Islam is the real positive change that you need to change for being a better person or a perfect human being, you can change yourself if you read QURAN, IF YOU DO THAT !! you will change this UMMAH, say I am not A Sunni or Shia, BUT I am just a MUSLIM. Be a walking QURAN among human-being AND GUIDE THEM TO THE RIGHT PATH.
North Charleston, South Carolina (CNN)Donald Trump
on Friday cited an apocryphal story about a U.S. general who
purportedly dipped bullets in pigs' blood to execute Muslim prisoners a
century ago in an effort to deter Islamic terrorism.
Speaking
at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, Trump reiterated his
claim that the U.S. should "go much further" than waterboarding
suspected terrorists, telling the story of Gen. John Pershing in the
Philippines, who Trump said captured 50 Muslim prisoners a century ago
and dipped 50 bullets in blood.
"And
he lined up the 50 people and they shot 49 of those 50 people, and he
said to the 50th, you go back to your people and you tell them what
happened -- and in 25 years there wasn't a problem," Trump said to the
audience, which grew quiet as he told the story.
Coming in contact with swine is forbidden under Islamic law.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a
request for comment about what Trump was suggesting in referencing the
story, which Snopes, a website that investigates urban myths and
legends, was unable to corroborate a year ago.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called the story "bizarre" during an appearance on NBC's "Today" show Saturday morning.
"I'm sure people are offended. We hope people are offended by that. That's not what the United States is about," Rubio said.
Later
Saturday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading Muslim
civil rights group, said Trump's "rhetoric has crossed the line from
spreading hatred to inciting violence."
"By
directly stating that the only way to stop terrorism is to murder
Muslims in graphic and religiously-offensive ways, he places the
millions of innocent, law-abiding citizens in the American Muslim
community at risk from rogue vigilantes," the group said in a statement.
"He further implies that our nation should adopt a strategy of
systematized violence in its engagement with the global Muslim
community, a chilling message from a potential leader. We pray that no
one who hears this message follows his gospel of hate."
Muslim
Advocates, another Muslim civil rights group, said Trump's comments
"are abhorrent and simply have no place in the American public forum. We
urge all Americans of good conscience to come together and rise above
hate and extremist rhetoric that only serves to divide us at a time when
we must stand together."
Trump strikes reflective tone
Trump's story took place during a rally in which the GOP front-runner reflected on his campaign's unanticipated success.
"This
all began June 16. Who knew this was going to happen? I figured maybe
I'd be in the pack," a subdued Trump said as he began his final rally
before South Carolina's Republican primary on Saturday, which could hand
Trump his second consecutive electoral victory. "I thought it was going
to be like a horse race. I'd be in the middle of the pack and at the
very end I'd inch it out."
But Trump isn't in the middle of the pack, ready to inch out a victory in South Carolina. He's leading it, with CNN's average of South Carolina polling showing Trump with a double-digit lead over his closest competitor, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
The victory would be a momentous one for Trump and a blow to several of
his opponents, including Cruz, who has positioned himself as the
conservative capable of rallying the South to capture the nomination.
At
Friday's rally, Trump ripped Cruz as someone "who lies more than any
other human being I have ever seen" and slammed politicians broadly as
"all taken care of by every industry."
And
while Trump touted his 20-point victory just a week earlier in the New
Hampshire primary, he also sought to undercut his supporters' -- and the
media's expectations -- urging them not to look at the polling showing
him poised to clutch a decisive victory, but instead to get out and vote
like they were preparing for a nail-biter.
"Who
knows what the numbers are. The polls are very nice. Who knows? We
can't take a chance," Trump said in comments starkly in contrast with
his predictions of a "tremendous victory" in Iowa the day he ultimately
faltered with a second-place finish.
"It's crunch time, folks. It's crunch time," he reminded the audience.
But
Trump ended the night on a reflective note, reminding his supporters
that they are part of a movement of which he is simply the "messenger"
-- and urging them to get out and vote.
"You're going to say to yourselves this was one of the greatest evenings and one of the great days of your lives," Trump said.
"We're going to make America great again. Thank you, everybody. I love you."
A member of the group is protesting against the 'Islamisation of America' AJ+
A group of white men in Texas are training to shoot Muslims
in case of an “uprising” and are dipping their bullets in pig's blood or
bacon grease so victims would “go straight to hell”.
“The next step in Jihad does not involve random, sporadic attacks.
They started killing people. They started slaughtering people
wholesale,” said so-called Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR) spokesperson David Wright.
