http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8500108.stm

The tragedy of dying languages

The Kallawaya tribe of Bolivia are experts in the use of medicinal plants

The death of the last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands highlights the fact that half of the world's 7,000 languages are in danger of disappearing. Linguist K David Harrison argues that we still have much to learn from vanishing languages.

My journey as a scientist exploring the world's vanishing languages has taken me from the Siberian forests to the Bolivian Altiplano, from a McDonald's in Michigan to a trailer park in Utah. In all these places I've listened to last speakers - dignified elders - who hold in their minds a significant portion of humanity's intellectual wealth.

Boa Sr, who died this week, was the last speaker of the 70, 000-year-old Bo

Though it belongs solely to them and has inestimable value to their people, they do not hoard it. In fact they are often eager to share it. What can we learn from these languages before they go extinct? And why should we lift a finger to help rescue them?

As the last speakers converse, they spin individual strands in a vast web of knowledge, a noosphere of possibilities. They tell how their ancestors calculated accurately the passing of seasons without clocks or calendars. How humans adapted to hostile environments, from the Arctic to Amazonia.

We imagine eureka moments taking place in modern laboratories or classical civilizations. But key insights of biology, pharmacology, genetics, and navigation arose and persisted solely by word of mouth, in small, unwritten tongues. Finally, this web of knowledge contains feats of human ingenuity -epics, myths, rituals - that celebrate and interpret our existence.

Pundits argue that linguistic differences are little more than random drift, minor variations in meaning and pronunciation that emerge over time (the British say 'lorry', Americans 'truck'; Tuesday is CHEWS-day, for Brits, TOOZ-day for Americans).

THE LINGUISTS The Linguists, a film featuring the work of Professor K David Harrison and colleague Gregory Anderson as they travel the world documenting the world's vanishing tongues, was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. Dr Harrison is a linguist at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, and director of research for the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Photo: Kris Krug

These reveal nothing interestingly different about our souls or minds, some claim. But that's like saying that the Pyramid of Cheops differs from Notre Dame Cathedral only by stone-cutting techniques that evolved randomly in different times and places; revealing nothing unique in the ancient Egyptian or Medieval French imagination.

All cultures encode their genius in verbal monuments, while considerably fewer do so in stone edifices. We might as well proclaim human history banal, and human genius of no value to our survival.

The fate of languages is interlinked with that of species, as they undergo parallel extinctions. Scientific knowledge is comparable for both domains, with an estimated 80% of plant and animal species unknown to science, and 80% of languages yet to be documented.

But species and ecosystems unknown to science are well-known to local people, whose languages encode not only names for things, but also complex interrelations among them.

Packaged in ways that resist direct translation, this knowledge dissipates when people shift to speaking global tongues. What the Kallawaya of Bolivia know about medicinal plants, how the Yupik of Alaska name 99 distinct sea ice formations, how the Tofa of Siberia classify reindeer. Entire domains of ancient knowledge, only scantily documented, are rapidly eroding.

I have to talk to myself. There's nobody left to talk to, all the elders have passed on Johnny Hill, Jr, Chemehuevi tribe, Arizona

Linguistic survivors hold the fates of languages in their minds and mouths.

Johnny Hill, Jr of the Chemehuevi tribe of Arizona is a big, imposing man, but he instantly wins people over with his gentle humility. Designated "last speaker" of Chemehuevi, Johnny achieved celebrity in the 2008 documentary film The Linguists.

Although he had never previously travelled far from his reservation or flown on an aeroplane, Johnny mesmerized film festival-goers with his life story. Raised by his grandmother who spoke only Chemehuevi, Johnny learned English at school seeking a path out of isolation.

At the other end of his lifespan, Johnny finds himself linguistically isolated once again. "I have to talk to myself," he explains resignedly. "There's nobody left to talk to, all the elders have passed on, so I talk to myself... that's just how it is."

Johnny has tried to teach his children and others in the tribe. "Trouble is," he sighs, "they say they want to learn it, but when it comes time to do the work, nobody comes around."

Speakers react differently to loss - from indifference to despair - and adopt diverse strategies. Some blame governments or globalization, others blame themselves. Around the world, a growing wave of language activists works to revitalize their threatened tongues. Positive attitudes are the single most powerful force keeping languages alive, while negative ones can doom them.

An archive picture of a clan leader welcoming a dignitary to one of the Torres Islands

Two dozen language hotspots have now been identified globally, and new technologies are being mobilised to the cause.

