I hold on to only a few intense memories from my preschool days (back then, we called it nursery school). One is of making brownies. We stood around a long table, and passed a big bowl down the line, each child carrying out the next step in the recipe, whether it was to break an egg into the bowl, measure the flour, add the melted chocolate...by the time the bowl made it down to me, we were down to the boring part -- three stirs with a wooden spoon, then pass it on.

Who knows why that mundane activity made such an impression? Maybe it was the great smell of chocolate, or the fear that I might have to be one of the ones to crack an egg.

I do know that not only did we engage in precious little pencil-and-paper work back then, but if we had, I sure wouldn't remember it today. It was all about doing stuff: wrestling with construction paper and dull little rounded scissors; peeling dried Elmer's glue off our fingertips; spinning around the blacktop on red tricycles.

It bothers me that Head Start 4-year-olds are sitting down in their little kid-sized chairs and suffering through a bunch of dull yet mysterious exercises that pass for "standardized testing". It bothers me that the success of their year will be measured in terms of letter recognition and ability to name that color, rather than how nicely they share the kitchen corner, make up stories about an orphan dinosaur, or zip their jackets without help.

Which is why I applaud the Alliance for Childhood, which has recently issued "Call to Action on the Education of Young Children". The alliance, which includes educators, health care professionals, researchers, advocates, teachers and others, is standing up against "the pushing down of the curriculum that has transformed kindergarten into de facto first grade," calling for research into "the causes of increased levels of anger, misbehavior, and school expulsion among young children."

While the alliance strongly supports state efforts to make preschool accessible to more low-income children, it argues that those children deserve to have an emotionally rich experience grounded in play, one that fits their young minds and developing senses and social capacities, just as those little chairs fit their small bodies.

The group argues that there is no body of research to support the assumption that pushing the youngest children towards early letter and number recognition will improve their school readiness. Instead, says the alliance, "creative play that children can control is central to their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth...Preschool is the place to...restore childhood play."

And bake brownies.

One thing about the lumbering SUVs that so many people seem to need to negotiate Washington, DC's urban jungle (yes, we do have some wicked potholes, but still...) is that for those of us in normal cars, the vanity plates on the SUV ahead is front, center and eye-level.

So, there was no missing the message on the bumper of that green Tahoe, or Expedition, or Global Warmer waiting for the light at Wisconsin and Whitehaven the other morning. The message was AUTISM.

I think it was the first time I've seen a vanity plate devoted to a developmental disability. My reactions were complex. On the one hand, as the parent of a child who lives somewhere on the mild end of the autistic spectrum, I felt a sort of fellowship. On the other hand, we've wrestled as a family with this issue of labels, and haven't really come to a resolution. It's been a particularly sore point this year, since we're applying to some private schools, and I have been nervously trying to decode the signals coming from various admissions-office people about how well they understand his learning style.

I wondered if the owner of the vanity plate was an autistic adult, in which case I would feel that this was a great expression of pride, maybe the expression of a growing civil rights consciousness. ("Don't ask me to look you in the eye, and I won't ask you to arrange your CD collection by recording date.")

Then I thought (cynical me) that maybe the plate belonged to someone who had made a very nice living, thank you, out of autism. A psychologist or an educational consultant or something. No, not even in Washington, I decided.

Finally, I considered the possibility that it belonged to the parent of an autistic child, and this made me a little uncomfortable. It's one thing to celebrate the enormous strengths, abilities and intellectual power that often accompanies a diagnosis of autism, to be proud of a child's uniqueness...and another to assume that simply by declaring one's pride, you can get others to share it.

Whatever the real story, it certainly is progress when something that used to spoken of only in whispers pops up on a license plate. The rate of autism diagnoses is soaring, so any signs that autism is going mainstream -- maybe even becoming cool -- raise the chances that autistic children will be more thoroughly accepted by their peers, teachers and everyone else.

It's interesting that one well-known group involved in pushing for more research into autism -- Cure Autism Now -- comes in for criticism from autistic individuals who, quite frankly, don't think they need curing. A group called Aspies for Freedom (Aspies is a name adopted by individuals with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism) has even launched a petition drive against Cure Autism Now.

