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Oculus VR sends invites to the press for a consumer-related event that promises to reveal market-ready hardware. What you’re going to see isn’t all that revealing, but the differences between the newest developer model of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and the first consumer hardware are few and far between. What you’re going to see at this special event … Continue reading

Forget buying a clunky wall mount for your TV… what if you could stick it up like a fridge magnet? LG Display is hoping you’ll do just that. The company has unveiled a 55-inch OLED screen that’s so thin and light (0.04 inches and 4.2 pounds) that y…

On July 10, 2011, Joan T. Daniels, Esq. posted the following comment on the listserv for the members of the Family Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association:

“Thought this article might be of interest.” Ms. Daniels provided a link to an article by Susan Gregory Thomas published in the July 9, 2011 edition of the Wall Street Journal titled “The Divorce Generation – Having survived their own family splits, Generation X parents are determined to keep their marriages together. It doesn’t always work.”

The article discussed the reality that many Generation Xers were/are determined not to divorce because of the impact their parents’ divorce had on them. The article provided in pertinent part as follows:

“No marital scenario, I told myself, could become so bleak or hopeless as to compel me to embed my children in the torture of a split family…. Many Generation X parents are all too familiar with the brutal court fights of their parents…. To allow our own marriages to end in divorce is to live out our worst childhood fears. More horrifying, it is to inflict the unthinkable on what we most love and want to protect: our children. It is like slashing open our own wounds and turning the knife on our babies. To consider it is unbearable…. Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to inflict such wounds on our children. We knew better. We were doing everything differently, and the fundamental premise was simple: ‘Kids come first’ meant that we would not divorce….

Many of us do. The phrase ‘friendly divorce’ may strike some as an oxymoron, but it is increasingly a trend and a real possibility. Relatively inexpensive and nonadversarial divorce mediation–rather than pricey, contentious litigation–is now more common than ever. Many of us are all too familiar with the brutal court fights of our parents, and we have no intention of putting our kids through it, too. According to a recent University of Virginia study, couples who decide to mediate their divorce are more likely than those who go to court to talk regularly about the children’s needs and problems, to participate in school and special events, daily activities, holidays and vacations. We may not make it in marriage, but we still want to make it as parents.”

As referenced in Part II of this series, on April 23, 2015, almost 4 years after sharing that article with the members of that listserv, Ms. Daniels stated, “I can count on the fingers of one hand the times when opposing counsel suggested mediation.”

In any event, responses to Ms. Daniels’ post, which explain a great deal about the mindset of many professionals involved in the field of family law, were as follows:

“Interesting article. Thx for sharing. Comparing every divorce to Medea may be a little over the top (maybe not? any psychologists who want to chime in?), but still, good.

Do any of the family law practitioners who have been practicing awhile see these trends in their clients? Is Gen X really different from Boomers this way, in your anecdotal experience?

Any tips other than ‘no DV [Domestic Violence]’ for identifying couples who are a good mediation fit? Any tips for moving angry clients toward a negotiated settlement? Sometimes the further information route–further information re cost of litigation, further information re assets of marital estate, further information re polarizing positions–isn’t enough. [Information processing is breaking down because of the emotional static?] With the new litigation deadlines, we won’t have the luxury of time to allow the raucous post-separation emotions to resolve on their own. Recommendations?”

Leslie Ellen Shear, CFLS, CALS and IAML responded as follows:

“The problems with ‘no DV’ as a criterion for Consensual Dispute Resolution are twofold. First, the power imbalances and risks can be even greater in the adjudicative model. Second, most humans have experienced behavior that falls into the broad classification of DV. With a skilled neutral, many of these couples can productively work out safe resolutions in CDR.

I find that in many cases, walking down the parallel roads of CDR and adjudication Is the most effective approach. The experiences in each model inform the choices made in the other. One of these days, I’ll write a longer piece on the complementarity of the two models, and why I think CDR makes a huge mistake in bashing the adjudicative model.”

