The Girl Effect

This site talks about the effect of helping to educate young girls.  Worldwide, vast numbers of girls are married before the age of 18.  Because they are most often poor girls who are married so young and have children almost immediately, claims the site, these girls often must turn to prostitution to support their families.  This helps further the spread of AIDS, among other problems.

The suggestion made by the site is that if we can help enable these girls, starting by around age 12 especially, to become better educated, to learn a trade, they can help their families without having to be bought off by a husband.  They can put off having children until they are capable of affording them--or having the option to decide whether or not they even want to be mothers at all.  By empowering young women, the idea is that they can help to elevate their families out of poverty.  They can reduce the number of children born in a given year and thus help prevent overpopulation.  By having fewer young women feeling a need to resort to selling their bodies, the spread of AIDS could diminish rapidly.  And the chain would continue on down the line.

The Girl Effect talks about foreign nations where this is a problem.  I think it's a global issue, including here in the US.  There are still places where the same behaviors of the third world are seen in our own country.  And if they are right, then education and thus, empowerment, can make (literally) a world of difference.

I mainly am posting this for information purposes and idea generating purposes.  Though I would be interested in discussing this tonight, if we don't have any other topic.

Fitness Affects Cognition

Article cites research which determined the brains of 9 and 10 year old children were more capable of executive function and scoring better on IQ tests if they were physically fit.  The fitter the child, the more pronounced the augmentation of certain parts of the brain related to cognition.

Additionally, the article cited research that revealed that students who run for 20 minutes before taking a test score notably higher.

Little Lake Free School

I haven't looked through this site completely, but I think it has some good thoughts from the small part I did glance at.