A Torres Straits' Islander in Australia told me: "Our language is standing still, we need to make it relevant to today's society. We need to create new words, because right now we can't say 'computer'."

The lowly text message may lift obscure tongues to new levels of prestige, translated software may help them cross the digital divide. Hip-hop performed in threatened tongues, as I've heard among young Aka speakers in India, infuses new vitality.

Language revitalisation will prove to be one of the most consequential social trends of coming decades. This push-back against globalization will profoundly influence human intellectual life, deciding the fate of ancient knowledge.

What hubris allows us, cocooned comfortably in our cyber-world, to think that we have nothing to learn from people who a generation ago were hunter-gatherers? What they know - which we've forgotten or never knew - may some day save us.

We hear their voices, now muted, sharing knowledge in 7,000 different ways of speaking. Let's listen while we still can.

K David Harrison is the author of the forthcoming book The Last Speakers: The Quest to Uncover the World's Most Endangered Languages.

Page last updated at 12:03 GMT, Saturday, 6 February 2010

In Paris, the customer is not always right

The idea of service is taken very seriously in France where any feeling of subservience is strongly resisted, as Emma Jane Kirby discovered.

Parisian workers traditionally regard themselves as the customer's equal

Paris is in a bad mood.

The sullen, steel-grey sky seems to be permanently snivelling sleet.

The Seine, swollen against its banks, pushes and squeezes its way through the city like an irascible woman in too-tight shoes.

And the January depression has even sucked some of the glitzy dazzle out of the Eiffel Tower, leaving it looking - at least from a distance - like a rather cheap, left-over Christmas decoration.

It may be the city of romance and a mecca for tourists, but right now Paris feels and looks like it just cannot be bothered any more to turn on the charm.

Not that this city is exactly known for its sense of service.

The customer is allegedly always right in London but, in Paris, he or she is little more than an irritant.

Cab 'service'

A couple of months back, I broke my leg in a skiing accident and became completely reliant on Paris's taxi service.

Under the circumstances, even though I was paying for this ride, I felt unable to ask this clearly sensitive man to turn down his deafening rap music

Wobbling precariously on my crutches after a family dinner in a local restaurant, I hailed the first cab in the rank.

He drove up, glanced at my plastered leg and drove straight off again shouting: "I don't take cripples. Your crutches might damage my paintwork!"

Somewhat stupefied, I hailed the next cab in line and politely asked the driver if I could sit up front as it was easier for my leg.

"I'm not arranging my whole damn cab to accommodate you," he snapped. "I've got all my personal things piled on the front seat!"

As he drove off at an angry speed, I got a glance of the front passenger seat and saw it was adorned with one folded newspaper.

The taxi driver who finally chauffeured me home was pleasant enough, although a stark notice on the back of the seat reminded me that it would not be wise to push my luck.

"Do not use your mobile phone in this cab," warned the hand-written sticker, "it annoys your driver."

Under the circumstances, even though I was paying for this ride, I felt unable to ask this clearly sensitive man to turn down his deafening rap music.

'I'm not your slave'

The fact is Parisians employed in any service industry simply do not buy into the Anglo Saxon maxim, "He who pays the piper calls the tune."

In France your waiter expects to be addressed formally as Monsieur, in exactly the same way he will address you

The revolution of 1789 has burned the notion of equality deep into the French psyche and a proud Parisian finds it abhorrently degrading to act subserviently.

This Sunday, a Parisian friend of mine waited in line at the fruit and vegetable stall of his local market.

When it was his turn to be served, he asked the seller for a kilo of leeks.

"They're at the other end of the stall," snapped the vendor waspishly. "Take a bit of exercise and get them yourself."

There is no mistaking the undertone, "I'm not your slave."

At my doctor's, the two dour receptionists are quite delightful when we meet on the street, sharing jokes and asking kindly after my broken leg.

Back behind their desk, however, they brood and scowl. There is not even a gesture of recognition, let alone a friendly smile.

On the street it is acknowledged that we are equals but, once back in the surgery - in that uncomfortable position of service provider and client - the receptionists become wary of a potential shift of power and are quick to squash any assumptions of superiority.

Blunt honesty

In America, your waiter comes to your restaurant table to tell you his name is Joe. Here, your waiter expects to be addressed formally as Monsieur, in exactly the same way he will address you.

