Archive for the ‘Student health’ Category
Texas high schools no longer required to offer health education
The AP (via Texas Cable News) reports:
Health class will no longer be a state requirement for high school students this fall, making Texas one of the few states in the country with no required health education, officials said.
Education Commissioner Robert Scott announced the move in a recent letter to school districts, causing some to worry Texas students will miss out on critical topics like alcohol awareness, sex education and basic nutrition.
“It was very surprising to a lot of people,” said Diana Everett, executive director of the Texas Association for Health Physical Education, Health, Recreation and Dance. “We’ve all been in shock.”
Individual school districts still can require students to take health classes, but Scott eliminated the state requirement to comply with a new law that bumps up the number of electives required to graduate. Starting this fall, students must take six elective courses, instead of the currently mandated three-and-a-half.
Can ‘neuro-enhancing’ drugs give students an advantage?
Note: This is cross-posted with my Cognitive Science Blog.
NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross reports:
In the modern world of busy schedules and busier lives, some people are turning to “neuro-enhancing” drugs to gain a competitive edge.
As journalist Margaret Talbot writes in the April 27 issue of The New Yorker magazine, a variety of students, professors and business people are taking drugs intended for attention deficit disorder, narcolepsy and epilepsy in an effort to enhance brain function and get ahead.
Talbot’s New Yorker article is available online here.
TIME Magazine on ending the “war over sex ed”
Later this spring, Congress will dive once more into the war over sex education when it decides whether to eliminate $176 million in federal funding for so-called abstinence-only programs, which instruct kids to delay sex until marriage. Advocates will debate at top volume the merits of abstinence-only efforts vs. more comprehensive programs that also teach about birth control and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
These arguments miss the point. We now have a pretty good sense of which sex-education approaches work. Substantial research–including a 2007 Bush Administration report–has concluded that comprehensive programs are most effective at changing teen sexual behaviors. They are also largely uncontroversial outside Washington. Vast majorities of parents favor teaching comprehensive sex education.
What we haven’t seen is the political will and community investment necessary to educate kids about sexuality and healthy relationships in a truly responsible and honest way…
New research probes relationship between poverty, stress, and intelligence
Note: This entry is cross-posted with my Cognitive Science Blog.
“Family income is a strong and consistent predictor,” of test scores, school grades and education, say a Cornell University study in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. “The longer the childhood exposure to poverty, the worse the achievement levels become.”
Although a “large, robust literature” stretching back more than a decade describes this observation, study authors Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg note there is no biological explanation for it. Why does poverty have this effect?
To find an answer, the pair looked at 195 men who were part of a long-term study of rural poverty. The study included health records and income. In 2006, about 22% of all children nationwide lived below the poverty line, living on less than $21,200 for a family of four, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. (About 18% of people worldwide live below the international poverty line of $1 a day, according to Princeton economist Alan Krueger.)
“The proportion of early childhood spent in poverty is also significantly related to working memory,” finds the study, perhaps not surprising. But when the researchers went back and looked at the men’s health records, the relationship between poverty and memory dissolved, revealing their health — as reflected in blood pressure, obesity and stress hormone measures — are factored in. What looks like an income effect is actually a public health problem.
The Evans & Schamberg report can be accessed here.
As economy suffers, homelessness becomes more common among students
Nine-year-old Daniel Valdez… his mother and five brothers, ages 1 to 17, live in a garage without heat or running water in a modest, low-lying neighborhood that sits between celebrity-owned mansions in the hills and the Pacific Ocean. Each morning, they arise at 6:30, get dressed and then leave quietly; they return only after dark — a routine born out of the fear that detection could mean the loss of even this humble dwelling.
Daniel and his brothers have been sleeping in the garage for more than a year — members of what school officials and youth advocates say is a rapidly growing legion of homeless youth.
Albuquerque school lunches impacted by economic woes
A very disturbing story from USA Today:
A cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a milk carton might not seem like much of a meal — but that’s what’s on the menu for students in New Mexico’s largest school district without their lunch money.
Faced with mounting unpaid lunch charges in the economic downturn, Albuquerque Public Schools last month instituted a “cheese sandwich policy,” serving the alternative meals to children whose parents fail to pick up their lunch tab.
“We’ve heard stories from moms coming in saying their child was pulled out of the lunch line and given a cheese sandwich,” said Nancy Pope, director of the New Mexico Collaborative to End Hunger. “One woman said her daughter never wants to go back to school.”
Is Facebook bad for students’ brains?
This is cross-posted with my Cognitive Science Blog.
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.
But they will strike a chord with parents and teachers who complain that many youngsters lack the ability to communicate or concentrate away from their screens.
Study: Most teens mention drugs, alcohol, sex or violence on their MySpace pages
A new study shows that more than half of teenagers mention drugs, alcohol, sex or violence on their MySpace pages. Yet getting teens to clean up their pages is easier than many might assume, researchers say.
More than 90% of adolescents have Internet access, and about half of these use social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook, according to the study of 500 18-year-olds in Monday’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
For all their Internet savvy, however, teenagers are still immature and impulsive, which can make them targets for online predators or bullies.
The study’s abstract can be viewed here (subscription required to download study)
Parents more likely to report boys’ health problems to schools, study finds
USA Today reports on a study just released by the US federal government’s National Center for Health Statistics:
Parents of about 15% of kids spoke to school staff or health care providers about their children’s emotional and behavior problems in the last year, according to a survey released Wednesday, the first-ever to gauge the issue.
Nearly 1 out of 5 boys had parents who discussed such difficulties, and about 1 out of 10 girls, says the report from more than 17,000 parents with children 4 to 17 years old…
The high number of parents who confide worries shows “the very, very narrow range of normalcy allowed for children these days,” says behavioral pediatrician Lawrence Diller of Walnut Creek Calif., author of The Last Normal Child. “Welcome to the age of anxiety, where more is expected of children academically and in self-discipline, while both parents are working, so there’s less support and structure.”
For kids who do get counseling, 39% receive it at school, and 27% at their doctor’s office, the survey finds. More pediatricians are bringing mental health experts into their offices, or bringing them on-board as consultants, says Jane Foy, a pediatrics professor at Wake Forest University and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Pediatricians are hearing more about mental health issues, and therapy services are sparse, especially for children whose problems are not severe, she says.
