Homeschooling Outlawed in Germany

This may be old news to some of you but I found this news posted on another list I am part of and I found it amazing! How ironic that we are all doing Waldorf enriched homeschooling but the country Waldorf was created in does not allow it! I didn't even believe the post at first. I had to look it up on Google. So if you are interested - try it yourself - "Google" HOMESCHOOL GERMANY and see what you find. WOW! There are articles about people selling their homes to pay a homeschool fine. Fleeing the country, having their kids taken from them. Yikes! I am not going to write any more since I am not sure of all the "ins and outs" of this...like is there a way around this law? Is it getting better? For now I am just sharing information. But if there are any people who know more about this please share with us! - Kristie

IN THE NEWS: Chinese Toys

I am sure none of you have missed the articles in the news lately about the dangers of some Chinese toys. It looks like appreciation of handmade &/or natural toys are finally seeing their time in the spotlight!

However, in the chaos that has emerged from this I want to remind people not to make their choices based on fear. Information and research are the best way to shop. I know of some wonderful fair trade products that come out of China, as well as some products that are sub-standard made by crafters or made in the USA. So before you buy anything make sure you have all the information you can on the person who made the product and how they made it. Even though the newspapers are finally "on our side" we don't want to make the mistake of blindly following what we are told to do. Keep doing your own research and following your own intuition. That said...

There was one article, however, that stood out for me because it was so shocking. Here is a quote from that article:"You might be surprised to hear Chinese suppliers complaining that the prices at Wal-Mart are too low, but that is just what this translated article appears to be saying. The complaint is related to the retailer's classic fallback position of slashing prices across the board in order to boost sales whenever revenue performance is lagging.

Although Wal-Mart has tried to increase profits by recruiting a different kind of customer -- one who is interested in more fashionable clothes and name-brand products and has the money to buy them -- its classic price chops continue to serve as an old, reliable crutch. In other words, it will likely never recover from the "always low prices" mantra it has built for itself.

So it's interesting that many of the retailer's largest Chinese suppliers are now saying they can't continue to supply Wal-Mart with the "low prices" it requires of them. It's quite a retail epiphany when a Chinese supplier says that it can't supply products as cheaply as retail requires. Only Wal-Mart has this kind of power, and if these vendor and supplier feelings are true, then signs of desperation are probably starting to swirl in the hallways of Bentonville right now.

IN THE NEWS: Bad News about TV...Again

A friend of mine sent me the following article:

By Anne Harding
Fri Sep 7, 11:30 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young children who watch more than a couple of hours of television a day are more likely to have attention problems as adolescents, researchers from New Zealand have found.

The two-hour point is very, very clear with our data, very consistent with what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends," Carl Erik Landhuis of the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago, the study's first author, told Reuters Health.

"We're not saying don't watch TV, just don't watch too much TV," he added.

While there is a widespread perception that TV can contribute to attention problems, there is actually very little data on the issue, Landhuis noted in an interview. To investigate, he and his colleagues looked at 1,037 boys and girls born in 1972 and 1973, following them from age 5 to 15.

On average, kids watched about 2 hours of TV daily when they were 5 to 11 years old, but were watching 3.13 hours on weekdays by age 13 to 15.

Study participants who had watched more than 2 hours of TV in early childhood were more likely to have attention problems as young teens, the researchers found. Those who watched more than 3 hours were at even greater risk.

The researchers used statistical techniques to control for the effects of attention problems in early childhood and other factors that could influence both TV watching and later attention difficulties. They found that TV watching, both in early childhood and in adolescence, independently influenced the risk of these problems in adolescence.

"Although it doesn't prove causation, it certainly provides evidence that the causal link is in that direction," Landhuis said.

He and his colleagues suggest that kids who get used to watching lots of attention-grabbing TV may find ordinary life situations -- like the classroom -- boring. It's also possible, they add, that TV may simply crowd out time spent doing other activities that can build attention and concentration skills, such as reading and playing games.

It's likely, Landhuis said, that kids today watch much more TV than the participants in his study, who had only 2 channels to choose from in the late 1970s.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, September 2007.