Robert A. Simon, Ph.D. responded as follows:

“As a custody evaluator and forensic consultant, the cases I work on are typically very difficult, tend towards high conflict and a good deal of polarization in positions. I observe, as I am sure many of you do, that when a case is in active litigation, positions can harden, feelings become more intense, accusations escalate, perceptions of the other parent become more negative, a tendency towards assuming the worst is seen and everyone in the family is in pain. However, even with this population of people being what I see most often, I do not see the ‘Medea Complex’ as being ubiquitous or even typical. Yes, parents tend to doubt their co-parent more and yes, they tend to imagine the worst but even when conflict is high, most parents understand that destroying the other parent is destructive of the children. I believe that the author of this very moving and courageous article overstates that case for the Medea Complex. Nevertheless, she clearly points out how divorce is painful for everyone, how good parents continue to wonder and, yes, at times agonize, over how their growing or grown children’s struggles in life would have been lessened had there been no divorce.

The popular sense that the legacy of divorce being inevitably harmful for children is, itself, harmful and false. Much of this sense draws not only from popular cultural beliefs based on stigma, taboo and guilt but also on the research of Judith Wallersten, Ph.D. who, inaccurately, came to the conclusion that divorce is always harmful for children and that the signs of this harm are seen long into the future. (For those who are unfamiliar with Dr. Wallerstein’s research, I would point out that the same of individuals she studied came out of a clinic setting – thus all of the individuals she studied were in psychotherapy). Another longitudinal study, that done by Constance Ahrons, Ph.D., came to different conclusions. Dr. Ahrons shows how children of divorce are not inevitably harmed. Her research shows that whether children are resilient post-divorce or are haunted by it has a lot to do with how the parents regard one another, how they handle their conflict during and after the divorce, particularly when it comes to conflict over the children. Note that Dr. Ahrons drew her study subjects from a broad sample of children of divorce – not only those in psychotherapy.”

It seems to me that Dr. Simon missed the entire point of the article, which was reflected in the following quote: “Many Generation X parents are all too familiar with the brutal court fights of their parents, and today, ‘friendly divorces’ are increasingly common.” I should also point out that in Part II of this series, I indicated that attorneys whose parents divorced when they were minors or financially dependent adults don’t tend to go into the field of family law for the same reasons why Generation Xers don’t want their parents’ divorces.

After my mother died in 2005, I found two large banker boxes in a closet in her bedroom that contained all of the correspondence, pleadings and deposition transcripts from her divorce from my father that took place in 1983/84. I also discovered similar boxes that contained her copy of the file from her divorce from my stepfather, which took place in 1994/95. I read every word on every page in all of those boxes. It was interesting, but not at all surprising, observing how they became more contentious with each other, as the litigation progressed. To say that the attorneys involved in both sides did nothing to de-escalate the conflict would be an understatement. It is now 2015 and I am afraid that family law litigators are essentially providing their clients with “their parents’ divorces.” Moreover, they blame their clients for the manner in which they behave during and subsequent to an adversarial divorce.

As I like to say, “outcomes are typically determined by the way in which the ‘game’ is designed.” My mother’s divorce files very clearly show how both of those “games” were designed and how the attorneys involved designed them. I have kept those boxes in my storage facility as a reminder of the damage that litigators frequently cause to families and the damage they caused to mine.

Since I happen to be an exception to the rule that attorneys who were minor children or financially dependent children of their parents’ divorces don’t tend to go into the field of family law, I frequently share my personal experiences in an effort to enlighten my colleagues and others. Sadly, many of my colleagues wish to interpret the reasons that I share my personal experiences as evidencing that I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and have no shame. They not only say such things to each other, but some actually put it in writing and share such opinions with others. In fact, some have opined in writing that I should start undergoing long-term psychiatric treatment for those issues. They have also published comments that I should stop writing about my “evil parents.” They completely disregard the role my parents’ divorce attorneys played in the dysfunction that ensued.

In any event, a family law attorney on the listserv chimed into the discussion with the following comment:

“Dr. Ahrons’ book, in my understanding, is the first long-term study on children of divorce and one conclusion was that many children of divorce emerged stronger and wiser in spite of– or because of–their parent divorce.