It is made clear from the start that no-one has the upper hand. The strict code of manners in Paris is a deliberate class-leveller.

'Don't even think about it,' said the shop assistant bluntly, 'not with that big fat leg'

Perhaps Parisians are just being honest.

Our American waiter Joe, after all, only promises to give us "good folks a great time" because he wants a terrific tip but, in Paris, providing quality is a matter of personal pride.

In the boulangerie next to our office, the baker spends a good 90 seconds skilfully wrapping up my plain brioche into an artistic cornet, even though she must know I will rip it open the second I leave her shop.

When I ask the local greengrocer for an avocado, he asks when I plan to eat it before dutifully feeling every avocado in the box to find the one which will be perfectly ripe on that day.

Last week, as I waited in the damp gloom for a taxi to take me home after yet another hospital appointment, I decided to shelter in the expensive dress shop next door.

I held up a woollen dress against me and admired myself in the mirror.

The shop assistant, nonchalantly blowing bubble-gum bubbles, looked narrowly at me and shook her head.

"Don't even think about it," she said bluntly, "not with that big fat leg."

The man who smuggled himself into Auschwitz

More than a million people died in Auschwitz

By Rob Broomby BBC News

When millions would have done anything to get out, one remarkable British soldier smuggled himself into Auschwitz to witness the horror so he could tell others the truth.

Denis Avey is a remarkable man by any measure. A courageous and determined soldier in World War II, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a camp connected to the Germans' largest concentration camp, Auschwitz.

But his actions while in the camp - which he has never spoken about until now - are truly extraordinary. When millions would have done anything to get out, Mr Avey repeatedly smuggled himself into the camp.

Denis Avey: "They knew they'd only last five months"

Now 91 and living in Derbyshire, he says he wanted to witness what was going on inside and find out the truth about the gas chambers, so he could tell others. He knows he took "a hell of a chance".

"When you think about it in today's environment it is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous," he says.

"You wouldn't think anyone would think or do that, but that is how I was. I had red hair and a temperament to match. Nothing would stop me."

He arranged to swap for one night at a time with a Jewish inmate he had come to trust. He exchanged his uniform for the filthy, stripy garments the man had to wear. For the Auschwitz inmate it meant valuable food and rest in the British camp, while for Denis it was a chance to gather facts on the inside.

Evil

He describes Auschwitz as "hell on earth" and says he would lie awake at night listening to the ramblings and screams of prisoners.

"It was pretty ghastly at night, you got this terrible stench," he says.

He talked to Jewish prisoners but says they rarely spoke of their previous life. Instead they were focused on the hell they were living and the work they were forced to do in factories outside the camp.

FIND OUT MORE... Listen to Denis Avey's story on the BBC News channel throughout Sunday and on Broadcasting House, BBC Radio 4 at 0900 GMT. Or listen to it here later

"There were nearly three million human beings worked to death in different factories," says Mr Avey. "They knew at that rate they'd last about five months.

"They very seldom talk about their civil life. They only talked about the situation, the punishments they were getting, the work they were made to do."

He says he would ask where people he'd met previously had gone and he would be told they'd "gone up the chimney".

"It was so impersonal. Auschwitz was evil, everything about it was wrong."

He also witnessed the brutality meted out to the prisoners, saying people were shot daily. He was determined to help, especially when he met Jewish prisoner Ernst Lobethall.

'Bloody marvellous'

Mr Lobethall told him he had a sister Susana who had escaped to England as a child, on the eve of war. Back in his own camp, Mr Avey contacted her via a coded letter to his mother.

He arranged for cigarettes, chocolate and a letter from Susana to be sent to him and smuggled them to his friend. Cigarettes were more valuable than gold in the camp and he hoped he would be able to trade them for favours to ease his plight - and he was right.

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Auschwitz prisoner's sister meets man who helped save him

Mr Lobethall traded two packs of Players cigarettes in return for getting his shoes resoled. It helped save his life when thousands perished or were murdered on the notorious death marches out of the camps in winter in 1945.

Mr Avey briefly met Susana Lobethall in 1945, when he came home from the war. He was fresh from the camp and was traumatised by what he'd witnessed and endured.

At the time both of them thought Ernst was dead. He'd actually survived, thanks - in part - to the smuggled cigarettes. But she lost touch with Mr Avey and was never able to tell him the good news.