“Do you really expect me to stand here and wait until we get to that
point? I’m not going to wait until we get to that point. I’m going to
start doing something about it now.”
The group fears that thousands of Muslim refugees would lead to an “uprising”.
BAIR is based in Irving, the same town where “clock boy” Ahmed
Mohammed was arrested after bringing to school a home-made clock which
the teacher thought was a bomb.
In a video from AJ+ news, BAIR members of the group stand over railway tracks and do target practice with an array of weapons. “A
lot of us here are using either pig’s blood or bacon grease on our
bullets, packing it in the middle, so that when you shoot a Muslim, they
go straight to hell. That’s what they believe in their religion,” said
Mr Wright.
BAIR members have recently staged armed protests outside mosques to “stop the Islamization of America”.
Recent fear and distrust has long existed in the US but has been
exacerbated due to racist rhetoric during the 2016 US election campaign,
including Donald Trump calling for a ban on Muslims.
Mr Wright named one “radical” as Mohamed Elibiary, a former top aide
to President Obama and a member of the Department of Homeland Security
advisor, who was accused of leaking secret documents in an attempt to
smear then-presidential candidate and Texas governor Rick Perry as
Islamophobic.
The claims were unfounded, said the DHS, yet Texas politician Louie
Gohmert then accused him of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The mayor of Irving, Beth Van Duyne, also led the city council to support a state bill aimed at blocking Muslim influence in the US courts.
To counter BAIR, people of all religions and background have staged anti-BAIR protests and have created their own anti-BAIR
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-men-train-to-shoot-muslims-and-dip-bullets-in-pig-blood-so-victims-go-straight-to-hell-a7053086.html
Mick Purcell has been sentenced to life, with a minimum of 23 years, for a horrific murder.Police handout
A London steelworker mutilated his flatmate's genitals
after brutally murdering her because of her sexuality. Michael Purcell,
53, has been jailed for life, with a minimum sentence of 23 years, for
the killing of his 49-year-old flatmate Imelda Molina.
The
shocking details of his crimes were revealed on 27 May, after the Old
Bailey heard that he had planned to steal £1,000 belonging to Molina's
partner, Amalia Valdez. Purcell broke into her room in the flat they
shared in Cricklewood, north London, and stabbed her at least 48 times
in the back, chest and groin.
Molina's
half-naked body was discovered just minutes later by Valdez, who had
returned with a takeaway pizza. A rucksack containing £1,000 belonging
to Valdez was later found stashed in Purcell's wardrobe.
The court
had heard that Irish-born Purcell owed £8,000 to the taxman, but said
he had no memory of the attack because of his heavy use of Jack Daniels'
whiskey in the fortnight before the murder and burglary.
Molina
had come to Great Britain from the Philippines and was sending some of
her earnings back to her poverty-stricken family. Both Molina and Valdez
worked as housekeepers, and had met two months after the victim moved
to the UK in 2013.
Purcell, who they knew as 'Mick', had been
living in the same home as Valdez since 2011. Judge Wendy Joseph QC,
whilst sentencing, said she believed Purcell inflicted the injuries to
the victim's genitals because Molina was a woman or a lesbian.
She said according to the Brent and Kilburn Times:
"There has never been a clear account of what happened in the flat but I
am satisfied there came a time where Ms Molina was under threat and
either fled to her room or was already there and locked the door from
the inside.
"When she was dead or dying he made a further attack with
the knife in her genital area. It is impossible to interpret your
decision to carry out this later attack as anything other than an attack
made in reference to her sex or sexual orientation which you knew to be
lesbian."
Purcell, originally from Tipperary in southern Ireland,
was found guilty last month and admitted killing Molina in the hours
following his arrest. He said that he did not know why he murdered her
but was sorry as 'she was a lovely lady'.
Mick Purcell has been sentenced to life, with a minimum of 23 years, for a horrific murder.Police handout
A London steelworker mutilated his flatmate's genitals
after brutally murdering her because of her sexuality. Michael Purcell,
53, has been jailed for life, with a minimum sentence of 23 years, for
the killing of his 49-year-old flatmate Imelda Molina.
The
shocking details of his crimes were revealed on 27 May, after the Old
Bailey heard that he had planned to steal £1,000 belonging to Molina's
partner, Amalia Valdez. Purcell broke into her room in the flat they
shared in Cricklewood, north London, and stabbed her at least 48 times
in the back, chest and groin.