The titles of 2 of her books are, ‘We’re Still Family’ and ‘The Good Divorce.’

Helps me sleep at night.”

Fortunately, Leslie Ellen Shear, CFLS, CALS and IAML replied to that attorney’s inaccurate information as follows:

“Not so. Ahrons’ studies (reported in several popular press books, and in scholarly articles is one of two well-constructed, scholarly longitudinal examinations of the topic. Dr. Mavis Hetherington pioneered this work, and her findings are also reported in a series of scholarly and popular press publications. There is considerable consistency in the findings from these two bodies of research.”

Joan Daniels then entered into the discussion with the following comment:

“The titles of Dr. Ahrons’ books, presupposes that both parents are able to work together for the benefit of everyone—-and that both parties hire attorneys who are not fee churners out to destroy the other party.

As to the question: when both attorneys refuse to provide the fuel for the conflict, the parties will more readily mediate—–or one–or both–will substitute in a fee churner to do their dirty work. And then everything goes (further) downhill.

We have the opportunity to be bridge builders at this critical time in the lives of the family, and still make a decent living.

But that is not how Family Law is usually practiced.

Hence, families are destroyed, along with their finances, and the mental health of their children.

Let’s put the blame where it belongs.”

Forrest (“Woody”) Mosten replied to Joan as follows:

“Our profession and the families we serve could benefit from your elegant point about our ability to serve as the bridge builders for families in conflict. I also agree that when even one lawyer models a constructive and peacemaking approach, often both parties are far better off (See ‘Lawyer as Peacemaker‘ Family Law Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Fall 2009).

In her work, Dr. Ahrons also recognizes the presence of high conflict parents (‘Fiery Foes’) and recommends useful interventions for lawyers, therapists, and the parents themselves to modulate destructive behavior in efforts to achieve a ‘Good Divorce.'”

Ms. Daniels responded to Woody as follows:

“What a joy to read your article and to know that there are menchen like you out there whose FL practice is somewhat based, IMHO, upon the original Hippocratic Oath: Primum non nocere: ‘First, do no harm.’ Your article should be required reading by every litigant as a condition precedent to commencing litigation, and translated into every language spoken in our courts.

As long as clients engage the services of attorneys who are expected to, and do, act as surrogates to ‘fight’ for them (a word that promises future misery for everyone), our practice will continue to regarded as the lye pits of the legal profession, second only to Juvenile Dependency Practice.”

Interestingly enough, on April 30, 2015, a number of the members of the listserv for the Family Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association engaged in public ad hominem attacks against me on that listserv. To make matters worse, they blocked me from commenting. When I sent an email to the moderator, he responded as follows: “You have certainly put your ‘brand’ on the system. Maybe be mindful that many do not want what you are selling?”

Karen Green Rosin, Esq. summarized what I am “selling” in the following comment that she posted on the listserv in response to those attacks against me:

Hey guys:

I know Mark Baer (and like him) and believe he is quite well-intentioned.

Consider his goals: What he is promoting is a philosophy that includes values I would hope we all share…

Something like the credo doctors try to live by: ‘First, do no harm.’

His main point is that the adversarial SYSTEM has the opposite effect on human relationships.

That is the better focus for discussion IMO.”

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I am a white teacher.

Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s in Brooklyn, N.Y., I do not remember having a single teacher who did not look like me. Every teacher I’ve ever had represented “me” in some way or another.

By virtue of being born a white child who spoke English as her first (and only) language, I was fortunate. I had my pick of mentors, my race was represented in most–if not all–curricular texts, and I excelled in school year after year. My academic fate was sealed in the most predictable of ways.

Not only were my teachers homogenously white, but in my 13 years of compulsory schooling, I do not remember being assigned a single text authored by a person of color.

Indeed, I was already at a social advantage long before my teachers even knew my name. My family and I were not tasked with learning what Lisa Delpit has famously coined the “culture of power”; as a typical neighborhood white kid, I was not ignorantly considered a cultural anomaly, nor was I a threat to the tried, “true,” and impenetrable pedagogies, practices, and policies of my teachers’ classrooms and those of the schools I attended.