The BBC has now reunited the pair after tracing Susana, who is now Susana Timms and lives in the Midlands. Mr Avey was told his friend moved to America after the war, where he had children and lived a long and happy life. The old soldier says the news is "bloody marvellous".

'Ginger'

Sadly, the emotional reunion came too late for Ernst - later Ernie - who died never even knowing the real name of the soldier who he says helped him survive Auschwitz.

But before he died Mr Lobethall recorded his survival story on video for the Shoah Foundation, which video the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. In it he spoke of his friendship with a British soldier in Auschwitz who he simply called "Ginger". It was Denis.

Ernest Lobethall moved to the US

He also recalled how the cigarettes, chocolate and a letter from his sister in England were smuggled to him in the midst of war.

"It was like being given the Rockefeller Centre," he says in the video.

Mr Avey traded places twice and slept overnight in Auschwitz. He tried a third time but he was almost caught and the plan was aborted.

He suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when he came back from the war and has only recently been able to speak about what he did and what he saw.

He admits some may find it hard to believe and acknowledges it was "foolhardy".

"But that is how I was," he simply says.

把掌声留给华文老师

把掌声留给华文老师
（2009-11-29）
● 李慧玲

　　华文老师在众多科目老师当中，心理素质其实是最强的，这才能够经得起一波又一波的震荡。在岛国的教育史当中，最为折腾的是华文，没有其他科目像华文一样，需要跟着内部和外部的环境过山车。

自由鱼

星期一的早晨，我不是很有把握的来到维多利亚学校。中学基本上已经放假了，而且最近天气总是阴阴的，雨说下就下，我不是很有把握，读报教育教师手册的推介仪式，到底会有多少老师来。他们还会来吗？

　　进入学校的礼堂，观众席上还是坐了很多人。那不是我们安排来充场面的，同事说，编写手册教案的老师21人之外，其实有100多位老师是自己报名来的。什么原因让他们来呢？

　 　推介仪式和几位老师对读报教育的分享完毕后，我们到餐厅用茶点。老师们没有排队拿食物，他们在长龙里等待领一份教学手册。拿了之后，他们没有像孩子们拿 了礼物被告知不能立即打开那样。他们马上就把塑料包装撕开，一起翻阅和讨论。有些老师现场就希望一所学校能够多要几份。
　　之前，在礼堂 里，老师们分享编写教案和试教的情况时，一位在邻里学校的老师热情洋溢地说，后来如果没有安排读报课，她的学生就会不断追问为什么不上读报课了。学生的反 应出乎她的意料之外，其实也可能出乎学生自己的意料之外。他们现在发现，自己原来读得懂《联合早报》上的国际新闻。

　　我在这套教案试教半 年快结束前，总算安排出时间去学校观课。那是邻里学校中一的学生，学生翻报纸玩老师设计的游戏，抢着举手回答问题。体育新闻版里学语文，篮球比赛用什么形 容词，请表演灌篮的动作。课上得热闹，站在课室前面的华文老师，活泼地用少年的语言和学生一来一往。有时柔声鼓励，有时用激将法。华文老师像个落力演出的 演员，没有威权，只有亲和力。
　　我们开始做这个读报计划时，很快意识到我们用的是报人的语言，老师们用的是教学的语言。我们要怎样用教学 的方法，把报纸的阅读方式传送到学生那里去？今年初，我和《逗号》副主编慧容讨论给老师们安排讲座、研讨时，左挑右选了好几个星期六。学校正事杂事已够 多，老师明年愿意再花这个时间和心思吗？刚刚开学的星期六好不好？农历新年前的星期六好不好？就这样，我们有点过意不去的占据了编写教案的华文老师好几个 星期六。

　　但那只是开始的阶段。真正进入编写教案，还有会议。而老师们几人一组，也要经常自己碰头。我在教学手册里看到培雅中学的谢陈琦 老师回忆美丽的合作过程时，叙述了这一段：“当初为了写教案，春娇老师和我‘山长水远’分别从金文泰和新民路下课后赶去科兰芝中学讨论。第一个教案讨论完 毕后才发觉晓玲老师的学校已经空无一人，附近组屋万家灯火。我开动车子欲离开科兰芝中学时，学校大门早被锁上，等了约莫20多分钟，晓玲和春娇才出现，真 是‘虚惊一场’。讨论第二个教案时，是5月1日！劳动节，地点还是科兰芝中学。没办法，老师平时事务繁忙，为了完成任务，只好连公共假日亦赔上。”

