The Art of Thinking like a Scientist

Generation STEM
January 30, 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 9

The Art of Thinking Like a Scientist

Lisa Yokana

Through the arts, students learn to observe, visualize, manipulate materials, and develop the creative confidence to imagine new possibilities. These skills and competencies are also essential to scientific thinking and provide a strong argument for transforming STEM education by integrating the arts.

Arts Teach Deep Noticing

Exposure to the arts teaches observation, or deep noticing. There is a difference, as you know, between looking and looking closely. When students are asked to draw something, they must look closely to accurately observe the lines and shapes of the object they are trying to portray. Students learn to see tiny differences and to record them. Doesn't this sound like what a scientist does?

The link between art and STEM is not a new idea. Artists and scientists have understood the connections for centuries, from Renaissance artists, architects, and inventors Leonardo da Vinci and Filippo Brunelleschi, to scientists and artists collaborating to create enhanced computer graphics or work on the Large Hadron Collider.

Through the arts, students practice envisioning, or creating an image from an idea in their heads. Scientific thinking requires facility with this skill, as well. It's notable that Einstein, who was able to visualize complex concepts in his mind, attended a Swiss secondary school founded on Johann Pestalozzi's educational philosophy of learning through visualization and modeling.

When students learn spatial thinking, they gain the ability to see three-dimensional space in their heads from looking at a two-dimensional drawing. This is a skill that engineers, architects, and scientists need, but it also allows students to understand difficult ideas. If students see how things fit together and how they pull apart, then they are able to understand how things work.

Arts Emphasize Process

Stanford University's approach to design thinking codifies the process of creative thinking, discovery, and empathy; synthesizing information and defining the problem; ideation or brainstorming; experimenting and testing; and evolution and redesign. I have been using this "road map for thinking" with classes this year, both in art and in collaborating with others on curriculum, and have found that it forces students to slow down. By taking things apart and tinkering or through manipulating art materials, students learn comfort with open-ended questions and process. Students involved in the arts understand that there is not just one answer to a question and that searching for an answer, or the process itself, is important. By grappling with creative problems, students develop habits of mind such as persevering and trial-and-error problem solving.

Students now are so product- and grade-driven that they are not interested in being involved in a process; rather, they hurry through any project to get it done and get the grade. As a result, they become focused on the right answer and cannot seem to persevere when it is not easily obtained. They become frustrated with open-ended questions because there is no one right answer.

Scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and artists need to be comfortable with these types of problems and to be resilient so that when an experiment or design does not yield the expected result, they adapt their thinking and try again. Students who make things, whether it is art or tinkering with tools and different types of material, learn to trust the design process. They learn to adapt their own thinking when something unexpected happens, to ask new questions, and to rethink. Failure becomes part of the process; students learn from it.

Arts Develop Creative Confidence

Students who make things feel satisfied and empowered through the act of making, and they develop creative confidence, which is key to seeking innovative solutions to problems. The "maker movement," sparked by Make Magazine's Dale Dougherty, believes that schools and communities need to embrace making, combining technology and the arts to allow people of all ages to collaborate and explore design issues. When students can observe, visualize, and manipulate materials, they develop creative confidence and the resilience to persevere within the creative process. These skills and habits of mind are a bridge that connects the arts and STEM subjects and can fuel the innovation so desperately needed to address real-world challenges. The arts not only support scientific thinking but also expand and transform traditional STEM curriculum to invite deeper observation, imagining, and revision.

Letting Kids in on the Charitable Giving Conversation

The Opposite of Spoiled February 6, 2014, 7:49 pm

Letting the Kids in on the Charitable Giving Conversation

By RON LIEBER

Money is one of the most powerful tools we have to teach children the values and virtues we want them to adopt. Given how many of our own values are wrapped up in charitable giving, it makes sense to bring the kids in on some of the decision making.

This doesn’t need to be a conversation about how much money you make and what percentage of it you should give away. Younger children don’t have enough math skills and experience to grapple with five- and six-figure numbers anyway. But a family’s choices about how it divides its charitable dollars reflect its values. So what’s the best way for parents to help their children see their values in action in this context? And how best to get them to question parental priorities and express strong feelings of their own?

Here’s what my family did as an experiment this holiday season: We put 100 dried beans on the dining room table, with each one representing 1 percent of our annual giving. Then we divided them up into piles to represent the causes and institutions we had supported in 2012.

Next, we looked through a pile of solicitations that had arrived in the mail, from organizations we had supported in the past and ones that hoped to persuade us to give before the end of the year. We also came to the table with new ideas, based on issues that were newly important to us.

Here’s what we learned by making this a family conversation about how to redivide the beans for 2013:

WANTS AND NEEDS One surprise was that our 8-year-old daughter applied the “Want-Need” test to this particular exercise. Normally this comes up when we talk about consumer purchases more broadly and whether various objects of desire are things we actually need or simply want. The necessity of cable television is one that we’ve been debating recently.

The test came up while discussing a pitch from the Public Art Fund, which helps place art in public spaces around New York City. Set against real human need, locally and globally, our daughter wondered whether this was something we really needed to support or whether we merely wanted to. It didn’t make the cut, though we agreed that we can help improve our local park by participating in cleanup days more often.

TRANSPARENCY Our family devotes a decent chunk of our giving budget to the educational institutions that gave me scholarships a couple of decades ago. We also try to give generously to the places that have helped shape our daughter, so that they can help as many children as possible afford their tuition or programs.

Many overnight camps lack much racial or socioeconomic diversity, since they have no endowments or much of a donor base. Our daughter helped persuade us to support a scholarship fund at her camp. We also decided to give to an organization that helps homeless children locally, moved as we were by the New York Times series about a young girl living in a shelter with her family.

We received a pitch from a dance company where our daughter took some lessons a while back. But the solicitation said nothing about its efforts to help children afford its classes, so we made a collective decision to pass on that one.

MARKETING We’re well aware that by looking at the solicitations at all, we’re encouraging nonprofit institutions to send ever more mail each year. This clogs mailboxes, kills trees and wastes piles of the very money that families like us donate.

This was an experiment, though, so we wanted to see what kind of impact the pitches would have on a child. It probably won’t come as much surprise to learn that the clever folks at Heifer International were the only ones who managed to sway our daughter via a direct-mail piece. Like many children, she was moved by its catalog of smiling people around the world who are able to make money and feed their families with the help of a water buffalo or sheep that the organization provides

One wrinkle here was that she didn’t want anyone eating these animals, because she’s a vegetarian. Several pages into the catalog, however, she found a beehive that she wanted to donate.

