The Upside Down World

2008-02-29T15:50:00.002-06:00

I've moved!

2007-12-27T21:24:00.000-06:00

I've moved to wordpress. Please click the link above to go to my new site.

Ups and downs

2006-10-12T00:58:00.000-05:00

Someone seems to have erased all the cookies on our computer and it took me 2 days to remember my user name and password for blogger - so I've had an extra long break from blogging. I've had some really big ups and really big downs in the past week and a half. However, dwelling on the ups is almost always better for a gal than dwelling on the downs. Soooooo . . . let me share a couple of "good mom" moments I've been hanging onto to even out the down moments.

My 7 year old has been having a hard time getting to sleep since we moved into a new house a couple months ago and I sometimes pray with/over him to try and help settle him and calm him (and to call in the re-inforcements for help!). A couple of days ago he came and asked me to pray with him to help him get to sleep. As always as part of my prayer, I asked God to help me be a good mother to my son. When we finished Collin put his arms around my neck and said, "you don't need to ask for any help being a good mom for me, Mom." That's only because I ask all the time I responded :)

I've never actually made my 11 year old study history because he wasn't interested and I figured we can always study it all in high school anyway. However we have had some talks about various historical events and dynamics. I never know how much he's listening, however and know that I can kill curiosity by giving too much information at the least sign of interest. So you can imagine my delight when Noah explained the relationship between Hitler and Stalin in WWII, how the USSR ended up with half of Germany and Berlin, what the differences between a communist/socialist system and a democratic/capitalist system were and why the Berlin Wall was built when his father casually mentioned something about WWII. I guess that lesson stuck after all.

Noah used the word "non sequitur" in a conversation last week. The poor child's never going to be able to communicate with anyone outside of our family! :)

Collin, who has struggled with controlling his emotional outbursts has kept his cool pretty well for the last couple of weeks. When I mentioned that I had noticed this, he responded, "I just keep remembering that conversation where you explained about big things and little things and I tell myself 'this is just a little thing' and then I don't get upset over it."

Noah has always struggled with fidgeting and focus so when his karate teacher told him he could move into a more advanced class only if he could stop fidgeting and start paying attention, I wasn't surprised. I suggested some mental exercises he could use to harness his excess energy to his benefit in class (it had something to do with visualizing the urge to move as a color, storing it and releasing it with his movements while visualizing calming energies moving in as the energy was released. I don't really remember, I was kind of pulling it out of my belly button at the time.) He's done fine and has moved up a belt since then, but I had actually forgotten telling him this. However, the other day after class he mentioned using this technique (whatever it was) and how it's really helped him.

My kids have always been a little extra challenging and rarely seem to pay attention to what I say or even to the punishments which are doled out as a consequence of their refusal to listen to what I say (like clean your room, stop running, don't jump off the furniture, go to bed, etc), so it's always surprising and gratifying when something I say actually makes an impression on them.
So there are my "good mom" moments for the week. I hope your days are filled with such moments as well.

Children's Movies

2006-10-02T22:05:00.000-05:00

This weekend, my husband took our boys, ages 7 and 11 to the movies. I was a bit surprised when my husband said he wanted to take the boys to see the new Jet Li movie "Fearless". He loves karate movies and thought the kids would be interested since they have been taking karate for a while now. But the movie is rated PG-13 and there was that new children's movie "Open Season" which came out on Friday. I didn't want to see "Open Season", but my husband doesn't seem to mind potty humor as much as I do and you never know what's going to show up in a PG-13 movie, so the children's movie seemed like it would be a better bet (or at least the least likely to do major damage). Fortunately, before becoming insistent, I looked up "Fearless" on the Focus on the Family's "Unplugged" website. (This is a great place to check before seeing a movie, BTW - they will tell you about minutiae like how many characters smoke, if wine is consumed, if anyone gets punched, how many times various foul words are used and any sexual innuendo. Some of the things they worry about aren't a big concern for our family, but it sure is nice to know what you're getting into.) You can read their review of "Fearless" here. Since the movie didn't have much of anything in the way of sex or language and the violence wasn't gory, I decided not to press the issue. The boys and my husband really enjoyed the movie and my husband said that it was a very moral movie with good, manly messages.
On the other hand, I happened upon this column by Fredrica Mathewes-Green about "Open Season" and I'm sure glad my hubby made the call and not me. From her column:

Sure, potty-talk has always been funny to kids. But grown-ups didn't teach it to them. They had something more significant to impart: stories to help children prepare for the world they were growing into. The best stories were complex and unafraid to deal with tragedy, like Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid, or Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio.
Earlier generations of parents complained that cartoon versions of such classic tales stripped them of all subtlety. The process has gone a step further in a movie like Open Season, where the plot presents only a starkly polarized pair of teams, good guys vs. bad guys, and then whips up a frenzy of vengeance.

Hmmm . . . I'm going to have to remember that next time I'm tempted to settle for the "least bad thing". (You really ought to read the whole thing as it goes much deeper than what I posted here. ) Whenever I see a movie like this, or the dreadful Shrek movies, I am reminded of something I read a while ago on the National Review Online. In an interview, Craig Good from Pixar studios says:

We don't make movies for kids. We make movies for adults, actually ourselves, and then just make sure there's nothing in them that the little ones shouldn't see. . . Two things are often forgotten about kids. One: They have no taste. They will watch just about anything. This is normal and healthy. Taste comes later. Two: They are not stupid! Kids are born intelligent, and there's no good reason to make dumbed-down entertainment for them.

Sooooo . . . this post really has no point except to say that my kids saw a movie that was good, even though it was PG-13 and children's movies are generally stupid and a sign of the degradation of our society (like that's never been said before!). Good day! :)

The Wall of Taxonomy

2006-10-01T09:53:00.000-05:00

Since my 11 year wants to be a herpetologist (reptile scientist), he decided he needed to get more serious about his science so we're studying biology right now. We've been looking at taxonomy (the classification of living things) and I came up with a fun activity I thought I'd share with you. It's basically just a worksheet on a wall, but my son enjoyed it.
In order to create our "wall of taxonomy" I started by creating a sketch of what the final layout on the wall would be. A taxonomy chart is a lot like a family tree where you start with great great grandma who had three kids who had a couple more kids each who had a couple more kids and so on down the line. The idea is that you start at the top with very broad classifications which split off into more and more narrow classifications. For example, kingdom animalia branches into phylum arthropodia and chordata. Phylum chordata branches into class reptilia, mammilia, amphibia, fishes, and ave. Class mammilia branches into carnivoria and cetecea. And so on until you get down to specific species of animals. I looked at charts like the ones found on this page or this page and mapped out how the classifications start at the top with one broad kingdom which gradually split into more and more narrow classifications all the way down to species. Once I had a map on paper of what the end product would look like, I started making slips of paper with the various names on them. The trick here is that if several animals share the same classification (class mammilia for example), you only made one slip of paper with that name on it. When you make the slips of paper, don't include the classification, just the name, BTW. So write "mammilia" not "class mammilia" for example. Once all of the names were on their own slip of paper, I made enough arrows to map the splits. Since my son is just starting this, I put the arrows on the wall where they should go to help him out. For example, on our taxonomy wall, Kingdom Animalia split into Phylum Arthropodia and Chordata, so under the spot where the piece of paper saying "animalia" would go, I put two arrows pointing to where arthropodia and chordata should go and so on.
Finally we're ready to go. To start, I had seven slips of colored paper with the seven classifications (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species) used in taxonomy and had my boys arrange them in the proper order along the right side of the wall. I also made an additional slip which said "common name" to put at the bottom after "species" and made slips of paper with the common name of animals we were working with along with the names of their phylum, class and such. Then I gave my son the pile of (mixed up) slips of paper I had made with all of the various classification names on them. His job was to place them all in their proper spots. I had him start by spreading the slips out on the floor, picking out the things he knew to put up first and then grouping names which he thought went together. I told him he could use books to help him out, but he really tried to do it without looking for help. In the end, he got it all correct and we snapped the picture above before his little sister started trying to tear the pieces of paper off the wall (taking a picture of a wall in a hallway is pretty tough, BTW). One of the nice things about this activity is you can make it very hard or very easy. If you have a more advanced student, you may not want to put the arrows on the wall for him or her so that they will have to remember what the splits are without the help of hints. Also, you can do as many or as few organisms as you want and can use it to study groups of living organisms and how they are related. I'm afraid my explanation may not be that great and I probably made it sound harder than it was, but the prep time for this activity, including hunting down charts listing classifications which I link to above and cutting up paper (perhaps post-it note would have been a more efficient method!) was probably about an hour and a half. I think I got a pretty good bang for my buck. Anyhow, I just thought I'd share!

Since that last picture only took about 5 minutes to load . . .

2006-09-26T00:56:00.000-05:00

I'll share this sweet photo of little Sophia. Don't ya just want to eat her up? :)

And no, I don't ever put clothing on my children - we just let them run around naked like monkeys. It's part of our homeschooling cult religion, you know! ;p J/K

One more for "momhood" . . .

2006-09-26T00:45:00.000-05:00

You're glad you know how to type because your toddler pried off half the keys on the laptop keyboard and you're typing by touch on rubber nubs until the new keypad gets in. I love you, Michaela Rose!

Education and conservatives

2006-09-25T23:49:00.000-05:00

If you are a conservative interested in education, you need to read this excellent column by Neal McClusky on conservatives embrace of big government education muddling on National Review Online. Mr McClusky starts of with this:
For decades, conservatives stood against big-government intrusions into American education. They defended local control of schooling, championed parental choice, and pushed to abolish the federal Department of Education. But then, tragedy struck: Republicans took power in Washington, and conservatives suddenly learned to love big government. Indeed, some are now so enamored of it that they are proposing what was once unthinkable: having the federal government set curricular standards for every public school in America.
As you may be aware, over the weekend former secretaries of education Bill Bennet and Rod Paige had a column in the Washington Post advocating for the creation of a national test for education. Because the solution to something government meddling has already badly screwed up is . . . even more government meddling.
This flies in the face of what we have learned from the few government programs which have had some success in reform; states, when given the freedom are excellent incubators and laboratories for innovative approaches to entrenched problems. Welfare reform and Medicare reform are two excellent examples. I am also willing to bet that in 20 years we will be looking at state experiments like what is going on in Minnesota and Massachusetts as the beginning of healthcare reform.
The idea that education can be improved by giving more power and influence to Washington politicians is laughable. In fact, I would argue that the growing influence and involvement of national politics in the education issue have served to thwart any meaningful movement in improving education. There are, in my opinion, 3 things which need to happen in order for meaningful education reform to happen: teachers must be treated as professionals and have control over the conduct and content of their teaching, parents must be free to make educational choices for their children including enrolling their children in their schools of choice and the influence of large national teacher's unions must be diminished. The nationalization of education works against all 3 of these changes. More and more teachers are being treated like trained monkeys who are expected to jump and hop according to what bureaucrats demand rather than using their brains, experience and skills to meet their student's needs. A national agenda for education makes it very easy for powerful, out of touch national education unions to influence any education reforms which are enacted (one big target is much easier to handle than tens of thousands of smaller, local targets which are less likely to be influenced by lobbying efforts). In contrast, parents find it very difficult to get the attention of national politicians as opposed to local school board members and administrators who might be willing to respond to their concerns (if their hands weren't actively being tied by national politicians and teacher's unions). Not to mention that as long as the national teachers union has a strong influence in the political arena, parent's are unlikely to be given much leeway in determining where their children will attend school.
Although nationalized testing and curriculum are taking on an air of inevitability, we must resist the temptation to short-cut our way into further disaster by giving the federal government even more say over what goes on in the classroom. As Mr. McClusky points out in his NRO piece:
no matter how much conservatives wish it weren't so, decades of monopolistic public schooling have proven that government will never provide desirable standards. Indeed, the numerous inherent problems of government are among the many reasons that the framers of the Constitution gave Washington no authority over education. . . As Congress moves inexorably closer to next year's scheduled reauthorization of NCLB, conservatives must reject calls for federal standards and tests, and remember the principles that they once held dear. Politically compromised, big-government policies will simply never provide the education our children need and deserve. Only pulling government out of education, and empowering parents and families with school choice, will do that.

Why we're losing the cultural war

2006-09-20T22:57:00.000-05:00

I just read an essay in The American Conservative by Claes G. Ryn which I found rather insightful:
Modern American conservatism has been enthralled by politics. It should be obvious to all by now that this has been a debilitating preoccupation. Society's long-term direction is not set mainly by politicians. It is set by those who capture a people's mind and imagination. Conservative politicians and policy wonks have failed to reverse any of the main deleterious social trends of the last half-century not because they have lacked financial resources but because efforts like theirs have limited efficacy in the first place. . . To recover, American conservatism would have to reorder its priorities and most especially put politics in its place. America's crisis is at bottom moral-spiritual and cultural. . . The problem, simply put, was lack of sophistication - an inability to understand what most deeply shapes the outlook and conduct of human beings. Persons move according to their innermost beliefs, hopes, and fears. These are affected much less by politicians than by philosophers, novelists, religious visionaries, movie makers, playwrights, composers, painters, and the like, though truly great works of this kind reach most minds and imaginations only in diminished, popular form.
Yet the conservative movement did not direct its main efforts toward a revitalization of the mind, imagination, and moral-spiritual life.

This brings to mind a recent discussion I saw which pointed out that the most politically conservative parts of the country have the greatest problems with divorce, out of wedlock birth, crime and other modern social ills. If conservative politics was reallpanaceancea for what ails our country, wouldn't that be just the opposite? I think Mr. Ryn is correct in his assessment of the problem. We have been looking for shortcuts - elect the right person, enact the right laws, structure the social programs correctly and then we can recover from the mess liberals have created. In the meantime, traditional minded people have lost the culture wars. We've made some progress in recent years in reducing teen pregnancies and abortions, but overall we're losing the war. I don't think many of us even expect to have a shot at reversing the trend anymore. Our entertainment becomes crasser and more obscene all the time, yet it keeps making money. Who's buying this stuff? I doubt that it's only (or even mainly) liberals. I also doubt that liberals are the primary ones getting abortions, std's or having babies before getting married. We've been looking to politics to solve our problems for too long. While those on the left spent their time crafting ideas and promoting them vigorously in media, education and the arts, we've given the world Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
I have thought for a long time that the only thing a traditional minded person can do in today's world is withdraw, regroup and set about getting their own little world in order. Whatever change is going to happen is going to come from the bottom up. Then again, as Mr. Ryn says, it is the "philosophers, novelists, religious visionaries, movie makers, playwrights, composers, painters" who change hearts and minds. What can we do to become those who inspire people to change? How do we take on this task? Ideas?

You know you've achieved full "Momhood" when . . .

2006-09-18T22:39:00.000-05:00

- You go to the bathroom while holding a baby (bonus points if you were breastfeeding at the time).

- You find yourself saying odd combinations of words like "don't lick yogurt off the window".

- It occurs to you that if you kick your oldest child really, really hard you could have everyone in the house crying at the same time.

- You yell at the kids for not being dressed even though it's 1 in the afternoon and you're still in your bathrobe.

- Your toddler follows you into the bathroom and helpfully tries to wipe your bottom.

- You allow your child to draw all over themselves with marker simply so they will stay occupied long enough for you to finish making their lunch.

- You share a couple of cookies with the kids just so when your husband gets home and finds the empty package you can say, "well, the kids ate some too."

- You give your children cookies with their breakfast so that you won't eat them all yourself.

- You can carry on a 10 minute conversation with your child about Pokemon without him catching on to the fact that you haven't heard a word he said. (Trick: repeat the last 2 words of every second or third sentence and it seems like you're actually listening - my husband's been doing it to me for years.)

- When your 2 year old proudly says the f-word you encouragingly respond: "that's right, Sweetheart - truck!"

- You see your toddler tearing up an artificial flower arrangement and figure, "it can be re-assembled" so you don't bother stopping him.

- You insist on being the one to get the mail because you need your daily exercise.

- You plan all of your trips out of the house to minimize the number of times a child will have to be removed from a car seat.

- You know that trip planning has nothing to do with buying plane tickets and everything to do with grocery shopping.

- Your version of a cost-benefit analysis involves weighing whether cutting out a round of getting kids in and out of car seats is worth paying 50% more for diapers at the grocery store.

- You respond to a kid's "why?" with "because I'm mean and I don't like you very much."

- You know that one day your child will tell his own child, "because I'm mean and I don't like you very much" after being asked "why?" for the 5th time.

- You think other people are jealously admiring you and your attractive, smart, fun kids when really they're just watching you so they can go home and start a conversation with, "I saw this poor woman while I was out today . . ."

- Even when all of your kids are crying at once - except for the oldest who wandered off to look at Pokemon cards and is now having you paged over the store intercom system because he didn't see you when he looked up to ask if you'd buy him a pack of cards, you never think of yourself as "this poor woman". You're too busy enjoying your attractive, smart, fun kids.

Talking with our kids about 9/11

2006-09-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

Ack! It's been a while since I posted, but we've been very busy and I just haven't had time. I still don't really have time, but since today is the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I thought I'd share a conversation I had over the weekend with my 7 year old about the attacks on the World Trade Center. We were watching something on TV about the attacks. Afterwards Collin asked several times why the terrorists had done it. How do you explain to a 7 year old why people would deliberately kill themselves and so many others for no real discernible purpose? I'm not sure how much he understood, but here's what I told him:

There are things which are right and wrong. Sometimes there are things which are so wrong we make laws against them like killing someone else. Sometimes there are things which are wrong, but which are choices people must make for themselves - like watching trash on TV. There are some people who think that no one should be allowed to make choices which they think are wrong. Here in America we believe that people should do the right things, but that they must be free to make their own choices even if that means that they will choose to do the wrong things. Here in America, you can do whatever you want even if it's a crazy thing to do because we believe that each person must make their own choices. This is even how God works - he wants us to do good things, but he allows us to choose to do the wrong things. The people who attacked the WTC aren't like that. They want to force everyone to dress, act, speak, think and live only in the ways they think are right. They hate that we don't do that. They hate that whenever people around the world see how much freedom we have to decide how to live, they want that same freedom for themselves. They don't think anyone should be able to do that. That is why they hate us and would like to see us become less powerful. They would like it if instead of seeing our freedom and wanting it for themselves, other people around the world would start hating us just like they hate us.
So they attacked us to show the world how strong they were and how weak America is. They hope that we won't stand up for ourselves and will try to do things to make them happy. They want to make the rest of the world think we are the bad guys if we don't do what they want us to do. They say, "see? People are being hurt because America won't just do what we want. It is because America is allowing people to be hurt like this that we must keep fighting against them" - even though they are the ones who are causing all the problems. But the fact of the matter is that even if we do things to try to make them happy, they will keep trying to attack us because what they really want is to be the ones in charge, deciding what choices people get to make about their lives. If one person fights and the other person just runs away, it is the one who is fighting who will win. So they think if they just keep fighting and get other people to hate us, we will give up and then they will win. Then people will have to live how they want them to live.
The other thing which is different about America and the people who attacked us is that we value individual people. These people killed themselves because to them individual people don't matter as much as gaining power to control others does. They will even kill their own people because they think that no person matters as much as what they are trying to accomplish. We believe that each person is very valuable and precious. We would never say, "there's this really good thing we want to get done and you are not as important as that thing, so we'll kill you if we think it will help us reach our goal." Americans are the sort of people who say, "even my own life is worth giving up to protect another person. There is nothing more important than any individual person's life."
[As an example I told him the story of flight 93 and how the passengers fought back to stop the terrorists because they would rather die than allow the terrorists to kill more people.]
The terrorists kill themselves in order to hurt other people. Americans will allow themselves to be killed in order to keep other people from being hurt. It's hard to fight people who don't care about hurting other people. We see them hurting other people and want it to stop. Since we don't want other people to be hurt, it's hard for us to fight back because when we do people will be hurt. However, we cannot afford not to stand up for ourselves and the other people these terrorists would like to have power over. Because even if they got what they wanted and were able to force people to do what they think is right, they wouldn't stop hurting people - they don't think people are important and don't feel bad at all about hurting other people. There will always be some reason in their mind why it's OK to kill even people who are doing nothing wrong. We hate it that people get hurt when we fight back, but at least at the end when we win people will be safe. Once the fighting is done, we will die in order to keep people safe, because people are precious. Unlike the terrorists we do not think we have the right to take away a person's life or their freedom to choose how to live.
That's why we can be proud of being Americans. We aren't perfect and too many people in America do use their freedom to choose to do things which are stupid or wrong. I wish more people made better choices about how to live, but that doesn't mean I think I should be able to do something even God doesn't do and take away their freedom.

I happen to think that this administration has made and continues to make terrible errors in trying to fight the ideology of Islamic fascism, so I'm not saying these things as a way of defending a particular course of action. However, our kids may well be fighting this battle when they are adults and I think it's important for them to know that as much as America gets wrong, there are some very important things we get right. If we won't stand up and defend those things, we will lose. It's just that simple. If there's anything in here which you find useful, please share it with your own kids and pass it around.

Ewwwwwwww!

2006-09-02T01:12:00.000-05:00

Right now on the kitchen counter next to me is a small, smashed, sun-dried snake that my 11 year old found. What is wrong with boys? Yeesh!