看起来付出的是时间，但是在付出时间的背后，展示的是华文老师的信念和理想。我再翻看参与的华文老师留下的感言，没有悲情，有的只是帮助教学、引起学生兴 趣，并且提高学生能力的殷切期望。他们当中，大部分来自邻里学校，几位老师来自历史悠久的传统英校。直接面对学生，他们比谁都清楚现实，却又比谁都努力地 依照现实，为华文课寻找新的有效的方法。引起兴趣的同时，让学生通过华文看到世界，在不知不觉中培养不同观念，了解华文不只属于教室、课本和考试。

　 　我从他们想到了自己接触到的许多华文老师。这几年来，我在不同的培训、讲座场合里碰到他们，当中有我的老师辈，也有我的同代人。华文老师在岛国是一个特 殊的群体，一方面受到特别的尊重——其他科目也没有模范教师奖项，唯独华文老师有之；另一方面，他们承担比任何老师更大的压力，在社会上成为经常被单挑出 来议论的群体：学生学习华文的经验备受关注，学得不好，抱怨华文老师教学沉闷、方法古老，造成孩子恐惧，似乎都言之成理，并且在媒体里得到放大。我的同代 人中，一些选择当了华文老师。我们都是时代的产物，华文程度不高，大学中文系里同学抄笔记时用拼音，文字不通的为数不少。从某个角度而言，我们是时代的牺 牲者，但在他们决心继承华文老师衣钵的时候，时代在他们身上留下印记的责任，却也都由他们扛下。作为一个群体，无论是哪个年龄层，华文老师轻易就成为别人 公开指指点点的对象。

　　华文老师在众多科目老师当中，心理素质其实是最强的，这才能够经得起一波又一波的震荡。在岛国的教育史当中，最为 折腾的是华文，没有其他科目像华文一样，需要跟着内部和外部的环境过山车。而在这个过程当中，一代又一代的华文老师不断适应，在最迷惘的时刻坚持着，在最 清楚的时候困惑着，在最喧闹的时候沉默着。但是什么原因，让他们一代又一代人锲而不舍？

　　这段日子里，我还接到圣约瑟书院的李老师发来的电邮，准备和学生报讨论可以如何为他们的学生量身定做，让孩子们快乐的学习，拓展视野。也有其他学校年轻的华文老师跟我反映他们如何受挫后，分享他们正如何为明年备课。

　　我没有问什么老师们星期一的早上八点多钟，为什么还要到东部维多利亚学校参加读报教育手册的推介仪式。我只是自忖，给学生解释成语时，华文老师能不能用自身的经验来示范说明什么叫做“百折不挠”？

　　（作者是本报高级执行编辑）

Children create new sign language

Last Updated: Thursday, 16 September, 2004, 18:51 GMT 19:51 UK

Children create new sign language

By Julianna Kettlewell BBC News Online science staff

Some language rules may be innate

A new sign language created over the last 30 years by deaf children in Nicaragua has given experts a unique insight into how languages evolve.

The language follows many basic rules common to all tongues, even though the children were not taught them.

It indicates some language traits are not passed on by culture, but instead arise due to the innate way human beings process language, experts claim.

The US-led research is detailed in the latest issue of Science magazine.

Debate

The development of language has long been the focus of debate. Some people in the extreme "nature" camp believe that grammar is essentially hard-wired in the brain, while those in the extreme "nurture" camp think language has no innate basis and is just culturally transmitted.

This research has made some of the most interesting discoveries in language acquisition in decades Steven Pinker

It has been difficult to clear up the argument, because most existing languages are ancient in origin and it is therefore hard to pinpoint how they formed.

That is why the sign language invented by a small group of deaf children in Nicaragua is so unusual. It has given scientists the clearest insight yet into how humans learn language.

"When people study historical linguistics to try to figure out how languages are born they are usually looking at old historical data, like scratches on rocks," explained co-author Ann Senghas of Columbia University, New York.

"This is the first time we have had the opportunity to observe it in action because the originators are still alive."

Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University and author of a seminal book on the acquisition and evolution of language - The Language Instinct - is impressed by the findings.

"I think this research has made some of the most interesting discoveries in language acquisition in decades," he told BBC News Online.

"It shows that children have sophisticated mechanisms of language analysis which give language many of its distinctive qualities."

Crude gestures

Before the 1970s, most deaf people in Nicaragua stayed at home and had little contact with one another, according to Dr Senghas.