My guess is that any family that tries this would hear their children echo at least some of the values that they hold dear. If not, the conversation offers an opportunity to find out which issues and institutions matter most to every family member and why.
Our plan is to make the dining-table allocation exercise an annual tradition, albeit without most of the mailers. Any other tweaks to the bean exercise that you would suggest?

Lavishing Kids with Praise Can Make Them Feel Worse about Themselves

Lavishing Kids With Praise Can Make Them Feel Worse About Themselves

The dangers of overdoing the compliments

Eleanor Barkhorn Jan 2 2014, 4:19 PM ET

"Hollywood dishes out too much praise for small things," the great actor Jimmy Stewart once said. "I won't let it get me, but too much praise can turn a fellow's head if he doesn't watch his step." He was talking about the sick power compliments can have on a person's ego: You hear enough times that you're awesome and you start to believe that you're the awesomest. And then you become insufferable.
A new set of studies shows that for kids, high praise can have the opposite effect on self-esteem: It can actually make some children feel worse about themselves. "That’s Not Just Beautiful—That’s Incredibly Beautiful: The Adverse Impact of Inflated Praise on Children with Low Self-Esteem" found that when adults give excessive compliments to children with low confidence, the children were less likely to pursue challenges.
One of the studies involved 240 children who visited a science museum in the Netherlands. The researchers asked each of the kids to complete a self-esteem assessment to determine if they had high or low confidence. Then, the children were asked to draw a famous painting and told that a professional painter would evaluate it. After they finished their paintings, the children were given a card from the painter (who did not in fact exist) with one of three responses: "You made an incredibly beautiful drawing!" (inflated praise); "You made a beautiful drawing!" (non-inflated praise); or no comment about the drawing at all (no praise).
The researchers then tested the kids' willingness to take on new challenges. They asked the children to make a new drawing and let them pick their subject: either a complex drawing or a simple one. It turned out that the students with low self esteem were less likely to do a complex drawing if they'd received inflated praise. "Compared to non-inflated praise, inflated praise decreased challenge seeking in children with low self-esteem," the researchers wrote.
So it seems that the best way to improve kids' self-esteem is to give them frank, straightforward praise. The only problem is, though, that parents and teachers often do the opposite. The researchers also found that adults are more likely to heap inflated praise on children with low-self esteem—presumably in a well-intentioned attempt to make them feel better.

Last month I wrote about how young teachers aren't being taught how to praise students effectively. Teacher training programs emphasize rules and routines as the key to classroom management but often overlook the role of encouragement in creating a positive learning environment. The "inflated praise" studies only highlight the need for better training in this area. Adults are trying to boost children's self-confidence, but their efforts are backfiring. Teachers trying to reach kids with low self-esteem need to know what works and what doesn't.

See for Yourself

‘Doug Unplugged,’ by Dan Yaccarino, and More

Absorbing the sights and sounds of the city in "Doug Unplugged."

By MICHAEL AGGER

Published: February 8, 2013

When it comes to picking children’s books, I am a lot like those old ladies you see in Upper West Side supermarkets, tapping, squeezing and smelling the melons on display: “Is it ripe, dear?” Bringing a children’s book into your home is not something to take lightly. An obliging parent may be asked to read it a hundred times. Nay, a thousand times. The big-eyed sheep that seemed so cute while you were flipping through pages in the store soon begins to vex. Over time, reading the book becomes like ripping off a Band-Aid. Even small defects — an irritating drawing, the misuse of the word “presently,” a character who speaks in rhyme — can form blisters on the parental soul. No, darling, not again. Let’s pick another book, please. I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by the 38th reading of “Knuffle Bunny Too.”

DOUG UNPLUGGED

Written and illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

40 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9)

DREAM FRIENDS

Written and illustrated by You Byun

32 pp. Nancy Paulsen Books. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 5)

THE BLACK RABBIT

Written and illustrated by Philippa Leathers

40 pp. Candlewick Press. $14. (Picture book; ages 3 to 6)

THE BOY WHO CRIED BIGFOOT!

Written and illustrated by Scott Magoon

48 pp. A Paula Wiseman Book/Simon & Schuster. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)

Enlarge This Image

In "Dream Friends," Melody gains valuable confidence.

Enlarge This Image

The little hero of "The Black Rabbit" is stalked by a mysterious stranger.

It is fitting, then, that the theme of these four books under review is the difficulty of making new friends — at least ones you would want to stick around — and the way they can materialize in unexpected places. The pick of the litter has to be Dan Yaccarino’s “Doug Unplugged.” I was already acquainted with the author from his excellent work in “Every Friday,” a charming tale of a father and son who journey to the local diner for their regular breakfast. His illustration style can roughly be described as Art Deco meets “Mad Men”: fedoras, solid shapes, bold lines. But Yaccarino isn’t trendy or simplistic. He’s especially good at slipping in the small, nourishing details that are savored upon repeated readings (thank Heaven for those).

In “Doug Unplugged,” a robot boy is left for the day by his robot parents. Rather than let him go to school, his parents plug him into a database where he can download all the information he needs. “They love their little robot and want him to be the smartest robot ever,” we learn. The plug, of course, goes directly into his bellybutton.

But one day, Doug decides to unplug. Powered by jetpack, he roams the city, where he learns firsthand about scaring pigeons, smelly trash cans and the darkness of manholes. He also meets a human boy at the playground. (“Then Doug came across something that wasn’t in any of his downloads.”) It’s a sweet tale, and true to the anti-technology, analog strain that runs through much of Yaccarino’s work. Apparently, all the world cannot be comprehended in a Google search. And, as Doug learns, “there were all sorts of different ways to play.”

I should probably disclose at this point that I am the father of two boys, and this book is about a boy robot. I suspect parents of girls will find much to cherish in You Byun’s “Dream Friends.” It reminded me of the classic “Goodnight Moon,” with its haunting, twilight-inflected color scheme. A girl named Melody plays with a giant cat in her dreams, which gives her the confidence to approach girls in real life. That plot description sounds straightforward, but this book could easily be billed as My First Acid Trip. In a good way! The drawings in this picture book debut enchant and enthrall and linger in the mind.

Did you catch my mistake? Yes, it’s the classic one of applying adult logic to a children’s book. I imagine most kids won’t give the fantasia of “Dream Friends” a second thought. Why wouldn’t a girl romp with an enormous cat in the night? Why wouldn’t fish fly in formation through a moonlit sky? Remember, we are dealing with people who believe in Santa Claus.