5 year old boys and "A Well Trained Mind"

2006-09-01T23:05:00.000-05:00

Earlier today I was reading the very good "Crunch Cons" blog over at beliefnet and the author, Rod Dreher was responding to a reader question about preparing to homeschool his daughter in a few years (the child in question was under 1 year). Mr. Dreher responded first by explaining that he and his wife were no longer homeschooling their son who is now six. Then he offered his wife's advice on what to do if you're planning on homeschooling. Now, before I get myself in trouble, I just want to say that I do not want to claim that I know what is best for the Dreher family or that they have made an error by putting their son in school. I am not privy to their lives and am willing to accept that this was the very best decision for them and their son. However, there were two red flags which I wanted to address, not in order to critique this family's actions, but because they remind me of problems I have seen played out in other families and a general error in our thinking about kids and education which is pretty prevalent. So, I am writing this not to address the Dreher's specific situation, but in order to make a couple of more generalized points.
The two red flags I saw were these: By way of brief (and I'm sure in no way complete) explanation Mr. Dreher says of putting his son in a private school: "we'd had so much trouble getting him to focus on his work at home". Further down in her recommendations, his wife says "If you really want to read something I'd take a look at Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer's books, which I found inspiring (and depressing because they made me more aware of the massive holes in my own education). She outlines a kindergarten curriculum that involves about 15 minutes of actual study per day."
(For those of you who don't know, Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer are authors of A Well Trained Mind which is a guide to using a classical approach to education at home.)
Here's the problem: a 5 year old who refuses to focus or co-operate with attempts to educate him/her is a perfectly normal child who will probably do very well with homeschooling. Too often we view a young kid who is not co-operative with learning as a sign that homeschooling isn't working. I think nothing is further from the truth and know many kids (including my younger son) who did pretty much nothing for kindergarten (or longer) yet did just fine as they got older. The idea that a 5 year old should be doing anything more rigorous than singing silly songs, reciting the alphabet and learning to count to 100 is actually pretty recent and often developmentally inappropriate. If a young child simply refuses to cooperate or focus, more than anything I think that means wither they aren't ready or the approach being used doesn't work for him/her. Yet I have known several families who have abandoned homeschooling after just a year or two because they thought the fact that their kid wasn't cooperating with attempts to educate him/her showed that they weren't cut out for homeschooling.
I think part of the problem is that while we may see that socially schools are unhealthy places for our kids and that the results are mediocre, we often accept the way and rate at which they do things as correct. We assume that homeschooling's magic isn't in using a completely different approach to learning and education but in the fact that we teach our kids one-on-one. So, we worry if our 5 year old won't sit still while we read a book or that our 6 year old won't work on phonetic lessons because everyone knows that this is how children learn to read. And heaven forbid if our 4th grader doesn't have their times tables down cold. However, none of these practices or time tables are based on any actual evidence that they are the "right" approach. It's probably the main reason schools don't work for so many kids - they insist on doing everything on some predetermined schedule in some predetermined way without regard to where the child is developmentally. Some 5 year olds will sit quietly while being read to, others will be practicing their cartwheels and not listen to a word you say. Allowed to learn on their own schedules, both will probably be independent readers by about age 8. Forced to work on someone else's time schedule one of them will probably struggle with reading disorders created by being forced to do something they weren't developmentally ready to do.
Which brings me to Jesse Wise and Susan Bauer Wise's books. Now, don't get me wrong. The Well Trained Mind is a great book in a lot of ways and the classical approach to education definitely has many appealing aspects to it. I actually use some of their ideas with my 11 year old. However, it is a very structured approach and I have never seen it work with a kid under the age of 9 or 10. I have, however, seen families become overwhemed, frustrated and demoralized trying to do it with their younger kids. What the Wise's do not say is that although their approach is in many ways very traditional, it is an approach which in the past did not start until age 8, 9 or later. Their book takes an approach meant for older kids, reduxes it and attempts to apply it to younger kids without regard to their developmental needs and abilities aside from using less time. Not only that, but at the younger ages, they rely heavily on usborne books, which in my experience, are too simplistic and only mildly engaging. I have never gotten one that my kids did anything other than glance at briefly. I can see how any parent who is uncomfortable not having much or any structure for their young child and then tries to use methods like the ones outline in the Wise's books will not succeed.
Which brings me back to why I wanted to post on this here, despite running the risk that it would look like I was trying to judge the Dreher family's particular situation: we have been so indoctrinated by many generations of institutionalized schooling that it takes an enormous amount of self-confidence and self-assurance to stand your ground when it's your kid who isn't fitting into the accepted framework. Even more so when everyone around you responds to every challenge you face by offering the structure of school as the solution. I want to challenge people to think differently about how we educate our kids (especially young boys) and offer re-assurance to those who are struggling to stand against the current. The magic of homeschooling is so much more than just one-on-one instruction or even a more demanding curriculum. The magic of homeschooling is really in freeing ourselves and our kids to learn in an entirely different way. I would go so far as to say that when we educate our kids according to their particular temperament and developmental readiness, even when it means letting a young child do little or no structured work, we are coming as close as we are able to helping them learn the way God designed them to learn. And despite what Sec. of Education Spellings might have us believe, God doesn't seem to intend for 5 year old boys to learn by sitting down and focusing on the work adults give them all that often.

Bugs galore!

2006-08-31T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here's a cool website for those seeking to identify unknown bugs: http://whatsthatbug.com/
FYI, there is a picture of wheelbugs mating which prompts a comment about "bug pornography" by the site authors. Nothing major, but I thought I'd give a heads-up in case that sort of thing bugs you. (Get it - bugs you! Harhar.)

Homeschooling at work!

2006-08-31T10:53:00.000-05:00

In our house when one of my boys does something particularly boneheaded, my darling, ever helpful hubby will often sarcastically remark "Homeschooling, eh?" Yesterday my 11 year old gave a truly spectacular demonstration of the superior results of homeschooling while filling out a form. First he didn't capitalize his last name, then he spelled homeschool "homeskooll", then he started to spell his guitar teacher Steve's name with a lower case "s". I finally took the pen from him when he corrected himself by writing a capital "S" - backwards.
Of course the real problem is that my ADD child was trying to look at all the posters on the wall, listen in on my conversation with his choir director and watch paper being fed into the laser printer on the table next to him all at the same time. Anyone else out there homeschooling an ADD kid without the aid of drugs? Any hints?
In the meantime, let's all say it together: "Homeschooling, eh?"

Why do we put up with this?

2006-08-31T00:24:00.000-05:00

According to the government, we spend an average of $8,287 per student in public schools. That's $207,175 for a class of 25. The average teacher makes about $47K. Yet every year we read stories like this. If the money isn't going into teacher salaries or supplies for the classroom - where the blazes is it going? And why do we put up with this?

Technology only a man could love

2006-08-30T23:26:00.000-05:00

When my hubby told me about BMW's new technology which allows a car to park itself, I was pretty impressed. Until I read about how it actually worked. Turns out this technology only works if you're parking your car in the garage. And you have to stand next to the car and hold down buttons on the key fob while the car parks it's self. Hmmmm . . . How very useful. I know plenty of people hate parallel parking or having to drive around a parking garage looking for a spot or even fitting their car into a tiny spot in a parking lot. I can't say, however, that I've ever heard anyone say, "I wish there was a way I could get out of my car by the garage door and stand there holding buttons down while it parked itself. Having to actually pilot the darn thing into the garage just drives me nuts!" I suppose if you were one of those people who either runs the car into the back wall or leaves the tail end hanging out, such a device might be useful, but I'm thinking hanging a tennis ball from the ceiling would be cheaper.
Now if they really wanted to make something useful, they'd put in bottons which allowed you to smack an obnoxious child in the back of the head remotely while driving. HaHa - just kidding. That'd be silly - a fly swatter on the front seat works just fine! I'm just kidding. Really. ;p

Link-o-palooza!

2006-08-27T23:16:00.000-05:00

The Chicago Tribune had a list of useful links for students and teachers which I thought I'd pass on to you. I copied these addresses and desciptions from the story and have tried to correct incomplete addresses, but if you come across something which doesn't work, leave a message and I'll try to fix it:

ACADEMIC ALL STARS
http://www.ipl.org — Tough to say enough good about the little known Internet Public Library site. It was started by the University of Michigan and provides links to online pages in numerous academic fields. And it will probably get even more comprehensive because 14 other schools have signed on to join the project.
http://www.sparknotes.com — The primary mission of this site from Barnes & Noble is to feature study guides to novels and nonfiction. But it also has free reference guides to other topics such as biology, math and physics.
http://www.howstuffworks.com — Provides a look at the inner workings of the mundane (pencil, hair dryer) and complex (brain, atomic clock). Great for science reports.
http://www.ask.com — Takes questions in plain language. Works best with simple queries such as, "When was Benjamin Franklin born?"
http://www.google.com — Still the best search engine.

ANATOMY
http://www.anatomyatlases.org — "Atlas of Human Anatomy" offers fantastic images of human body parts.
http://www.bartleby.com/107 — This is the 1918 version of the classic Gray's "Anatomy of the Human Body." Still a handy, basic guide.
http://www.innerbody.com — Interactive site that's used to identify body parts (not just skeletal but also digestive, muscular and other systems) and to learn about their functions.

ARCHEOLOGY
http://www.archnet.asu.edu — Arizona State University's list of links to museums and other resources, organized by geography and topic.
http://www.cyberpursuits.com/archeo — Assorted links, organized by region.

ART HISTORY
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah — The Metropolitan Museum of Art's timeline of art history, from Mal'ta carvings in Asia in 20,000 BC to video installations by Bill Viola that the museum purchased in 2001.
http://www.witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html — Extensive links to art periods, artists and museums.artchive.com — Not the easiest site to navigate but worth the trouble. The online guide provides images of works by prominent artists.

BIOLOGY
http://www.biology.arizona.edu — University of Arizona's site has links organized by topic.
http://www.mnstate.edu/weibust/internetresbiostu.htm — Minnesota State University Moorhead's list of links, by topic.

CENSUS
http://www.Factfinder.census.gov — Official U.S. population numbers, by ZIP Code, from the federal Census Bureau. Breaks information down by race and other factors.

CHEMISTRY
http://www.chemicalelements.com — Of the many periodic tables of elements sites on the Web, this one's particularly well designed. It began as an eighth-grader's science project in 1996.
http://www.chemdex.org — Originating from the University of Sheffield in England, this site features more than 7,000 links.
http://www.antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/index.shtml — Quizzes, glossaries and tutorials from Frostburg State University in Maryland.

CONVERSION TOOLS
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/conversions.html — Metric conversions of distance, area, weight, speed, temperature and more. Also converts fractions to decimals.
http://www.xe.com/ucc/full.shtml — Converts more than 180 world currencies. Continuously updated.

LANGUAGES
http://www.translation.langenberg.com — Translates words and phrases in 13 languages.
http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/index.asp — Conjugates verbs in numerous languages.
http://www.ethnologue.com — Information on nearly 7,000 living languages.

LITERATURE
http://www.gutenberg.net — Now in its 35th year, this spectacular collection of 18,000 public-domain books includes all works by Shakespeare, "Moby Dick" and numerous religious texts. All selections can be downloaded to be read either on the computer screen or on paper.
http://www.vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=3 — World literature links from UC Santa Barbara.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com — The famed Cliffs Notes study guides to hundreds of books can be read on the website for free, although you'll have to pay to download a print version in a PDF file.
MATH
http://www.algebrahelp.com — Algebra practice problems.
http://www.mathplayground.com/flash cards.html — Remember flashcards? Here's an online version.

MUSIC
http://www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources — From Indiana University comes this list of links, organized by music genre, composer and performer.
http://www.carolinaclassical.com/links.html — Good set of links, organized by era.
http://www.classical.net/music — More than 5,000 links, plus thousands of CD reviews and recommendations.

PHILOSOPHY
http://www.plato.stanford.edu/contents.html — The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a work in progress that provides short essays on nearly 1,000 names and concepts. All are written by professionals in the field.
http://www.epistemelinks.com/index .aspx — These links are organized according to philosophers, eras and topics.
http://www.philosophypages.com/dy — Dictionary of names and terms, many of which include links to other resources.

PHYSICS
http://www.aip.org/history — Interactive exhibits from the American Institute of Physics on landmark discoveries in the field.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl — An interactive site from the University of Colorado at Boulder demonstrates physics principles behind microwave ovens, X-rays, lasers and more.

POLITICAL SCIENCE
http://www.thomas.loc.gov — The Library of Congress site includes the daily Congressional Record and updates on pending legislation.
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/official.htm — Links to government websites worldwide.

PSYCHOLOGY
http://www.allpsych.com — A glossary of basic terms, plus numerous other features such as a timeline.
http://www.psychology.org — Links to publications and resources.

REFERENCE
http://www.dictionary.reference.com — Enter a word and get a definition from the American Heritage Dictionary among other sources.
http://www.encyclopedia.com — Brief entries from the Columbia Encyclopedia.
http://www.infoplease.com — Almanac of statistics and information on politics, business, sports, weather and entertainment.

WORLD FACTS
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook — Not everything the CIA does is secret. The agency's public directory of countries includes such information as a nation's population, government type, terrain, agriculture, health systems, languages and broadcast stations.

Learning by Osmosis

2006-08-27T22:31:00.000-05:00

If you have read this blog for any amount of time, you may have noticed that I go through cycles of worry and paranoia about how we teach our two sons, ages 7 and 11. Much of this is fed by the fact that the homeschool moms I spend the most time with are the type who buy curricula and are pretty darn disciplined about following a particular schedule. Hearing about how their kids get up, eat breakfast, grab their workbooks and are sometimes done with school before all of my kids are out of bed makes me a bit insecure and I end up wondering if we're really doing enough. We, as I have mentioned before, are not strict unschoolers but we're definitely closer to being unschoolers than anything else. We approach learning as something which happens naturally, prodded on by life and inborn curiosity and try to save more formal lessons and such for things which the kids are unlikely to learn without a more concerted effort. It is a method which fits our style as a family and matches our family's philosophy about people and learning. However, I have to admit, it also leaves me a bit insecure about whether we're "doing enough".
For this reason, I cherish experiences like the ones we had at brunch this morning. A few months ago I wrote about coming to the realization that my younger son's math workbook (which I got for him because he asked) not only had no relation to his understanding of math, but was probably holding him back. I've been feeling kind of bad that he's probably behind where he could be with math since we wasted most of last year being dependent on the stupid workbook. However, this morning, Collin demonstrated his ability to do simple multiplication problems and was even able answer his brother's "Oh yeah, if you're so smart what's 10x20?" question correctly. I never taught him that. Hmmmm . . . Perhaps that's what happens when math is a practical process used in everyday life rather than a series of steps or facts to memorize.
Then my older son surprised me by commenting that my husband (whose birthday was today) is now old enough to be president. I never taught him that either. I have often been concerned over the fact that he shows no interest in history or civics, yet somehow he knew this little tidbit of trivia.
Apparently they're learning by osmosis. Another homeschool mom I know has commented that she wonders sometimes if our attempts to educate our kids actually cause them to learn or if they just happen to coincide with what the child was going to learn anyway. She may have something there. So I'm feeling pretty good about our approach today. That should last for another hour or so before I start worrying again :p

The Girl's Got Style

2006-08-24T17:54:00.000-05:00

Not only is my 18 month old beautiful, smart and lots of fun to have around, but she's got great taste - she hates Barney! No purple dinosaurs in this house! Woo-hoo! ; )

Pedophile Identification . . . Please pass this on

2006-08-22T21:26:00.000-05:00

The New York Times today printed a truly chilling piece today about the psyche of pedophiles using the web. Now, I want you to understand that I am not the sort of person who is given to alarmist views or paranoia. I don't pass on alarming e-mails about people who want to take away your religious freedoms or use your cell phones to target marketing to you. I know that stranger kidnapping is extremely rare and think the number of people in low-risk areas who don't want their kids to play outside because of the danger is ridiculous. In almost all areas I tend towards minimizing threats. However, this was the scariest thing I have read - perhaps ever.
The Times conducted an investigation into online sites, chat rooms and such directed towards pedophiles. What they found were people who were working awfully hard to convince themselves and re-assure each other that they were not deviants who posed a danger to children. In their view they are working to free children to be the sexually expressive creatures they were meant to be with themselves as the lucky recipient of children's sexual expression. The end result is people so delusional that one poster expresses surprise at the violent angry reaction of boys who are told of a political party in the Netherlands which seeks to make sex between men and boys legal. These online discussions could easily "normalize" behavior and thoughts in the mind of the pedophile which he would otherwise seek to repress. Once a behavior is seen as normal or even good, he would likely be less inclined to resist temptation and act on his impulses. Honestly, I don't even know if I should recommend that you read it because it's a look into the face and mind of evil without any way of doing anything constructive about it except becoming angry, paranoid and distrustful. However, there is a piece of useful information contained in the article which you absolutely should pass on: pictures of jewelry and symbols used by pedophiles to indicate their identity to those in the know. Here they are:

Top row, pendants symbolizing "boy-love."
Second row, "girl-love" pendants.
Third row, logos representing "boy-lovers," at left; "girl-lovers," at right.
Fourth row, logos for "child-lovers" at left; and at right, for "online pedophile activism."

I'm not sure what one could do if you saw someone using these symbols except keep your children very, very far away. As a related aside for those of you who read the article and are now contemplating never allowing your children out of their room again, the Center for Missing and Exploited Children does not recommend teaching your kids "stranger danger", but rather encourages parents to help their kids be confident enough to recognize signs of danger and act quickly should they ever be faced with a dangerous situation. Kids who are confident and self-assured don't make good victims. Being good parents, fostering familial bonds and self-confidence are better protection against predators than locking your child up and never letting them out of your sight.
Hat tip to Education Wonks for pointing out the NYT story.

Carnival Of Homeschooling's Up!

2006-08-22T11:04:00.000-05:00

This week's carnival of homeschooling is up over at Patricia Ann's Pollywog Creek Porch.
It's a trip to the swamp without the mosquito bites! My post from yesterday about the Washington Post columns on high school mediocrity is there as well as a bunch of other good stuff. So skip the Off! and head on over there.

Unclear on the concept

2006-08-21T13:04:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend my 7 year old caught a big black cricket and put it in a plastic water bottle on our counter. (This is a huge improvement of his previous practice of placing bugs under over-turned drinking glasses on the counter, BTW.) I told him that he should let it go.
"But Mom, crickets bring good luck. The Chinese keep them for pets. I want a pet cricket for luck!"
"But you're going to kill it by keeping it in a plastic bottle," I protested.
"Dead crickets are still lucky!" was his indignant response.
Uh, I don't think so.

High School in America

2006-08-21T12:02:00.000-05:00

There was a column in the Washington Post yesterday by a college professor outlining his student's general lack of literacy. Today there was a column by the Post's education writer about how uncommon overachieving high school students are. Any chance the two are related?
In his column, Michael Skube shares everyday words his students don't know. On the list are impetus, ramshackle, lucid, advocate, derelict, satire, pith and brevity. The author points to a lack of reading and grade inflation as reasons for this sorry trend. The result is young adults who cannot write (a common complaint from employers, BTW) or communicate beyond a very superficial level.
This reminded me of a recent letter to the editor which was printed in our local newspaper. It was written by a high school senior just days away from graduation complaining about the way a disciplinary issue had been handled by school administrators at the local high school. The letter was practically incomprehensible. The writer repeated herself several times and had not arranged her ideas in any perceivable order. It was like listening to a 7 year old tell a story, but on paper. Now, I don't know who this young woman was, she may well have been a special needs student for whom such a letter would have been a great accomplishment. Unfortunately, it's more likely that she's just another run-of-the-mill senior from a supposedly good suburban school with a decent GPA who has never been taught how to properly commit her ideas to paper. In the meantime, my 11 year actually used the word "undulate" in casual conversation last week.
In his column, Jay Matthews education reporter for the Washington Post seeks to correct the popular notion that it is common for today's high school students to be hyper-competitive, neurotic messes who are so busy striving they don't have time to learn to become whole human beings. Quite the opposite is true, he says. Among other things he points out that the average high school student spends about 42 minutes a day doing homework as opposed to the 3 1/2 hours a day spent watching tv, playing video games and such. One study found that high school students spent all of 8 minutes a day, on average doing non-school related reading.
I suppose the good news for those of us who homeschool is that compared to that our children will enter the adult world as phenoms. Unfortunately, one does have to wonder what sort of adult world they will be entering when their peers won't even be able to understand them when they speak.

The Battle for Marriage

2006-08-19T12:12:00.000-05:00

Not that long ago (I think it was just last year) any proponent of traditional marriage who brought up the specter of a slippery slope towards polyamory, polygamy and such if gay marriage were embraced was accused of being homophobic, bigoted, ridiculous, a scare mongerer and first cousins to bolweevils. Today, however, it is no longer social conservatives warning that gay marriage will lead to the dissolution of marriage in any recognizable form, but gay rights activists who are openly promising to work towards that end. Over at the Weekly Standard Ryan Anderson has an article up called "Beyond Gay Marriage" which looks at the recent full page ad taken out in the New York Times by mainstream gay rights activists and their supporters advocating not just gay marriage, but group marriages and the like. The statement actually advocates for polygamy, group marriage and even pairs of gay/lesbian couples deliberately "creating" children to be passed back and forth between them. Read the text of the statement here. As Mr. Anderson points out, while the authors of this statement claim that non-traditional families are now the norm, they pay no attention to the effects the breakdown of traditional marriage have had on children and society. Their only concern is that nothing impede or disenfranchise adult's rights to do exactly what they want.
Mr. Anderson compares this to what have become known as "The Princeton Principles", a statement in support of marriage created and endorsed by a wide range of religious and secular professors, thinkers and researchers. The Princeton Principles are based on extensive research into how marriage and its breakdown affect men, women, children, society and government. Suffice it to say that the evidence is overwhelming that marriage is far superior to other familial arrangements for all involved.
Additionally, the statement demonstrates that there are many, many reasons to support a traditional definition/view of marriage which are not religious in nature. IMO, the argument in favor of traditional marriage has not gone as well as it should have in large part because supporters of traditional marriage too often start and end the conversation with "God made marriage to be between a man and a woman." While there may be no more compelling argument for the religious minded than "because God said so", in order for the government to act accordingly some purely earth based benefit must be demonstrated. For today, enough people oppose same-sex marriage that voters have kept it at bay. However, that majority opinion will rapidly disappear (and in many surveys already has) if supporters of traditional marriage can't let go of their need to couch their argument in religious terms in order to put forth an argument which is self-evidently superior regardless of one's religious thinking. I think that the authors of the Princeton Principles have done just that.
So read the "Beyond Gay Marriage" statement to see what the future holds if supporters of marriage don't step up to the plate. Then read the Princeton Principles for a vision of hope and a vastly superior argument in favor of marriage. Then pass it on.