Then, in 1981, a vocational school opened, and the children began to communicate with each other. No one actually taught them to sign, but they began to develop a system of gestures to get their messages across.

At first, these were rather crude and pantomime-like, similar to the gestures a hearing person might make if they had to describe something without speaking.

But as a new wave of children learned the gestures they turned them into a sophisticated sign language, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), complete with traits seen in nearly all other languages - both spoken and sign.

One key trait that the children adopted is called "discreteness". This refers to the process of breaking down information into small manageable packages.

Expressions of motion are particularly useful for studying discreteness in spoken and sign languages. In developed languages, we break up the idea of continuous motion into separate words.

So, in the expression "rolling down the hill", one word (rolling) conveys the movement, while another (down) conveys the direction.

But if a hearing person were asked to convey this idea in gestures alone, they would almost certainly do it with a single continuous movement.

Rolling cat

Dr Senghas and her colleagues showed the deaf people from each of the age groups a cartoon, in which a cat swallows a ball and then wobbles down a steep road. Then they asked the participants to tell the story.

The oldest group, who invented the initial "crude" form of NSL, told it with one continuous gesture as a hearing person might.

NSL follows basic rules common to nearly all languages

But the younger groups did something different. They separated the movement and direction into separate signs as is done in spoken language.

"If they were just clever at learning they would have learned to do it the way they had seen it being done," said Dr Senghas. "But that isn't what they did - they ended up acquiring something different. They ended up breaking down the gestures into something they could build a language out of."

This is compelling evidence that humans are predisposed to develop language in this way, say the researchers. In other words, children instinctively break information down into small chunks so they can have the flexibility to string them back together, to form sentences with a range of meanings.

Interestingly, adults lose this talent, which also suggests there is an innate element to the language learning process.

"We lose the ability to break information into discrete elements as we age," said Dr Senghas. "It is not just that children can do it, but adults can't do it."

Dr Senghas does not claim her findings support the extreme "nature" camp, but that they do suggest there is an instinctive component to the way we learn language.

"It doesn't prove that language is hard wired to the degree some people say it is, but it does prove the fundamentals of language are part of the innate endowment," she said. "So you don't have language or grammar in your head when you are born, but you do have certain learning abilities."

Professor Pinker said the results of the study showed something that had always been suspected by some psychologists.

But, he said: "Since children's language ordinarily ends up the same as their parents' language, one couldn't easily pinpoint what their minds added.

"It takes a case in which the language children end up with is more complex than the language they hear to identify the creative contribution of the child."

Page last updated at 01:37 GMT, Sunday, 8 November 2009

Tough love 'is good for children'

The report said parenting style was more influential than income

Children brought up according to "tough love" principles are more successful in life, according to a study.

The think tank Demos says a balance of warmth and discipline improved social skills more than an laissez-faire, authoritarian or disengaged upbringing.

It says children aged five with "tough love" parents were twice as likely to show good character capabilities.

Report author Jen Lexmond said: "It is confidence, warmth and consistent discipline that matter most."

Life chances

According to the report, qualities such as application, self-regulation and empathy were more likely to be developed in children whose parents employed a "tough love" approach.

It found that these qualities made "a vital contribution to life chances, mobility and opportunity".

The report said these characteristics were profoundly shaped in pre-school years.

The most important influence is the quality of parenting Building Character report

The Building Character report analysed data from more than 9,000 households in the UK.

It found that children from the richest backgrounds were more than twice as likely to develop the key characteristics compared to those with the poorest origins.

Additionally, children whose parents were married were twice as likely to show such traits than children from lone parent or step-parented families, the report said.

But it added that when parental style and confidence were factored in, the difference in child character development between richer and poorer families disappeared.

The report concluded that this indicated that parenting was the most important influence - and the same result occurred when the family structure factor was analysed.

The report said that other positive influences included the main carer's level of education, and breast-feeding.

Girls were more likely to develop character capabilities by age five, while no connection was found between paid employment of either parent and children's characteristics.

The authors urged more support and information for families, and for children with disengaged or low-income parents to be given particular focus.

They recommended that the Government's Sure Start programme should be refocused as a tool for early intervention, with less emphasis on childcare and more on development; improved pilots for the Family Nurse Partnership; and for health visitors to be given an early years role to help with parenting.

'Ambitious agenda'

"There is some evidence that lower-income households face more difficulty in incubating these character capabilities," the report said.