My parents never, not once, not for a nanosecond, would have to worry about how my teachers and administrators chose to relate to me–or worse yet, treat me–because of my race, culture, or primary language. My parents did not have to worry about the potential for racist policies and practices to impact my outcomes.

As a white child, I would not have to endure a single micro-aggression by some adult who should have a) kept their mouth shut, and b) read a book by Lisa Delpit, bell hooks, Tim Wise, or other brilliant thinkers who have made it their life’s mission to understand how race–including whiteness and white privilege–and the dominant culture impact day-to-day life in this country and its schools.

I may have been from a working-class community, but I had it easy. The fact of the matter is that schools were set up by people who looked like me for people who looked like me. And as Motoko Rich illustrates in her recent article, “Where Are the Teachers of Color?,” despite an ever-increasing racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse student population, not much has changed in the racial makeup of the teaching force.

Different Experiences of School

Indeed, the important quest to develop more teachers of color is not new. Education leaders and researchers from a variety of camps have been asking the same questions about this issue for quite some time. However, it is a question that seems to skirt, if not outright ignore, the system of racialized privilege that is historically embedded in, and endemic to, the public school system writ large.

As a researcher, I study white teachers, their words, and their practices. As a university professor, I teach education courses where, most semesters, each and every one of my teacher-education students is white.

I have yet to meet a student in my college courses who did not claim to excel in school, or at the very least, to do exceptionally well. My students, for the most part, fondly recall their experiences as K-12 students.

Such fondness, to be sure, is part and parcel to why students go into teaching, and it is not far-fetched to assume that they look back fondly on their experiences because schools were set up by people who look like us for people who look like us.

Current politics, initiatives, and institutionalized madness aside, is it really any wonder that we’d want to return? Indeed, most of us who desire to return to school as teachers are returning to the very institutions that have been set up to benefit us all along.

Conversely, why would historically marginalized populations elect to eventually become teachers for the very system designed to underserve them in some way? Why would minoritized populations elect to serve a system that will (likely) continue to underserve minoritized students if the current discourse of “accountability” has its way?

In other words, who willingly, and in their right mind, returns to a system that failed to adequately educate, represent, respect, and appropriately mentor their own student body?

An underserved schooling experience might be examined in a couple of ways. We might think about it in terms of the desperate skill-and-drill measures that Jonathan Kozol illustrated long ago, fraught measures which have been shown to impact schools inequitably.

Moreover, the guarantee of seeing your race represented positively in your daily experience, or of seeing your race reflected back at you by people in power (as with our teachers and administrators) is a core tenet of Peggy McIntosh’s iconic White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

Ignoring Diversity

On the other hand, for your race to be under-represented in your daily experience with others in the most meaningful of ways (e.g., while spending up to one third of your day in an educational institution surrounded by authority figures who do not look like you) is one powerful way by which to be underserved by the schooling experience.

On the curricular front, I would argue that schools’ odd, even irrational adherence to all things canonized is also an example of underserving an increasingly diverse student body. Perhaps if schools permitted their teachers to teach something other than the “required classics” from the “canon,” we might begin to scratch the surface of what it would look like to foster a culturally in-sync learning environment. A curriculum which reflects the realities of a racially and culturally diverse student body is perhaps more likely to create an environment with the potential to appeal to a more diversified teaching force.

The failure to incorporate curricular materials that, as McIntosh puts it, “testify to the existence” of racial diversity is to underserve and ignore our increasingly diverse student bodies. Perhaps if, as institutions of education, we gave some attention to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has famously coined “the danger of a single story,” we might begin to unravel the reasons why our teaching force has not kept up with the student populations we are tasked with educating for a better world.

The quest for more teachers of color involves a lot more than asking schools, programs of teacher education, and teachers to uncover personal biases. Becoming aware of your own personal biases requires, also, becoming aware of how and why school served you well. An examination of your relationship with your educational experiences, however long gone, might reveal unspoken insights into who schools invite back to become teachers, and who they continue to cast aside.