The death of 82-year-old Stan Berenstain, who with his wife Jan created an industrial-sized publishing franchise around a family of bears by the same name, has gotten me thinking about the hours I spent with those Berenstain bears.

There was a lot about them that grated on my adult sensibilities. It bothered me that they don't have first names, for one thing. Just Momma and Poppa, Sister and Brother. What's with that horrible shower-cap-like headgear Momma always wears? Why is Poppa Bear such a doofus? And why is Sister so partial to pink?

But maybe it was that very generic, predictable framework that made the books so precious to my children growing up. They could always turn to Dr. Seuss for quirky individuality. And the Berenstains wrestle with issues that adults may minimize, but that loom large for kids: fear of the dark, the thumb-sucking habit, moving to a big-kid bed, being left with a sitter.

It was interesting to learn that Seuss himself, Ted Geisel, bought Stan and Jan Berenstain's first book about the bear family for Random House, where he was working as a children's book editor...I wonder if he had some special kid-friendly radar that helped him understand why these simple and predictable bears would would eventually rival Horton and Sam-I-Am as giants in the imaginative world of children.

How can judges rule fairly in a case that establishes a precedent affecting thousands of children, when the case they hear bears little resemblance to the vast majority of related cases? That's the question that's been on my mind since November 14, 2005.

That's when the Supreme Court ruled 6-to-2 that parents who appeal their child's special education plan have the legal burden of proving that the plan was not appropriate under federal law.

The case before the justices, Schaffer v. Weast, concerned a Montgomery County, Maryland boy whose parents, unhappy with the county's special education plan for their son, appealed the plan and in the interim moved their son to a private school that they felt would better meet his needs. Because the wheels of justice turn so slowly, the boy is now in college. (Does that mean maybe his parents were right?).

The majority decided that special education appeals should be subject to the same standard that applies in civil trials: the one with the complaint bears a heavier burden. But is a special education dispute the same as a civil trial? Dissenting Justices Breyer and Ginsburg argued that because the playing field is so uneven -- school districts start out with the expertise, the staff lawyers, and the deep pockets while many parents have nothing but their own belief that their child needs and deserves better -- the burden should always rest with the district.

The Schaffers fought long and hard to make that argument. They had prevailed in one lower court, lost in another. They are highly educated, high-octane parents, not easily intimidated by judges, lawyers and PhD's. I admire their persistence through the years...but can't help being struck by this: it probably takes parents like the Schaffers to get a case to the Supreme Court, but that very fact undermines the basic argument that parents aren't equipped to go toe-to-toe with school districts.

The world of special education is full of paradoxes, but this is one of the most troubling: the kids who most need someone in their corner with an advanced degree, a sturdy bank account, a commitment to their success and a ton of attitude are least likely to get that. (The last two items -- the commitment and the attitude -- may be available in ample supply for any child. But the advanced degree and the bank account are probably more important.)

Think about a single mom with a GED juggling two or three low-wage jobs, sitting alone across the table from her child's principal, special education teacher, classroom teacher, school psychologist, etc.

I would have liked to hear that mother's case aired in the rarified atmosphere of the Supreme Court chambers.

In any case, some special education experts believe that Schaffer v Weast will not have much of an impact in the courtroom. Charles Fox, writing in his special education law blog, makes some good points on this score, and so does Wrightslaw's Pete Wright.

It could be that the most important impact will be in how parents and school officials respectively view their chances when a special education dispute gets to a hearing officer.

Remember middle school? No? Maybe you don't really want to...

Here's something that might refresh your memory: the latest edition of Indicators of School Crime and Safety, an annual report from the National Center for Education Statistics, finds that "middle schools were more likely than primary or secondary schools to report racial tensions, bullying, verbal abuse of teachers and widespread disorder in classrooms" in 1999-2000 (the most recent year for which data is available).

Yep, middle school is still where can all fall apart, where Lord of the Flies reads more like sociology than fiction, where homeroom meets hormones.