"But the most important influence is the quality of parenting.

"Confident, skilful parents adopting a 'tough love' approach to parenting, balancing warmth with discipline, seem to be most effective in terms of generating these key character capabilities.

"An ambitious agenda for equality of opportunity will need to take the development of these capabilities seriously."

Ms Lexmond added: "Far from a 'soft' skill, character is integral to our future success and wellbeing."

Parentline Plus chief executive Jeremy Todd said the charity also supported the call for increased help for families.

But he said different children reacted differently to parenting styles.

"If we are to reduce the strangle hold of cycles of deprivation, the issue of how we support families to raise children must be grasped," Mr Todd added.

"We welcome this report and hope that it stimulates debate among policy makers around how best to support families to transform our society into one where we top the league tables for outcomes for children and well-being."

Page last updated at 10:38 GMT, Friday, 6 November 2009

Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'

Babies' cries imitate their mother tongue as early as three days old

German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb.

The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German.

The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.

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The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb.

Cry melodies

It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices.

Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age.

Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: "The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life.

Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding Kathleen Wermke, Unversity of Wurzburg

"Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the importance of human infants' crying for seeding language development."

Dr Wermke's team recorded and analysed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old.

Their analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the infants' cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue.

They say the babies need only well-co-ordinated respiratory-laryngeal systems to imitate melody contours and not the vocal control that develops later.

Dr Wermke said: "Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding.

"Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age."

Debbie Mills, a reader in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Bangor University, said: "This is really interesting because it suggests that they are producing sounds they have heard in the womb and that means learning and that it is not an innate behaviour.

"Many of the early infant behaviours are almost like reflexes that go away after the first month and then come back later in a different form.

"It would be interesting to look at these babies after a month and see if their ability to follow the melodic contours of their language is still there."

Page last updated at 00:33 GMT, Thursday, 27 August 2009 01:33 UK

'Artificial trees' to cut carbon

By Judith Burns Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Artificial trees could be used in areas where carbon emissions are high

Engineers say a forest of 100,000 "artificial trees" could be deployed within 10 to 20 years to help soak up the world's carbon emissions.

The trees are among three geo-engineering ideas highlighted as practical in a new report.

The authors from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers say that without geo-engineering it will be impossible to avoid dangerous climate change.

The report includes a 100-year roadmap to "decarbonise" the global economy.

No silver bullet

Launching the report, lead author Dr Tim Fox said geo-engineering should not be viewed as a "silver bullet" that could combat climate change in isolation.

He told BBC News it should be used in conjunction with efforts to reduce carbon emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Many climate scientists calculate that the world has only a few decades to reduce emissions before there is so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that a dangerous rise in global temperature is inevitable.

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The authors of this report say that geo-engineering of the type they propose should be used on a short-term basis to buy the world time, but in the long term it is vital to reduce emissions.

They define two types of geo-engineering. Nem Vaughan of University of East Anglia said: "The first category attempts to cool the planet by reflecting some of the sunlight away. The problem with this is that it just masks the problem."

"The other type of geo-engineering is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it."

Hundreds of options

The team studied hundreds of different options but have put forward just three as being practical and feasible using current technology.

A key factor in choosing the three was that they should be low-carbon technologies rather than adding to the problem.

Dr Fox told BBC News: "Artificial trees are already at the prototype stage and are very advanced in their design in terms of their automation and in the components that would be used.

"They could, within a relatively short duration, be moved forward into mass production and deployment."

The trees would work on the principle of capturing carbon dioxide from the air through a filter.

The CO2 would then be removed from the filter and stored. The report calls for the technology to be developed in conjunction with carbon storage infrastructure.

The captured carbon dioxide could be stored in empty north sea oil wells

Dr Fox said the prototype artificial tree was about the same size as a shipping container and could remove thousands of times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than an equivalent sized real tree.

Another of the team's preferred methods of capturing carbon is to install what they term "algae based photobioreactors" on buildings. These would be transparent containers containing algae which would remove carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis.

Algae units could be designed into new buildings or retrofitted to old ones

The third option focuses on the reduction of incoming solar radiation by reflecting sunlight back into space. The report says the simplest way of doing this is for buildings to have reflective roofs.

The authors stress that all of these options will require more research and have called for the UK government to invest 10 million pounds in analysis of the effectiveness, risks and costs of geo-engineering.