Molina's
half-naked body was discovered just minutes later by Valdez, who had
returned with a takeaway pizza. A rucksack containing £1,000 belonging
to Valdez was later found stashed in Purcell's wardrobe.
The court
had heard that Irish-born Purcell owed £8,000 to the taxman, but said
he had no memory of the attack because of his heavy use of Jack Daniels'
whiskey in the fortnight before the murder and burglary.
Molina
had come to Great Britain from the Philippines and was sending some of
her earnings back to her poverty-stricken family. Both Molina and Valdez
worked as housekeepers, and had met two months after the victim moved
to the UK in 2013.
Purcell, who they knew as 'Mick', had been
living in the same home as Valdez since 2011. Judge Wendy Joseph QC,
whilst sentencing, said she believed Purcell inflicted the injuries to
the victim's genitals because Molina was a woman or a lesbian.
She said according to the Brent and Kilburn Times:
"There has never been a clear account of what happened in the flat but I
am satisfied there came a time where Ms Molina was under threat and
either fled to her room or was already there and locked the door from
the inside.
"When she was dead or dying he made a further attack with
the knife in her genital area. It is impossible to interpret your
decision to carry out this later attack as anything other than an attack
made in reference to her sex or sexual orientation which you knew to be
lesbian."
Purcell, originally from Tipperary in southern Ireland,
was found guilty last month and admitted killing Molina in the hours
following his arrest. He said that he did not know why he murdered her
but was sorry as 'she was a lovely lady'.
Instead of thanking a doctor for helping in the delivery of
his new-born baby, a father took out a gun and shot him at close range
because he believed that a man should not have helped his wife give
birth. Despite being shot in the chest, Dr Mohannad al-Zubn is said to
be recovering in hospital.
The injuries sustained by the Jordanian
doctor are not thought to be life-threatening, a spokesperson at the
King Fahad Medical City in Riyadh said. The incident took place last
month.
London-based agency The New Arab news said
that the new father had gone to the hospital and asked to see the
doctor, under the pretext of wanting to thank him. However, when they
met outside the garden, he pulled out the gun and shot him.
"The
husband came to the hospital looking for the doctor and shot him in the
chest in an attempt to kill him for helping his wife delivery a baby,"
the spokesperson said. The father managed to run away but was arrested
by police.
Saudi Arabia has very strict laws governing gender
segregation in public places. Male doctors in Saudi Arabia can only
legally treat women in extreme circumstances, and then only with the
presence of a male guardian.
In 2014, the Ministry of Health
issued a directive that male medical workers could only examine female
patients if a woman nurse was also present. "Women are prohibited from
exposing body parts to male doctors in Islamic law, especially during
childbirth. This does not include medical emergencies. Islamic
jurisprudence makes exceptions," Qais al-Mubarak, a member of the
Council of Senior Scholars said, according to the report by The New
Arab.
In 2011, more than 100 doctors and religious leaders urged
the Ministry of Health to build women-only hospitals. A Saudi woman
launched a Facebook group campaign called Pure Hospitals to lobby for an
all-female hospital.
"The mixing of men and women in hospitals
and other places leads to corruption and vices such as exchanging looks,
breakdowns in barriers between men and women, and unethical
relationships forbidden in Islam," Arab News reported the woman as
saying.
Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/new-father-shoots-male-doctor-helping-his-wife-deliver-their-baby-1562243?awt_l=JpAd9&awt_m=irMwNOXK7WbOvKU&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rss
In this May 10, 2016 photo, Argelia Gamboa, Roberto Bernal's widow, sits on a sofa with a family... Read more
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The mob didn't know at first what Roberto Bernal had done, but he was running and that was enough.
Dozens of men loitering on the sidewalk next to a supermarket kicked
and punched the 42-year-old until he was bloodied and semi-conscious.
After all, they had been robbed of cell phones, wallets and motorcycles
over the years, and thought Bernal had a criminal's face.
Then a stooped, white-haired man trailing behind told them he'd been mugged.
The mob went through Bernal's pockets and handed a wad of bills to
the old man: The equivalent of $5. They doused Bernal's head and chest
in gasoline and flicked a lighter. And they stood back as he burned
alive.
"We wanted to teach this man a lesson," said Eduardo Mijares, 29.
"We're tired of being robbed every time we go into the street, and the
police do nothing."
Vigilante violence against people accused of stealing has become
commonplace in this crime-ridden country of 30 million, once one of the
richest and safest in Latin America.
Reports of group beatings now surface weekly in local media. The
public prosecutor opened 74 investigations into vigilante killings in
the first four months of this year, compared to two all of last year.