Blogging the bible on Slate.com

2006-08-17T10:49:00.000-05:00

I was off line when this started, but Slate.com's David Plotz has a running series of posts about reading the bible which you may want to check out. Mr. Plotz is Jewish, but not particularly observant and like many people, Jewish and Christian, had never really read the bible beyond what was covered in religious education classes or referred to in pop culture, sermons and such. This May he set out to actually read the Torah from the beginning without the use of commentaries and such. He wanted to read the book with fresh eyes and share what he read with us. The result is a fascinating series of posts and descriptions which should force the reader from his/her complacency about the bible and the God we serve.
I think too often we read the bible in a stupor. God says and does bewildering things and we act as if the text said nothing more challenging than "God is love and wants you to be rich". We dumbly nod and keep right on going. Or if we do notice, we write it off as God's perogative and move on quickly before we have the chance to think unacceptable thoughts about God. Or we come up with elaborate explanations to make God's actions more acceptable on human terms. ("God did a good thing by sending those bears to kill the boys teasing His prophet for being bald - they were really a dangerous pack of thugs who had probably been terrorizing the community" as if we would accept such logic if it were our own teenaged boys and their friends teasing the village crazy person on a boring afternoon.)
A couple of years ago, I actually undertook something similar to what Mr. Plotz is doing here myself. Although I had read through the whole Old Testament once before, this time I deliberately sought to block out what I had been taught and thought I already knew and look at the text for what it was. In the end if forced me to turn to God and ask, "what in the blazes was that all about?" His answer changed me, my understanding of God and my whole Christian walk. But that's a whole 'nother topic.
So, if you're in the mood for an eye-opening look at scriptures, grab a cup of coffee and take a peek at Mr. Plotz's account of his trip through the old testament. I think it'll be worth your while.

I've got an itch I need to scratch

2006-08-16T15:29:00.000-05:00

Recently, my 11 year old has been giving me fits. I don't think it's anything real unusual for a kid his age and it is particularly understandable considering the challenges and changes our family has had to face in the past year or so. Basically he's been lazy, selfish and somewhat surly as of late. Of course we're dealing with these things and I think we're making some progress. I suppose it's only natural to think that we must be doing something wrong or are failing as parents when your child starts displaying such traits. However, the fact of the matter is that sometimes kids do go through difficult stages and it's part of being a parent to help push them past those periods of difficulty. Also he's changing a lot. He's getting more competitive, more sophisticated in his thinking about relationships and more aware of his own place in the world. (This would be the upside of the self-centered times a kid goes through.) As he's changing, we need to change what we do for and with him as well and of course, that can be a challenge for me as well.
What has been both frustrating and unhelpful as we move through this process, however, is the fact that whenever I talk with someone who either doesn't homeschool or isn't 100% behind the idea of homeschooling, they inevitably suggest that the solution is to put him in school. Because we all know that 11 year olds who go to school are nothing but industrious, courteous and giving. And of course, there's just no reason to think that I won't get the same wonderful results if I hand my difficult kid over to the state for 5 days a week, because we all know that the state is much better at parenting than actual parents are! And maybe I should just put him on Ritalin while I'm at it! Now there's a plan without a flaw.
OK, sorry for descending into sarcasm and please forgive me if you're one of the well-meaning people who have proffered such advice lately. It's just that there are so many unexamined assumptions about the role of schools and how children are raised out there and this issue wraps them all so neatly together that it can become overwhelming to even begin to respond, especially if one doesn't wish to foster ill-will with those who think school has the potential to be helpful for a kid like mine. I will, however, share two general responses to the idea:
1. From another homeschooling mom I know: "when you have a difficult kid, people tend to think it's because you homeschool when, in fact, it's usually why you homeschool."
2. "When peers replace the parents, children remain stuck in their development. Peer orientation produces a mass of immature, conformist and problem-afflicted young adults, who are incapable of integrating into society." - Gordon Neufeld, in the introduction to his book, Hold onto your Kids - translated from German by scatty at Green Fields and Open Horizons
I know there are kids who make it through school without problems and even learn positive things in the process. Even if I could be assured that my kid would be one of those kids, I just don't think he can't do as well or better through homeschooling. And I don't see any reason to forgo all the advantages of homeschooling in order to allow the school systm to (supposedly) do something I'm quite confident his dad and I are capable of doing ourselves. As for the people who think the answer to every problem my kids have ever or will ever have is to put them in school, I wonder what they tell parents whose kids are already in school to do when their kids are less than perfect - that they should homeschool them? Somehow I doubt it.

The Homeschool Diner is Open!

2006-08-16T11:23:00.000-05:00

My friend Julie, a smart, resourceful homeschooling mom has just opened the homeschooldiner.com. It's a website devoted to spreading the word about homeschooling, helping people find materials, methods and curriculum which will work best for them and their child(ren). In our circle, Julie is the queen of info and always knows the best websites, resources and activities out there. If you or someone you know is thinking about homeschooling or you're already homeschooling and thinking about shaking things up, her website is THE place to go.
Also, she has written a book aimed at younger kids called "I learn at home" which follows two children doing a unit study on Japan. This can be a great help as "everyone else" heads back to school to help kids develop a positive attitude about homeschooling. You can order the book off her website.
So, head on over and check it out!

RENT, the musical

2006-08-14T23:44:00.000-05:00

Last week my hubby and I went to see a touring production of the musical Rent while it was in town. Both of us went not really sure we'd like it and concerned about the fact that its subject matter was questionable to say the least. For those of you who are not familiar with it, the basic premise is following a group of friends which includes a recovering drug addict with AIDS, a current drug addict and stripper with AIDS, a homosexual man and his drag queen "girlfriend" who both have AIDS, a lesbian couple, and an aspiring film maker living in New York in the mid 90's through a year of their lives. Not exactly what we'd consider edifying stuff. However, my husband and I not only enjoyed the play but left the theater very touched and have been thinking and talking about the issues raised by the play ever since.
I think what made the play compelling rather than repulsive or problematic for us was the fact that the depictions of the various characters were so real. We've both known and spent time around people on the fringes of society and recognized real people in the characters. It wasn't the sort of idealization or romanticizing we normally see from the entertainment industry when people engaged in harmful behaviors are presented. Nor was it the sort of nihilistic decent into degradation which rich people in the entertainment industry substitute for actual experience with the poor and outcast when trying to be "edgy" and real. These were real people who loved, fell, indulged, failed to learn lessons, learned the wrong lessons, tried to do the best they could figure out how and suffered the very real consequences of their behaviors.
Really, the play could almost be used as a morality tale: "see, that girl spent all her money on drugs and now she has no heat and is dizzy from lack of food. Plus she's going to die from using a dirty needle to feed her addiction. And look at those homosexuals - they're going to die a terrible death because they were having sex with other men and caught AIDS. And look at how that lesbian couple fights all the time - they'll never be happy because it's just not how people were meant to live." However, I think that would miss a much bigger lesson which we Christians especially need to see. It is this: these people were just people. People who loved with all the passion God put into the human heart and erred with all the conviction Adam and Eve bequeathed to them. I think we tend to see too many people as sins to be resolved before they can be people to be loved . Of course to be human is to be sinful. However, there are certain sins which push the human label to the back of the line. So we look for ways to ingratiate ourselves in order to get a chance to address their sinful behavior, if we will deal with them at all. I read an article by Reb Bradley last week which put it this way: a shortsighted question asks, "What can I do to show love to my liberal, feminist sister?" Would it not be better to actually love her?
I think this is exactly what we do much of the time when dealing with those around us who are "living in sin". We basically want to smile at them, maybe invite them over for dinner and do other really strenuous things to "show" our love so that we can get down to the really important stuff: confronting the sin. (We've loved the sinner so now we get to hate the sin, right?) However, what we are called to do, above and beyond all else is love. We don't need to approve of someone else's sin in order to appreciate their kind heart or good humor or generous spirit. God is in the business of judging and changing people's hearts. We need to trust Him more to do His part and put our energy into doing our part which is loving people. I think that was what was so compelling about this play: it neither tried to argue that these people's lifestyle was good nor that their errors made them less worthy of love, but simply presented them as real fallen people who need love just like everyone else. Of course, what the play missed and what much of society fails to see is what Christianity has to offer. While human love, compassion and care can help us survive, God's love can heal us and help us overcome. However, that is a message the rest of the world is unlikely to pay much attention to when we treat people like sins to be resolved rather than human beings to be loved.

Speaking of preparing for a new school year

2006-08-11T12:14:00.000-05:00

In our house we take a pretty relaxed approach to schooling. Not quite strict unschooling, but much closer to that than to "school at home". However, it has always been my plan that we would gradually ramp up to a more formalized approach as the kids got older so that they would be sure to cover math through calculus, world and American history, learn a foreign language, be able to write well and understand biology, chemistry and physics. My oldest son is 11 and would be in 6th grade this year. So far I have planned algebra, real science 4 kids biology, rosetta stone spanish, sonlight language arts writing program for 7th grade, some spelling and a history book. Hmmmm . . . this is starting to sound a lot like "school at home" homeschooling. I'm not sure that's really what I want. Besides, what am I going to do with his little brother to keep him out of his hair while he tackles the mountain of work I seem to be planning to set before him everyday? But how do I make sure that he actually learns something other than dragon mythology and how to beat the "Kirby" game on his gameboy?
I never really worried that my kids wouldn't learn to read, write or do math any more than I worried they'd never learn to walk or talk without tutoring. All those things are pretty much natural human impulses which a reasonably functional environment compel a kid towards any how. But studying algebra or learning what a golgi apparatus is? And my 11 year old is has a pretty stiff streak of laziness going on these days and I'm not sure if his natural curiosity would be enough to motivate him to get up and find an answer to something he's wondering about rather than lay on the couch contemplating building the ultimate dragon costume for Halloween this year. And what if all those people who say a more relaxed approach will result in lazy undisciplined children are right and I've erred in not being more disciplined and structured up to now? But then again, he actually has expressed an interest in a more serious study of biology and thinks he's pretty hot stuff for being ready to study algebra. Maybe I'm not giving him enough credit. And the Rosetta stone is supposed to be pretty easy to use and kind of fun and if we can all learn to say funny things like "Karl Rove is laying down under the airplane - he should eat more salads for lunch" in Spanish, that might be motivation enough. Plus the writing program is only a 2 day a week program and the world won't end if he throws some historical novels into his reading repetoire and saves a more serious study of history until he's actually interested in it. Plus, he still wants to make a website and possibly a video game devoted to dragons (what else?) and I really don't want to take so much of his time doing the "proper" academic things that he doesn't have time to pursue that. Or plan the fort his dad and I promised him we'd help him and his brother build. Ack!
I'm sure we'll stumble through to a balance that works for us, but if any more experienced moms have some relevant words of wisdom to share, please do.

Way cool

2006-08-11T12:07:00.000-05:00

Over on msn.com, one of the highlighted stories scrolling across the top of the page is about the blogs of 4 teachers preparing to start a new school year - 2 looking forward and 2 starting retirment. One of the 2 teachers looking forward to the new school year of a HOMESCHOOLING mom named Tanna. Blog here. I think it's way cool that a mainstream news outlet is highlighting a homeschooling mom like any other teacher rather than asking "why would anyone do that" like they usually do. Yet another sign that homeschooling is going mainstream.

I'm Back!

2006-08-05T09:20:00.000-05:00

Well, OK, so a "few days" turned into 3 months, but I was real busy, ya know. We moved into a new house on April 30th which is far enough out of town that we can't get cable or DSL and our old computer is so rickety that we couldn't even get the CD Rom to read an AOL start-up disk. (Donations in support of replacing said computer may be sent to my paypal account.) With everything else going on, I decided that going off-line for a while might not be such a bad idea anyhow. I suffered from minor withdrawal for a couple of weeks, but with a rapidly progressing (and sometimes difficult) pregnancy, a house to unpack and arrange, 3 kids to care for and a husband in New Orleans for several months, I had other things to do. But now the baby has been born (Sophia Rebecca b July 5, 9 lbs 9 oz, 22"), the house is unpacked, (but still in need of more decorating and furniture - donations for the purchase of which can also be sent to the paypal account mentioned above), a husband at home and a pilfered laptop, I think I'm ready to to return. So aside from acting as a 24 hour dairy queen for the new princess, I just have nothing else to do besides share my fascinating take on whatever piques my interest. Besides, I wouldn't be the first woman to type one-handed while breastfeeding - would I?

Stuff to look at

2006-04-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

I'm sure all my faithful minions are heartbroken that I haven't been blogging more this week, but packing must continue. So in the meantime, I'll direct you to some fun stuff to look through:
The Pig's Tales: A 4th grade teacher blogging about life, school, kids and an outrageously terrible principle. I recommend starting here and wandering through older posts (the stuff on her main page right now isn't as interesting as some of her older stuff, IMHO).
Generation Me: A new book which just came out about people born in the 70's, 80's and 90's based on lots of research which looks at the good and the bad of this generation. I'm going to blog about this at some point, but I just don't have the time right now. Check out the author's blog - older posts are better as she's been very busy out promoting her book the last few weeks. I don't agree with everything she has to say, but there's a lot of good stuff to think about. (Site appears to be down right this moment, but hopefully this is temporary.)
Go Fug Yourself: Pictures and critique of terribly dressed celebrities. OK, this is not very Christian and actually down-right snarky, but I must share that there have been times when at the end of a very long, hard day I look at this sight and see something like this and laugh so hard that life seems a little easier to take. And the girls who do the website, while perhaps not using their talents for the highest purposes, are great writers whose commentary is often funnier than the pictures. And in their (and my) defense, they disapprove of people walking around half naked just as much as my mother.
There you go. Grab some coffee and browse. I'll be back soon. I hope.

Let's go to the carnivals!

2006-04-26T17:39:00.000-05:00

I'm still busy packing, so I'm not going to have much time to post over the next few days (which doesn't mean I won't indulge anyway!), but I wanted to let everyone know that the Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at the Common Room. The Carnival of Education is up over at Education Wonks. Browse, mingle, talk among yourselves, have fun!

The state and your children

2006-04-24T15:29:00.000-05:00

I sometimes wonder if parents realize how much control they are handing to the government when they enroll their children in government schools. I'm guessing that many parents do not realize that not only are they not choosing what specifically their children are taught, but they do not have the legal right to have their children exempted from lessons which they may find objectionable or immoral. This came to light again last week in Lexington Massachusetts after a 2nd grade teacher used a book called "King & King" to teach children about different types of marriage. (Story here.) The teacher did not inform parents ahead of time that a book depicting marriage between two men would be used (and he is under no legal obligation to do so). When parents objected, the school's response was predictable:
"Lexington Superintendent of Schools Paul Ash said Estabrook has no legal obligation to notify parents about the book. ''We couldn't run a public school system if every parent who feels some topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides their child should be removed . . .' "
Last year a father at the same school who refused to leave school grounds until he was allowed to have his son opt-out of lessons which included teaching about same sex marriage was arrested for trespassing. We saw a similar demonstration of state power over our children in a case decided in California last fall where parents were found not to have the right to prevent a school from requiring their children to participate in Islamic practice's including prayers to Allah. (Story here.) This is the power of the state when it comes to educating children - they can choose what to teach them AND the parent has NO right to have their child exempted from lessons and activities which they find objectionable (exceptions for sex ed are allowed in most places).
Right now this is primarily a problem for those with traditional values, but it could just as easily turn against those whose values are in the minority. It's not hard at all to imagine a situation in a part of the country which is less amiable to the idea of same sex marriage where a lesson may include a statement such as "No society in history has ever recognized marriage other than between a man and woman (or women) because it has long been believed that homosexuality is unnatural and children entrusted to such couples would grow up twisted and unable to participate in the functioning of the society." Obviously, such a statement (while perhaps factually true) would be offensive to a same sex couple and might even cause real harm to the psyche of a child being raised by a same sex couple. However, parents simply do not have any right to insist that their children not be exposed to something which the state or its officials want them to be exposed to. When a child is enrolled in a government school, it is the state and the state alone which decides what that child is to be taught. What is so crazy about this situation is that we often hear from pro-government school apologists that the public school system is the foundation of a functioning democracy. In fact, a mandatory state run school system which claims sole responsibility for the ideas a child is exposed to while in its care in order to maintain a society which functions according to that state's vision of proper is a defining characteristic of dictatorial, fascist and other non-representative freedom killing regimes. How is it that so many people have accepted the idea that in a democracy the government should take on such a role? Call me cranky, but it really is the idea that it's perfectly reasonable that parents hand over their right to educate their own children to the government which bothers me much more than any particular thing which is or isn't taught in schools. To me giving the state the right to indoctrinate my kids as they see fit, without my input or control, runs contrary to the sort of radical freedoms our nation was founded on.

Forbes magazine on why your kids should think about skipping college

2006-04-23T23:19:00.000-05:00

Over on msnbc.com they have an article from Forbes Magazine titled "Five Reasons to Skip College" (click link above) which I think every parent and teen should read. The article points out that while there is a correlation between a college degree, particularly from a top school, and earnings, this should not be taken to be a causative relationship. If you're smart and ambitious enough to get into a top school, or even to pursue and complete a degree from a more run-of-the-mill college, you're smart and ambitious enough to be successful without a college degree. As the article points out:
"in truth, most professions - journalism, software engineering, sales, and trading stocks to name but a few - depend far more on "on-the-job" education than on classroom learning. Until relatively recently, lawyers, architects and pharmacists learned their trade through apprenticeship, not through higher education.
Certainly some jobs - medical doctors and university professors - require formal education. But many do not, and between the Internet and an excellent public library system, most Americans can learn pretty much anything for a nominal fee."
Of course without a degree, one needs to do something else in order to demonstrate proficiency and competency. This is one of the areas where homeschoolers really have an advantage. Since our kids aren't constrained by the demands of a typical high school career, they can do things like start a small business, create portfolios, volunteer, internships, even devote themselves to solving some problem in a particular field or any number of other things which involve actually practicing a particular endeavor. The frightening thing about it is that many employers use college diplomas as screening devices to weed out weak candidates, so the fear is that one will never be able to get an employer to take you seriously without a degree. However, it does seem to me that our slavish devotion to getting our kids into and through a college degree program might be worth taking a second look at.

Uproar over teacher's blog

2006-04-22T19:51:00.000-05:00

In today's Chicago Tribune, there's an article about a teacher's blog which is apparently creating such a fuss and out-cry that the teacher has stopped coming to school out of fear for his safety. The school in question is Fenger High School , one of Chicago's worst public schools. On a blog he called "Fast times at Regnef High", the teacher wrote about the chaos he saw there:
He labeled his students "criminals," saying they stole from teachers, dealt drugs in the hallways, had sex in the stairwells, flaunted their pregnant bellies and tossed books out windows. He dismissed their parents as unemployed "project" dwellers who subsist on food stamps, refuse to support their "baby mommas" and bad-mouth teachers because their no-show teens are flunking. He took swipes at his colleagues, too--"union-minimum" teachers, literacy specialists who "decorate their office door with pro-black propaganda," and security officers whose "loyalty is to the hood, not the school."
Apparently students, teachers and parents found his language too sharp and were upset that he didn't preface every negative comment by paying heed to the few kids, teachers and parents who were working hard and behaving properly. However, I find it very telling that this article is written as if the teacher imposed the label criminal on his students and even put the word "criminal" in quotes as if this were simply his assertion. Last time I checked, stealing, dealing drugs, destruction of government property and having sex in public were all illegal behaviors and people who do illegal things are called criminals. It's hard to get a handle on exactly what is going on here as the blog has been taken down due to the angry, often threatening comments which were being left there. It's possible that this teacher's comments were really so over-the-top that the average student or parent reading it would reasonably be insulted. However, when one looks at the school's performance, it's pretty clear that this wasn't a minority of students he was talking about. (Info on test scores here, info on graduation rates here, violent incidents here - go to "related charts" halfway down the page, click and look for Fenger.)
What I think is so interesting about this is that no one seems to be denying the that what the teacher said was true, although they think he was too sweeping in his pronouncements. What people seem to be upset over is that he talked about it and did it in a way which was not couched in niceties or excuses for people's poor behavior. How is it that the day-in day-out reality of the sorts of behavior this teacher talks about are treated as just a reality of life, not worth getting riled up over, but someone actually talking about it is something to be upset over?
The article ends with the sort of comment which probably goes a long way to explaining how this can be:
"Although many of our students adopt tough facades and insist they are grown, they are still children: sensitive children who still crave guidance, encouraging words and positive reinforcement," wrote teacher Gina Miski. "Was the author present when students, having read the blog, dejectedly hung their heads with pained, angry tears stinging their eyes?"
You know what - if my children behave abominably and are brought to shame and tears when confronted with their actions, that's not a bad thing. That's the time for saying, "OK, you don't like what's in the mirror - what are you going to do about it?" What is so damaging is when kids aren't treated as if they are capable of doing and being better but are instead told that it's someone else's fault that they feel bad. Then the kid is left with a sense of shame about themselves which they don't know what to do with combined with a sense of entitlement to never be judged or held accountable for their behaviors.
When I was in college, I worked with teenaged boys in Illinois state prisons - some of whom no doubt came from this school. They had horrible lives and had been dealt a raw deal from the beginning. Almost to a child, they needed healing from abusive and traumatic experiences in their lives. However, in order to move forward they needed not to be coddled and given "encouraging words and positive re-enforcement" - they needed to start doing things which could be encouraged and displaying behaviors worth re-enforcing. We have done a great disservice to many kids, but especially to inner-city kids who already have such a rough road to walk by emphasizing feeling good about yourself just because you suck air with the rest of humanity instead of building competency and the idea that respect is earned through positive behaviors and accomplishments. When brought up in an education system which says "we respect you even if you take a piss in the corner and beat up your teachers", it's no wonder kids and parents get upset when confronted with their own poor behavior.

