Category — Education

Stick one of these over your laptop’s built-in camera as a reminder that we are all – constantly – under survelience. Particularly kids in the US, unaware that their ‘assigned’ school laptops can be accessed remotely by spying teachers. Unfortunately, that’s a true story.

CCTV Stickers (via Boing Boing)

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Cracks in the wall disguised as art
March of the ants wall stickers

Stationery Of Horror is Jacques Pense’s “bloodthirsty corporate design for Germany’s most famous crime and horror channel”, 13th Street. It’s also the ultimate inappropriate back-to-school gift for ‘colourful’ young minds.

Horrifying stationery (via Boing Boing)

Being as this is a mousetrap, the most painful finger punisher in the world, and would take your fingernail clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I really need to turn the light on? Well, do ya, punk?

Switch me (via Cribcandy(and Dirty Harry, just because))

(Via Kottke)

Anything that makes counting fun while enjoying a cuppa tea is, at first glance, great. But when you think about it, the only number between 0 and 9 that you’d comfortably want to stick your finger in is 0. You know, like a normal mug handle. Thus rendering the other 9 useless apart from using them for the occassional game of ‘dangerous china cup stacking’.

Stackable Number Cup by +d (via BLTD)

When dismantled, the pieces of Eric Ku’s Flatpack Chair spell out the word CHAIR. Fun! Just to confirm, it definitely does not spell out the word COMFORT.

Fabulous Flatpack Furniture (via Inhabitat)

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Literal Periodic Table
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Cow udder milk carafe

Thomas De Bruin has made an alphabet display from sections of Google Earth’s satelite photography. There’s an upper case (as above) and lower case version plus a set of numbers and punctuation – all taken using only Google Earth images of the Netherlands.

Satellite photography alphabet (via Boing Boing)

Every school’s science department comes with an obligatory periodic table of elements poster. But why waste good wall space when clearly this literal periodic table and bench (a clever accessory made up of Lanthanoids and Actinoids, actually) – forcing kids to eat, arm wrestle and procrastinate on – would be much more subliminally effective?

Periodic table (via Make)

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Literal Table and chairs and table
Cow udder milk carafe

Although my six-month-old is probably still too young to be subjected to my record collection (note: during those first few sleep-deprived weeks, various CDs were thrown on in desperation with mixed response from baby – more on that in a moment), basing that question solely on my own childhood is enough to answer it with a resounding ‘yes’. Just not in a straight-forward way…

Perhaps the more compelling question, then, is the one raised by Alexis Petridis in today’s The Guardian newspaper: ‘Should’ a parent even attempt to influence their children’s taste in music?

“Thanks to my desperate ministrations, my three-year-old now likes pop music, but I wouldn’t describe it as a wonderful shared experience,” writes Petridis.

“The first time she heard it – when I stuck the recent Madonna greatest hits set on in the car – her face lit up in a really magical way, but even the joy of seeing my child have a totally genuine, entirely unmediated response to music was tempered by the crushing realisation that I was now going to have to listen to the track at least seven or eight times in a row, on a daily basis.”

The undeniable truth

And there lies problem number one: repetition, and the risk of your loved ones rendering a part of your own, beloved record collection unlistenable.

The second problem is realisation: in my short experience, Kings Of Leon’s last album Only By The Night seemed to do the trick in stopping baby crying (until I read that using loud music as a pacifier was a form of ‘accidental parenting’ – booo). But the realisation i’m referring to is the undeniable truth that all parents know: our babies would much rather hear that loathsome nursery rhyme CD. Even if Caleb Followill’s croon did work temporarily!

Fast forward a few years to Petridis’s example (and rewind back to my own childhood) and surely this is prime ‘influencing’ territory? My dad loves Bob Dylan, but I have no recollection of hearing his music as a child. Instead, my earliest musical memories are filled with Dr Hook & The Medicine Show, Abba, Hot Chocolate and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

So kids like fun, theatrical music (or at least that’s what they remember, anyway). Hardly a revelation, is it? And in reality, nothing we play – however regularly – will change that (I have a hard enough time convincing my wife to like LCD Soundsystem as it is!).

What next for DJ Dad?

The bottom line is that despite our best efforts, kids could (and should) rebel through music. I did, but have since learnt to appreciate Dylan on my own. That Andrew Lloyd Webber cassette tape, however, is unlikely to see the light of day again. So what will I do as my role of DJ Dad approaches? Exactly the same as my dad did: ignore everything and play my music anyway. Why? The same reason we make silly faces and don’t really mind getting up at 5am: in the hope of sparking “joy” and that “genuine, entirely unmediated response.”

Teaching children harsh truths about the world via a fork won’t suit every parent. And if you already feel guilty about chowing down knowing someone in Angola consumes only half of the calories you do – Nadeem Haidary’s Calorific Consumption concept fork does not come recommended.

So My Fork Makes Me Feel Guilty (via Yanko Design)