This brings me to an aspect of children’s literature that, despite my wariness, always wins my affection: books that recall some truth about childhood we are apt to have forgotten. “The Black Rabbit,” by Philippa Leathers, another first-time author and illustrator, builds upon the indisputable fact that — remember? — children are obsessed with their shadows. A rabbit is followed everywhere by a mysterious black creature, even into the deep, dark wood. It is there (spoiler alert!) the shadow saves the bunny from a vicious, hungry wolf who is also kind of cute. How this pertains to making new friends, I have no idea (eliminating enemies?), but it is a truth universally acknowledged that shadows are awesome.

Equally awesome is Bigfoot, though presenting an adorable Bigfoot smacks of overkill, like deep-fried Snickers bars. Scott Magoon’s “Boy Who Cried Bigfoot!” can be forgiven this transgression, however. True, his Bigfoot is hairy and irresistible. I also found his overall style to be strongly, appealingly Brooklyn-antiquarian — perhaps because the boy in the book rides a classic roadster bicycle that 20-somethings would love to be seen pedaling to their C.S.A. pickup. The pleasing optics, however, play second fiddle to the book’s midpoint Shyamalan-esque twist: The story is actually told from the perspective of Bigfoot.

At this revelation, a pleasing pop of delight emerged from my 4-year-old test audience. Again and again. I was O.K. with that. With the right book in your hands, rereading is a pleasure. Until you pass out.

Portrait of the Artist as a Child

‘The Noisy Paint Box,’ by Barb Rosenstock, and More

JAN. 29, 2014

Children’s Books

By SARAH HARRISON SMITH

Why is it that little children, who romp gleefully though museum halls in their preschool years, grow into kids who would rather do anything than walk through an exhibition? If only they knew how much they have in common with the men and women who made the work on the gallery walls, rebels all. Three new books, one each on Vasily Kandinsky, Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso, present the artists in imaginative and appealing ways that should leave adults surprised by what they learn and children feeling they’ve encountered brilliant kindred spirits.

In “The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art,” by Barb Rosenstock with illustrations by Mary GrandPré, Kandinsky’s Russian parents stress conformity. Young Vasya, with his big head and protruding ears, is bored and dutiful in his studies of math, science, history and piano. As he sits through formal dinners or spends hour after hour over his books, his eyes practically roll back in his head as he struggles to stay awake.

From "Alexander Calder: Meet the Artist!"

Vasya looks a little familiar. Painted by GrandPré, illustrator of the original American editions of “Harry Potter,” this dark-haired boy with an interesting pallor wields his paintbrush like a wand. Lacking Harry’s lightning-bolt scar, he’s nonetheless marked by a mixed blessing: To him, colors are “noisy.” In an author’s note, Rosenstock writes that Kandinsky, who recalled hearing a hissing sound when he first mixed colors together, is thought to have experienced synesthesia.

As Rosenstock puts it, his paint box — a fortuitous gift from a kind aunt — “trilled like an orchestra tuning up for a magical symphony.” GrandPré employs muted purples and blues to depict Vasya’s dull childhood world. Once he starts painting, the pages come alive with bright swirls of color that fly around his head like strands of melody. Eventually, Kandinsky abandons his career in law, studies painting and, frustrated with the limitations of figurative work, grows “brave enough” to create “something entirely new — abstract art.”

Children who enjoy “The Noisy Paint Box” might want to see Kandinsky’s paintings in person. In New York City, the Neue Galerie’s temporary Kandinsky exhibition is on view through Feb. 10 (only children 12 and older are allowed entry), but Rosenstock notes that both the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art hold many of his works in their permanent collections. Even those who aren’t inspired to visit a museum will take away the lesson of Kandinsky’s life: Listen to what excites you and follow its call.

For children ready to learn about artists’ lives and work in greater detail, Princeton Architectural Press begins publishing its “Meet the Artist!” series in February. The first books in the series introduce young readers to the work of Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso. Both books, written and illustrated by Patricia Geis, are vibrantly colored and interactive, with cutouts, pop-ups, sliding tabs and opportunities to explore and mimic some of the methods the artists employed.

Calder’s fascination with toys, mobiles and what he called “stabiles” — essentially rigid sheet-metal sculptures — makes his work well suited to a young audience, and to the paper engineering of pop-ups. The book includes a delicate pop-up circus with cutout figures readers can use to stage their own performances; an ingenious metal chain, attached to the book at the top and bottom of a page, that can be shaped in the mode of Calder’s wire sculpture of Josephine Baker; and a three-dimensional model of “Saurien,” a red stabile Calder created in 1975, which stands at Madison Avenue and 57th Street.

Picasso — who according to Geis once said, “What the great artists struggle to reach, the child creates naturally” — is, like Calder, an artist whose work immediately appeals to children, and the author makes the most of her subject. Among the interactive elements she incorporates are pages with flaps that reveal astonishingly precocious paintings made by Picasso at the tender ages of 7, 14, 15, 16 and 17. Somehow the act of flipping the pages introduces an element of drama, surprise and fun to viewing the works. Children can also try on a primitive mask, compare the paintings of Braque and Picasso in tiny booklets, pluck the strings of a three-dimensional guitar and gaze at themselves in a folded cardboard mirror — to see things the Cubist way, from multiple perspectives.

THE NOISY PAINT BOX

The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art

By Barb Rosenstock

Illustrated by Mary GrandPré

40 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 and up)

ALEXANDER CALDER: MEET THE ARTIST!

Written and illustrated by Patricia Geis

18 pp. Princeton Architectural Press. $24.95. (Pop-up book; ages 8 and up)

PABLO PICASSO: MEET THE ARTIST!