Mind over body

2006-04-21T18:51:00.000-05:00

We have a mean flu bug working its way through the house. It hit my 6 year old pretty hard today. He's been running a fever and this afternoon, he fell asleep for a couple of hours on the couch. When he woke up, his temperature was about 102. I asked him how he felt. He looked up at me with his flushed face and fevery eyes, swallowed uncomfortably and said with a suprising amount of feeling, "I feel great, mom! Thanks."
Either it's the power of positive thinking or he's inherited his father's extreme distaste for taking medicine. :)

Update: The motrin has kicked in and he just came to me and said, "I bet if you took my temperature now it would say 'P' for 'perfect' " LOL

What does the state need to be able to do to "their" kids?

2006-04-19T19:40:00.000-05:00

I read an article today about homeschooling in VA where apparently there are some rather onerous requirements for assessment. Fortunately, there's also an out: a religious exemption clause which allows parents who are homeschooling for religious reasons to do so without interference from the state. Now some people are wondering if the law should be revisited due to the large number of homeschoolers claiming this exemption. Any how, what woke me up was this quote from former State delegate Jim Dillard who wrote VA's homeschool law:
"It goes back to the idea of an enlightened electorate," he said. "In order to have society function as a democracy, the state needs to be able to inculcate certain values in its children, in order to prepare them for citizenship and to have a meaningful role in society."
Hello!?! The state's function is to protect rights, maintain law and order, create a climate for commerce to function, not to "inculcate certain values in its children"! And this certainly isn't the role of a democracy - only in fascist regimes like Hitler, Soviet Russia and our current batch of Islamofascists is indoctrination of children seen as a proper role of the state. Our founding fathers would be appalled.

This week's carnival of Homeschooling is up!

2006-04-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

Week 16 of the Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at about homeschooling. If you haven't seen a carnival before, be sure to head on over. It's a sampling of what homeschoolers on the blogosphere are talking about and can be a great way to find new, interesting blogs. My post "My kitchen table's under-used (and I think I'm OK with that)" is included in this week's batch. I'm in the middle of packing to move at the end of the month and I've sworn I wouldn't spend too much time on the computer for the next couple of weeks, but goshdarn, it really looks like a great collection of posts that Beverly has put together!
Hopefully you're not packing and can grab a cuppa coffee or tea and head over to take a look. I may have to cheat - "once we get 4 more boxes packed I'll just go read one article". Have fun!

What if they learn without doing the worksheets?

2006-04-14T21:08:00.000-05:00

Over at the new blog "Robin's Blue Skies", there is a wonderful post about how kids learn in the real world vs. workbook learning. I know people who are "school at home types" and I know that some of them think the idea of not having the kids sit down to do their school work for several hours every day seems crazy. However, if my son knows how to read, does it matter that he never struggled with "learning phonemic awareness"? If he never does a unit study in his life, but becomes an expert on prehistoric life just because it's what he spent time learning about on his own, does that make him less well educated? Quite often before having my kids sit down to do some sort of school work, I try to remember to ask myself, "is this actually what he needs to do in order to learn something? Is this a skill or knowledge he's going to acquire whether he does this or not? How often does he actually need to be doing this to master it?" I've learned to put it away unless it's actually something that they aren't going to get another way.
A few years ago a friend called to complain about her 6 year old's homework. The school had sent a worksheet designed to help the kids figure out how to choose books which are likely to have information you want about a specific topic. Aside from the fact that this is one of those things you learn by doing, normally without much thought, the worksheet was unnecessarily confusing. There was a list of titles and list of subjects which the child was supposed to match up. All of the titles and subjects were about clothing and costumes. I doubt if I could have matched up titles and subjects to their satisfaction because the meaning of the subjects was so vague and the titles so similar. So now something which should have been completely natural is presented to a child as a difficult skill they may not be able to master!
I think that a lot of what we make our kids do is like that. There are thousands of lesson plans, curriculum, worksheets, unit studies and what not out there to teach our kids things which they would have to be walking around with their eyes closed bumping into walls while plugging their ears not to learn in the normal course of life.
I'm not saying there's never a place for formal study in the life of a child. However, especially for younger kids, I think that most of what people do to teach kids is done for the benefit and comfort of the parent rather than because it is needed for the child to learn. Of course, we have been so indoctrinated to equate school work with actually becoming educated that it's amazing any of us questions this at all. And the fact of the matter is that the style we use to teach our children must be one we as parents can live with. I would hope that a mother who is forcing her children to do things which only lead to rebellion, frustration and thwart learning will in time seek another way. However, a mother who is profoundly uncomfortable with unschooling, but attempts it anyways is unlikely to be successful either. But, that's one of the advantages of homeschooling - there's no one way we must do things.

For Good Friday and Easter

2006-04-14T11:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday on beliefnet.com, the blogger Chattering Mind asks if we need to/should accept Jesus' literal resurrection as fact. She seems inclined to the Borg train of thought in which one makes up something more suitable, albeit without any supporting evidence besides one's own conjurings like Jesus being alive in our hearts, rather than physically alive. I was going to leave a comment, but I couldn't figure out a way to say it succinctly and decided to leave it to God. Today on slate.com, Rev. Chloe Breyer offers a wonderful explanation of why we can believe in Jesus' physical resurrection and why it matters that he was physically resurrected.
I would add just a bit more to her essay. I think it matters that Jesus was resurrected because it matters so much that he shared suffering with humanity. It is a wonderful comfort that our God does not just sit on high, but stooped low to experience the same struggles and sufferings which we have in this life. We can know that we are understood, that we can go on, that God does not turn away from our suffering spirits, but embraces them. However, if that was all that he did, God would be no more than a rich man who sloughed off his lifestyle for a while to live with those in the gutters. All good and well, but what does that mean for those left in the gutters who do not have a mansion and nice clothes to return to? Because Jesus rose in the physical state which he chooses to share with us, and not just in some spiritual-metaphysical state of glory we do not share with him, we know there is hope for us. Paul teaches that because we share in Jesus' sufferings, we will also share in his resurrection. We know that our lives too can be a miracle, that death cannot and will not triumph over us either, that the suffering we see on the cross is not the end of the story. It is hope that the resurrection gives us. It is hope for the person who will never escape their miseries in this world. We know that even if we never escape or rise above the suffering of this world, there is resurrection - real life - that we have to look forward to with Christ. One of the first bible verses I ever committed to memory was Jesus preparing his disciples for his impending death by telling them, "I tell you these things that you might have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33) While these are nice words, it is the reality of the resurrected Jesus which allows us to live in the peace he desires for us, knowing as he did when he spoke these words that there is more that awaits us than suffering and death and the memory of nicely words spoken.

In honor of the protests over illegal immigration . . .

2006-04-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel tonight examined the myth of a gigantic slingshot used to fling people through the air and across the border. There's one way to cross! Of course they're too nice/smart to get too embroiled, so the imaginary border they created to test their gigantic slingshot was the US Canadian border. But not too nice, and definately smart enough to put the episode into heavy rotation for the next week. It was a pretty darn funny episode. (And no, you can't really use a slingshot to get someone over the border.)

Help needed: building a website

2006-04-12T17:49:00.000-05:00

My 10 year old wants to make a website about dragons and I need help in getting him started. I'm afraid I just don't even know how to start this and would appreciate any resources/instructions you might be able to offer. Mostly, I'd like him to be able to work on this pretty independantly. Like I said, I haven't the foggiest notion of how to start and everytime I've tried to learn I get about 2 sentences in to where they say something like "HTML is a language used to . . . " and it looks like "HTML bonk bleep gubble gorp blech . . ." to me! If anyone knows of something to help us out, please either leave a comment or e-mail me at ratrotter73@yahoo.com. Thanks!

My brain is going to explode

2006-04-12T13:19:00.000-05:00

A few minutes ago, I sat down to read an article on slate.com criticizing some column David Brooks wrote about the Duke lacrosse team scandal (don't really care about it, but the headline writers at slate are so good, they make you want to see what an article's about). Apparently David Brooks had been complaining about the race/class lens being used to look at the story and he thought it should be looked at as a moral issue and a sign of the lack of any attempt by our culture or schools to indoctrinate our youth in morality and chivalry. One Stephen Metcalf at slate didn't care for the column and as part of his response wrote this:
When a sociologistÂsomeone like C. Wright Mills, for exampleÂhears the word "chivalry," he doesn't hear the language of personal responsibility but its dark underside, the language of self-blame. There was a timeÂsurprisingly coterminous with the heyday of Brooks' chivalryÂwhen a black stripper who had been raped by white college boys would never think of going to the cops. Totally unaddressed by Brooks' nostalgia for "the 1920s," when "you can actually see college presidents exhorting their students to battle the beast within" is whether the best aspects of that bygone era (decency in public manners) could be resurrected without the social apparatus that sustained it (white Anglo-Saxon hereditary elitism). Brooks doesn't mention it, but one way to return university presidents to the language of inner beasts is to once again exclude women, blacks, and Jews from universities.
So chivalry and a moral education cannot exist withracismcism, religious bigotry and the oppression of women? And returning to the days of such things would be a prerequisite to a return to chivalry and morality?
As I sat at my computer, mouth agape trying to figure out if I read that right, the NPR program I had turned on early crept into my consciousness. The father of John Lindh (the American young male picked up with the Taliban back in 2001) was speaking. He was telling the story about how his son had been mistreated, not given a fair shot at justice, blah, blah blah. Someone asked if he thought his son had done anything wrong. His dad responded (paraphrasing here): "not at all. Going back to the 80's Reagan called these people freedom fighters. John just got caught in the crosshairs when America switched sides, rather suddenly in the wake of 9/11, and began backing the Northern Alliance. What John was doing was admirable. We want our kids to go to other countries, lenewnewe things, learn about other cultures, get involved." HELLO - your son was hanging out and "learning" with people who cut off women's breasts, killed their husbands, dropped boulders on the heads of suspected homosexuals, made women prisoners in their homes, left widows to starve, cut off people's hands, wouldn't allow little girls to go to school, ripped out the fingernails of women for wearing nail polish and on and on and on. But we're suppose to think he was just off learning about other cultures like some sort of exchange student? What was he going to do - come home and share the proper technique for whipping a woman in the street with a cat-o-nine tails?
Two displays of such reality-free immoral thinking so close together is just too much for me. I think my brain is going to explode.

15th Annual Canival Of Homeschooling

2006-04-11T10:04:00.000-05:00

This week's Canival of Homeschooling is up over at Tami's Blog. For those of you who may not be familiar, the Carnival is a weekly round-up of what homeschooler's are blogging about. It can be a good way to find out about what homeschoolers in the blogosphere are doing and thinking as well as a good way to find blogs which might interest you.
I especially like this week's submission from Dena's Deliberations about letting your child work at his own pace and the blossoming which occurs when a child is ready to learn rather than being forced to learn on some schedual.
Denise in IL has a post outlining how to solve complex word problems whihc I think I'm going to try with my son.
Henry Cate has an interesting examination looking a education vs credentialing and the effects of "credential inflation" over at Why Homeschool.
I make my Carnival of Homeschooling premire this week with my post on Christian Homeschoolers challenging us to examine how we deal with each other.
There's lots more, so wander over and take a look!

Christian Response to Illegal Immigration

2006-04-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I posted about illegal immigration and was rather harsh about the hardships which would be faced by many people and families if they were unable to work and support themselves here in the U.S. Basically I said, "that's life. Life is hard." Without the context of who I am and what I think about life outside of government actions, I suppose that seems really, really mean and uncompassionate. I had to think about this after reading this article on crosswalk.com about how Christians engage in cultural issues. I agree with about 90% of what the article has to say - Christians should not be harsh, should demonstrate love towards those who are different than us, should understand the difference between Christian faith and the Republican Party, etc. However, I had to stop and think when the author turned to the current discussion of illegal immigration. Examples he gives of Christians comparing illegal immigrants to bugs and vermin, referring to them as "those people", and an excessive desire to protect "our lifestyle" are obviously out-of-bounds and not compatible at all with a Christian heart. However, then he says this :
"For Christians to say we should deny health care to immigrants can only grieve the heart of God. How can we be so selfish when we've been given so much? Have we missed the point of the Good Samaritan: that our neighbor is anyone in need? Certainly we need to help illegal immigrants become legal. But deny them health care to force them back across the border? The bible is clear: "Also you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Ex. 23:9)."
I pretty well advocated such a position in my post yesterday. Am I taking a position which as the author puts it, "grieve[s] the heart of God"? I had to think about that one. In the end, I don't think so and here's why.
First of all, I see a big difference between the role of the government in doing God's work and my role as a Christian in doing God's work. If it were suddenly impossible for illegal immigrants to find work here, I would expect that I and other Christians would set up ways to help feed those in need, counsel them, listen to them and help them make wise decisions about what to do. I can easily see situations where churches might choose to assist people in returning to their native homes and support their visa applications from there. However, I do not think that this sort of charity is particularly they job of government beyond what is necessary to maintain some sort of order in the country. I actually think that part of what is wrong with our society is that we are too comfortable with the idea that the government will take care of people when it's our job to take care of people. We don't look out for the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, the elderly and disabled the way we should, in large part because we think the government should take care of it. I'm pretty sure that Jesus told us to do such things, not to set up a government system which we pay into which will do that hard work for us. So I don't think this is a case of being selfish or refusing the stranger help. I just think that the government has a proper and legitimate role in setting rules regarding access to our country. The person sneaking over the border is no more deserving of access to our healthcare system than a poor family struggling for survival in some other part of the world. If providing healthcare is our goal, we should seek to do this around the world, not just for those who happen to have been able to figure out a dishonest way to physically get here.
The other problem I have with illegal immigration, especially at the levels we see it today, is that it is depleting other countries of their best and brightest and helping to prop up corrupt governments. While it may seem to be compassionate to help someone who is here illegally, how compassionate is what they're doing to those in their native countries who could benefit from their courage, work ethic and smarts? What about the fact that many more in their home country are suffering from continuing poverty and lack of freedom because the money being sent back by expatriates masks the real effects of corruption, lack of opportunity, etc? We have this modern notion that people should avoid conflict pretty much no matter what. There are real changes which need to happen in the parts of the world which many illegal immigrants are coming from. As frightening as potential conflict is, wouldn't many illegal immigrant's homelands, families and future generations benefit far more if the sort of passion, organization and solidarity displayed in the demonstrations we've been seeing here was applied to forcing changes at home? Of course, the fact is that protesting and organizing here is not dangerous in the least, while the same actions back home could well get you killed. I do not mean to be callous to this fact, but I am the wife of a black man and we owe the very existence of our family to those who fought and died in the civil war and in the civil right's movement. There are things worth dying for. Many people die every year just trying to get across our border. Wouldn't their willingness to sacrifice be better spent on changing things in their native countries than in trying to cross our border? As it is, the possibility of a fairly easy pay-off for being in our country illegally is simply enabling corruption and poverty in parts of the rest of the world. There is a bigger picture at play here than just the individuals involved.
So, the bottom line is that I stand by my original position, although I see a need to flesh it out more fully. While I do not think our laws should enable illegal immigration, I do think what we as Christians are called to help those in need, including those for whom our laws cause hardships. I also think that there are issues far beyond the lives of individuals and even individual families which need to be considered. It has always really bothered me that I would be born in such a prosperous country facing my own problems, but certainly not matters of life and death while so many others live their entire lives with nothing. However, God didn't just say about me or my countrymen or people living in developed countries, "I know my plans for you. Plans for peace and not for evil." It wasn't only to the privileged he promised, "I will cause all things to work together for good for those who love me." This is His promise to a child who will live only days or months somewhere in Africa and to his mother as well. I do not understand it, but I trust God. C.S. Lewis makes an important point in The Boy and His Horse. Aslan is explaining to the boy Caspian why things which had seemed to have no purpose but misery had to happen to him. Caspian wanted to know about a servant girl who had been whipped, but Aslan told him, "that is her story. I am telling you your story." I don't know why so many people face such difficulties and have been born into corrupt countries where there is too much suffering. However, I do know that their lives are part of a story God is working out for His own glory. So, it's not that I am callous or selfish in supporting changes and better enforcement of our laws, but I do see things a little differently, I suppose.

Update on John Stossel's "Stupid in America"

2006-04-10T13:13:00.000-05:00

A while back I blogged about John Stossel's report on American schools and the lack of competition which he says is leading them to be so mediocre. (You can read my previous post here.) The teacher's unions had a hissy fit and showed up outside his office to protest. (You can read his account of the protest, including some of the really dumb things the teachers there had to say here.) During the protest, the head of the New York City teacher's union challenged him to spend a week doing a teacher's job. Mr. Stossel said, "OK." After many meetings, manipulations and hedging, the schools backed out. Apparently the the thought of Americans being able to see so clearly into even one of their very best schools was too much for them. I mean, it's not like Americans are the ones paying for this whole thing - oh wait, we are paying for it! Now, tell me why?

I know how to fix our illegal immigration problem

2006-04-10T10:25:00.000-05:00

Here's a juxtaposition for ya: two columns about immigration one by Juan Williams and one by Mark Steyn.
Juan Williams actually claims that the pro-illegal immigration rallies we are seeing are comparable to the black civil rights movement. A couple of facts perhaps Mr. Williams failed to consider: the black Americans who fought the civil rights movement were here because their ancestors were forced here against their will and forced into perpetual servitude. Illegal immigrants are here because they CHOSE to break our laws in order to make money and gain access to our way of life. Black Americans who fought the civil rights movement were full American citizens fighting for the rights guaranteed to them by our constitution. Illegal immigrants are not U.S. citizens and have no rights guaranteed to them under our constitution, but think they should be given such rights simply because they are willing to break our laws and demand them. Black Americans were routinely murdered, disfigured and terrorized if they did something which met with white disapproval. Illegal immigrants are routinely given jobs, medical care, and education for breaking our laws. Black Americans faced (and sometimes still face) actual hatred and racism. Illegal immigrants face legitimate law enforcement. It is a grievous insult to those who fought and died for the rights of black Americans to compare their fight to the demands of people who break laws and face not death, but jobs and social services for it.
In contrast Mark Steyn points out the incredible ineptitude and inefficiency of our legal routes towards immigration and compares that with rewarding someone for coming into the country illegally and acquiring false documents.
Here's the bottom line: there is not a right for non-native people to be in our country. We have an immigration system which should be overhauled and fixed post-haste, but this does not mean that we have a moral obligation to accept that anyone dishonest enough to break our laws in order to get into the country should automatically be granted a spot at the table. Over at the Corner on the National Review Online, John Derbyshire talks about a friend from Egypt who over stayed his visa in England for a year. The man nearly starved. Here, we give you a job and after awhile say, "oh, why don't you just stay?"
Here's my fix for immigration:
1. Fix our legal immigration system. Make it easier, more respectful of families and common sense. Reduce the time, paperwork and hoop-jumping. Make it easier to move in and out of the country with a legal visa in order to accommodate those who really do only want to be here seasonally. Heck, increase the number of visas available. Stop punishing those who are willing to come into the country legally.
2. Require all companies to run the social security numbers of new-hires through an easy to use database of legal social security numbers. We have these things called computers - it's about time our government figured out how to use them. Divert the money we'd spend on building a wall or whatever towards putting this together and towards drastically increasing enforcement and penalties for companies who hire illegal workers. Once people who come here illegally see that they must either go home or starve here for lack of work, both the existing population of illegals and any considering coming here illegally will lose their incentive for breaking our laws.

We keep hearing that this is a complicated problem and therefore, we must contort ourselves and the law in order to fix it. However, whatever complication there are belong to the individuals who have chosen to break our laws and their families and to the companies who have allowed themselves to become dependant on breaking the law. It is not the government's job to fix or accommodate the problems created by those who have broken our laws. It is the government's job to create common sense rules governing the right to reside and work in our country. If this makes things difficult for a company, well it's a free market system where laws of supply and demand rule even in the sphere of jobs. If your company can't navigate a free market system, you probably need to take another look at your business model and adjust. If a family has illegal, legal and citizen members, as hard as it may be should our lawmakers ever grow up and fix our laws, they are going to face hard choices. That's not punitive, unfair or immoral. That's life. Life is hard. Ask the black Americans who fought a real civil rights movement 50 years ago.