About 43 percent of middle schools reported daily or weekly student bullying, compares to 26 percent of primary schools and 25 percent of secondary schools. That's a big bully differential.

Overall, the news on crime and safety in schools is moderately hopeful: school crime rates, which fell significantly between the early 1990s and early 2000s, have been pretty much flat since then, with slight increases in some categories.

Interestingly, the report finds few statistically significant differences in rates of crime victimization in school by student race/ethnicity...in other words, students of all races face roughly the same odds of becoming the victims of theft or violent crime in school.

There were some exceptions, though: American Indian students were more than twice as likely than black, hispanic or white students to report being threatened or injured with a weapon while on school property (22 percent vs. 11, 9, and 8 percent respectively).

Ever since the early 1970's WAVM-FM has been broadcasting from Maynard High School in Maynard, Massachusetts. About half the kids in the 350 student school are involved -- putting out an early-morning community news hour, and carrying music, sports, weather and other programming every weekday from 2 to 9 p.m. On weekends, the station carries local church services. The high school's sports teams' events are covered live by WAVM student reporters.

And ever since October 6, 2005, the WAVM students, local fans, and just about everyone in the town of Maynard has been waiting to find out if the station will survive -- or if the FCC will stand by its boneheaded decision to award WAVM's frequency to a California-based religious broadcaster, Living Proof, Inc.

"At this stage, the apeals process ended last week, so we're just waiting to see how they react to our petitions -- so, all we can ask for from anyone who wants to help us is their prayers," Joseph Magno, the station's faculty advisor told me this morning. It was Magno who spearheaded the creation of WAVM all those years ago -- he came out of retirement to run the program again a few years back, just one of the facts I learned from a history of the station included on WAVM's website.

"This is a very comprehensive program," said Magno. Maynard High offers students a radio and television programming and production course for one semester, and then students who want to continue have the option of a second semester. Dozens of Maynard grads have gone on to careers in radio and tv. "It's an integral part of the school and the community, that's why this FCC thing didn't go down so well around here."

WAVM received a letter from the FCC saying the frequency had been awarded to Living Proof because WAVM's application to increase its power signal from 10 to 250 watts amounted to a "major change" that opened the door to having its frequency challenged. Living Proof applied for the frequency and won.

Magno said hundreds of petitions have been sent on WAVM's behalf, with the Massachusetts Congressional delegation weighing in along with a lot of local legislators.
Given the blueness of the Bay State, I asked him if the station had garnered any Republican support. "Well, I don't think we heard from the governor, but there has been some from state legislators," said Magno.

The concept of the "good divorce" is in the cultural crosshairs, thanks to two things: the attention being paid to the independent movie "The Squid and the Whale," and media coverage of what claims to be the first survey based on a nationally-representative sample of young adults aged 18 to 35 to ask broad questions about the emotional lives of those whose parents divorced before they were 14.

The survey was carried out by Elizabeth Marquardt, a child of divorce herself. It revealed that the children of divorce are more likely, as adults, to say that they felt like a different person with each parent; sometimes felt like outsiders in their own homes; and they had been alone a lot during childhood. Marquardt wrote a column about her findings that appeared yesterday in the Washington Post.

Marquardt's research doesn't challenge the reality that most children of divorced parents will grow into successful adults, but she does argue that the process is often more difficult and painful for them. Her research also is not designed to get at the more nuanced -- and to my mind more important -- question of how children of divorced parents fare compared to children who grow up in high-conflict marriages.

The idea of the good divorce has served a real purpose: it gives divorcing parents an understanding of how important it was to make sure both parents stayed connected to their kids, and probably helped many avoid the common pitfalls of verbally running down an absent spouse, asking the kids to be spies in the other parent's home, and otherwise making them miserable double agents in their own lives.

(My own parents divorced in the pre-"good divorce" era, and I think would have benefitted from the concept.)

But Noah Baumbach's movie (which pokes wicked fun at the absurdities of some joint-custody arrangments) and Marquardt's survey and book, taken together, are a useful reminder that even the best divorce is hard on kids.