Written and illustrated by Patricia Geis

18 pp. Princeton Architectural Press. $24.95. (Pop-up book; ages 8 and up)

Announcing the First White House Maker Faire

Tom Kalil and Jason Miller
February 03, 2014
12:48 PM EST

In years past, firing a marshmallow cannon might have landed you in the principal’s office. On Tuesday, it landed 16-year-old Joey Hudy in the First Lady’s box at the 2014 State of the Union Address.
At the 2012 White House Science Fair, Joey wowed the President by using a homemade cannon to send a marshmallow flying across the State Dining Room. Joey then handed the President a business card reading, “Don’t be bored, make something.” The saying became a rallying cry for the President’s efforts to grow a generation of students who are “makers of things, not just consumers of things.” In December, Joey became the youngest Intel intern, after he amazed Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at a Maker Faire, which is an event that allows tinkerers, entrepreneurs, and inventors like Joey to haul their creations out of the garage and into the spotlight.
Inspired by “Joey Marshmallow” and the millions of citizen-makers driving the next era of American innovation, we are thrilled to announce plans to host the first-ever White House Maker Faire later this year. We will release more details on the event soon, but it will be an opportunity to highlight both the remarkable stories of Makers like Joey and commitments by leading organizations to help more students and entrepreneurs get involved in making things.
Meanwhile, you can get involved by sending pictures or videos of your creations or a description of how you are working to advance the maker movement to maker@ostp.gov, or on Twitter using the hashtag #IMadeThis. Take Joey’s advice – don’t be bored, make something. Maybe you, like Joey, can take your making all the way to The White House.
By democratizing the tools and skills necessary to design and make just about anything, Maker Faires and similar events can inspire more people to become entrepreneurs and to pursue careers in design, advanced manufacturing, and the related fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The Administration is already partnering with companies, non-profits, and communities to make the most of this emerging movement. The Defense Advanced Projects Agency, or DARPA, collaborated with the Veteran’s Administration to support the creation of a TechShop in Pittsburgh, where members can access cutting-edge tools for making, andprovided memberships for thousands of veterans. With funding from the Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO and Carnegie Mellon University are partnering with TechShop Pittsburgh to create an apprenticeship program for 21st-century manufacturing and encourage startups to manufacture domestically. Similarly, with support from Americorps and leading companies and foundations, the Maker Education Initiative is working with schools and youth-serving organizations to provide students with access to Making. Last summer, the group engaged more than 90,000 youth and families around the country in Making activities. The White House has also honored Maker Movement leader Dale Dougherty as a Champion of Change.
Later this year, the Administration will launch an all-hands-on-deck effort to provide even more students and entrepreneurs access to the tools, spaces, and mentors needed to Make. There are many ways in which, in addition to the contributions of thousands of individual Makers, companies, universities, mayors and communities, and foundations, and philanthropists can get involved. For example:

Companies could support Maker-spaces in schools and after-school programs, provide their employees with time off to serve as mentors, be “anchor tenants” for makerspaces like Ford’s partnership with TechShop, or, for multi-channel retailers, provide access to consumers for innovative Maker start-ups.
Universities could add a “Maker Portfolio” option as part of their admissions process, create more Maker spaces on campus for students and the community, and support research in advancing the development of better hardware and software tools at national, regional, and local levels, such as the equipment in MIT’s FabLabs.
Mayors and communities could pursue initiatives like design/production districts that allow entrepreneurs to create more jobs or initiatives that expand access to Marker spaces, mentorship, and educational opportunities through their schools, libraries, museums, and community organizations.
Foundations and philanthropists could provide matching grants to communities that are interested in embracing Making, in the spirit of Andrew Carnegie’s support for public libraries. In particular, the Administration has called for special efforts to ensure that girls and under-represented minorities are included in such STEM opportunities.

Interested in getting involved? Email your thoughts, questions, or creations to maker@ostp.gov.
Working together, we can prove that in America, the future really is what we make of it.

Excerpt: The Social Neuroscience of Education

Illustrations by Nate Williams

Is Science Relevant to Education?
Horace Mann, the founder of American public education, believed that pedagogy should be based on sound scientific principles. His science of choice was phrenology, which is the study of intelligence and personality based on the arrangement of the bumps on our heads. Thus began a long history of “science-based” (or, more accurately, pseudo-science-based) teaching.
The most recent trend of “brain-based learning” applies findings from cognitive neuroscience to the classroom. Many steps ahead of Mann’s phrenology, it attempts to apply what laboratory scientists have discovered about learning and memory to classroom education. The problem is that science is complex, challenging to learn, and difficult to apply. The result is that a few principles are taken out of context, turned into a sound bite or a list of “Ten Important Scientific Facts,” and come to nothing but a new set of clichés.
Most teachers are understandably skeptical and rightfully question the value of brain-based consultants who pepper standard educational dogma with words like neuron, cortex, and synapse. The fact is, there is no substitute for the instincts of a bright, dedicated, and caring teacher. On the other hand, a thorough knowledge of the nature, limits, and possibilities of students’ brains couldn’t hurt. While we are just at the beginning of attempting to apply neuroscience to education, it is hard to deny that the evolution and development of the brain is a potential treasure trove of information about where we have come from, what we are capable of, and how we learn. However, this knowledge must be well understood, integrated with what we know about social and emotional development, and made culturally relevant.
The Child's Brain in the Classroom
The brain has been shaped by evolution to adapt and re-adapt to an ever-changing world. In other words, the brain exists to learn, remember, and apply what has been learned. Learning and memory are dependent upon modifications of the brain’s chemistry and architecture in a process called “neural plasticity.” Neural plasticity reflects the ability of neurons to change both their structure and relationships to one another in reaction to experience (Buonomano & Merzenich, 1998; Trojan & Pokorny, 1999). We know that animals raised in enriched and more challenging environments have larger brains, longer neurons, and more synapses (Diamond et al., 1964; Guzowski et al., 2001; Ickes et al., 2000; Kempermann et al., 1998; Kolb & Whishaw, 1998). We also know that when adult humans engage in exploration, education, and challenging jobs, their brains become more complex, robust, and resistant to age-related diseases (Kessler et al., 2003; Scarmeas et al., 2004; Staff et al., 2004). Teachers use their personalities, interpersonal skills, and teaching methods to create enriched physical, conceptual, and social environments that stimulate neural plasticity, enhance brain development, and optimize learning.