I wonder if spinning so hard makes them dizzy

2006-04-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

We've heard a lot lately about boy's lack of success in our education system. However, in today's Washington Post, writers Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett say, "hey, don't worry - the boys are fine." According to them, we shouldn't worry because the only boys who aren't doing well are the poor, minority, rural and urban boys. The boys who really matter, you know, white suburban boys, are doing just fine. Since it's just the insignificants whose boys are struggling, there's really no need to introduce dangerous notions about the inherent differences between boys and girls into our educational system. Uh huh.
Too bad even this isn't true. At the bottom of this page, you can see a table listing the percentage of undergraduates who are male broken out by race and income group. When one looks at the data, the only way to make Rivers and Barnett's proposition fit is if one assumes that all white, suburban males come from families with incomes of $70,000 or more. (They claim that among white, middle class boys, the gap between college attendance is very slight - 49% male vs 51% female - a statistic which is only true in the above $70,000 income bracket.) Since approximately 85% of white households earn less than $70,000, this seems highly unlikely. Basically what they are arguing is that the boy crisis is a myth because the approximately 12% of the United States population which is white and has a household income of more than $70,000 a year isn't seeing this so-called boy's achievement gap. Gee and to think we were all so worried! Of course white males from homes making less than $30,000 are outpaced 42% vs 58%. Those from homes making between $30,000 and $70,000 are outstripped by their female counter-parts 43% to 57%. I dunno, it sounds to me like this "boys in crisis myth" has some substance to it.
While the authors would have us believe that all of the gaps we are seeing are simply the result of race and income, what is striking about the actual data is that the gap in gender achievement for middle and upper income blacks and hispanics is nearly identical to that for whites. It is only low income blacks (and to a lesser extant hispanics) who show a significantly greater gender gap than their white peers. Of course, Madams Rivers and Barnett have made it clear that such people don't count, so let us not dwell upon unpleasant facts now.
Of course, the source of the author's incredible spinning of statistics isn't hard to figure out when you look at the rest of the column. The authors insist that there is more difference between individual boys than there is between boys and girls. (Try telling this to a classroom teacher.) They dismiss all of the brain research which has documented differences between boys and girls by comparing it to theories from the 1800's that men were smarter because their brains are bigger. They completely ignore the astonishing facts that boys account for 90% of all ritalin prescriptions and that 1 in 10 ten-year old boys is on medication for ADD. Then there's the fact that boys are stuck in special education classes at much higher rates than girls, are responsible for most disciplinary problems and on and on. Basically, since the boys who really matter (rich, white, suburban) are doing just fine, we should continue to mindlessly accept the outdated, disproven notion that differences between boys and girls will never be anything other than manufactured societal constraints.
Don't they have fact checkers at the Washington Post? This sort of amateur statistic spinning really doesn't deserve a prominent spot in a prominent newspaper.

Homeschool Prom

2006-04-09T18:23:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice little article about a homeschool prom held outside Chicago. I loved this:

"I don't know how these people learned this," the Elmhurst teen said, motioning toward a huddle of other students bouncing to the beats of a Ciara CD. Freshman Michael Naskrent, a home-schooler whose dervish-like twirls set his loosened necktie flapping, later whispered his secret to looking so good his first time out: "I asked my mom how to dance."

LOL :) Now there's a lesson which probably doesn't have a place in most teen's schooling - learning how to dance from mom!
I thought this was telling as well:

Although some schools now require parents to attend pre-prom information sessions or mandate Breathalyzer tests for attending students, all the home-schooled teens interviewed said they had never considered drinking before the event.

I'm guessing none of the girls showed up dressed like this either. I wonder what the state of homeschooling will be when my baby girl is old enough for prom. I hope it is going strong and still fairly isolated from the problems which too many teens face and succumb to.

Theology and Truth

2006-04-09T15:24:00.000-05:00

There's a very interesting (although slightly technical-language heavy) essay on theology and search for truth at Focus on the Family's TrueU.org sight for college students. The author, Michael Bauman, makes a point which I have often thought/observed myself - that too often Christians become servants of their theology to the point where they are unable to acknowledge or deal productively with anything which is contrary to what they already believe. These are people who measure truth against their own theology, rather than measuring their own theology against truth. If something doesn't fit into their understanding, then either it is simply incorrect, no matter the evidence to the contrary, or if what does not fit is from scriptures, then that scripture is manipulated, pushed, pulled and explained until it can be made to fit. Mr. Bauman puts forth his prescription for avoiding this all too common trap:

In short, we ought to be biblical, skeptical, objective and tolerant. That is, while we have the record of the very revelation of God in our hands, we must remember it will always be interpreted and applied by our own fallible minds. The Bible itself is infallible and indefectible; we are not. We try to walk and talk according to our Bibles - and we should. But, we are lisping and lame.
To such guides as we have proven ourselves to be, the best response is to be skeptical about what we hear advanced as truth and open-minded and loving toward those who advance it. We ought to listen carefully to what we are told and to evaluate it according to the best workings of our mind and senses. But, in so doing, we ought never to lose our love and appreciation for those whose words and ideas we so carefully scrutinize.

I especially like his advise about how we approach those with whom we disagree:

Theological exploration is a difficult, even dicey, matter at best - one that we must not complicate by constantly shooting at other explorers. Giving aid and comfort and modest advice to fellow travelers is one thing; to treat them like the enemy is another. This is not to say we have no enemies. We do. A lot of us just don't know who they are, and we begin to shoot at anything that moves, or at least that moves in a way different from our own. We have forgotten, apparently, that not only does our enemy move, but so also do our friends and fellow travelers.

"Jobs American Senators Won't Do"

2006-04-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

Glen Reynolds has a post up about the illegal immigration boondoggle going on in Washington. I thought this was a great idea:
maybe I should just sneak into the Senate chamber and start voting as an "undocumented Senator," one who's willing to "do the jobs American Senators won't do." It could be fun...
Where can I sign up?

My beautiful, darling, sweet daughter . . .

2006-04-05T23:51:00.000-05:00

began our day by throwing a major fit because I gave her a cup of milk rather than juice. Silly me. A few minutes later, she climbed into my lap with her blankie and spent 5 minutes cuddling and sweetly cooing at me before toddling off to wreck havoc throughout the house. Life with a young toddler! :)

My 6 year old's math problem

2006-04-05T22:22:00.000-05:00

The other day, I realized that I had a problem with my 6 year old's math. You see, a year ago, when I ordered a pre-algebra workbook for his brother, he asked for his own workbook. So I got him the first Miquon Math book on the recommendation of a reasonably like minded friend. Collin loves his math workbook because he can flip through and say, "look at everything I've done." The problem is, that I just realized that it's been a year, we're not done with the book (which is supposed to take 6 months) and what is being taught is completely irrelevant to Collin's math knowledge. I couldn't even tell you what the book covers as it seems to touch on a little of everything without ever going too deep. In the meantime, Collin adds 2-3 digit numbers in his head, figures out speed and time while we're in the car. He figures out how much money he'll have left in his allowance account if he buys something. He is forever figuring out how many days until his birthday, Easter, the baby's born, Halloween, his eighth birthday and so on. He probably spends at least 10 minutes a day figuring out how long it will take him to save enough money for some toy, given that he gets $4 every 2 weeks for allowance. And what if he gets a twenty dollar bill for his birthday? He figures out how long it is until some TV show he wants to watch, what time it will be when dinner's ready if dinner is 15 minutes away and it's 6:20 now. He takes money from the coin jar, sorts it, counts it, adds dimes to nickels to pennies to quarters and then tries to convince me to let him keep it. He figures out what year something happened if it happened so many years ago and even has use for the occasional fraction. I really think he devotes a good 30 minutes a day just to figuring out various numerical problems. In the meantime, a couple times a week I hand him a workbook which is having him use "greater than" or "less than" signs to indicate which number is bigger for 6 pages. Why am I wasting my kid's time like this? I think I'm going to leave the darn book in a corner somewhere. If he really wants it, he can get it, but I'm not pulling it out again. While I know he enjoys having a workbook, I think that next time he asks about his math, I'll just offer to teach him something new without it. Now I remember why I never wanted to bother with a math curriculum with my oldest son. With him, we just sat down anywhere from 1 to 3 times a week, learned to do various math functions and moved on once he got it. Sometimes if he got stuck, we'd just not do math for a while. When he was almost ready to move into pre-algebra (a couple months into 4th grade), we spent time just practicing in order to help him memorize his math facts and get better at paying attention to details. It seemed to work just fine for him, and certainly was more useful than that goofy workbook I got for Collin!
Oh, I also figured out why we're not done with the darn thing yet - you're supposed to do it every day! Duh! Now why would I want to do that? ;P

Words of wisdom from Steve Jobs

2006-04-05T10:56:00.000-05:00

This is almost a year old, so perhaps some of you have already seen it, but if you haven't read Steve Jobs' 2005 graduation address at Stanford, you should. His brief description of dropping out of college to learn seems especially pertinent for those of us who are homeschooling our kids. My favorite part though, because it speaks to where my family is right now is this:
"you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
We've all been taught to "begin with the end in mind" which is generally good advise. However, this presumes that we actually know what the end is. Sometimes we just need to do what we know to be right today, even if we cannot see how things can possibly cometogethere in the end.

TV and learning

2006-04-05T01:29:00.000-05:00

Earlier this evening I had a very interesting conversation with my 10 year old son in which I was forced to flesh out and defend my ideas regarding the television as an educational tool. I thought I would share what I came up with here. First of all, my 10 year old son LOVES television and always has - it's one of the things he inherited from his dad :P I think that watching television makes brain cells drip out your ears. However, I must admit that my son learns a lot from watching documentaries on the Discovery Channel, Science Channel, History Channel, National Geographic Channel and such. In order to maintain complete control over their television viewing, I have every single channel and show locked and nothing can be watched without my husband or I putting in the code to unlock it. Tonight, my son came and asked if I could just unlock the educational channels, since he learns so much from them and it's a hassle to have to convince me to unlock something for him every time he wants to see something.
I told him no because while the shows he watches are educational, they are only one way of learning things, and not even the best way of learning things. He responded that he thought they were a great way of learning lots of things very quickly so I should be happy to have him watch a lot of documentaries. To explain to him why this was not so, I used the analogy of an athlete training for his or her sport. An athlete follows a well-rounded program of conditioning rather than spending all of their time simply practicing their chosen sport. If they spent all of their time just practicing their sport, or just doing aerobics or weight training or whatever conditioning techniques they use, they will not perform as well as someone who does all those things. The same is true of different ways of learning. When one watches television, one is passively taking in information. However, unless we also spend a lot of time learning how to work with information, apply it to problems, understand how it relates to other things, how to use it to create something new and so on, the information isn't anymore useful than water sitting in a bucket. In order to know how to work with the information, we need to read, write, solve problems, make things, experiment, create theories, talk to other people about what we think, argue, defend our ideas, explore and so on. Time spent watching television, while it may have a limited role in education, takes away from time spent doing all these other, more productive endeavors.
I almost had him, but he wanted to know how reading a book was any different than getting the same information from a television show - after all, I never put limits on his reading. So, I explained how reading a book is different than watching a TV show about the same subject. With a book one has to visualize what is being describe. You can skip over parts which are not interesting to you or flip to another part of the book to find exactly what you want. You can put one book down and pick up another on the same subject to fill in any gaps or get another perspective. With TV there's no ability to stop, check another source, skip over parts, re-arrange the order in which the information is taken in and so on (we don't have TiVo, obviously). When watching TV, one can't do anything other than take in whatever the show's producers decided to put into the show, from their point of view, or walk away.
I'm not sure I completely convinced him, but I did stump him, so he dropped it. Of course, I think that even if I could scientifically demonstrate that watching TV really did cause brain cells to drip out your ears, he would still want to watch as much television as possible, so convincing him was probably never a realistic goal. In the end, while I do know that my son learns a great deal from the documentaries he does watch, I'll not be unlocking whole channels anytime soon.

Christian Homeschoolers

2006-04-04T22:39:00.000-05:00

I went to a church once where a pastor told a joke about two ministers who happened to be seated next to each other on a plane. After settling in, they introduced themselves and discovering their shared profession, set about discerning what their seatmate was all about. Down the list of topics they ran, "bible: inerrant or not, salvation: grace or works, baptism: full immersion or sprinkling" and on and on. The ran through dozens of potential problem spots of the faith and became more and more excited as they discovered that they were in agreement on them all. Finally, one proffered, "lectern: wood or Plexiglas." "Plexiglas," replied his neighbor. "Heathen," the first man muttered and turned away.
Being a homeschool mom I run into many religiously oriented people. Unfortunately, this joke could well have been told about many of the moms I run into rather than about ministers. One almost hates to open one's mouth about anything remotely religious, even when your Christian faith may be the thing dearest to your heart because inevitably, you will express an idea or opinion which doesn't pass muster with such people. Just try walking into a religious homeschool support group and saying that you do not see the teachings of evolution and Christianity as being incompatible. Odds are, your children won't get many playdates from that group. Then tell them that you don't think the "sinner's prayer" is the key to opening the door of salvation. At best you'll have many people working to ensure that you are "saved". I can come up with dozens of examples of things which can and are used to write you off as not believing the right things and therefore, not safe to spend time with or just not someone to take seriously.
I know that these dynamics are at work in many parts of our society, but I think they are amplified in the homeschooling community. Many people choose to homeschool specifically so that they can transfer their specific belief system to their children. Obviously, such people attach more significance to their belief system than others who may believe essentially the same things, but don't see the need to take such a radical step as homeschooling in support of it. Also, some churches have cultivated a real community of like-minded homeschoolers and may actually encourage their members to homeschool. While this is wonderful, it does create a social pressure not to fall out of line with the common thinking - since it is the common thinking which brought you together, getting out of line can almost inevitably leave you out of the group, bereft of the support system which made the leap to homeschooling seem do-able to begin with.
While I really do understand the different dynamics which can foster unease and division between homeschoolers who hold different doctrinal beliefs (many more than I've spoken of here, BTW), I think this habit is problematic spiritually, communally and practically. The spiritual problem is, in my opinion, the most serious one. The message Jesus actually communicated more than any other was, "don't be afraid." However, many Christians live in fear. They are afraid that their children will be poisoned by any contact with the corrupt aspects of the world we live in (I'm speaking of contact with, not immersion in) and end up not knowing what to tell their kids when a relative or babysitter does something which is immoral as they don't even think their kids should know such things happen. They cannot tolerate those who believe different things than they do and feel that they must always choose right and wrong and shun wrong (and the people who believe "wrongly"). The idea that each of us is responsible to God alone and that God alone can judge takes a back seat to the need to "know right and wrong" as Adam and Eve sought to know right and wrong. What is missing from all of this is a trust that God is big enough to handle whatever dangers we may come across. God is big enough to protect us and our children. That God can and does do what he promises and will "work all things together for good", even if the path gets a bit scary at times. It's like many Christians think they must stand alone in the spiritual wars which plague this existence and are only rewarded with God's presence and approval upon the successful completion of battle. That's not what God says. Jesus tells us, "In this world you will have troubles, but be brave, for I have [not will , could, would like to, might if you make me happy] defeated the world." He says, "I will be with you until the end of the age." God is not sitting on his throne, waiting to see if we do a good job, using the tools He provides us. Paul says, "In Him we live and move and breathe and have our being." We are not fighting these battles, "It is no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me" - and it is Christ who has already won these battles. Why the fear, people? Why the need to fear and shun and judge? Is this really a reflection of faith in the mighty work God has done for us? He did not die and win the battle so that we could go out onto the battlefield of life to fight for his approval!
Then there is the point where our spiritual well-being meets our need for community. Because we know that we will be judged and either welcomed or feared based on our beliefs, many people are driven to demonstrate that they do, in fact, hold the correct beliefs in ways which run contrary to scriptural instructions. The people Jesus criticized most harshly were those who exercise their faith in ways which are meant to be seen by others in order to gain acceptance or admiration. If you look around a group of homeschool families, you are likely to see explicitly religious shirts, hear scriptures quoted in casual conversation (complete with chapter and verse) and a fair amount of name dropping of respected church members or Christian teachers. This is not to say that one cannot be open about one's faith, but come on - when was the last time someone came to the Lord because of someone's t-shirt or bumper sticker? If anything, many people have been repelled by such things. Most of these explicit displays of religious belief really are more about affirming one's self and letting people know, "I'm one of you" (or conversely, "I'm not your type, so please keep your distance").
Finally, there are practical problems. We are called to be salt and light, yet when even those who desire good, want to teach their children, want to reject the sorrid culture around us, know they are likely to be judged and rejected, we are like the stagnant water God will spit out - not refreshing cool waters or useful soothing warm waters. We are doing a disservice both to the kingdom and to the important work we are doing in creating alternative communities for people to find sanity and safety for themselves and their children in when we approach one another with fear, judgment and rejection. So, my plea to those in the homeschooling community would be to be more aware of how you are handling yourself and conducting yourself as you move about in the world. When people who are not part of your "group" see you, are they afraid or attracted? Is your need to separate good and evil greater than your instructions to love? When meeting someone who doesn't believe what you do, do you automatically fear this person's beliefs or are you secure in knowing God can handle it?
I think that the homeschooling community is doing really important work for our children, for society, for our families and even for the kingdom. However, I think we could be doing so much more if we would let go of our fears and need for judgement and approval. God is too big for us to try and constrain him like that.

"generation 9/11"

2006-04-04T10:57:00.000-05:00

Over at the Phi Beta Con blog on National Review Online, Guy Benson who is a student at Northwestern University recounts a very interesting anecdote:
In a literature class last month, one of my professors asked our class to think of a moment or event that most defined our generation. The very first response from a student was, "9-11." The professor was caught off-guard. "I hadn't thought of that," she admitted. "How many of you would have said 9-11?"Almost every hand in the room shot up.
Perhaps I'm just looking at things through rose-colored glasses, but it seems to me that more and more pressure is building on academia as a result of out-of-control tuition increases, lefty-professors and a concern over quality. I think that this sort of disconnect between the cloistered world of professors and the rest of the universe may well prove to be their undoing. If you are not aware that 9-11 is the defining event of the last 20 years, then you are already obsolete and irrelevant. What is left for the rest of us is to figure out ways to usher this generation of moribund, immoral unseeing folk out the door. Then again, perhaps what's funny is that I see the undoing of academia as a good thing!

Daylight Savings Time and Homeschooling

2006-04-04T10:52:00.000-05:00

One thing about Daylight Savings Time and homeschooling is that there just isn't much external pressure on us to adjust to the time change. So now our schedule's an hour behind. That's kind of a problem since we tend to run about an hour and a half behind the rest of the world anyways. Lunch at 1:30 and dinner at 6:30 are one thing, but lunch at 2:30 and dinner at 7:30 seems to be a bit much. I suppose we'll have to resort to using an alarm clock for a week or so to re-set our schedule. Ah - the struggles of being a homeschooling family :P

One for the "Duh!" department

2006-04-03T15:50:00.000-05:00

On MSNBC.com, they're reporting on a study which found that "Sexually charged music, magazines, TV and movies push youngsters into intercourse at an earlier age". They think this is because being surrounded by such media influences create a "norm" of early, frequent, fun and consequence free sexual activity in the minds of young people. Gee - ya think?

Raising independent kids

2006-04-02T22:51:00.000-05:00

Just last week at the YMCA, I watched my 14 month old daughter wander away from me to greet people walking into the building (and maybe figure out an escape route) and I joked with my friends, "It's so sad how kids never learn to become independent unless you put them in daycare." I, of course was being completely sarcastic. Unfortunately, there seem to be some people who actually think this is true. Over at the Washington Post, there is a blog about working and stay at home moms by Leslie Morgan Steiner who just wrote a book called "Mommy Wars". In today's installment, she actually writes that only a stay at home mom could coddle her kids enough to prevent them from becoming independent based on a conversation she had with a friend. Apparently her friend who is a stay at home mom is a complete freak who thinks that by telling her daughter that she will put her to bed every single night for the rest of her life she will ensure that the child never ends up in therapy. Obviously, this is both a bizarre claim to make and completely not typical of stay at home moms. Ms. Morgan Steiner, however, takes this one odd ball and declares her life as a working mom superior for creating independent kids because in the chaos of their lives, she can't be as controlling over her kids as us control freak stay at home moms. Isn't it well past time that this ridiculous stereotype was put to its proper death?
There are two problems with this stereotype. The first is that it's simply not true. If anything, because we're not scheduled to death, my children are responsible for large portions of their own time. They have to figure out what to do with themselves without the constant structure of schools and after-school programs and lessons, practice and what not in the remaining few hours of the day. One of our objectives in homeschooling is that our kids will be the sort of people who can figure out what they want to do and how to get it done rather than people who wait to be told what to do. Having the freedom which me being home and us homeschooling allows us gives them a chance to learn just this.
The second problem with this stereotype is that it completely ignores the high price of having kids who are not supervised reasonably. Research has found that kids who are so "independent" that they are left alone after school are far more likely to use drugs or alcohol, be sexually active, and have other problems. (For a good review of how our daycare-make 'em independent of parents-latch key kids mentality is hurting kids, check out Mary Eberstadt's "Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes ".)
Another thing I have noticed about these "kids with stay at home moms are clingy and overly dependent" conversations is how callous people often are to the legitimate needs of children. 30 years ago, a kindergarten teacher knew that for the first few days of school she would be dealing with a class full of unhappy kids who wanted mommy. This was seen as a perfectly normal "right of passage" and dealt with. Today, the kindergartener with the stay at home mom who is unhappy about mom leaving him/her at school is used as an example of how having a stay at home mom creates clingy kids. How is it that we are so callous towards the needs of our kids that a very small child, a good 13 years away from adulthood, is seen as flawed if he/she hasn't gotten over being left by mommy at the ripe old age of 5? When my son was in a government school for kindergarten, some teachers actually said they preferred kids who came from a daycare setting because they were used to being in a more institutionalized setting and not being able to do what they wanted. Sure it's easier for the teachers, but what about the kids? And I'm sorry, but I don't think either being able to leave mom and dad at a very young age without any distress and accepting another person controlling your time are traits which are real conducive to becoming well-adjusted adults who are leaders and in control of their own lives!
Yes, we all want our kids to grow up and be independent. However, let's not pretend that kids aren't kids and don't need their parents around to raise them. People sometimes ask me how I can homeschool 2 kids, care for a baby, and keep the house running (however feably) and have time to blog. It's really because I have independent kids who I don't need to spend 100% of my time "interacting" with. I'm here when they need me, and I'm aware of what's going on so that I can step in when they need help or correction, but they are perfectly happy to spend a good part of their time doing their own thing. They don't need to be clingy - they know I'm here if they need me, will step in and make them do things when they don't want to and that it will be the same tomorrow. That's the reality of stay at home moms raising independent kids!

