Interesting Wikipedia article on bibliomancy

[conuly]

I knew, of course, of the practice of opening up a holy book and reading a random snippet, but I didn't know that one could just ask a child what verse comes to mind. It seems that asking a child does increase the odds you'll get a verse from the beginning or end of the book, and also dramatically decrease the odds that you'll get one about somebody begetting somebody else, which is 99.999% of the time amazingly unhelpful and, the rest of the time, helpful in all the wrong ways. Well, depends on who begat whom, I guess, and what you were asking about....

But what happens if the child mangles the scripture, or happens to say something that isn't (your) scripture at all?

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Moderate alcohol consumption improves foreign language skills

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Unusual experiment reveals the power of non-mainstream media

“Spiritual but not religious”: inside America's rapidly growing faith group

'Annotated African American Folktales' Reclaims Stories Passed Down From Slavery

Why Are Parents Afraid of Later School Start Times? (Why are comments to articles on this subject always so stupid? 1,000 variations on "Who cares about science!?")

The forgotten Muslim heroes who fought for Britain in the trenches

The Forgotten Women Scientists Who Fled the Holocaust for the United States

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Comments

[8hyenas]

I feel like the school start time article could replace the phrase with "daylight savings time" "five day work week" "universal income" and still be accurate. Change. Apparently no one's a fan.

Even I, in the face of beloved science, don't want the school times to change.
But that's mainly because I don't want to have to leave for work before the kid gets on the bus.

[conuly]

To be fair, nobody is suggesting making elementary start times later. If anything, they want to make them earlier so as to free up buses to take high schoolers in later! Because high schoolers have a wonky natural sleep cycle, and little kids don't.

[8hyenas]

I was thinking about my highschoolers (now aged out of the house) all being the kind of kids you wanted to watch walk up the bus steps. But that's probably not normally the case. And...thinking about it. I guess... I'd support later start times. I've been convinced!

[elf]

Why Are Parents Afraid of Later School Start Times?

In part because parents have almost 10 years' practice with the early schedule by the time high school rolls around. And a later start time means either working parents can't deliver them to school, or parents can't stick around to make sure they got ready & caught the bus.

8-3 ish is standard for many schools. 9-4 means teachers staying later, which throws off their ability to pick up their own younger kids. It also means after-school events (club meetings, sports) start later, and in winter that's full dark by the time those are over.

These aren't insurmountable problems, but it's not a simple matter of "just move the first hour's activities to the end of the day."

[conuly]

Your first paragraph is not true. As the article points out, most districts have staggered schedules - the elementary kids go to school later, the high school kids go earlier. This is the crux of the problem - elementary kids need to be dropped off, and also have an earlier circadian rhythm than adolescents. Logically, it should be the other way around - high schoolers, who can travel by themselves more independently and who have a later circadian rhythm, should have the later schedule and elementary kids the earlier one.

[hamsterwoman]

The alcohol consumption vs foreign language article is neat! My husband's fluency in Russian (his 6th language in order of fluency) definitely seems to increase when he's had a glass of wine or two, which I've always thought of as lowering inhibitions.

I would love to have later start times for my highschoolers (one of them currently starts at 7:35 /o\), but we are in an unusual situation where we live close enough to the high school to walk and my husband doesn't work 9-5 so can drop them off at odd hours.

[siderea]

8-3 ish is standard for many schools.

I would have merrily killed someone for an 8am start time in any of my three high schools.

[conuly]

A huge selling point for Ana's high school? 9:25 am start time. (Which, when you factor in the commute, means she still has to leave the house by 7:45 - but first period at our zoned school starts 20 minutes before that.) Of course, her school doesn't let out until 4-ish, which means her friends bitch and moan that she isn't here to socialize until it's dark out, but she's happy.

[sallymn]

Given the way my memory mangles bible stories even now (and was way worse as a kid) you'll be astonished to hear I have doubts on the usefulness of that method....

[siderea]

That's great!

I, perhaps cynically, feel like a lot of discussion about school "start times" is disingenuous: my first high school had a "start time" around 7:30am, IIRC, but I had to be at the bus stop by 6:40am and then the bus dropped us off around 7am and we had to cool our heels for a half an hour before school started. So the actual "be at school time" was a half an hour earlier. Presumably because the bus went out and picked up another load of students. At least the caf was open and one could buy a hot breakfast. But I'm still bitter about this.

(I just checked on my first high school, and they changed from a 7:30am start time to an 8:20am start time this year due to the science which, I would like to remind everyone, we had thirty years ago when I was a student. I have no idea when this means students will actually have to arrive, or present for pick up.)

[conuly]

I, perhaps cynically, feel like a lot of discussion about school "start times" is disingenuous: my first high school had a "start time" around 7:30am, IIRC, but I had to be at the bus stop by 6:40am and then the bus dropped us off around 7am and we had to cool our heels for a half an hour before school started.

On the flip side, larger schools may have a specified start time, but really run on a staggered schedule. If you plan your classes carefully, you may be able to avoid going in until third period.

[mme_n_b]

Not to mention that many parents have children in elementary, high, and middle schools. For instance, in our nearest school elementary and middle are in the same building. That means, that if middle-school starts half an hour later than elementary school, a parent with two siblings in, say, 4th and 5th grade will have to spend half an hour at the school in the morning doing nothing.

[conuly]

Most districts have staggered schedules anyway. There's no reason they can't stagger them so the littles go to school early and the adolescents go to school late rather than the other way around.

[mme_n_b]

Districts around me stagger elementary and middle school by 10 (ten) minutes. I lack information on most districts, but would love to see some. I'm not sure switching that 10 minutes around would make all that much difference, and I suspect 10 minutes is not what the author of the article has in mind.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

Articles that ask "why are parents afraid of later school start times" annoy me. I'd love for school to start at 10 am instead of 8:20, but parents who start work at 9 am sharp are as human as I am, and probably have less resources to cope - do they hire a babysitter to stay with their kid from 8:20 to 10? Quit work? Do their waitressing and stevedoring online? Asking for later start times without asking for extended pre-care hours is just begging to have one's privilege checked with a wet fish in the face.

[conuly]

Nobody is asking for school to start at 10, so that's a total red herring. Few people are asking for elementary to be put later anyway - if anything, they want it earlier. For some reason, elementary school tends to start later than high school, even though the under-10 group has an earlier circadian rhythm than adolescents do. Logically, it should be flipped - and very few people need to stay home an extra hour to supervise their 9th grader.

How does elementary even come into this?

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

You'll note that the article mentioned high _and_ _middle_ schools. That's 5th grade and up. Can we agree that in many places it's actually illegal to leave 5th graders alone? And that even a high school senior may have difficulty getting out of bed on time if not kicked hard and/or getting to school (not all high school seniors drive, not all live walking distance from school, and not all have access to bikes and bike lanes). Getting one's kids to school in the morning is a thing parents do, that's why we see traffic in front of schools in the morning, including middle and high schools.

Re: How does elementary even come into this?

[conuly]

Middle school starts in the sixth grade or the seventh.

Re: How does elementary even come into this?

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_school#United_States
"Usually consisting of grades 7-8, 7-9, 6-8, or 5-8. ..."Middle schools" and "junior high schools" are schools that span grades 5 to 8 and 7 to 9, respectively"

I think our lack of agreement on this subject may be defined by the differences in our surrounding school districts.