And a majority of the country supports mob retribution as a form of
self-protection, according to polling from the independent Venezuelan
Violence Observatory.
The revenge attacks underscore how far Venezuela has fallen, with the
lights flickering out daily, and food shortages fueling supermarket
lines that snake around for blocks. As the plunging price of oil has
laid bare years of mismanagement, the economy has come apart, and with
it, the social fabric.
Venezuela now has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and
it's hard to find a person who hasn't been mugged. In the general haze
of violence, Bernal's killing didn't stand out enough to make the front
pages or provoke comment from local politicians.
"Life here has become a misery. You walk around always stressed,
always scared, and lynching offers a collective catharsis," Violence
Observatory director Roberto Briceno-Leon said. "You can't do anything
about the lines or inflation, but for one moment, at least, the mob
feels like it's making a difference."
Bernal lived his whole life in a maze of narrow staircases and
cheerfully-painted cinderblock shacks built into the hills above
Caracas. This kind of slum is home for about half of Venezuelans, who
are bearing the brunt of the country's collapsing economy.
The shantytowns draped over Caracas have not seen running water for
months, and residents have begun raiding passing trucks for food. Bernal
had been out of work, and recently confided in his siblings that he and
his wife were struggling to feed their three children. He wanted to
find a way to move to Panama.
A quiet man with a muscular build from his time in the army, Bernal
spent the days before his death presiding over his sister's kitchen,
preparing Easter stews and candied passion fruit. He chuckled softly
when he won at dominos.
His six siblings thought of him as the one who made it, attending a
cooking school and becoming a professional chef. He liked to turn on the
TV as soon as he got home from work, and would leave the room at the
first sign of an argument. Many people who grow up deep in the slums
assimilate some parts of street culture, sporting tattoos or cocked
baseball caps, but not Roberto.
"He was so on the straight and narrow, he didn't even have a nickname," his aunt Teresa Bernal said.
A regular church-goer who often sent around religious text messages,
Bernal set his relatives' phones dinging the night before the burning
with a series of prayers for God to fill their day with blessings.
That morning, he left the family's windowless shack before dawn and
walked into an acrid smog that had descended over the city from grass
fires in the mountains above. He took a twisting bus ride out of the
slum, dropped his daughter at school, then boarded the metro.
By the time he emerged next to a bustling thoroughfare near the
center of town, fat blue and gold macaws were crisscrossing overhead. He
walked past security guards sitting outside sparsely-stocked shops and
apartment buildings protected by the electric fencing that denotes a
middle-class Caracas neighborhood.
Bernal had told his wife he was on his way to a new job at a
restaurant. But he stopped near a bank beneath a billboard advertising
door-to-door delivery of scarce goods from Miami, a three-hour flight
away.
A man in his 70s walked out, tucking a stack of bills worth $5 into a hat that he then hid in his jacket.
It would have been a lot of money for Bernal. It could have bought
his family a week's worth of food. Or a plastic dining table. Or a
proper school uniform for his daughter, whom the other kids were calling
"stinky."
Bernal grabbed the cash and started running toward a taxi line where
dozens of motorcycles were parked, the robbery victim later told
investigators. The man pursued him, crying "thief!" People watching from
a distance assumed they were racing to get in line to buy groceries.
In the meantime, the motorcycle drivers were sitting on a low wall in
front of the supermarket, fiddling with cracked cellphones and drinking
coffee from small plastic cups. They watched the pair come toward them.
When the beating began, workers at the curbside candy stalls and
hotdog stands left their booths, not wanting to see what was coming.
Other people stayed to watch and cheer.
Someone had the idea to siphon gasoline from a motorcycle tank into a
soda bottle. As the smell of burning flesh filled the air, the crowd's
shouting turned to silence. Some onlookers took cellphone video of
Bernal trying to stand as tall flames consume his head.
He would likely have died there, begging for water to quench the fire
in the middle of some two dozen onlookers, if not for Alejandro
Delgado. The youth pastor arrived for his part-time job as a motorcycle
taxi driver just as the frenzy was reaching its peak. Horrified, Delgado
whipped off his dusty black jacket and smothered the flames.
"These guys I work with every day had turned into demons," he said.
"I could hear the man's flesh crackling and popping. When I put the fire
out, they threw bottles at my head."
Bernal was taken away in an ambulance on a cross-city quest to find a
hospital with enough medical supplies to deal with his injuries. The
videos spread across social media, but they drew curiously little
condemnation. Even the trauma nurse who attended to Bernal thought a
form of justice had been carried out.