Funding Higher Ed

2006-04-02T21:48:00.000-05:00

In the past, I have posted about a column proposing that colleges no longer receive funding directly through the government, but that money be given directly to students to purchase educations and about the state of Colorado's attempts to do just that. While I'm sure there are still many, many hurdles left, it appears that this may be an idea which has a chance of catching on. On the Phi Beta Con blog over at the National Review Online, Candace de Russy reports that in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, the President of Miami University proposes privatizing public schools and providing government funding directly to students as a way of addressing "the deep structural problems in public universities." Ms. de Russy also reports on a similaproposalal by a member of the secretary of education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. All in all, I think this is a good idea. However, my one concern is that it might be easier for the government to cut funding to individuals or put onerous income qualifications on funding, which would be counter-productive. I'm not generally a big one for government programs, but after WWII and pretty well through the 70's and early 80's, government funding of colleges (particularly through student aid programs) played an important role in the rise of a strong American middle class and opportunities for economic mobility. I think that proposals to give students control over the spending of government support of college educations would put market accountability into our crumbling higher education regime as well as allow the government to play a positive role in supporting economic mobility and the strong middle class which our country depends on. Perhaps it's time to start agitating for these ideas before the forces that be on college campuses catch wind of this and snuff it out before it can get going.

I really shouldn't wade into this . . .

2006-04-02T13:09:00.000-05:00

There is the most unbelievably ridiculous column up on the Washington Post today by Kevin Phillips who is promoting his book "American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century". I read the Washington Post everyday, but they really demean themselves by giving a forum to such nonsense. I'd hate to see them go the way of the grey lady and become a newspaper only foaming at the mouth lefty crazies care about. This guy actually starts his column by saying:
"the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews."
Now, let me say up front, I don't like G.W. Bush. There are a whole variety of reasons for this, but his excess of religious motivation (I think too many evangelicals allowed themselves to see what they want in him and doubt he's really "one of ours") is certainly not one of them. So, I'm not come at this as a Bush apologist. However, just to show you how unbelievably stupid Mr. Phillips' premise is - his book is being published at the point where more and more religiously motivated people are becoming disillusioned with President Bush for a wide variety of reasons. Many, many people are coming to the conclusion that religious folks were never more than pawns for the president to use to get in office and whose views will always take a back seat to powerful business interests. But never mind reality - Mr. Phillips and those who are going to take his red meat herring certainly aren't ones to let themselves be swayed by little things like reality.
All in all, it is abundantly obvious that Mr. Phillips knows no real-live religious folks other than the caricatures he sees on TV. There are just so many things wrong with his premise that it would take more time than it's worth to deconstruct how ridiculous his thinking is and how completely and utterly removed from reality it is. Kathy Shaidle does a rather nice job of poking fun at Mr. Phillips over on beliefnet.com (ack- religion! the religious right is taking over the internet - be afraid, be very afraid), so I'll just quote from her March 22 column:
American liberals have been predicting the rise of "Theocracy USA" for more than 25 years, since Ronald Reagan won the White House with considerable help from the "Religious Right". (Odd how an honest-to-God "born again Christian" Democrat's occupation of the Oval Office during the previous four years didn't inspire similar concerns...)
It's 2006, and still no sign of concentration camps for homosexuals (you'll find those in Cuba, actually). Yet nothing can dampen the Left's feverish "Handmaid's Tale" delusions of persecution . . . It's awfully sad to watch otherwise intelligent people caught up in such misguided, not to say self-absorbed, terror: the fear that somehow, someday, in ways never clearly articulated, the paranoid individual's sacred right nay, their very duty to abort fetuses, smoke pot, watch porn, get sex change operations, and marry their hamster might just might be challenged, never mind abolished, by somebody, somewhere. Theocracies do exist, of course. Attempting to escape an imaginary one, an American author stumbled upon something like the real thing. Gay journalist Bruce Bawer was so horrified by the "Religious Right" that he fled New Amsterdam (Manhattan) for the European original. Yet the enlightened, tolerant, multicultural liberal paradise of Bawer's imagination turned out to be a seething hotbed of Muslim fundamentalism. In various European nations, he and his boyfriend were gay-bashed, politicians were murdered, terrorists were cheered and women were regularly "honor killed" in broad daylight--and, incredibly, not one of the perps was a "right-wing" Christian or white supremacist skinhead. Funny, that. Bawer's flawed, infuriating, but invaluable book about his experiences, "While Europe Slept," will receive far less attention than "American Theocracy." The chattering classes don't wish to have their strangely comforting dreams of impending doom disturbed by anything as tedious as the truth.
The fact of the matter is that Mr. Phillips and his ilk have No idea what a theocracy is or looks like. The very reality that he can make such ridiculous and demonstrably false claims, get a publishing deal and be subjected to nothing worse than people like me ridiculing him is a demonstration of how far we are from a theocracy. The fact that he can apparently move about in a world where there are no actual right-wing Christians and he must watch Jerry Falwell on TV like the rest of us must watch lions on the National Geographic Channel shows how out of touch with reality this guy is. Having a president who is a Christian doesn't make us a theocracy. Having our laws reflect the values of the majority of the country (ie Christian) makes us a democracy, not a theocracy. I'm sure it can be frustrating to live in a culture where your worldview is a minority POV, not embraced by most of your countrymen or even your president. Mr. Phillips can write a book claiming that the planet was seeded by pink aliens to harvest organs from, if he so chooses, however, what is really disturbing is that a the Washington Post would provide a forum for such flawed, illogical thinking. I would have hoped that their standards of fact and logic would be higher than that. Then again, this is a paper which brought in a plagiarist to represent a conservative POV (because there just wasn't anyone better, ya know) and was attacked by readers for providing the blog as a sop for the right. Because , well, liberal columnists exist for all of our benefit, but conservatives columnists are merely a sop. When are they going to start teaching logic in schools again?

What's happening to boys?

2006-03-31T10:11:00.000-06:00

I'm sure everyone and their brother will have something to say about this Washington Post column today entitled "What's Happening to Boys", but I'll go ahead and add my $.02 anyway. Boys aren't doing well in our society today. 90% of Ritalin prescriptions are given to boys, they are more likely to drop out of school, be suspended or expelled, commit suicide, less likely to go to college, and apparently more likely to pursue serious employment as young men. Leonard Sax, a Maryland physician and psychologist wrote today's column on the subject and announced the formation of the National Boy's Project which is aimed at figuring out what's going wrong and how to fix it. From looking at their website, it looks like they already have some good ideas and probably won't have to look too hard to figure it out. The problem is probably going to be in implementing the kind of changes which will allow boys to succeed in schools and feel respected and needed in society.
Since I'm a homeschooling mother of 2 boys, it probably isn't a surprise that I see schools as toxic to the well being and proper development of boys. Any place where 6 year old boys are expected to sit quietly without fidgeting is a place which has essentially declared war on little boys. I have written here before about my son's struggle with writing which I believe was made much worse (and caused no small amount of discouragement) by a school system unwilling to work with the natural development of boys. It can take 3-4 years for a boy's fine motor skills to catch up with a girl's. Educators know this, yet they continue insisting that little boys spend large parts of their day doing handwork. If a boy must deal with this struggle and discouragement everyday of his school life, it's no wonder that by 4th grade many of them have checked out. Add in the impulse to criminalize and sexualize everything a little boy does in the name of creating a "safe" environment (as if boys are themselves unsafe) and you have a brew custom made to set a boy on a path towards failure.
If a toxic school system was the only problem, it wouldn't be so bad. However, our society takes a very dim view of men, what drives them and their worth in our lives as well. It's easier to see how the breakdown of family affects women and children, but I think it has been just as devastating on young men as well. Throughout time men have been driven to succeed, in no small part, in order to care for their families. I have found that men have a very strong need to be responsible, to be living their lives in service to something greater than themselves and to have people trust them. Knowing that they would be expected to provide for a family or that they could go out into the world an accomplish great things kept many a young man on the straight and narrow. Even today, I have been struck by the number of young men who when talking marriage express what their fiance or wife means to them by saying, "this person is entrusting her life to me." In all honesty, I don't think many women see marriage in quite this way - it seems to be a particularly male point of view which reflects the importance of being trustworthy and responsible to them. Today, many young women say proudly, "I don't need a man." Mothers teach their daughters "never put yourself in a position where you're dependent on a man." We have taken the very thing which is likely to bring out the best in men - the need to be trusted, responsible and to care for someone - and declared it not only unnecessary, but potentially dangerous to their partners.
On top of that, marriage is seen by many young men as being a very risky proposition. Our family courts are getting better, but for much of the past 30 years, women have been able to unilaterally declare a marriage over, take the kids, keep the family home, half of everything a man owns and then continue to take a large portion of a man's income for spousal and child support. I think we've underestimated the profound effect that this state of affairs has on a young man's thinking. Men love their children as much as any women, and the very real prospect of an unhappy wife who can make it near impossible to have a relationship with their own children is a major deterrent for a young man thinking about starting a family. I also think that we women tend to misunderstand how and why losing possessions and income is so hurtful to men in these situations. It's not really the things themselves, but what they mean to a man. Many men get themselves out of bed in the morning and go to work with one thing on their minds: "I have to take care of my family." They seem to personalize their work and the possessions they provide for their family more than women. When a marriage ends, the loss of possessions can seem like a betrayal of the care and trust that went into providing them. And a man facing going to work to provide child and spousal support to someone who he feels betrayed by is particularly galling to him.
So you take a young man who checked out of education somewhere around 4th grade, who is facing a future where he is unneeded and where the very things he needs - to be responsible and needed - seem terribly risky and it's no wonder that many young men just don't have a lot of motivation to do much more than provide themselves with as much pleasure as they can get. After all, we may have taken their most noble drives and trashed them, but our culture's still perfectly happy to pander to their least noble drives.
Like I said, I don't think the National Boy Project is going to have to look real hard to figure out why young men aren't doing well. What I've written is just a small sample of the ways in which we set our boys up for failure. I think the real challenge is going to be in implementing the changes in schooling and in societal attitudes which would allow our boys to turn into young men who are driven to act on their best impulses rather than flounder about in their worst.
BTW, the website mentions t-shirts which have been popular among girls which say things like "Girls rule. Boys drool" and "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them." I would just like to say in the most judgmental and least tolerant tones I can muster, that if you have ever allowed your daughter to wear such an item, you should be ashamed of yourself as a human being.

Miss Manners' take on "boomerang kids"

2006-03-30T17:30:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I wrote about re-thinking our assumptions regarding young adults living with mom and dad. Today I came across a column Miss Manners wrote about the attitudes of parents and children facing a return home upon completing college. Her take is that the assumption that as our kids grow, they will come to have disdain for us is damaging to the parent child relationship, resulting in an unnatural and somewhat irrational rejection of adult children by parents who do not wish to continue pouring out unrequited love - even towards their own offspring who they doted on just a few years earlier. She also notes that it is unreasonable for young people to treat their parents as roommates as this is not in keeping with how a family treats one another. I think Miss Manners is a pretty smart gal.

The disappearing generation gap?

2006-03-30T10:42:00.000-06:00

Today over at the National Review Online, Myrna Blyth has an article making fun of life coaches. In it she makes reference to a New York Magazine article about parents in their 30's and early 40's who, in her words, "in their hoodies and their retro sneakers, have decided it is really very cool to remain childish even when they have children of their own. " She also refers to them as "shallow". So I wandered over to take a look. It's a long article (8 online pages) and I spent about the first 3 pages going, "why is this weird? Why is this even an article?" At the point where they start discussing people wearing $400 torn-up jeans, they lost me, but even as a teen I wouldn't have considered wearing ridiculous, over priced clothing cool. Basically the premise of the article is that Gen X'ers (I am one), are keeping up with new music rather than screaming at the kids to "turn down that terrible noise", not trading in their comfy clothes and sense of style for suits anymore and enjoy a lot of the same activities and entertainment younger people do. Not only that, they're just not as willing to give up their freedoms and passions to make money as the last couple of generations. They're still making money - just not by working for other people if they can help it. An HR person says "To motivate a baby boomer, offer him a bonus. To motivate a Generation-Xer, offer him a day off." My first reaction was, "yeah. And?"
While my family isn't taking mid-week trips to Mammoth to snowboard on a whim or deliberately working to shape our kids to have a hip music and style sensibility, we do listen to a lot of current music, my husband and kids enjoy many of the same cartoons and play "Yu-gi-oh" together. While I need a lot more money and a lot less weight to be truly fashionable, I don't own a single plain colored t-shirt or sweatshirt, any "mom-jeans" or ugly, practical sneakers. If we could figure out a way for my husband never to depend on someone else for his employment, we'd do it in a heartbeat (actually at some point we do plan on doing just that). Does this mean that we're acting like kids? I think part of this goes back to the discussion earlier about what it means to be an adult. After all, the article is talking about people who, like my family, are having kids, bringing in paychecks, maintaining a household and all the rest of the things which seem to me to equal being an adult. I didn't realize that it was shallow or childish not to accept that such superficial things as music, dress and entertainment would define you as an adult or a child. (Of course, I'm talking about reasonably decent music, dress and entertainment here, not gangsta rap, dressing like a prostitute or being entertained by debauched things.) We also differ from parents in the last few generations by being pretty open with our kids about life, what we think about things and even what we'd like from our lives. Perhaps this is childish and self-centered as well, but we view it as part of raising kids who are connected with their parents (rather than seeing us as mysterious and unknowable) and who will know how to navigate an increasingly complicated world.
Then again, this came out of New York, so it's relation to the rest of the universe is dubious. However, I thought it was interesting that I, a homeschooling mom in the middle of the country, had such a "and your point is" reaction to an article which is clearly meant to define some new trend for marketers and category makers to glom onto. I'm still also wondering what elicited Ms. Blythe's negative reaction to the article. Actually, the most New York thing about the article (aside from some of the specific style and political preferences of the people in the article) is the fact that the author doesn't seem to realize that parents and children not being at odds with each other's sensibilities is pretty natural and is a return to the way things have been for millennia, not as he puts it "unprecedented in human history". If we're putting away the generation gaps which have poisoned and plagued parent-child relationships for much of the last century, so much the better. That doesn't mean that the adults involved are childish. Perhaps they're just mature enough to realize that clothes, music and money do not an adult make.

A new guide for helping your kids choose a college

2006-03-30T00:00:00.000-06:00

I should be in bed, but I just had to post a link to a blog called The Torch which is run by the organization FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). FIRE is an organization devoted to helping college students defend their rights to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, due process and such. It's pretty sad that there's even a need for an organization devoted to defending people's constitutional rights against college administrators (who are themselves tasked with creating an environment of free intellectual pursuit), but that's the world we live in. As long as I'm at it, I might as well link you to the new blog addressing "higher" "education" on the National Review Online called Phi Beta Cons.
I particularly recommend these blogs to parents who feel a little insecure about not being able to afford to send their kids to Ivy League schools or who don't think their kids could get accepted. Once you see the sort of nonsense going on at places like Harvard (where no one's too whiney not to be taken seriously) or Yale (where a Taliban spokesperson is currently a "special student"), you will never again dream of sending your sons and daughters off to such hallowed halls. Not only that, but you'll have a nearly endless supply of stories to laugh about with friends (the ones coming out of Harvard really are the best). Enjoy!

How to become much smarter in about an hour

2006-03-29T22:39:00.000-06:00

There's a gentleman over at the Crunch Cons board named Bruce Frohnen who I have become a big fan of. I swear to you that if you take about an hour and read just his posts from the Crunchy Cons board, you will be a smarter person.

Crunchy Conservatives and Civic Activity

2006-03-29T22:08:00.000-06:00

I've mentioned the conversation going on at the National Review Online about the book "Crunchy Conservatives" as couple of times here. This week there has been a very interesting (or at least I found it very interesting) conversation about civil society and how we engage in a culture we see as hostile and corrupted. A letter was posted there from someone basically saying "you guys are too doom and gloom - get out there and get involved. Be a positive influence in the community." After thinking about it, I sent the following to Rod Dreher (the gentleman who wrote the book this discussion is based on). It has been posted on the "Crunchy Con" board, but I thought I would share it here as well:
I wanted to respond quickly to your friend Mike regarding being active in the community. I think that a huge part of what is simultaneously driving much of the "doom and gloom" and the small scale community involvement which comes with being a "crunchy con" is that we have lost faith in much of what has been thought of as civil society. Our schools, our political parties, county boards, chambers of commerce and many of the other avenues by which we've often been encouraged to "get out there" are so corrupted that fighting them or even expecting anything good out of them seems to be a lost cause. So yes, we're active, but we're not doing it within organizations which are often looked upon as being essential to a civil society. I think it's the reality of the failure of the basic structures of our civil society on top of the disintegration of our cultural/moral framework which is driving many people to simply withdraw and seek out places where we really can influence our worlds. So we homeschool because we cannot change the school system, we support crisis pregnancy centers because we can't influence the laws or change the larger culture which is driving the problem, we join garden clubs because we can't stop the county board from paving everything over and so-on and so-forth. I think part of what makes a crunchy con a crunchy con is that we don't buy into the idea that we can do much in the larger world of politics, education and culture. So we are retreating into smaller worlds where we can influence things for the better. Hopefully, in time, we can gain enough influence in these small areas that we'll start being able to influence some of the larger structures of society. In the meantime, I'm not holding my breath.
Actually, the second to last sentence really ought to say "Hopefully, in time, people will get sick enough of the status quo to start looking for alternatives. Should this happen our small, fulfilling communities may well be able to be central to a renewal of civil society."
I've gotten myself a bit out of sorts this week by spending too much time "out in the public square" looking at what people are saying about our local elections which are coming up, as well as in the larger world where we're arguing over immigration, marriage, parenting, the war in Iraq, the role of religion in our society and on and on. It all feels so futile. Congress will continue passing laws which don't reflect sanity (or the desires of the people), the local school board will never fix the fundamental problems of public schools, our local governments will always be involved in things they have little business messing with, the courts will do whatever they please, people will continue to say and think things which are demonstrably false and damaging rather than change their minds. So I come again to where I always do when faced with the discouraging reality of what passes for civil society - I'll pull back into the world where I can make things better, be a little light in the darkness and find others who are trying to do the same. It's not grand and gloriously self-gratifying - I'll never be honored in the public square, but it sure beats banging your head against walls and tilting at windmills!

"Let's all get together and defend high unemployment" day in France

2006-03-28T18:06:00.000-06:00

To us Americans, the riots and protests going on in France over proposed changes which would make it easier for companies to hire and fire people under the age of 26 are completely unfathomable. In his World Opinion Roundup on the Washington Post, Jefferson Morely looks at several international reports and some of the deep cultural issues which are influencing this seemingly incomprehensible lack of logic on the part of the French protesters. I still think they're completely bonkers, but it is an interesting, somewhat informative piece if you want to take a look. I can't find a link right now, but I particularly liked one protestor who said, "if they pass this law, we'll be like slaves for the employers - we'll have to do every little thing they tell us to do or they can fire us." Words just fail me.

Research on Homeschoolers

2006-03-28T16:40:00.000-06:00

I came across an article from the Fall 2004 issue of the Journal of College Admission which summarizes the research which has been done on homeschooled students for college admissions officers. It was Written by Dr. Brian D. Ray, the president of the National Home Education Research Institute. It is written from an obviously pro-homeschool point of view, but Dr. Ray has the research to back up his very positive view of homeschooling. Some of my favorite points:

In study after study, the homeschooled scored, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the United States and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile.
Researchers, wondering if only certain families-in which the parents have a high educational attainment or family income-are able to homeschool such that their children score high on achievement tests, show that children in homeschool families with low income and in which the parents have little education are scoring, on average, above state-school averages.
In addition, research shows that the parents' teacher-certification has little to no relationship with their children's academic achievement, and that the degree of state control of homeschooling (i.e., regulations) has no relationship with academic achievement.
Shyers (1992) found the only significant childhood social-interaction difference between the institutionally-schooled and homeschoolers was that the institutionally-schooled had higher problem behavior scores.
Susannah Sheffer (1995) reports a homeschool girl who told her:"I think some people would have seen [school] as my opportunity to 'be like everybody else.' But I didn't want to be like everybody else." Sheffer concluded, "Throughout this book the homeschooled girls I've interviewed have echoed these statements. They have talked about trusting themselves, pursuing their own goals, maintaining friendships even when their friends differ from them or disagree with them." Finally, these home-educated girls maintain their self-confidence as they pass into womanhood.
Both the SAT and ACT publishers have reported for several years that the scores of the homeschooled are higher, on average, than those from public schools.
Galloway and Sutton (1997) used academic, cognitive, spiritual, affective-social, and psychomotor criteria for measuring success at a private university. Among other things, they found that homeschooled students held significantly more positions of appointed and spiritual leadership, and had more semesters of leadership service than did those from private schools, and were statistically similar to the public school graduates.
. Gary Knowles (Knowles & de Olivares, 1991; Knowles & Much more, 1995) was the first to focus research on adults who were home-educated, collecting extensive data from a group who were home-educated an average of about six years before they were 17 years old. He found that they tended to be involved in entrepreneurial and professional occupations, were fiercely independent, and strongly emphasized the importance of family. Furthermore, they were glad they had been home-educated, would recommend homeschooling to others, and had no grossly negative perceptions of living in a pluralistic society.
Smith and Sikkink used data from the 1996 National Household Education Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, which differentiates between students educated in public, Catholic, non-Catholic church-related, and nonreligious private schools, and homeschool students. The researchers concluded:
"Far from being privatized and isolated, home schooling families are typically very well networked and quite civically active. The empirical evidence is clear and decisive: private schoolers and home schoolers are considerably more civically involved in the public square than are public schoolers, even when the effects of differences in education, income, and other related factors are removed from the equation. Indeed, we have reason to believe that the organizations and practices involved in private and home schooling, in themselves, tend to foster public participation in civic affairs... the challenges, responsibilities, and practices that private schooling and home education normally entail for their participants may actually help reinvigorate America's civic culture and the participation of her citizens in the public square."