The curriculum and social environment of a classroom have a synergistic impact on learning. Supportive, encouraging, and caring relationships stimulate students’ neural circuitry to learn, priming their brains for neuroplastic processes. Studies with birds have demonstrated that the ability to learn their “songs” can be enhanced when exposed to live singing birds versus tape recordings of the same songs (Baptista & Petrinovich, 1986). Some birds actually require social interactions to trigger brain plasticity (Eales, 1985). Studies of high-risk children and adolescents who show resilience in the face of trauma and stress often report one or two adults that took a special interest in them and became invested in their success. This underscores the fact that, like birds, humans engage more effectively in brain-altering learning when they are face-to-face, mind-to-mind, and heart-to-heart with caring others. This is how learning occurs in tribes and in tribal classrooms, where teachers and classmates are able to become family.
The Core Elements of Social-Emotional Learning
Brains grow best in the context of supportive relationships, low levels of stress, and through the creative use of stories. While teachers may focus on what they are teaching, evolutionary history and current neuroscience suggest that it is who they are and the emotional environment in the classroom they are able to create that are the fundamental regulators of neuroplasticity. Secure relationships not only trigger brain growth, but also serve emotional regulation that enhances learning. A low level of stress and arousal—where the learner is attentive and motivated to learn—maximizes the biochemical processes that drive neuroplasticity. The activation of both emotional and cognitive circuits allows executive brain systems to coordinate both right and left hemispheres in support of learning, affect regulation, and emotional intelligence. Let’s begin with a brief summary of each of the central elements of social-emotional learning. This is just a preview—we will return to these ideas throughout the coming chapters.
Safe and Trusting Relationships
It is becoming increasingly evident that facial expressions, physical contact, and eye gaze connect us in constant communication exchanges with those around us. It is within this interpersonal matrix that our brains are built, rebuilt, and regulated. A teacher’s supportive encouragement properly balanced with an appropriate level of challenge activates dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and endorphin production at levels conducive to learning (Barad, 2000; Huang et al., 1999; Kang & Schuman, 1995; Kilgard & Merzenich, 1998; Kirkwood et al., 1999; Tang et al., 1999). Through these and other biochemical processes, teacher-student attunement creates states of mind and brain that make students better able to incorporate, recall, and use new information.
From a neurobiological perspective, the position of the teacher is very similar to that of the parent in building a child’s brain. Both can enhance a child’s emotional regulation by providing a safe haven that supports the learning process. This “holding environment” optimizes neuroplasticity, allowing for new learning (Kegan, 2000). Among the many possible implications of this finding for the classroom is the fact that teacher-student attunement isn’t a “nice addition” to the learning experience, but a core requirement. This is especially true in cases where children come to class with social, emotional, or intellectual challenges. The social brain takes into account both what we are learning and from whom we are learning it.

A.D.H.D. Experts Re-evaluate Study's Zeal for Drugs

A.D.H.D. Experts Re-evaluate Study’s Zeal for Drugs

Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

Stephen Hinshaw, a University of California, Berkeley, researcher in an influential 1990s study, said skills training should be a priority in A.D.H.D. cases.

By ALAN SCHWARZ

Published: December 29, 2013 171 Comments

Twenty years ago, more than a dozen leaders in child psychiatry received $11 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to study an important question facing families with children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Is the best long-term treatment medication, behavioral therapy or both?

Multimedia

How Pharmaceuticals Sell A.D.H.D.

The widely publicized result was not only that medication like Ritalin or Adderall trounced behavioral therapy, but also that combining the two did little beyond what medication could do alone. The finding has become a pillar of pharmaceutical companies’ campaigns to market A.D.H.D. drugs, and is used by insurance companies and school systems to argue against therapies that are usually more expensive than pills.

But in retrospect, even some authors of the study — widely considered the most influential study ever on A.D.H.D. — worry that the results oversold the benefits of drugs, discouraging important home- and school-focused therapy and ultimately distorting the debate over the most effective (and cost-effective) treatments.

The study was structured to emphasize the reduction of impulsivity and inattention symptoms, for which medication is designed to deliver quick results, several of the researchers said in recent interviews. Less emphasis was placed on improving children’s longer-term academic and social skills, which behavioral therapy addresses by teaching children, parents and teachers to create less distracting and more organized learning environments.

Recent papers have also cast doubt on whether medication’s benefits last as long as those from therapy.

“There was lost opportunity to give kids the advantage of both and develop more resources in schools to support the child — that value was dismissed,” said Dr. Gene Arnold, a child psychiatrist and professor at Ohio State University and one of the principal researchers on the study, known as the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With A.D.H.D.

Another co-author, Dr. Lily Hechtman of McGill University in Montreal, added: “I hope it didn’t do irreparable damage. The people who pay the price in the end is the kids. That’s the biggest tragedy in all of this.”

A.D.H.D. narrowly trails asthma as the most frequent long-term medical diagnosis in children. More than 1 in 7 children in the United States receive a diagnosis of the disorder by the time they turn 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 70 percent of those are prescribed stimulant medication like Adderall or Concerta because, despite potential side effects like insomnia and appetite suppression, it can quickly mollify symptoms and can cost an insured family less than $200 a year.

Comprehensive behavioral (also called psychosocial) therapy is used far less often to treat children with the disorder largely because it is more time-consuming and expensive. Cost-conscious schools have few aides to help teachers assist the expanding population of children with the diagnosis, which in some communities reaches 20 percent of students. Many insurance plans inadequately cover private or group therapy for families, which can cost $1,000 a year or more.

“Medication helps a person be receptive to learning new skills and behaviors,” said Ruth Hughes, a psychologist and the chief executive of the advocacy group Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. “But those skills and behaviors don’t magically appear. They have to be taught.”

Accepting no support from the pharmaceutical industry — “to keep it clean,” Dr. Arnold said — the National Institute of Mental Health gathered more than a dozen top experts on A.D.H.D. in the mid-1990s to try to identify the best approach. Over 14 months, almost 600 children with the disorder ages 7 to 9 across the United States and Canada received one of four treatments: medication alone, behavioral therapy alone, the combination, or nothing beyond whatever treatments they were already receiving.

The study’s primary paper, published in 1999, concluded that medication “was superior to behavioral treatment” by a considerable margin — the first time a major independent study had reached that conclusion. Combining the two, it said, “did not yield significantly greater benefits than medication” alone for symptoms of the disorder.

In what became a simple horse race, medication was ushered into the winner’s circle.

“Behavioral therapy alone is not as effective as drugs,” ABC’s “World News Now” reported. One medical publication said, “Psychosocial interventions of no benefit even when used with medication.”

Looking back, some study researchers say several factors in the study’s design and presentation to the public disguised the performance of psychosocial therapy, which has allowed many doctors, drug companies and schools to discourage its use.

The Making of the Presidents

Maira Kalman’s ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ and More

By HAROLD HOLZER JAN. 10, 2014

“Away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read,” Abraham Lincoln nostalgically remembered on the eve of his first inauguration, “I got hold of a small book. . . . Weems’ ‘Life of Washington.’ ” The future president never forgot its vivid accounts of the battles and heroes of the Revolutionary War, not to mention the causes for which the founders fought. “I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was,” he reminisced, “that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for.” The book’s stories “fixed themselves on my memory,” he proudly added, acknowledging that “these early impressions last longer than any others.”