As first appeared in Education Week Teacher April 28, 2015. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Christina Berchini is an assistant professor in the department of English at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. An East Coast native, she flew the coop and earned her Ph.D. in curriculum, instruction, and teacher education with an emphasis in English education from Michigan State University. Her areas of interest and specialization are secondary English education/English teacher education, critical race studies, critical pedagogy, social justice, and issues in urban education.

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In its relentless search to organize the world’s information, Google may have stumbled in its efforts to present the results to children. Six weeks after a coalition of consumer advocates accused Google of using ‘deceptive and unfair’ ads in its YouTube Kids app, the same group is raising new concerns about access to videos that are inappropriate for children.

“Our new claims are really about deceptive practices,” said Aaron Mackey, a graduate fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Public Representation, citing Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

The coalition, which sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday as a supplement to the previous complaint, includes the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy. The groups allege that the app, which is marketing to children ages 5 and under, allows kids to access inappropriate videos — including some that have nothing to do with children at all. Some of the unrelated videos are unremarkable, like videos of corporate filings. Others, though, will raise eyebrows with explicit language, jokes about drug use and pedophilia, and frank discussions of pornography, violence and suicide.

“When Google set up the app, it said it was a child-friendly app that parents can feel comfortable leaving their kids alone to navigate and learn how to start searching using their voice,” Mackey continued. “We found videos that are not appropriate for kids under 5. It’s deceptive to tell kids that this is a safe product. … Anyone, with just a little bit of searching, can find a lot of inappropriate content.”

Cursing and alcohol use may not be so different from what young children encounter passing on television or on city streets, but discussions of suicide or parental abuse are something else.

The video below, compiled by CCFC, shows some of the most egregious examples of what was available to children on YouTube Kids:

While YouTube removed some of the content that the coalition’s letter flagged as deceptive or unfair from the channels in the app, the videos themselves remained accessible through the app’s search function.

The coalition wasn’t the first to notice the issue: Two weeks ago, a user named Marco Acevedo started a petition on Change.org asking Google to “recall the YouTube Kids app” because it allows access to content that’s unsuitable for children under 5.

When Larry Magid wrote that YouTube Kids is a parent’s best friend, he expressed sentiments that many parents share. As I wrote in an earlier column, my own family has used YouTube to watch “The Muppet Show,” “Sesame Street,” cooking videos and any number of videos about animals on our mobile devices, at home and in transit. If screens and smartphones are part of the modern lives of adults, they’re part of their children’s lives as well. The questions parents face is how to integrate them and what we allow on them.

“Parents are likely to believe what Google has claimed about YouTube Kids,” said Josh Golin, ‎associate director at CCFC. “The app has been specifically set up for kids to use and Google has told them it’s a safe place, but that’s clearly not true, based upon the sheer amount of content we’ve found.”

“Children are still developing self-confidence, identity and understanding of independence from their parents at that age,” said Dale Konkel, an emeritus professor of communication at the University of Arizona. “To hear material like this, that parents kill children or some children kill themselves, is going to be very upsetting to the average child.”

Konkel, who has studied the effects of television violence, sexual content and advertising on young people, advised the coalition on the original complaint.

“Young children are uniquely vulnerable to commercial persuasion,” he went on. “They don’t understand persuasive intent, role-playing or abstract thinking. I saw that the YouTube Kids app was advertised and marketed as family-friendly and safe when it came out. When I used it, I was dumbfounded. Most of the advertising and marketing tactics would be illegal on TV.”

Konkel was referring to the Children’s Television Act of 1990, which requires the holders of television broadcast licenses to provide educational programming for children and limit the amount of advertising in those programs. Online videos that are streamed over wireless networks to smartphones, tablets and laptops, or over wired networks to set-top boxes and computers, fall outside of CTA, given that they require no broadcast license.

“Young people, in particular, are growing up in a cross-platform world,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a party to the coalition’s complaint. “What should the rules be? They’re true on screen, so why aren’t they true elsewhere?”

