"Is it necessary for the average elementary school teacher to know about changes in brain structure and function during childhood? And if so, why is it important?"

“I think we’re just starting to have more productive discussions”

"Nora Raschle, developmental neuroscientist at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Center, University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, talks about the critical time window in children’s and adolescents’ brain development when developmental disorders manifest. In her work, she focuses on the use of neuroimaging for the early detection of such disorders."

A review of the book, "Shadows of the Mind" by Roger Penrose

"One of the world's leading child psychologists shatters the myth of "good parenting"

Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call "parenting" is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult. In The Gardener and the Carpenter, the pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that the familiar twenty-first-century picture of parents and children is profoundly wrong--it's not just based on bad science, it's bad for kids and parents, too.

Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. The variability and flexibility of childhood lets them innovate, create, and survive in an unpredictable world. “Parenting" won't make children learn—but caring parents let children learn by creating a secure, loving environment."

I'm providing a link to a downloadable report by the Foundation for Responsible Robotics’ that also includes links to two news articles about the report.
This topic has been discussed by this group in the past. 

Two editorial pieces from the Los Angeles Times caught my attention yesterday.

The first discusses the need for "better" police training.

"Despite damning videos and police dash-cam accounts, officers are rarely held accountable for what looks like criminal use of lethal force."

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-banks-police-shooting-verdicts-20170702-story.html

The second offers up a novel idea that I have doudts about.

"Once all you citizens of the United States are passing in and out of prison on a regular basis, will the conditions there not seem singularly urgent?"


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ball-incarceration-duty-20170630-story.html


"A recent literature review by Molly Crossman, a Yale University doctoral candidate who recently wrapped up one study involving an 8-year-old dog named Pardner, cited a “murky body of evidence” that sometimes has shown positive short-term effects, often found no effect and occasionally identified higher rates of distress."

"When children go to new schools, they are often paired up with a “buddy”, someone senior who can show them the ropes, tell them what to expect, how to play it all, the dos and don’ts. We need this for newcomers to the dark underworld of depression. We should build, perhaps in partnership with Mind or the Samaritans, a nationwide volunteer system of “buddies”, available, say, for one hour a week to coach new victims through the worst stretches, reassure them that, yes, most people recover, but that it will be very up and down."