It is entirely possible that some other future president, boy or girl, may cast eyes on these four works of presidential biography and poetry, inviting the question: Will any of the books inspire young readers to revere and emulate — or, just as usefully, question and critique — their subjects? It’s probably too much to expect. Modern juvenile biographies hardly strive for the Weems effect. They are mercifully shorter than that notoriously bloated tome, and far less hagiographic. It is fair to admit, on the other hand, that young Abe Lincoln would not have liked books with “an edge,” just as today’s young readers would never stand for the reverential bloviating in Weems’s megaselling bible of myths. Yet even Lincoln would have appreciated the beautiful and often amusing color illustrations that accompany the best of today’s kid-lit biographies. In Lincoln’s day, a stilted engraving of a miniature George Washington manfully admitting he had cut down his father’s cherry tree was about as visually daring as things got.

Happily, no such restraints inhibit the acclaimed artist-writer Maira Kalman, whose exuberant Matisse-like style, eye for unusual detail, and disarming bluntness enliven her breezy and typically offbeat life of Thomas Jefferson. She talks children’s language, too. Her subject is interested in “everything,” she enthuses in a text overflowing with capital letters and emphatic script. “I mean it. Everything.” So is Kalman. She illustrates and explicates on everything from Jefferson’s freckles (20 of them in all, she thinks), formidable linguistic talents, collecting mania, green thumb, fondness for ice cream, inventiveness and inexhaustible energy. Then, once she has us ensnared in her whimsical world, she hits us with five blunt pages on the horrors of slavery, calmly and cannily introducing the subject with a spare interior view of a cramped slave cabin, followed by a busy depiction of enslaved cooks tending Jefferson’s kitchen, which he enters obliviously each week, she tells us, merely to wind the grandfather clock.

It’s about as much as readers aged 5 to 8 should be expected to absorb about Jefferson’s — and his country’s — shameful hypocrisy without having a sleep-inducing bedtime story descend into a nightmare-evoking all-nighter. Kalman, a subtle but shrewd moralizer, is right on the mark in summarizing Jefferson as “optimistic and complex and tragic and wrong and courageous.” Her book is hypnotically charming, abounding with striking little details that children will remember. Who wouldn’t be enthralled to know that the author of the Declaration of Independence had blazing red hair, liked peas, counted to 10 when he was angry, and had his frayed coats mended with old socks?

Ulysses S. Grant in "Rutherford B. Who Was He?"

C. F. Payne’s soft-toned illustrations, which grace Doreen Rappaport’s lovely little volume on Theodore Roosevelt, prove no less gripping, although they hardly approach a Kalmanesque “edge.” The text inevitably offers classic “weakling to he-man” inspiration, following young Teddy (in truth not so nicknamed until he met his future wife, we’re told) as he transforms from nearsighted nerd to Energizer Bunny workaholic. Rappaport, who is strongest on Roosevelt’s childhood years, portrays the grown-up T.R. as a crusader without warts, reforming the corrupt New York Police Department, achieving military glory with the Rough Riders, and busting selfish corporate trusts. The book sidesteps Roosevelt’s tendency to use “bully” as both a catchword and a political tactic, and brushes past his anticlimactic 1912 try for a White House comeback — Doris Kearns Goodwin may now breathe a sigh of relief — but Rappaport is no less persuasive than Kalman in evoking the virtues of energy and curiosity. And Payne’s pictures advance the text with spirit and inventiveness: The double-page illustration showing President Roosevelt lassoing a gigantic fist gripping a wad of cash, to name one, neatly evokes T.R.’s crusading spirit while wordlessly critiquing the American mania for wealth.

With similar proficiency, the illustrator AG Ford’s John Currin-like realism makes Jonah Winter’s new biography, “JFK,” sparkle like a Life magazine collectors’ edition, but here it is the text that produces the true startle effect. Yes, of course, we will be told that John F. Kennedy, too, adored study, exercise and family fun, but Winter opens his account at the end of the story with a whale of a first-person revelation: He was a 1-year-old perched on his father’s shoulders peering at the Dallas motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, just a few minutes before the president lost his life. Winter watched Kennedy “waving to the crowds of cheering people, watched him getting smaller and smaller as the car drove on.” Could a 1-year-old really be left with such vivid impressions? A reality check would be superfluous. Amid the recent avalanche of 50th-anniversary assassination rehash, how many other authors can offer such an extraordinarily personal connection to the tragedy?

It’s been a few years since I’ve read bedtime books to my grandson — he now reads to me — but I would have happily chosen all of the above to read to my own future president (and then tried stealing Kalman’s for my own bookshelf). After all, what could be more nourishing and soothing than a dose of inspiring success stories leavened by the occasional, if sugarcoated, dose of reality? For variety, the poems in “Rutherford B. Who Was He?” will surely entertain any little insomniac even if the sometimes tortured rhymes won’t soon supplant Dr. Seuss. Still, one has to give Marilyn Singer credit for rhyming “drudge” and “pudge” for Taft, “underrated” and “celebrated” (Carter), “jazz cat” and “New Democrat” (Clinton), and “Afghanistan” and “Yes, we can!” (guess who?).

Suppose, as in the case of my grandson, it takes at least three books on one soothing subject to elicit grudging consent for lights-out. From an hour’s immersion in these four adorable volumes of presidential lore, one encouraging common theme emerges: Jefferson “read many books,” Teddy Roosevelt “gobbled up books,” and John F. Kennedy “loved words.” The lesson is: Read, and then read some more. These particular titles would not be a bad place to begin.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything

Written and illustrated by Maira Kalman

40 pp. Nancy Paulsen Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 8)

TO DARE MIGHTY THINGS

The Life of Theodore Roosevelt

By Doreen Rappaport

Illustrated by C. F. Payne

48 pp. Disney-Hyperion Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 6 to 8)

JFK

By Jonah Winter

Illustrated by AG Ford

32 pp. Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins Publishers. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)

RUTHERFORD B. WHO WAS HE?

