Category: Health

A morning to make you think

~ arthurjlandry ~ Leave a comment

Played my first 9 hole round and my partner was legally blind.  He had a spotter(another person) and some GPS technology to help him know where the ball was, where the hole was and if he hit it it went far.  I did OK but I can see! Very humbling to see what we complain about.  The went to Planet Fitness to freshen up, and a young lady with Downs was on elliptical next to her  mother..I guess Mother was 60 and daughter 25.  Finally drove through downtown and saw Lauralton Hall Cross Country practicing as well as a half dozen young Chinese students who I assume were the JV team with the new Athletic Director on a bike coaching/ encouraging them on.  A lot to think about..

We should wake up to the rest of the world..

~ arthurjlandry ~ Leave a comment
100% of French schoolchildren are learning a foreign language. That’s also the case in Austria and Norway. Poland and Spain aren’t far behind.

  • The median among European countries is 92% across primary and secondary school, according to Pew. In the U.S., that number is 20%.
  • New Jersey is the only U.S. state where more than half of students are learning a second language. Wisconsin, Maryland and Vermont are next at around one-third. The rate is just 9% in Arkansas, New Mexico and Arizona.
  • No sorpresas: Spanish is by far the most popular foreign language taught in the U.S. In Europe, it’s English.

Another global educational disparity is examined in this week’s Economist: the length of summer breaks…

  • “Their length ranges from three weeks in South Korea to three months in America, Italy and Latvia. … studies have found that children regress over the summer even in Belgium, Britain, Canada, Germany and Malawi, all of which have much shorter summer breaks than America’s.”