Joseph Fuerst

Just tossing this out for consideration.......

I saw a blurb in a magazine (Family Life or Family Fun) which staed a "new
study" has found that childrn who come from neat and clean homes perform
better academically. Of course, there was no real article explaining the
"research".

I'll try to find the magazine.

I question this myself. I have a sil who keeps her house sp tidy, people
get uncomfortable. I remember once while visiting, her 13 yo son asked if
he could have hot cocoa. It was about 9p.m. and sil had cleaned the
kitchen. She said 'no', she didn't want to make it for him. He said he'd
make it. He was not allowed because she felt she couldn't trust him to
make it without creating a mess. Anyhow, I think my nephews do well in
school.....but they may not be able to fend for themselves in 'real' life!

Maybe I'm just rationalizing our mess....but how in the world will they
learn anything if they aren't allowed to 'mess up'?

OTOH, I do find an organized environment enables me to function/focus
better. If nothing else, it saves time when trying to do something if you
know where things are and where they go. It's hard for me to find a
balance. We do have six people living in a 1250 sq ft house...including one
toddler and a 3 yr old.

Just wanted some toughts on this....as far as how environment neatness
effects children. Do you think neatness/organization is a learned trait or
innate? Do you yourself or do you observe your children having behavior
differences with different environments?

Susan

Susan

rumpleteasermom

--- In Unschooling-dotcom@y..., "Joseph Fuerst" <fuerst@f...> wrote:
> Just tossing this out for consideration.......
>
> I saw a blurb in a magazine (Family Life or Family Fun) which staed
a "new
> study" has found that childrn who come from neat and clean homes
perform
> better academically. Of course, there was no real article
explaining the
> "research".
>

Interesting thought . . .
I think it depends on how you define "academically". I think
children from organized homes probably do better in public schools
for a couple of reasons. One, they can find their homework (and are
probably forced to do it at a specific time every day) and so always
have it ready to turn in. Two, they are used to thing having to 'be'
a certain way so they don't think outside the box as much as those
from the more eclectic homes would.

When there were 5 of us living in a 1000 sq ft house, it was a
disaster. It had reached the point where we never even had people
over becasue there simply was no room. Now we have more than twice
that amount of space but we still aren't neat freaks. My kids do
well on tests and such but they would NEVER get good grades in high
school. They'd probably be kicked out for being too annoying.
Rachel would make most of the teachers look like idiots because she
is not a fraid to correct or question an adult in public of the
subject matter is "academic". Jenni would be the kid with her
fiction book hidden inside the textbook everyday.

But back to the question, I think most of the really great inventors
were a bit on the tend-to-be-cluttered side and I think it goes with
the territory of a cluttered, busy mind.

Bridget

Elsa Haas

Susan,

This study, just from what you say about it, reminds me of the time that
there was great excitement about somebody discovering a neurological test
that would predict violence and delinquency in young children. Supposedly,
there was a disorder which caused certain children to "mispronounce" certain
words in certain ways, and these children were much more likely to later
exhibit violent or delinquent behavior.

So....guess how they pronounced the words? Like people who speak Black
English (or whatever it's called now - I was out of the country for years)
do. Why did they speak this way? Because they were disproportionately
African American, and lived in high crime areas in low-income families,
where Black English is most commonly spoken.

Obviously, nothing new had really been discovered. But if somebody had
announced that low-income African American kids from high-crime areas were
disproportionately represented in juvenile lockups, it wouldn't have made
headlines. It probably wouldn't even have made headlines if somebody had
said this was the case with kids who spoke Black English. (Yes, I know that
these kids are also disproportionately found guilty when they're really
innocent.)

Because it was dressed it up as a neurologically-based disorder (the
"symptom" was something very specific, like dropping the final "s" on verbs
in the third person), and it was "discovered" by means of a big scientific
study, it sounded like a breakthrough.

On the "neatness" study itself: I would think that any sample might include,
for example, families that are on the brink of falling apart in all ways. I
mean, if your mom's an alcoholic and your dad's suicidal, the house is
likely to be a mess, but we couldn't conclude that the cause of your failing
grades is simply messiness and that you'd pass your tests if somebody got a
cleaning service in there once a week.

Another question, of course, is whether "performing better academically"
just means jumping through the hoops in school (which you might be more
likely to do if you came from the kind of home where the parents are
generally strict, both about schoolwork and about neatness). If that's the
kind of "success" the study is pointing to, why do we care? If it's IQ
scores, I'm still unimpressed, both because I don't believe those scores
mean much and because of the iffiness of neatness as the cause.

My main point is that there's a big difference between showing some kind of
link and showing that one thing caused the other.

Elsa Haas

Susan wrote:

<>

Just tossing this out for consideration.......

I saw a blurb in a magazine (Family Life or Family Fun) which staed a "new
study" has found that childrn who come from neat and clean homes perform
better academically. Of course, there was no real article explaining
the
"research".

<>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]