Poems About Our Presidents

By Marilyn Singer

Illustrated by John Hendrix

56 pp. Disney-Hyperion Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 6 to 8)

The Missing Link Between STEM Education and Jobs of the Future

James Dyson Jun 6 2011, 10:39 AM ET

As the U.S. aims to create new jobs requiring highly skilled workers, the next generation of engineers are needed now more than ever

As a boy, I loved taking things apart. Clocks, radios, my mother's kitchen appliances. Luckily for her, I was fairly adept at reassembly. I wanted to discover how things worked, what made them tick (and not just the clocks). But at school, the closest I came to engineering was art lessons and woodworking class.
The way the U.K. teaches engineering is a lot more exciting these days. The curriculum has evolved from making matchbox holders in woodworking to designing circuit boards and electronics. Design and Technology, D&T, was introduced around 20 years ago and takes a holistic approach to learning. Science and math principles are taught through hands-on activities, not through rote learning. Students learn by making things, making mistakes and learning from both. D&T can help shape the next generation of engineers.

Some believe iPads and laptops are the key to reigniting U.S. education, but these are simply new tools in an old system.

While D&T is growing in the U.K., it's all but absent in the U.S. At a time when engineering is in such high demand, D&T should be considered as part of the school day. Science and engineering vacancies are anticipated to grow 70 percent faster than other jobs, but there won't be enough qualified people to fill them. With China trending to overtake the U.S. as the number one economy, ensuring the next generation is equipped with the skills needed to engineer the future is paramount.
Education reform is top on the government's agenda, and nearly everyone has an opinion on how to solve the learning lag. STEM education has become the poster child for education leaders. And while there is a renewed emphasis on math and science, the same cannot be said of their less popular siblings, engineering and technology. Very rarely are all four concepts taught in one lesson.

Many schools follow the 'basics-first' approach where they teach the foundational concepts of a design problem first (like basic math), without actually taking students through the process. How torturous for a curious student to learn about torque, motors and circuits without getting the chance to even unhinge a bolt.
Some believe iPads and laptops are the key to reigniting U.S. education, but these are simply new tools in an old system. Computer learning may help engage children, but it remains an extension of the traditional system of read and repeat.
I am one of those students who would have benefitted from D&T instruction, which bridges the gap between learning and doing. Fueling creativity and imagination, D&T pulls young people out of their every day and inspires them. The curriculum involves the entire design process, from ideation to construction.
It also enables students to develop practical skills, as well as an understanding of product aesthetics, environmental issues and industrial practices. Often D&T is a child's only exposure to the world of engineering and design and, for many, their favorite subject.
My education foundation -- active in the U.K. since 2002, and recently arrived stateside in Chicago -- developed an engineering education box as part of the D&T curriculum. This year, a school in the U.K. used the box in its 6th grade class, culminating with the students' Science Fair projects. By taking something apart -- as I used to all those years ago -- the students learned about the design process, from materials to manufacturing to testing. From it, they identified a product they would like to redesign to make it better (one student had an idea for a silent blender).
The curriculum was a success. Students were completely engaged as they disassembled a Dyson machine and put it back together -- even hesitant to leave when the bell rang. It's not often teachers face an audience of students eager to learn more. In March, the Foundation ran its first workshop in the U.S. Creativity and problem solving were tested in a rapid design challenge where they brainstormed, sketched and 3-D modeled their designs in less than an hour. The ideas could rival the engineers of today, from a bicycle commuter train to a solar powered charger.
Real life and potential future jobs require the skills D&T teaches: problem solving, making mistakes and learning from them. The U.S. aims to have 123 million jobs requiring highly skilled workers. With only 50 million Americans qualified to fill them, the next generation of engineers are needed now more than ever. Hands-on learning does more than just encourage a child's natural creativity: it and can fuel the future of invention.

It All Started with a 12-Year-Old Cousin

Science

It All Started With a 12-Year-Old Cousin

Salman Khan Turned Family Tutoring Into Khan Academy

JAN. 27, 2014

Salman Khan at the offices of Khan Academy, which reaches more than 10 million users. Bill Gates invested in the school. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

A Conversation With

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

In 2008, Salman Khan, then a young hedge-fund analyst with a master’s in computer science from M.I.T., started the Khan Academy, offering free online courses mainly in the STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Today the free electronic schoolhouse reaches more than 10 million users around the world, with more than 5,000 courses, and the approach has been widely admired and copied. I spoke with Mr. Khan, 37, for more than two hours, in person and by telephone. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our conversations.

Q. How did the Kahn Academy begin?

A. In 2004, my 12-year-old cousin Nadia visited with my wife and me in Boston. She’s from New Orleans, where I grew up.

It turned out Nadia was having trouble in math. She was getting tracked into a slower math class. I don’t think she or her parents realized the repercussions if she’d stayed on the slower track. I said, “I want to work with you, if you are willing.” When Nadia went home, we began tutoring by telephone.

Did you have background as a math educator?

No, though I’ve had a passion for math my whole life. It got me to M.I.T. and enabled me to get multiple degrees in math and engineering. Long story shortened: Nadia got through what she thought she couldn’t. Soon word got around the family that “free tutoring” was going on, and I found myself working on the phone with about 15 cousins.

To make it manageable, I hacked together a website where my cousins could go to practice problems and I could suggest things for them to work on. When I’d tutor them over the telephone, I’d use Yahoo Doodle, a program that was part of Yahoo Messenger, so they could visualize the calculations on their computers while we talked.

The Internet videos started two years later when a friend asked, “How are you scaling your lessons?” I said, “I’m not.” He said, “Why don’t you make some videos of the tutorials and post them on YouTube?” I said, “That’s a horrible idea. YouTube is for cats playing piano.”

Still, I gave it try. Soon my cousins said they liked me more on YouTube than in person. They were really saying that they found my explanations more valuable when they could have them on demand and where no one would judge them. And soon many people who were not my cousins were watching. By 2008, I was reaching tens of thousands every month.

Youtube is a search engine where producers can upload short videos at no cost. Would the Khan Academy have been possible without this technology?

No. Before YouTube, the cost of hosting streaming videos was incredibly expensive. I wouldn’t have been able to afford the server space for that much video — or traffic. That said, I was probably the 500th person to show up on YouTube with educational videos. Our success probably had to do with the technology being ready and the fact that my content resonated with users.

In your videos, the viewers never actually saw you — just cartoonlike equations you’d drawn. The voice-overs were friendly and encouraging. Had you taken the dread out of math instruction?

I tried to strike a balance. There’s some STEM teaching where the lecture is blah — no joy, no intonation. On the other side, you have people who try to make it fun by making it less math-y. That’s often cheesy. I was trying to get to the idea behind the math and say: “This is a really interesting idea. Once you get it, it’s beautiful.”

