Flag Day observed at Mount Wachusett Community College in a special way
The traditional field of red, white and blue has returned to the entrance at Mount Wachusett Community College. A display of about 2,000 American flags honoring Flag Day, June 14, was put in place by personnel from the Salvation Army Service Units and Veterans Committee and joined by volunteers from MWCC on Friday morning.
Among those volunteering to place the flags were sisters Arie Voorheis and Brie Voorheis, who said their father is a veteran. Flying above the display is a 16-foot banner urging visitors to support local veterans. The banner was created by a student in the MWCC graphic design program.
The field of flags tradition began 12 years ago when Wil Leslie, service extension director, and former Mayor Mark Hawke first started erecting hundreds of flags on the lawn in front of City Hall. As the tradition grew, so did the need for a larger space, and that's when officials moved the field to the MWCC entrance.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the tradition, which helps raise critical funds for The Salvation Army's Veterans Fund at the entrance of MWCC. The fund allows The Salvation Army to provide emergency social services and other assistance to those who served their nation.
This article originally appeared on Gardner News: Flag Day display meaningful at Mount Wachusett Community College
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Chicago Tribune
6 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Pope Leo XIV encourages peace and harmony at Chicago's Rate Field celebration
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Buzz Feed
7 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
38 Photos That Scream "American Public Schools"
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Boston Globe
12 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Should boys start kindergarten a year later than girls?
Some districts, including New York City, have banned this practice (with exceptions), in part because these children already tend to be ahead in school, so it could contribute to a long-existing achievement gap by race and family income. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But a different way to address that issue, supporters of redshirting say, is to make it the national policy for all boys. That would make it accessible to more Black and Hispanic boys and those from low-income families -- the children least likely to be redshirted now but most likely to benefit, says Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Advertisement Such a policy might sound far-fetched. The data is not clear that it helps in the long run. Children develop at different rates, and a universal policy is unlikely to serve them all. Crucially, kindergarten is usually the first year that parents have free child care, and without universal pre-K, this would force many parents of boys to pay for another year of private care. Advertisement But research shows that being a year older benefits children, especially boys, in one crucial way involving self-control -- and helps illuminate why many young children are struggling in the American school system. Redshirting has been happening in small numbers for decades. Malcolm Gladwell popularized it in his 2008 book 'Outliers,' noting that professional athletes were often old for their grade. The idea to redshirt all boys was proposed in 2022 by Reeves in his book, 'Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.' It gained momentum because of two changes to education. First, parents have become more competitive about educating their children, and redshirting has been a way to give them an edge in academics or athletics. 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Advertisement Researchers in Tennessee and North Carolina found similar results, including that redshirting reduced the male-female achievement gap. Studies in other countries have also found that older children score higher and have more self-confidence in school. One line of research provides a clue as to what exactly is benefiting older children. They stood out in a key skill: their ability to sit still, concentrate, think before acting and see tasks through to the end, a study of Danish children found. These traits, which girls tend to develop earlier, have been shown to be crucial to academic success. Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and an author of the study, said children develop this kind of self-control through pretend play, and older children probably spent more time doing that in high-quality, play-based Danish preschools. (He cautioned that the potential benefits of redshirting might not be realized if the extra year were spent in a less enriching environment.) This idea -- that these attention skills are driving the differences between older and younger students -- is backed by studies showing that the youngest students in a grade are more likely to be diagnosed with attention disorders. A study of 400,000 children in every state found that those with birthdays just before the kindergarten cutoff were significantly likelier to be diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder than those with birthdays just after the cutoff. A study of 1 million children in Britain found a similar pattern. Advertisement 'Age really matters,' said David Figlio, professor of education and economics at the University of Rochester and an author of the Florida study. Yet he also didn't think universal redshirting for boys was the answer. A better alternative to redshirting all boys, some researchers said, would be to make it optional for any student so that parents could choose whether it was right for their child, with advice from teachers and the option to attend an extra year of public pre-K. An easier change, some said, would be to make the cutoff date for kindergarten earlier, so all children would turn 5 at least a few months before they start. Teachers could group classes by birth month, with the older kindergartners together in one class and the younger ones in another. Also, schools could restore more of the play-based learning -- like dress-up, art and nature exploration -- that was much more common in kindergarten before 2000. 'Boys are half the population, so if we're doing all these things in school that we think are disadvantaging them, the answer isn't to redshirt,' said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, professor of education and social policy at Northwestern. 'We can do something cheaper and better, like not overintellectualizing kindergarten -- more circle time, fewer worksheets about circles.' This article originally appeared in
