug 29, 2000 - 9 comments