Least Common Multiple Video by Khan Academy

Talk about the “studio” you built to record your videos.

It was in a closet at my home. It had a $900 desktop from Best Buy and a $200 microphone. I had a little pen tablet that I got from Amazon and screen capture software. I drew on an art program on my computer while talking into a microphone.

Around 2009, I left my job at the hedge fund to devote myself full time to building the Khan Academy. I dreamed a lot. Then, one day, [the philanthropist] Ann Doerr sent a text message. Something like “I’m at the Aspen Ideas Festival and Bill Gates is on stage. For the last five minutes, he’s been talking about the Khan Academy, how he uses it for his kids.”

He ended up supporting us financially, allowing the Khan Academy to become a real organization.

How are Khan Academy tutorials different from MOOCs, the massive open online courses that many universities offer for free?

They tend to be regular courses transplanted into the virtual world. They tell you what to do in Week 1, Week 2. You take a final exam. Some people pass. Some don’t.

That’s not what we want. We don’t want to see who can keep up with an M.I.T. course and who can’t. We want to get everyone to the point that they have the knowledge that the M.I.T. course is trying to teach them. When you go to the site today, you get a test to evaluate where you are in math. You determine your own pace. And you don’t go to the next level until you’ve mastered the previous one.

Another difference between us and many of them is we have a platform where people can get personalized suggestions. Our software tracks your progress and customizes your lessons. You can take as long as necessary to get to a high level.

We’re more like a highly enriched, personalized textbook, a tool for you on your own or your teacher or tutor.

Last April, when administrators at San Jose State university wanted to use Harvard’s online version of Professor Michael Sandel’s “Justice” course as the basis of their undergraduate philosophy class, some San Jose State faculty members protested, saying the school was shortchanging students. Were the professors resisting progress?

I think they are right. To tell the San Jose faculty, “Hey, move over, we’ve got the Harvard guy on tape — why don’t you facilitate him teaching your kids and you grade the papers?” — that’s the incorrect way to be thinking about leveraging technology. The single most valuable thing that any student at San Jose State could have is a conversation with their professor. He or she doesn’t need to watch Michael Sandel having a Socratic dialogue with Harvard students.

The Washington Post had an article last year saying a viewer had discovered that two of your tutorials were wrong and you’d removed them from your offerings. Have you been growing too quickly, doing too much?

You know, the benefit of this form is that everything we do is out there. You get feedback and critiques. And when we see [an error], we take a second look. I view that as very healthy. We are definitely imperfect, but we have processes in place to put in a check. In a traditional classroom, you often don’t know when a professor makes a mistake.

What ever became of your cousin Nadia?

Nadia is now a pre-med and writing major senior at Sarah Lawrence. She’s turned out to be a very impressive young woman. I do, however, sometimes joke with her that a lot is riding on her future!

Children Need to Take Risks, and Parents Need to Let Them

Children Need To Take Risks, and Parents Need to Let Them

By LYNN MESSINA

I’m haunted by a 3-year-old French girl in a buttercup-yellow dress. She’s a vague remnant from an article I read sometime in the last two to three years about the supreme competence of French children. While her mother chatted with a reporter in the living room, the girl very ably made cupcakes in the kitchen. In the years since I read the article, she periodically appears in my life as a rebuke against too much caution.

She shows up now as my 6-year-old son asks to light the Hanukkah candles. We keep the menorah on the fireplace mantel, well above Emmett’s grasp, and it’s never occurred to him to ask before. For years, he’s stood happily next to his father while I mangle the prayer, waiting to sing “O Hanukkah,” which his dad composed to the tune of “O Canada” because that’s our family’s tradition. But this year Hanukkah fell on Thanksgiving, and Emmett stood silently by while a cousin his exact same age lit the menorah. He’s been pleading for his turn ever since.

I understand the attraction: not just the primal pull of fire but the participatory tug. But I also know fire. My father owns a lab that tests the flammability of fabric, and I spent my summers in college holding a flame under hundreds of pairs of children’s pajamas and recording the damage. Most fabrics smoldered and winked out, but every so often one would flare into a devouring blaze in the blink of an eye.

Still, I think, French children probably light their own barbecues and grill their own steaks while whipping up Hollandaise.

The French girl also appeared over Passover, when Emmett wanted to help peel potatoes. My instinct was to say no, the peeler’s too sharp. But he swore he had used one at school and, well, there are all those French children making all those cupcakes. I said yes, and he promptly cut himself on the blade, slicing a deep gash in his thumb that brought a halt to all potato-peeling enterprises for 25 minutes and left him dry-hiccupping on the couch for half the afternoon.

The arguments against his lighting the menorah run along the same lines as the potato peeler (he’s going to get hurt, it will derail the process) but so does the argument for. And so, acceding gracefully, I light the Shamash and hand it to Emmett, who holds it with one hand, despite my request that he use two. With quiet deliberation, he lights the first candle, then the next. Almost immediately, his little brother, who will be 3 in January, asks to light one, his tone growing increasingly agitated as his will is thwarted, and in a flash it comes back to me: how my brothers and I used to argue over who lit which candles each night. Grappling over fire is an intrinsic part of my Hanukkah tradition, and every night my mom calmly negotiated a seemingly fair settlement.

And then, because all my memories of my mom are tied together by one endless thread, I suddenly recall what she said when, at 16, I asked if I could take the train from our Long Island suburb into New York City on a Friday night with my friends. She paused, then asked herself two questions out loud: Am I ready for this? Will I ever be ready for this? Both questions elicited a no, and yet somehow she said yes.

The calculus of this answer confounded me as a teenager, but as I watch Emmett hold the flickering candle, it makes perfect sense. If her comfort level was a function of time, then the problem was mine and I would wait. But if it was a general anxiety about her child’s safety that would never quite go away, then the problem was hers and I wouldn’t.

My mom died 15 years ago, long before I knew I wanted kids, and it occurs to me as Emmett lights the last candle that if I must have a voice in my head, far better that it be hers than a vague French girl in a buttercup-yellow dress. The parenting road ahead is long and riddled with land mines, and I’m keenly aware that Hanukkah candles and potato peelers are quaint concerns — luxuries, really, in the universe of things to worry about. All too soon my sons will be asking to do things with actual risks that will have to assessed, and as I wonder if I’ll have the strength to say yes to any of them, I find myself thinking, Please, Mom, haunt me more.