"If the people grabbed him and lynched him, it's because he was a
thug," said nurse Juan Perez, who has himself been robbed too many times
to count.
When Bernal's wife got the call, she assumed he had been burned at
work. Arriving at the hospital, she walked right past his charred body,
and then doubled back to ask, "Are you Roberto?"
His eyes had been seared shut, and his trachea was so scorched that
he could only speak in whispers. He told her that the old man had
mistaken him for the real thief, and his accusers had not given him time
to explain. He died two days later.
His murder was not the first in his family. A cousin was shot when he
spooked a home intruder, and a nephew was killed last year in a
domestic abuse case.
And it was far from the only attack in the neighborhood.
Elisa Gonzales, 59, watched the mob beat Bernal from her window.
Later that night, she spied another group of men kicking another alleged
thief in the head.
"It makes me sick to see this stuff. I don't go downstairs anymore," she said.
Police tend to approach mob violence like bartenders dealing with a
fistfight; they'll sometimes step in to break it up, but aren't going to
spend much time looking into how it got started. Officers say they
intervened in 9 such cases in this neighborhood during the first three
months of this year, compared to 18 cases for all of 2015.
Increasingly under attack themselves, police recently put up a thick
brick wall around their station here. In the weeks after the killing,
the taxi drivers who beat Bernal joked that they were waiting for
officers to come by to ask for money and then go back to their bunker.
Nationwide, police used to make 118 arrests for every 100 murders,
according to the Violence Observatory; now they make eight. Robberies
and thefts are so rarely investigated that most victims don't bother to
file a report, government surveys have found.
Bernal's family was desperate for his case to be different. They
began making regular trips to the prosecutor's office, toting mementos
of Saint Anthony, patron of the poor. They hoped their presence would
shame officials into holding someone accountable for the April 4 murder.
To their surprise, it did.
"We have to prioritize cases," explained public prosecutor Regino
Cova. "It really matters when a family comes every day like, 'please,
please, please.'"
A month after Bernal's death, Cova charged 23-year-old law school
dropout Maickol Jaimez with pouring the gasoline. He told the family
that the other men who appeared in the video would now be off the hook.
Overwhelmed by a murder rate on par with a war zone, prosecutors can't
afford to chase after people for getting in a few kicks, he said.
Jaimez lived in the same hillside slum as Bernal and worked next to
the supermarket guarding shoppers' parked motorcycles, one of the many
security-related jobs that have proliferated amid the violence. Like
Bernal, he had never been in trouble with the law before. But co-workers
say he'd been upset lately because people had been stealing helmets and
motorcycle batteries, and he'd had to pay.
He told prosecutors they will never be able to convict him because no clear shot of his face appears in the video.
He could be right. Last year, the state charged 268,000 people with
crimes ranging from robbery to murder; a threefold increase from the
year before. But only 27,000 were found guilty.
Bernal's blood still stains a motorcycle taxi sign above the cracked
sidewalk where he was burned. The men here say they won't wash it off;
it's their trophy from the time they stood up to one of the criminals
who have made city life a cauldron of stress and fear.
"People can try to make us look bad," said Francisco Agro, 29, a taxi
driver who participated in the beating. "But the truth is, the courts,
the police, they don't work. It's not the way things should be, but it
fell to us to protect an old man from a thug."
Bernal's widow and children have been sleeping huddled together since
the murder, afraid someone might come for them, too. His 11 year-old
son has stopped going to school and is spending more time with the older
kids in the slum's dirt alleys, wearing fake tattoos on his spindly
arms.
The family still does not believe Bernal robbed anyone, but they agree with his killers on one point: There is no justice here.
"Everyone needs to be scared," said his nephew, Alfredo Cisneros.
"People need to know there is no law here anymore. No one is safe."
Clive Rose/Getty ImagesRichard Branson and his mother, Eve.
Any good parent wants their kids to stay out of trouble, do well in school, and go on to do awesome things as adults.
And while there isn't a set recipe for raising successful children,
psychology research has pointed to a handful of factors that predict
success.
Unsurprisingly, much of it comes down to the parents.
Here's what parents of successful kids have in common:
"If kids aren't doing the dishes, it means someone else is
doing that for them," Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Dean of Freshmen at
Stanford University and author of "How to Raise an Adult" said during aTED Talks Live event. "And so they're absolved of not only the work, but of learning
that work has to be done and that each one of us must contribute for the
betterment of the whole," she said. Lythcott-Haims believes kids raised on
chores go on to become employees who collaborate well with their
coworkers, are more empathetic because they know firsthand what
struggling looks like, and are able to take on tasks independently.