Dr Fox said: "We very much believe that the practical geo-engineering that we are proposing should be implemented and could be very much part of our landscape within the next 10 to 20 years."

Page last updated at 01:15 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 02:15 UK

Pupils receiving help 'do worse'

There are more than 180,000 teaching assistants in England's schools

Pupils who receive help from teaching assistants make less progress than classmates of similar ability, a government-funded study suggests.

The Institute of Education assessed the impact of the huge expansion in support staff in England and Wales since 2005 by studying 153 schools.

It said such staff tended to look after the pupils most in need, reducing their contact with the qualified teacher.

The government said teacher workloads and class behaviour had improved.

The expansion of the school support workforce, which began in 2003, was also intended to raise quality, giving extra support to children with special educational needs.

The more time pupils had with support staff the less time they had with the teacher Professor Peter Blatchford

The Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) project surveyed 20,000 teachers and analysed the help received by more than 8,000 pupils in 153 schools in 2005-6.

The researchers were so surprised by the results of their study, that they repeated it for 2007-8 and came to the same conclusion.

Lead researcher Professor Peter Blatchford said the results could not be explained by the lower attainment, special educational needs, family backgrounds and behavioural problems of those pupils who had help from teaching assistants as those factors had been accounted for.

He added: "This is not something that we should blame on teaching assistants - we are not saying they are a bad influence.

"It seems to be about the way in which they are deployed and the way in which they are managed.

"The main explanation seems to be that support staff tend to look after the children in most need. They can then become rather separate from the main curriculum.

"The more time pupils had with support staff, the less time they had with the teacher."

'Counter-intuitive'

Support staff tend to have less training and a lower level of education than teachers.

About two-thirds of the support staff in this study had not been educated beyond GCSE level.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which funded the study along with the Welsh Assembly, said support staff were the backbone of the teaching workforce.

"There is clear evidence that there is a positive effect on pupil's progress where teaching assistants are trained and effectively trained to deliver specific support programmes, alongside well-planned lessons - as this research acknowledges.

"And the DISS study found that 14-year-olds who worked closely with teaching assistants were less distracted... followed instructions, were more independent, confident, motivated and likely to complete work."

He added that the research made no allowance for teaching assistants' experience, training or qualifications nor whether the school was high- or low-performing, the extent it had been remodelled or whether the teacher or teaching assistant were teaching as a team or separately.

Head of education at the public service union Unison Christina McAnea said: "Unison has been calling for better pay, training and more paid time for teaching assistants to do their jobs, for many years.

"Teaching assistants are not substitutes for teachers, but what they can do, given the right training and support, is help children with special needs to get the most out of school."

The findings of the study are being presented at the British Educational Research Association conference in Manchester on Friday.

Page last updated at 13:29 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 14:29 UK

Girls 'born with fear of spiders'

Women's fear of spiders has now been linked to the behavioural traits of our hunter-gatherer ancestors

A new study in the US suggests that women have a genetic aversion to dangerous animals, such as spiders.

The research, published in the New Scientist, says women are born with character traits that were ingrained in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

As child protectors, they have to shun animals that threaten them or their young off-spring, researchers said.

Previous research suggested women were actually up to four times more likely to be afraid of creatures like spiders.

The new research was headed up by developmental psychologist, Dr David Rakison, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, 10 baby girls, and 10 baby boys were subjected to a number of pictures of spiders to gauge their reactions.

First the babies were shown a picture of a spider with a fearful human face, followed by images of a spider paired with a happy face - alongside an image of a flower twinned with a fearful face.

The results showed that the girls - some as young as 11 months old - looked longer at the picture of the happy face with a spider than the boys, who looked at both images for an equal time.

The researchers concluded that the young girls were confused as to why someone would be happy to be twinned with a spider, and were quick to associate pictures of arachnids with fear.

The boys, it seems, remained totally indifferent emotionally.

'Ancestral behaviour'

Mr Rakison attributes this genetic predisposition to behavioural traits inherent in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Men, he purports, were the greater natural risk takers, the ones who took greater risks were more successful when going out to hunt for food.

With women, in their role as natural child protectors, it made sense for them to be more cautious of animals such as snakes or spiders, Mr Rakison adds.

By contrast, the research concludes that modern phobias such as the fear of hospitals - or that of flying - show no differences between the sexes.

Previous research has shown that almost 6% of people have a phobia of snakes, with nearly 4% scared of spiders.

However, of that percentage, four times are likely to be women than men.