There's more, but like I said, these were some highlights. I think that pretty well covers all the major objections to homeschooling we run into. Not that facts ever did anything to change a determined ideologues's mind. Of course, as the author points out, "This is not to say, of course, that every homeschool graduate is brilliant, attractive, and destined for success. It simply means that, on average, they appear to be doing well in the "real world" because the environment in which they were educated-in the broad sense, academically, mentally, morally, and aesthetically-gave them sound academic skills, a solid and confident social and emotional nurturance, respect for others, a stable worldview, and a zest for learning."

Probably my favorite quotes came from some Ivy League school administrators:

Dartmouth College admission officer: "The applications [from homeschoolers] I've come across are outstanding. Homeschoolers have a distinct advantage because of the individualized instruction they have received."
Admission officers at Stanford University think they are seeing an unusually high occurrence of a key ingredient, which they term "intellectual vitality," in homeschool graduates (Foster, 2000). They link it to the practice of self-teaching prevalent in these young people, as a result of their homeschool environment.
"These kids are the epitome of Brown students," says Joyce Reed, who became an associate dean of the college twelve years ago. "They've learned to be self-directed, they take risks, they face challenges with total fervor, and they don't back off" (Sutton, 2002).

If you know someone who is thinking about homeschooling or is just starting off and is worried about if they're doing the best thing for their kids, send this along. It should probably be read by those who know homeschoolers, but aren't real sure if it's such a great idea (hi, Mom!). So, there's my encouraging post for the day!

RIP Recess

2006-03-27T19:34:00.000-06:00

There was an item in our local newspaper which caught my eye because I thought it was so very odd. The headline was "Recess thrives in Wisconsin":

The national PTA reports many schools in Wisconsin grant 30 minutes for recess during the day, half at mid-morning and half in the afternoon. That's the maximum allowed by state law. (Emphasis mine.)
But nationally, the PTA says 40% of elementary schools have either cut out recess or are thinking about it. Blame goes to budget cuts and requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act.

First of all, why do we have a law limiting recess? I mean, was there an epidemic of schools allowing children to run around for hours on end and not teaching kids to read and write? I can totally see passing a law requiring a minimum amount of recess, but a maximum?
Secondly, it's really frightening that school administrators (I can almost promise it's not classroom teachers pushing this nonsense) are so completely and utterly stupid that they think cutting recess is a good way to improve student achievement. Are all these people hanging out with Marion Barry over lunch? And we wonder why boys are failing in school and 1 in 10 fifth grade boys are on ritalin? Anyone with a functioning brain cell in their heads should realize that reducing kid's opportunities for blowing off steam will also reduce their achievement. Yeesh!

We need clear thinkers like this today

2006-03-26T15:53:00.000-06:00

A writer named Mark Steyn has a column up on the Orange County Register about the case of a man being threatened with execution in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity. The whole thing is good, but I particularly appreciated this bit:
In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

What is wrong with people?!?!?!

2006-03-25T21:12:00.000-06:00

There is so much to say about this Washington Post story on "Club Libby Lu", but I think I can sum it up pretty quickly: blegh! It reminds me of one of those mom phrases which just doesn't get used enough these days: over my dead body!

"Little People Big World"

2006-03-24T14:34:00.000-06:00

Over on Slate.com today there's a column about my favorite new show "Little People Big World" (Sat. 8/7c on TLC). I watch very little television, but I've actually been making an effort to try and catch this one simply because I think the family involved is so wonderful. The show is about a family where mom and dad are little people. They have 4 kids - 3 are average sized and one who is also a little person. The columnist for slate.com thinks that a big part of the appeal is allowing people to stare as much as they want without feeling bad about it. After all, the show isn't exactly edge-of-your-seat drama. I disagree. I enjoy watching it because we see this family defying whatever expectations we may have and being such a neat, better-than-average family. So often when we see people who face challenges on TV, the urge for Hollywood is to "make them real" by having them deal with the sort of sorrid-ness and disfunction Hollywood seems to think is normal. However, this show has a real family who, while not perfect, are refreshingly functional and really wonderful human beings. I think that is the essence of why it's such a fun show - we relate to this family not because of their disfunction but because they're people we'd actually like to have over for dinner. I think that any show which can cause people's physical differences to become secondary to our admiration for them as people is doing something right.

Is "Failure to Launch" Really Such a Failure?

2006-03-24T13:31:00.000-06:00

There has been some talk lately about people in their 20's or even 30's who still live at home with mom and dad. Now, when I was in my early 20's, I certainly did not want to live with my folks and truthfully, I didn't really respect those who did. I have always said that I fully expect my kids to strike out on their own once they finish schooling. However, every time I read an article or column about how terrible it is that so many young people still live at home, I start to think that perhaps we're off base in our thinking about this issue as a society. Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote a column this week extolling the virtue of a bit of shame in getting the young to jump the nest and now I'm really thinking I might need to re-evaluate my thinking on this one (probably just the opposite of what he was hoping for).
First of all, until fairly recently a child who moved out of his or her parent's home prior to getting married was rare and often seen as scandalous. So what we're talking about isn't exactly a new thing. Children stayed put for many of the same reasons they do today - to help the family out, to save money for their future and because it was where they were comfortable. I think that what has changed - and what we should consider alarming - is that we used to see getting married and starting a family as what moved us into adulthood. Today we look at freeing ourselves of encumbrances to family and being self-sufficient as what makes a person an adult. Marriage and starting a family are no longer seen as the standard of adulthood, but as risky endeavors which should only be pursued once one is completely established as a person with no significant ties or dependency on any one. Is this really healthy? Of course, if we get rid of the push towards marriage AND we get rid of the push towards self-sufficiency, we're not left with much by which to measure the passage into adulthood by. That can't be healthy either. Yet I'm not at all convinced of the superiority of pushing young people into becoming completely self-sufficient creatures. Not only does it deny the social bonds and centrality of family in people's lives, but is it any wonder that people who have been taught to measure their worth by their independence have difficulty negotiating marriage where mutual dependence is the name of the game?
The portion of Mr. Navarrette's column which really raised alarm bells for me was this:
And if these young people live in areas of the country where home prices are astronomical, they even have a built-in excuse. Many may be unable to buy a home of their own and thus are more likely to move back with mom and dad. Some may have decided that they'd rather live in a nice area of the country, even if it means living with their parents. They must know that they could have their own home if they moved to a place with more opportunity and a lower cost of living, but they stay put.We already knew that--according to U.S. employers who are dependent on foreign labor--the work ethic is slipping among members of the younger generation. Now, also in short supply is the willingness to seek out opportunity wherever it exists.
As much as it's become a reality of modern life, anyone who looks at our society can point to the loss of community, neighborhoods and family support which results from the high levels of mobility we have as having been detrimental to our quality of life. What Mr. Navarrette is saying is, "to heck with the kids knowing grandma and grandpa. To heck with having women you trust around to help teach you how to care for your first child. To heck with caring for aging parents - a real American goes where the opportunities are! Why do you think we have e-mail, day care and nursing homes?" As much as we all want our kids to be independent, do we really want to teach our kids that the bonds of family and community come behind seeking out the next opportunity? I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here as our family has certainly made choices about where to live based on jobs. However, I'm not certain that this trade-off is one which should be accepted so casually.
I'm not saying that I've committed myself to having my kids live with us until they build a hut in the family compound upon taking a bride. However, I do think that we nee to ask ourselves if a set of social norms which is so dependent on accepting family as secondary to self-sufficiency is what we should be promoting with our children. Many of us often lament the short shrift family matters get in our culture, but perhaps that's just what is to be expected when leaving your family is seen as necessary to living a worthwhile adult life. Something to think about.

My kitchen table is under-used (and I think I'm OK with that)

2006-03-22T12:27:00.000-06:00

This is our third year homeschooling and perhaps I'm a little slow on the uptake, but half the time I feel like I'm just starting to figure out what we're doing. I do think I'm ready to make a confession, however: my kitchen table is sorely under-used. (Actually, I think it gets way too much use from greedy munchkins who expect to be fed 3 times a day, but that's a whole 'nother story.) The fact of the matter is that we just don't sit down to do "school work" all that often. And no matter how often I run through my mental list of re-assurances that my children are being educated, the idea that they should be sitting down at the table every day to do "work" is a hard one to shake. I suppose I could have made life much easier on myself by buying a curriculum and setting aside time every day for the kids to learn. However, when I started I wanted more - I wanted to be creative, respond to where my child was and what they were interested in and all those other things we romantically think education can be. So rather than buy a curriculum, I set about making my own. Because a curriculum I designed was just going to be so much better than one someone else designed, you know. I'm so funny sometimes.
There was a little snag in my plan, however; an 8 year old named Noah who was not going to be a willing participant in my little curriculum designing adventures. Now, I want you to know my husband and I are in charge in our home and we have no problem asserting our authority as parents. Noah, however, has an amazing capacity to accept the consequences of his behavior as a necessary price to pay when it comes to certain things. He will willingly forgo his allowance and give up all his privileges if he thinks it might buy his way out of clearing the kitchen table after dinner. So, I would give him a sheet of math problems I knew he was perfectly capable of completing in about 20 minutes and he would sit at the table for the next 8 hours without doing it. He knew he was missing out on playing outside or watching TV. He knew he would lose television, computer and gameboy privileges for weeks on end. He knew that piece of paper wasn't going to go away. He knew I wasn't going to give in. If I offered an incentive for completing his work in a timely manner, well that's OK, he could do without. If I gave him something unpleasant to do until he was ready to get back to work, well, really he could just do that all day. Or he could say he was ready to work and then sit down, do one problem and then stop working again. Repeat this pattern for all the other subjects we were supposed to be covering and it was often bedtime before he was allowed to leave the table (with very little work completed), usually just because we wanted him to go away. After a month or so of this, I finally decided that if I wanted him to spend his days being forced to do things he didn't want to do, learning to hate learning and being screamed at, I could just pack him off to school and use my time to do other less frustrating things, like negotiating peace between the Isreali's and Palastinians perhaps.
So, I laid down a few things with him. I told him that he was responsible for his own learning. I would provide him with all the opportunity and materials he needed to become well educated. I could make it unpleasant for him to refuse to learn, but ultimately, learning was his responsibility. If he wanted to grow up to be an uneducated dolt, that was his problem. I wasn't going to give myself a stroke over it. I told him that I was going to make sure he knew how to write and do math, but as long as I could see that he was moving forward in these areas, I was going to make sure that these activities didn't take up more time than needed. As far as everything else went, I would make myself and the materials he needed available, but again, this is his education and I wasn't about to destroy a child's God-given curiosity about life by allowing his education to become part of a power struggle between us. Now, perhaps this seems like a ridiculous set of ideas to present an 8 year old with. Lord knows I have fudged and meddled and doubted what I was doing many times over the last couple of years. It took a long time for me to stop trying to turn all of his questions into lessons, complete with activities and preferably, lots of writing. Needless to say, he didn't ask me many questions for a long time.
Believe it or not, he didn't stop learning. I think he was afraid that if he did his work, he would be rewarded with increasing amounts of work and pretty soon I would consume him whole with my desire to teach him. Once he felt comfortable knowing that this wouldn't happen, he became more co-operative about those things he had to do like math and writing. And faced with a lot of time to fill and very limited access to TV, movies, computer games and such, he filled it by reading the piles of books I carefully selected and left laying about or making up goofy experiments with his brother. Add in the 4-6 novels he reads a week and despite my nagging guilt, he kept moving forward.
I also discovered the magic that happens in letting a struggling child walk away from a subject for a while. I can't tell you how many times we've gotten to a point where he either couldn't or wouldn't do any more work. Inevitably if I just let it go for a month or so, when we came back to it, it was like a something had just shifted into place and it wasn't such a struggle any more. Of course, try telling a parent whose kids are in school or who do "school at home" homeschool that your kid hasn't done a formal math problem for a month!
Just recently, however, we had an experience which confirmed for the me the wisdom of allowing these breaks. I have been particularly concerned about Noah's writing abilities this year. Fifth grade is one of those transitional years where kids start working on creating output rather than just absorbing information and writing is central to this. I knew that Noah had been forced to do a lot of handwork in his first 3 years of school despite not having the fine motor skills needed to do the work well. However, I was uncertain to what extant this slow fine motor skill development and the resistance to writing he picked up from being forced to do something he wasn't ready to do were contributing to his poor writing skills. He almost never used cursive unless forced, would write as little as he could possibly get away with at the expense of being able to express himself coherently, misspelled almost every word and just absolutely despised doing anything which involved writing. So, after forcing him to write at least a little bit pretty well every day for a couple of months and seeing no real improvement, I let him go. He hardly wrote a word other than the occasional thank you note for about 3 months. A few weeks ago, I decided to give it a try and got him a new guided writing workbook. I told him to pick one page and do it. 20 minutes later he was done. He had answered each question thoroughly, had very few spelling errors, wrote in cursive without being prompted and even wrote sentences which made sense! I can't say he enjoyed it, but it was no big deal. So, he's been doing that 2 or 3 times a week. What was especially intriguing to me about it was that a couple days after he started working on this workbook, he came to me and said "look what I can do, Mom" and drummed his fingers on the table. He explained that he couldn't really do it with his left hand yet, but thought it was pretty cool that he could do it with his right. Obviously, if doing something as simple as drumming his fingers on the table was a novel new skill to him, his fine motor skills really were lagging behind up to this point and continuing to force him to do something he just wasn't developmentally ready for wasn't going to help.
I think part of what makes our family different in our approach to education than many others is that we're using what in the business world would be called an "outcome based approach". As long as they're learning and progressing forward, how that happens isn't really the issue. I think that in a lot of families, education doesn't only serve as a way to make sure the kids have the scholarly knowledge and skills they need, it's also used as a conduit to learn other, non-academic skills. Keeping a schedule, perseverance, self-discipline, self-denial and even authority issues are often goals of the educational program a family chooses. We actually devote a lot of time to developing these essential elements of character in our kids, we just don't use their scholarly education as a means to do it. In a way, I think that there are some advantages to separating the two, at least at the elementary and middle school level. Growing perseverance and self-discipline as well as learning to submit to authority are difficult, sometimes unpleasant lessons. I think that by treating scholarship and character development as separate arenas, one can avoid contaminating the task of learning with the pain and struggle of character development. And character development isn't confused with real learning or developmental struggles. Too often children are labeled lazy (a character judgment) when really they are just struggling with some specific academic skill. In time, I expect and am beginning to see, as a child's character becomes more well formed, it should be a pretty natural thing to apply self-discipline, perseverance, time management and such to the pursuit of knowledge. One can benefit the other without being knotted together so tightly that one or the other runs the risk of being strangled.
Sorry this is so long already - on another day, I'll have to explain in a bit more detail how my children's learning works, but for now, consider this my family's declaration of freedom from the kitchen table!

Afghan Man Facing Death for Converting to Christianity

2006-03-21T19:11:00.000-06:00

Perhaps you have seen this story about an Afghani man who is facing death in Afghan government courts for converting to Christianity. I'm sorry, but I really think this is the point where we need to tell the Afghani government that either they need to join the modern world and learn to play nicely with others or we're taking our cash and soldiers and going home. If they can't handle themselves without our assistance, well, we always have long range bombers on hand to help keep them in the stone age where they apparently feel most comfortable. I know, I'm not being very nice here, but if I was a mother who lost a child fighting for this country, I would be furious. There is no way our men and women should be away from their families facing injury and dying so that this sort of thing can go on. I'm also not one to write off diplomacy, but there are some things which I think we should make clear simply are not open for negotiations. This is one of them. Plus, if we turn a blind eye to this sort of thing in Afghanistan, is there any doubt that religious fascists in Iraq will seek to set up their own oppressive government with our money and blood?
If President Bush isn't willing to take a hard line on this, it's time for the congress to grow some cajones and threaten to cut off funding for our activities in Afghanistan.

More on Public policy and Families

2006-03-21T08:12:00.000-06:00

There's an article up on The Weekly Standard called "Indentured Families" which I found very interesting. It outlines several prime examples of how the GOP, while being miles above the Democratic Party on many things, is hardly the champion of the family it is too often allowed to portray itself as. It gives examples of 3 specific policies which hurt families but because of specific business interests, are supported (or even championed by the Republican Party). I think the 3 examples it gives are both excellent and an illustration of the fact that one need not be talking about creating new government programs or entitlements in order to support families. The policies mentioned are the really terrible bankruptcy bill passed last year, the child care tax credit and the federal student loan program. My only quibble with the piece is that they fail to point out that our unacceptably high bankruptcy rate is directly linked to another family problem the GOP refuses to take constructive action on: health care costs (and here).
I find it encouraging that a prominent conservative magazine like the Weekly Standard has taken to addressing these sorts of issues. I also think it's high time we start pressuring the Republican Party to take actions which help families rather than letting them get away with just slapping a family friendly face on any old thing they do.

Frightening Video

2006-03-20T16:50:00.000-06:00

A few days ago in a post about our cultural taboo against correcting other people's children, I wrote this:

"It's not just that we live in a more dangerous world - the reality is that crime has dropped very dramatically in the last 20-30 years. Statistically speaking, we're much safer today. However, what's missing is any re-enforcement from others our children will meet as they move through the world of the sorts of good behavior and proper character development we're teaching our kids. Instead of living in a world which helps us as we raise our kids, we must equip our kids to defend themselves against the world."

I was speaking in particular of misbehaving children, but I think it also demonstrates that in those rare cases where our children might need help, adults would not feel it was their place to step in. A story on the Today Show demonstrates just how true this is. A security expert set up a mock kidnapping of a little girl to see if anyone would step in to help. This girl did just what we teach our children to do: fight and yell "help, this isn't my dad!" Yet it took hours of repeating this scenario before several young men came forward to help. Watch the video of the story here (the link's part way down the page) and ask yourself if you would stop to help. Children cannot raise themselves and they cannot properly defend themselves against the evils of the world. They need adults to step in when there is trouble and acts like the grown-ups. It's very sad that we live in a world where a child faces not only potential dangers from those who would do her harm, but cannot even expect that other adults will see it as part of their responsibility to step in when she needs it.

Spring Malaise

2006-03-20T12:05:00.000-06:00

Spring officially begins in just a few hours, but spring time malaise has already set in here in the northern tundra. Perhaps this isn't something you suffer from and you whole heartedly buy into all the wonderful visions of new life springing forth from the earth, the cycle of life and cute baby animals coming forth into the world. If so, I'm willing to bet you live in far more temperate climes than I do. Here, we're still digging out from a couple of late winter snow storms which left nearly 20" of snow on the ground. Usually I can augment this ugly reality by tending to the tiny seedlings I grow for the garden each spring, but this year we are moving to Lord knows where at the end of April. Even if I knew that I was going to have a garden somewhere this summer, the poor seedlings wouldn't be fit for the trip. Sigh.
It's cliche to even say it, but God really has provided a great balm for our spirits in nature. I suppose I should just learn to enjoy the stark beauty and bracing chill of the long winter months, but I don't. It's just to darn cold. So by this time every year, I'm claustrophobic and sick of people. Even things I usually enjoy like politics, education and news are oppressive rather than intriguing. Everything weighs heavier without a warm sky to send cares up into.
Add in a terrible sinus cold I've been fighting off for the last week and a pregnancy which has become rather uncomfortable and I'm just all out of sorts. Heck, I haven't even found anything I'm real eager to pontificate about here for the last few days!
Ah well, like everything else, this will pass. Comfort is found in strange places and if we're open to it, it always seems to come. So, nothing real interesting today, but I'll leave you with this sonnet from William Wordsworth which seems particularly timely both for my spring time malaise and for the world at large:

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

"Smart Sex"

2006-03-15T11:35:00.000-06:00

It is really difficult to over estimate all the ways in which our culture bombards us and our children with the idea of sex as merely a recreational activity whose consequences can be avoided. Too many parents indulge their discomfort about the topic and fail to provide their kids with an equally strong, consistent and frequent alternative view. They think that making sure their kids go to church, know what their parents think right and wrong is and maybe promise not to have sex before marriage is enough. I would emphatically argue that it doesn't even come close to being enough. Most kids raised in a good environment know what they should do but have no real idea of why. They know that "God said so" and have heard "it's wrong", but why did God say so and why is premarital sex wrong? There's a whole world out there which will happily tell them not only that it's OK, but why. And trust me, when hormones start raging, a young person needs more to hang their hat on than "God said so". If they're to resist their God-given sexual urges, they had better know why God said so.
In a new book called Smart Sex, former economist Jennifer Roback Morse takes on the arguments of our culture which view sex as a morally neutral, personal activity without real consequences and shows both how false this is and how true sexual freedom and fulfillment can only happen within a life-long marriage. You can read a bit about the book here. I highly recommend that anyone with an older high school student or college student give this book to their child to read.
Not only is her argument well founded and argued, but she's not some holier-than-thou moralizing windbag who readers can easily write off. As she puts it, I "got to be an expert on what doesn't work . . . I more or less did the whole sexual revolution . . . I tried most of the hare-brained things I'm now writing about: adultery, fornication, cohabitation, group sex, same-sex sex. I had an abortion. I was married and divorced."
I would also recommend this book to parents who think that although they should tell their kids to wait until marriage to have sex, just aren't sure if it's realistic. Or perhaps, like most of us, they've never heard a particularly compelling argument to refute our culture's permissive attitudes about sex. This is a huge issue with implications for our kids, our grandchildren and the well being of society as a whole. If our kids are going to have a fighting chance as they move into the world, we need to let go of the fantasy that we can protect them from being exposed to the corrupting influences of our culture and start properly equipping them to fight.