She bases this on the Harvard Grant Study, the longest longitudinal study ever conducted.
"By making them do chores — taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry — they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life," she tells Tech Insider.
The 20-year study showed that socially competent children
who could cooperate with their peers without prompting, be helpful to
others, understand their feelings, and resolve problems on their own,
were far more likely to earn a college degree and have a full-time job
by age 25 than those with limited social skills.
Those with limited social skills also had a higher chance of getting arrested, binge drinking, and applying for public housing.
4. They have healthy relationships with each other.
Shutterstock
Children in high-conflict families, whether intact or divorced, tend to fare worse than children of parents that get along, according to a University of Illinois study review.
Robert Hughes, Jr., professor and head of the Department of Human and
Community Development in the College of ACES at the University of
Illinois and study review author, also notes that some studies have
found children in nonconflictual single parent families fare better than
children in conflictual two-parent families.
The conflict between parents prior to divorce also affects children
negatively, while post-divorce conflict has a strong influence on
children's adjustment, Hughes says.
One study found that, after divorce, when a father without custody
has frequent contact with his kids and there is minimal conflict,
children fare better. But when there is conflict, frequent visits from
the father are related to poorer adjustment of children.
Yet another study found that 20-somethings who experienced divorce of
their parents as children still report pain and distress over their
parent's divorce ten years later. Young people who reported high
conflict between their parents were far more likely to have feelings of
loss and regret.
5. They've attained higher educational levels.
Merrimack College/Flickr
A 2014 study
lead by University of Michigan psychologist Sandra Tang found that
mothers who finished high school or college were more likely to raise
kids that did the same. Pulling from a group of over 14,000 children who entered
kindergarten in 1998 to 2007, the study found that children born to teen
moms (18 years old or younger) were less likely to finish high school
or go to college than their counterparts.
Aspiration is at least partially responsible. In a 2009 longitudinal study of
856 people in semirural New York, Bowling Green State University
psychologist Eric Dubow found that "parents' educational level when the
child was 8 years old significantly predicted educational and
occupational success for the child 40 years later."
6. They teach their kids math early on.
Flickr/tracy the astonishing
A 2007 meta-analysis
of 35,000 preschoolers across the US, Canada, and England found that
developing math skills early can turn into a huge advantage. "The paramount importance of
early math skills — of beginning school with a knowledge of numbers,
number order, and other rudimentary math concepts — is one of the
puzzles coming out of the study," coauthor and Northwestern University researcher Greg Duncan said in a press release. "Mastery of early math skills predicts not only future math achievement, it also predicts future reading achievement."
A 2014 study
of 243 people born into poverty found that children who received
"sensitive caregiving" in their first three years not only did better in
academic tests in childhood, but had healthier relationships and
greater academic attainment in their 30s. As reported on PsyBlog, parents who are sensitive caregivers "respond to their child's signals promptly and appropriately" and "provide a secure base" for children to explore the world. "This suggests that investments in early parent-child
relationships may result in long-term returns that accumulate across
individuals' lives," coauthor and University of Minnesota psychologist Lee Raby said in an interview.
8. They're less stressed.
Flickr/Oleg Sidorenko
According to recent research cited by Brigid Schulte at The Washington Post, the
number of hours that moms spend with kids between ages 3 and 11 does
little to predict the child's behavior, well-being, or achievement. What's more, the "intensive mothering" or "helicopter parenting" approach can backfire. "Mothers' stress, especially when mothers are stressed because
of the juggling with work and trying to find time with kids, that may
actually be affecting their kids poorly," study coauthor and Bowling
Green State University sociologist Kei Nomaguchi told The Post. Emotional contagion —
or the psychological phenomenon where people "catch" feelings from one
another like they would a cold — helps explain why. Research shows that
if your friend is happy, that brightness will infect you; if she's sad,
that gloominess will transfer as well. So if a parent is exhausted or
frustrated, that emotional state could transfer to the kids.
9. They value effort over avoiding failure.
China Stringer Network/Reuters
Where kids think success comes from also predicts their attainment. Over decades, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has
discovered that children (and adults) think about success in one of two
ways. Over at the always-fantastic Brain Pickings, Maria Popova says they go a little something like this:
A "fixed mindset"
assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are
static givens that we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is
the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how
those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for
success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining
the sense of being smart or skilled.