As with so many aspects of today’s converged communications, technological innovation has raced far ahead of the rules and regulations set up for a far less connected world. There’s no reason to expect that to change any time soon, either, with major corporations like Viacom, Comcast and Verizon experimenting with or exploring on-demand video and Internet Protocol television services, racing to compete with giants like Google, Amazon and Apple.

“By making their first app for kids like this, Google is trying to set the lowest common denominator,” said Chester. “We’ve asked FTC to act as the parent to get Google to clean up its room.”

When I was growing up, the daytime TV available elsewhere on the dial didn’t pose much of a risk: soap operas, game shows, talk shows and cartoons, along with ads cleared for broadcast before “late-night” viewing. The rise of connected smartphones and tablets has erased all of those distinctions. On-demand TV means there’s no daytime or late-night programming anymore. On YouTube, you can find graphic violence and sexual content, to say nothing of outright pornography. In the coming years, online videos and apps will be a part of the lives of hundreds of millions of children, in places and contexts far beyond the local PBS channel on TV in a living room or playroom.

The Federal Trade Commission confirmed that it received the new letter and will review it, but would not comment further. Last month, in response to the original complaint regarding deceptive advertising, the regulator said it would review the charges, and also recommended that parents visit OnGuardOnline.gov for resources about protecting children online.

Ironically, the problem that the consumer advocacy groups found lies in search, the essential function that Google performs 100 billion times every month. Moreover, once a child uses search to find inappropriate content, the recommendation engines on Amazon or Netflix that might help a parent to find more relevant programming can also be problematic — the other side of feedback loops.

“Let’s say that a kid accidentally stumbles on a video,” said Konkel. “Because of the recommendation function, it will automatically recommend more problematic videos.”

Responding to the criticism, YouTube acknowledged that its mix of automated controls and user feedback is not 100% accurate, which means it’s possible for parents — and children — to find inappropriate videos. YouTube suggested that parents flag problematic content or consider limiting the available videos to those on the app home screen by turning off the search function.

“We work to make the videos in YouTube Kids as family-friendly as possible and take feedback very seriously,” said a YouTube spokesperson. “Anyone can flag a video and these videos are manually reviewed 24/7 and any videos that don’t belong in the app are removed. For parents who want a more restricted experience, we recommend that they turn off search.”

The latter may be the best option for parents who aren’t always around when their children are using the app. But a parent who comes back to find her child watching a video that’s not offered in the app may not be satisfied with a mechanism that flags problematic content after it’s discovered, as opposed to only allowing videos that are specifically designated for children.

Konkel suggested that Google is going in the wrong direction: It should “whitelist” videos, not depend on an algorithm and user-flagging.

“You can’t filter everything on YouTube and make it acceptable to kids that way,” he said. “Google is trying to shift the paradigm for kids. In my lifetime, whenever media was developed for kids, it was developed specifically for kids and presented to specifically to kids. What Google is trying to do is take all the media in the world, filter it a little, stream it all through and say it’s OK. … They should just take content that’s been developed for child audiences.”

YouTube emphasized the amount of educational and entertainment content available on its “open platform,” as opposed to the channels of programming on broadcast TV. That’s not wrong, but there’s an inherent tension between being an “open platform” while also attempting to host and create programming specifically for young children.

No one I spoke to who is involved in the complaint wants content on YouTube to be censored. Rather, they want an app that would never enable very young children to access violent or disturbing videos. The idea behind YouTube Kids, where children stay within the confines of a kid-friendly app with kid-friendly content, remains sound. It meets a need, even if the initial execution has been flawed.

YouTube is one of this young century’s marvels, sharing humanity’s triumphs and nature’s wonders, while also serving an important role in helping adults bear witness to our worst habits. As parents, we owe it to our children to monitor their exposure to the latter, as well as to commercial messages.

“The Internet is the most powerful information, selling and branding mechanism ever created,” said Chester. “There’s a balance, like anything in life. We want kids to participate in the online world, and the same time, you want to temper its excesses.”

“Do you want your kids to have unfettered access to these?” he continued. “Do you want your kids to grow up so influenced by commercial culture that it overpowers other things? If the most powerful tech company on the planet promises you a safe environment, what should we expect?”

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