Whether the take-home message is that parents should be more willing to "suck it up" in a bad marriage is the big question. Most of the divorces I have been aware of through the years were triggered by one of two things: alcoholism or another addiction, or infidelity. I think there is some research indicating that children in marriages where one partner is addicted benefit from divorce, and I'm not aware of what the research says about those marriages threatened by affairs.

Until recently, the whole Wiki thing just didn't make sense to me. It sounded like something out of Utopian science fiction, creating a sort of online "hive mind" policed by its own members, running on the sheer intellectual energy of geeks who spend too much time on their computers.

But the thing is, it's just so much fun. Go ahead, look something up on Wikipedia. the encyclopedia that is the best-known manifestation of the Wiki world. OK, there you are with your information. But you also have in your reach the power to change that information -- as long as your changes pass muster with the vigilant volunteer experts who police the site. It's like a magic pass to the top of the ivory tower.

So I was thrilled to read in eSchool News that the next castle to be stormed by Wikimedia is that of the textbook publishing oligopoly. Wikimedia will betapping its virtual army of experts in virtually everything to create free e-textbooks on a wide range of topics.

If every any group of businesses deserved a wake-up call from the information age, it is the textbook publishers. Why do they insist on issuing revised editions of their hugely expensive tomes every couple of years, sentencing entire forests worth of trees to early death, forcing cash-strapped school districts to cut back on things like art supplies, real books for their libraries, and field trips so that more kids can be forced to trudge around with the equivalent of a half-dozen bricks in their backpacks?

The publishers say they're not worried -- that Wiki books can't stand up to the rigorous fact-checking, careful alignment to state education standards, and expert research provided by McGraw-Hill and the others. But as Wikimedia founder Wales puts it, "the proof is in the pudding." We'll see.

A brilliantly simple idea for helping teachers pay for supplies, field trips, equipment and the other "extras" that public school budgets won't stretch far enough to cover has now significantly expanded its reach. Donors Choose, a web-based nonprofit that we profiled last year in the story A Lesson in Giving is now up and running for teachers in the Los Angeles, Compton, Inglewood and Hawthorne school districts.

The five-year-old organization, the idea of former public school teacher Charles Best, allows teachers to use a simple form to submit their requests for small amounts of funding, along with a description of what the money will buy and how it will be used. Visitors to the site can then browse all the proposals and either fully or partially fund the one that catches their fancy. So far, this Robin Hood version of e-Bay has connected mini-philanthropists with over 6,000 teachers to fund 8,400 projects in New York, Chicago, South Carolina and elsewhere.

It's great to see Best's idea taking off, and winning enough serious financial support to cover the expense of expanding to new territory. But it's more than a little disheartening to realize that in so many school districts, the concept of "extra" has been defined downward to include basics like balls for playground sports.

It's happening all across the country.

Workers come and dismantle the tall slides, the jungle gym, the big swing set. The see-saw disappears. So does the towering fireman's pole, ending the childhood ritual of standing frozen in fear at the top until gathering enough nerve for that first ride down.

In their place, brightly-colored but oddly shrunken plastic tunnels and slides, swings on short stubby plastic-coated chains, and little molded animals on which a small child can sit and gently bounce.

For the smallest children, it's a fine and enjoyable place to spend a sunny morning. And many of the newest playgrounds are designed to be accessible and enjoyed by kids in wheelchairs, or kids with other physical challenges, and that is something to celebrate.

But, bottom line, for active kids over the age of 7 or 8, these new playgrounds are dullsville. And we all know why: liability, liability, liability. The same grinch that stole the high dive from the community pool. "We have to meet the safety requirements, or we are open to tremendous liability, which makes it hard to get enough challenge to make it fun for kids over the age of 8," a park administrator in Great Neck, NY told the New York Times this week, explaining why a new local playground was such a dud with older kids.

However, all is not lost: there are some great examples of playground design aimed at getting older kids active during recess. Climbing walls are one feature of those designs. Kids were actively involved in designing the new middle-school playground for the Ellis School in Fremont, NH, and it has proved to be a huge hit.

Does safe have to mean boring? And is there such a thing as a childhood that is too safe?