A "growth mindset," on
the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of
un-intelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for
stretching our existing abilities.
At the core is a distinction in the way you assume your
will affects your ability, and it has a powerful effect on kids. If kids
are told that they aced a test because of their innate intelligence,
that creates a "fixed" mindset. If they succeeded because of effort,
that teaches a "growth" mindset.
The study found daughters of working mothers went to
school longer, were more likely to have a job in a supervisory role, and
earned more money — 23% more compared to their peers who were raised by
stay-at-home mothers.
The sons of working mothers also tended to pitch in more
on household chores and childcare, the study found — they spent
seven-and-a-half more hours a week on childcare and 25 more minutes on
housework.
"Role modeling is a way of signaling what's appropriate in
terms of how you behave, what you do, the activities you engage in, and
what you believe," the study's lead author, Harvard Business School
professor Kathleen L. McGinn, told Business Insider.
"There are very few things, that we know of, that have
such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working
mother," she told Working Knowledge.
11. They have a higher socioeconomic status.
EagleBrookSchool
Tragically, one-fifth of American children grow up in poverty, a situation that severely limits their potential.
It's getting more extreme. According to Stanford University researcher Sean Reardon,
the achievement gap between high- and low-income families "is roughly
30% to 40% larger among children born in 2001 than among those born 25
years earlier." As "Drive" author Dan Pink has noted, the higher the income for the parents, the higher the SAT scores for the kids. "Absent comprehensive and expensive interventions,
socioeconomic status is what drives much of educational attainment and
performance," he wrote.
12: They are 'authoritative' rather than 'authoritarian' or 'permissive.'
Spencer Platt / Getty
First published in the 1960s, University of California,
Berkeley developmental psychologist Diana Baumride found there are
basically three kinds of parenting styles [pdf]:
Permissive: The parent tries to be nonpunitive and accepting of the child
Authoritarian: The parent tries to shape and control the child based on a set standard of conduct
Authoritative: The parent tries to direct the child rationally
The ideal is the authoritative. The kid grows up with a respect for authority, but doesn't feel strangled by it.
As
schools struggle to recruit staff, more and more teachers are being
asked to take on a subject in which they have little expertise.
Sometimes headteachers have no choice. Department for Education figures
show 18% of lessons were taught by teachers without a relevant
post-A-level qualification for English baccalaureate subjects in 2014.
Things are unlikely to have improved since.
The support provided to these non-expert teachers varies widely, according to interviews given to Education Guardian.
How many parents know this is going on? “In some places parents will
be very aware,” says Malcolm Trobe, of the Association of School and
College Leaders. It’s never an ideal situation for headteachers but
there may not be a choice. “Schools will endeavour to have a subject
specialist. But if you can’t recruit, particularly in a core subject,
you’re going to have to ask someone to teach outside of their
discipline.”
Former drama teacher, London
Taught music to year 7 students
I laughed at them when they asked me. I said: you’ve got to be crazy,
I can’t even play an instrument. I have absolutely no musical capacity.
They said they’d give me lesson plans, but that didn’t help, because
[in lessons] I was setting students off in groups to play instruments
and I couldn’t help them in any way. It soon became clear to the kids
that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was angry for them.
When students give performances at the end [of a lesson] you’re meant
to give feedback. They’d perform – and I’m comparing it to the last
concert I went to. I’m expecting Pavarotti and they’re beating
tambourines. What kind of feedback can I give? “Yes it sounds lovely”?
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My
main approach was to get the classroom set up in a way that I could
work on discipline and control. I’d make sure that I had the desks in
groupings that would work best, because there were quite a few
discipline problems, of course.
There were grade 8 pianists in the class, so if there was a
demonstration to do I’d perhaps ask one of them. Though they soon got
pissed off – they didn’t want to be seen as teacher’s pet.
For some students, if you have a whole year of that subject with
someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing that could ruin the subject
for life. That was one of the reasons I left the teaching profession.
Richard White, biology specialist, West Midlands
Teaches sciences and has taught key stage 3 geography and drama
I spend about 90% of my time outside my specialism. I studied the
other sciences at A-level so it wasn’t too bad when I started. The first
six months of physics was a struggle because I was teaching myself a
week before, and reading through the bits I didn’t understand. The
flipside is that it has helped me to understand where the kids fall down
and where they get confused.
Drama was more unnerving. I never did drama at school myself. I’d
never even been in a school play. But there are loads of good schemes of
work online and I did actually enjoy it. It has also benefited my
teaching [in science]; I do a lot of role play in lessons now. It’s also
nice to see the students in a different setting – you get kids who hate
science but are amazing at drama and vice versa. It gives them a
confidence boost and it boosted my faith in them, to see what they can
do.
Job applications at Passmores Academy, Essex: PE to the left and, to the
right, English, maths, modern foreign languages and science.
Photograph: Vic Goddard
Music teacher, London
Teaching French to year 7 students
I really enjoy it, partly because I see the students more often than I
would as a music teacher. It’s been a lot more work, though, because of
the planning, but my head of department has been phenomenal in
supporting me. Because I’m not a French specialist, you want to go into
class knowing every eventuality – what possible questions could they
ask?
I wasn’t too worried because it was only year 7 and I have an A-level
in French. I’m probably not teaching at the same level as a French
specialist – they can go off script – but I am an experienced teacher so
I don’t have any classroom management problems. And there are maybe
things that I can bring to the lesson that others haven’t, not because
I’m a non-specialist but because it’s me, I’m a good teacher.
Art and design teacher, Nottinghamshire
Also teaches textiles and food technology, including GCSE classes
The first thing that went through my head was dread and panic. I
thought, OK, I can do this, but how am I going to find time? I worried
most about the technical stuff, especially in electronics and
workshop-based subjects because there are health and safety issues
there. We do things like soldering circuit boards together, using vacuum
forming machines, bandsaws, pillar drills – there’s all this technical
equipment. The specialist teacher would show me first and then I would
show the students. The amount of time I had practising varied: sometimes
it was an hour, sometimes at lunchtime or after school. Lots of times I
felt a bit out of my depth, though there’s always a technician as back
up. The workload is massive, it’s huge. With food tech, the only
experience I have is the part-time jobs I’ve had at university. Aside
from a health and safety course, I haven’t had any support for GCSE – I
was just given a textbook.
You have to have a cut-off point, otherwise you’d get buried under it
all. I have a young child, so I can’t take huge portfolios home to
mark. We’re here from 8am to 5pm so I’ll do marking at school but then
when I’m at home, after I’ve taken my daughter to bed I’ll open my
laptop and do a couple of hours of planning.
Science teacher, London
Has taught maths
My subject knowledge for maths is really good – I’ve done maths to
A-level. But it was knowing how to teach it, how to help people who are
struggling, that I found hard; that’s something I’d had no training in.
Because I’m a science teacher I’m used to there being some physical,
practical thing in most of my lessons, and I didn’t have the expertise
to deliver maths in that way. So when a child struggled, I was a bit
like: well I know how to do it, and I’ve shown you how to do it and I
really don’t know other ways of doing it. I couldn’t go to the
department meetings [which clashed], so I didn’t get to find out what
was going on. There were pages in books about multiplication and
division, then [the other maths teachers] said – oh no that was for
calculator practice. I didn’t know.
Kristy Turner, chemistry specialist, Manchester
Has previously taught science, maths, geography and French
State school teachers I know are teaching 23 lessons out of 25
possible periods a week – so they have two lessons in which to do all
their marking, all their planning. Nobody would doubt it would have to
spill over into your free time. The time they’ve actually got to develop
subject knowledge is limited to ending up a page ahead of everybody in
the textbook.
I’d still got my A-level notes from school, that helped me more than
anything else really. At the time I felt fine but looking back I do feel
I did some of those children a disservice because I know I’m a much
better chemistry teacher than I am of anything else. The hardest thing
was not knowing the subject well enough to differentiate to the level
the pupils need.
Sam Hesling, PE specialist, Hertfordshire
Teaches history to year 8 students
In the back of my mind I did wonder: how happy would students and
parents be if they had a PE teacher teaching their son or daughter
history? My main concern was that I only had a GCSE in history to my
name and that was over 10 years ago. But I was given a lot of support: a
huge bank of shared resources from previous years, an email group
between history teachers, extra textbooks were ordered so that I could
take one home to plan, assessment guidance and effective marking
shortcuts were handed out termly. My head of department has been very
supportive, always checking how things are going and on hand to either
cover or step in if behaviour was an issue. I do think there is an
element of expertise needed to sufficiently teach GCSE, but at key stage
3 a good teacher should be able to teach and plan lessons outside of
their area.
Read more: "http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/17/parents-recruitment-crisis-teachers-subjects-not-qualified
Job applications at Passmores Academy, Essex: PE to the left and, to the
right, English, maths, modern foreign languages and science.
Photograph: Vic Goddard