The great expanse of motherhood

2006-03-11T00:27:00.000-06:00

I came across this wonderful quote about motherhood from G. K. Chesterton today in a book I am reading and wanted to share it with you:

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. (What's Wrong With the World)

I think that in our modern era, all stay at home moms, from time to time, feel that we are not doing enough - that we must somehow justify our lives with busy-ness and being productive. We know that there are those who look at us and think we are wasting our talents, stuck in the house. Or the enemy tells us we are. We see other women who are being productive, making money, gaining power and recognition, wearing beautiful clothing and, well, making money. In comparison, we can feel silly, unimportant, dowdy and poor. In fact, as the gentleman says, we are the universe to our families. We don't need to justify what we do and who we are.
Everyone who homeschools has been asked why they homeschool. So often it feels like an invitation to justify our choice. So we talk about poor school experiences, religion, our particular child's difficult temperament or health problems, our own abilities as an instructor and so on. While all these may well be true, I have lately come to realize that even if I could send my children to excellent schools which I know they would fit into and be safe and respected in, I would still homeschool. Simply because we like it. We enjoy it. We have no reason to do otherwise. Likewise, for all of us who have made the choice to devote ourselves full time to the care of our children and family, we do not need to justify ourselves to the world. Some things are just true, whether the world would recognize them or not and the great expanse of motherhood is one of them. Be blessed!

Correcting other people's children

2006-03-10T11:58:00.000-06:00

Yesterday a friend and I were talking about the taboo many people seem to have about correcting other people's children when they are misbehaving. Then this morning, I found this article from the Today Show about how to deal with other people's misbehaving/annoying children. In it the parenting "expert" completely accepts the idea that one should never correct someone else's child even in the face of bullying or extreme rudeness (she mentions a child burping in your face). Can someone please explain the thinking behind this taboo to me? Now, I wouldn't yell at someone else's child or interject myself into the life of some random obnoxious child I saw while walking down the street. However, I see nothing wrong with telling a child who is operating in your common space, "please stop doing that. You're going to hurt yourself/it's very rude/you make other people feel bad" or whatever is appropriate. Occasionally, my children are corrected by another adult and they know that they need to deal with that and not give people cause to correct them. Of course I would never be abusive towards a child and would not tolerate another person treating my child in an abusive manner, but simply correcting poor/dangerous behavior seems perfectly fine to me. Every time this topic comes up, I feel like I must be missing something as I just cannot understand why stepping in to speak to a child who is out of hand should be a problem.
Many of us (or at least our parents) remember a time when if you misbehaved out in public, not only would any adult present reprimand you, but they would likely make sure your mother knew about it by the time you made it home so she could deal with you as well. I think that the difference between those times and today demonstrates a change which parents neglect to take seriously at their (and their children's) own peril. Once upon a time, you could be a fairly negligent parent, not devoting much energy to supervising or disciplining your children and feel fairly comfortable that your kids would turn out basically OK. That was because while you might not be there with your kids, other adults were watching and correcting problem behaviors. Your children simply could not move through the world in most places without having societal norms enforced on them. Having other parents and the community re-enforcing proper behavior and norms assisted parents in raising good kids. I think too many parents fail to realize that since this mechanism is no longer in place, they are wholly responsible for their child's development. Too many parents act as if they can still send their kids out into the world and have them be OK. It's not just that we live in a more dangerous world - the reality is that crime has dropped very dramatically in the last 20-30 years. Statistically speaking, we're much safer today. However, what's missing is any re-enforcement from others our children will meet as they move through the world of the sorts of good behavior and proper character development we're teaching our kids. Instead of living in a world which helps us as we raise our kids, we must equip our kids to defend themselves against the world. It seems to me that this cultural taboo we have about correcting other people's children simply feeds into this problem and makes raising good kids that much harder.

Government Policies and Marriage

2006-03-08T08:38:00.000-06:00

On of the topics I have brushed on here is how the government can/should change policies in order to encourage family formation and make it easier to maintain families. Unfortunately, whenever government and policies appear in the same sentence, people may assume I'm referring t new big-government programs. This is not the case at all. In The National Review Online today, one of the authors of the study I reference below is interviewed regarding his work. In response to the question of what policy changes we should make in light of his study, he responds as follows:
I think we should give couples and families the ability to make choices about work and family that best suit their own needs. Among other things, this means adjusting the tax code so that child-care tax credits do not reward one model of organizing family and work.
I also think we can reform divorce laws so that spouses who commit themselves to marriage do not find themselves holding the bag when their spouse thinks they have fallen out of love or finds an attractive alternative. For instance, court decisions regarding child custody and property division should take into consideration the responsibility that each spouse bears for the divorce. As a matter of simple justice, innocent spouses who do not wish to divorce should not lose primary custody of their children or primary control of their property. Of course, spouses who are the victims of adultery, abuse, or abandonment should be able to get a divorce promptly.
Finally, because many of our tax and welfare policies - e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, etc. - are means-tested, they end up penalizing marriage among low-income couples with children (see). To strengthen marriage for all Americans, federal and state policies must be reformed to stop penalizing low-income couples who are considering marriage or who wish to remain committed to their marriages.
This is exactly what I have been talking about. We really do need our lawmakers to stop claiming that every pro-business move they make is also pro-family (it may or may not be) and start looking at the nitty-gritty of what the government is already doing which makes family formation and maintenance harder than it needs to be.

If you're happy and you know it . . . perhaps you're a SAM

2006-03-06T22:59:00.000-06:00

Another one for the destruction of radical feminism by reality files: an exhaustive study by two sociologists at the University of Virginia has found that women who stay home with the kids rate themselves as happier with their lives than wives who work outside the home. This held true for both religious women who may see traditional gender roles as ideal and women who hold very progressive, feminist ideals. The study also found that people who believe that marriage is a life long commitment have happier marriages than people who think that people should divorce if they fall out of love.
I do understand that there were definite problems in society that the feminist movement and the sexual revolution tapped into. However, rather than tweaking and working within frameworks that did fit, too many people decided to "throw the baby out with the bath water" and turn society upside down entirely. While it's nice to see so many recent studies which have confirmed traditional ideas of marriage, family, sexuality and gender, when one thinks of the serious damage which has been wrecked on people's lives by the breakdown of families and traditional morals, it's hard to feel smug. All the children growing up in poverty without fathers, all the young people coping with the humiliation and potentially life altering effects of STD's, all the people broken by broken marriages and on and on.
This is why it's so important not to allow our children to be sucked into the vicious, soul-destroying culture we live in and the lies which undergird it. If you have kids who are old enough to read, print out an article like this and give it to him or her to read. Equip them defend themselves against those who like the "feminist" I wrote about last week who would have them toss out their God-given desires to fit some crazy utopian vision which has wrecked such damage on so many souls. Like I said, it's nice that research is disproving much of the nonsense we have been fed for the last couple of generations, but let's not allow another generation to suffer through the sort of hardships and sorrows this nonsense has wrought before it all sinks in.

Student Loans Are Evil!

2006-03-06T18:00:00.000-06:00

I alluded in a very long post a couple of weeks ago to my distaste for student loans - they are perfectly horrid things and I would rather see my children work their way up from being potato peelers in the Salvation Army kitchen than take on any. Any one who thinks that I'm being ridiculous needs to read this. We really are failing our young people if the best we can offer them as they start life is exhorbenant college costs which render trying to work your way through unfeasible and the opportunity to take on a lifetime of crippling debt.
I have a particular problem with financial planners who say that student loans are "good debt". Not only are they a huge burden on young people's lives, but there's no guarantee that you'll get anything for them. If you go to the government student loan website one of the most common issues they address is whether you have to pay your loans back even if the college you attended did not meet its obligations as an educator or you cannot find employment. If I borrow money to buy a car, at least I know I will have a car in my driveway for my money. If I buy a new car or a warranty on a used car, I can even be reasonably sure I will have a working car in my driveway. Plus, I know exactly what my loan payments are when I borrow the money and I know how they will fit into my budget, since I know what my budget is, I can make a good decision about how much I can afford to borrow. With student loans, I may end up getting very little for my money (especially if I can no longer afford to attend and drop out) and since students usually don't know what their loan payments will be and have no idea what their budget will be when paying off those loans, there's no way they can make good decisions about how much they can afford to borrow. I think it's a program the government should get out of. Let private lenders step in the gap if they want to. Either the government is willing to help fund higher education or not, but this garbage of setting up a program which does nothing to encourage market discipline in the system and makes it harder for students to get started in life is complete crap.

And I thought no one was reading my blog!

2006-03-06T17:50:00.000-06:00

Over the weekend it appears that this blog was reported to blogger.com as a spam blog by enough people that their "anti-spam robot" put a lock on it which has prevented me from posting for several days. Gee, what could I have posted that would have caused not one, but several people to behave in such an absurd and immature way? Hmmm . . . Well, I'll leave it to you to check out the posts below and come to your own conclusions. I will also leave it to you to decide what this says about the dynamics of how certain issues are being discussed in our society. If one can't defend one's point of view on the merits, I suppose trying in whatever silly, immature way possible to silence one's critics will have to suffice.
As for me, I'm guessing it was my post on what a cute baby girl I have - very offensive stuff, you know!

The Altruism of Babies

2006-03-03T07:27:00.000-06:00

I have a 13 month old baby who has recently started offering us portions of her food to share. Of course, she also throws herself on the floor and screams when you stop her from climbing on everything like a monkey. We often hear that people are naturally bad and need to be civilized in order to overcome their natural tendency towards sin. I have always thought that this was an overly simplistic view verging on blasphemy since it denies the fact that we are made in God's image and His glory cannot be obliterated by our tendency to sin. Now science is backing me up; there's a story in the Chicago Tribune today about scientists studying empathy in toddlers. The toddlers very consistently and without exception tried to help when they saw the need. Of course from an evolutionary as well as a theological point of view this makes sense as humanity needs to be cooperative and altruistic in order to survive. We're just designed that way and I think that's a good thing to remember.

"Gay Marriage" News You Haven't Heard

2006-03-02T22:10:00.000-06:00

The French government set up a commission to look at the issue of same sex marriage and issued a report called the "Parliamentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children" in late January which came down firmly on the side of traditional marriage. Story here and here. The commission held numerous public discussions, listened to a wide variety of opinions and studied the laws and after-affects of changes to marriage in numerous countries and came up with a report which could have been written by the Heritage Foundation or Focus on the Family. In our country the discussion of same sex marriage is often framed in such a way that the only possible reason for opposition to "gay marriage" is said to be homophobia or religious zealotry. Concerns about children are dismissed out of hand as being mere covers for the true motives behind opposition to same sex marriage. However, this report came to its conclusions based on a simple presupposition which gets to the real heart of the issue: "to affirm and protect children's rights and the primacy of those rights over adults' aspirations." In doing this, the commission decided that it "is not possible to think about marriage separately from filiation: the two questions are closely connected, in that marriage is organized around the child. Marriage is not merely the contractual recognition of the love between a couple; it is a framework that imposes rights and duties, and that is designed to provide for the care and harmonious development of the child." (Emphasis mine.)
In conclusionsion of the report, the commission actually went so far as to call laws allowing parentage of children by same sex couples "fictitious filiation by law - two fathers, or two mothers - which is biologically neither real nor plausible." Can you even imagine what the response would be if a government report actually asserted such a thing here in the US? The report concludes: "Diametrically opposed representations were made by the people heard on this point, and they failed to persuade a majority of the Mission to support recognizing a right to a child or a right to marriage, for same-sex couples. A majority of the Mission does not wish to question the fundamental principles of the law of filiation, which are based on the tripartite unit of Âa father, a mother, a childÂ, citing the principle of caution. For that reason, that majority also, logically, chose to deny access to marriage to same-sex couples."
I don't know if the conclusions of the commission will hold in the face of popular support for gay marriage in France, but it sure is nice to see a group which can't possibly be said to be either homophobic or religious zealots come to logical conclusions regarding this issue. What would be even nicer is if in light of the obvious care with which this report was developed and the strength of the arguments, this report was able to influence public thinking on the subject.
Of course, it's very telling that although the report has been out for over a month, there has been NO discussion of it or even reporting on it in our press. A search for information on the report elicited not a single mainstream media news report on the topic. The only people reporting it seem to be conservative news outlets and the Catholic Church. I must admit that I take allegations of liberal bias in the press with a great big boulder of salt. Actually, it's one ofonly a few topics which I just don't have much of an opinion on, but given the coverage that things like the approval of gay marriage in Canada got, this does seem a bit suspicious.

What makes us jealous

2006-03-01T17:26:00.000-06:00

Parenting Magazine has a survey up which found that the thing moms envy about other moms is their organizational abilities. I know this is true of me! Other interesting tidbits:

Only 6% of moms said that they wanted to go without kids - even for a day.

73% of working moms say they are jealous of stay at home moms vs 49% going in the other direction.

Hat tip to Chattering Mind on Beliefnet.

Feminists "Intellectuals" vs Real American Women

2006-03-01T16:49:00.000-06:00

Some of you may have read or heard something about feminist professor Linda Hirshman's campaign to condemn well educated women for staying home with her kids. This started with a ridiculous article in American Prospect titled Homeward Bound in which she declares among other things "The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust."
Ah yes, there's the essence of my life: "repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks". Talk about completely missing the point! What planet does this woman live on? That's like calling being a rocket scientist "repetitious, socially invisible and physical". After all, it's repetitious because they are often working, reworking and refining the same numbers, sketches and calculations over and over again. And it's obviously socially invisible, because let's face it unless you're related to a rocket scientist you probably can't name a single one. And it's physical because they have to keep their desks in order (no doubt a job that's never done), may have to walk back and forth to meetings, the copier and may even have to physically put together and take apart models, prototypes and such. I say we start a campaign to declare rocket science to be a "less flourishing" sphere for women due to it's "reputes, socially invisible and physical tasks".
Of course the reality is that us women living in the real world completely disagree with her. According to studies only 16% of mothers actually want to work full time outside the home. No doubt she would consider this a sign of our oppression, but hey, we're just little women - what more can you expect from us? Really, what her thinking reveals is a profound misogyny which underlies much of what has passed for feminism in the last 40 years. If you click on the link to her article above, you'll see that the lead in says "'Choice feminism' claims that staying home with the kids is just one more feminist option. Funny that most men rarely make the same 'choice.' Exactly what kind of choice is that?" And this is exactly where modern feminism went wrong - they define worth by what men do. Women cannot be women on their own terms, being respected for their own choices, values and natural tendencies. Their equality and worth is assured only to the extent that they live up to male standards. Obviously, if a choice was worth making, men would make it. If they don't, then no matter how deeply a woman may desire it, it's just not up to snuff. The original feminists (Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al), must be rolling in their graves.
Fortunately, Ms. Hirshman doesn't rely on her misogyny alone to let her know that staying home is a lesser choice; she also reads our blogs: "One of the things I've done working on my book is to read a lot of the diaries online, and their description of their lives does not sound particularly interesting or fulfilling for a complicated person, for a complicated, educated person." Boy, she really has her finger on the pulse of my life! What a bloody joke!

Hurricane Katrina Heroes

2006-02-24T14:00:00.000-06:00

Stephan Barr at the Washington Post has a column on those who were heroes during Hurricane Katrina last fall. As cynical as we all are and as easy as it is to get all worked up over all that goes wrong in this world, I think it's very important to take time to remember that there are good people doing good things as well. Take a look.

Anti-family government policies

2006-02-24T10:26:00.000-06:00

I mentioned the Crunchy Conservatives blog/book club going on at National Review Online based on the new book by the same name in a previous post. I wanted to share part of a post put up there yesterday which made me think, "somebody gets it!" A guy named Bruce Frohen writes:
"this is a good time to point out how radically unnatural, anti-family and anti-community many of our public policies are today. In defending permanent things, and families and communities in particular, I'm not saying that people should be forced to live my way. But I am saying that societies and governments are definitely not neutral. For example, our current tax structure punishes families for having children and for making the choice of relying on a single income, along with a stay at home mom. And I do mean punishes. The tax structure assumes that all of us are atomistic individuals who may happen to choose consumption items, like children, for which we will give them some tax relief, because we claim to like kids. A system based on the family as a fundamental, natural basis of society would start from the presumption that the family is the unit taxed. That means income splitting (lowering taxes for single income families) and far more generous dependent deductions. This would show concern for and valuation of families, make it easier for more people to make family-friendly choices, and encourage employers, neighbors, and others to show more respect for families."
I completely agree with this. As a society, we often view having children as a consumerist choice. We talk about having a kids as being a privilege or a right. Does anyone else realize how completely and utterly insane such notions would have seemed to our ancestors? How about children as a way to ensure the continuance of a society and culture and parenting as a service to the world?
A couple months back The Weekly Standard ran an article called "The Party of Sam's Club" which talked about ways the Republican party could work to really support families. Some of it's specific policy suggestions were the sort of nonsense they do in Europe. However, this excerpt got me thinking:
"Yet the decision to raise children continues to be treated as something akin to the decision to buy an expensive automobile--a perfectly fine thing to do, but don't expect any sympathy or support when you can't afford a tune-up or an oil change. Having a large family used to be a sign that you had faith in the future. Today, outside the family-friendly exurbs that played a crucial role in reelecting President Bush, it's become a form of conspicuous consumption--or, for the poor, a mark of irresponsibility.
Crafting pro-family policies that stand against this trend is not a question of turning back the clock to some lost Ozzie-and-Harriet golden age, as critics of social conservatism often assert. Quite the opposite: Precisely because the world has changed, with the demise of lifetime employment and increasing returns to education, strong families are growing ever more important, and policies that encourage people to form them and keep them together are ever more necessary."
As I said elsewhere in this blog, I do not think it is the job of government to make be people be virtuous, but I do think that the government should create a situation where it is easy to choose to be virtuous (or at the very least not do things which make being virtuous any more difficult than it has to be). So, how would our government policies change if we were to make family formation and maintenance a priority? I've been thinking about this for a while and have some ideas which I may share later. If you have any, please post them in the comments section.
Of course, the real question is why an at-home mom in Western Wisconsin is thinking about these things while the boneheads we elect to run our government (including the so-called "family values" ones) really don't give a hoot about them?

Going Overboard

2006-02-23T12:56:00.000-06:00

Just overheard:
My 6 year old says to his 10 year old brother, "I think Mom went overboard with Michaela."
(Michaela's my 1 year old daughter.)
"Why?"
"Because she's just so super cute!"
I don't know how much it has to do with me, but I agree she is super cute!

Thoughts on multi-culturalism, immigration & vouchers

2006-02-23T11:26:00.000-06:00

Last night my husband and I were having a conversation about why immigrant communities have not successfully integrated into the European countries they have settled in. (Yes, we actually talk about these sort of things - we're well matched dorks.) Aside from the riots in France last year there is the incredible news that 40% of British Muslims want the government to impose sharia law in parts of the country. For all it's problems, particularly with its African-American population, America just doesn't seem to have these sort of problems with our legal immigrants. We identified two problems: lack of opportunity and a strange version of multi-culturalism. If you'll bear with me I want to bring this back to a question it raises about our education system and vouchers.
The first problem is one of opportunity. If a legal immigrant plays by the rules here, gets an education, works hard, etc., they have a reasonably high degree of confidence that they will be largely accepted and have access to the opportunities America offers. This provides a strong incentive for new immigrants to assimilate rather than seeking to transplant their old country to America. In many places in Europe, it seems that immigrants just don't see the pay-off for giving up their old ways. In many places even legal immigrants are treated differently than their native peers when it comes to employment and access to education. To make things even worse, in some countries like France, an immigrant's child is not guaranteed citizenship and all it's benefits even if born on French soil. When opportunity is blocked, so is incentive to buy into a country's culture and participate.
The second problem is a version of multi-culturalism. This is one you hear a lot about from right leaning thinkers and politicians. Most European cultures have a history of colonialism which has left them very wary of doing anything which might be seen as imposing their culture on another. Britains in particular seem to have a strong allergic reaction to doing or saying anything which would remotely imply that their culture has something to offer that another culture does not. This has lead to a version of multi-culturalism where it is seen as improper to expect that an immigrant would modify their views or practices, even when in conflict with British norms and morals. An extreme example of this has been official's reluctance to get involved in "honor killings" which have taken place in minority communities. Another result is that the government provides funding for Muslim schools in Britain. Unfortunately, one of the results of having duel school systems in place for Muslim and non-Muslim children seems to have been that Muslims who have not bought into British values can insulate themselves from pressure to do so or for their children to do so. Now, perhaps this is simply a reflection of the lack of opportunity I mentioned above, ie if there was an obtainable advantage to buying into the British sensibility keeping one's children insulated from such would not seem so appealing. However, it's hard to argue with the simple fact that faced with no pressure to give up old ideas and ways of doing things, people don't. That said, perhaps you can begin to see the problem this raises for me in my thinking about schools and vouchers.
Anyone who has read John Taylor Gatto knows that one of his arguments is that prior to government schools, people who sent their kids to school sent them to schools which taught values they themselves had. There were Quaker schools and Baptist schools and so on. This reduced conflict between people with different beliefs because if that crazy Quaker down the road wanted his child to be taught crazy Quaker ideas that didn't matter to you because he wasn't trying to teach such notions to your child. People didn't feel threatened by other people's beliefs, as they often do today, because they weren't trying to impose them on your family. So why hasn't this worked in places like Britain? I think it's a lack of opportunity for minority communities as well as what happens when a great culture like the British doesn't see their own worth because of their failings and become easy targets for another culture which is convinced of it's own superiority (such as militant Islam).
I support vouchers for many reasons, not the least of which is because it would allow a dynamic such as the one Gatto identifies prior to government schools being forced on parents. Hillary Clinton gave a particularly ridiculous speech on vouchers the other day, but I agree that I certainly would hate to see a situation where our differences became more rather than less threatening and divisive.
However, perhaps Europe's experience isn't particularly informative in regards to our conversation on vouchers here in the US. I think our economic opportunities and national pride would act as counter-weights against a desire to hold too strongly to ideas and traditions which are in conflict with our own - even if all parents were free to send their children to schools that reflected their own values. After all, many of us in the homeschool community homeschool precisely so we can protect our kids from being taught things we find immoral or wrong - yet our kids seem to be integrating into society quite well once we're done with them. It seems to me that we would do well to think about these things so that when some demagogue like Hillary tries to use the divisions which have been perpetuated in part by religiously separated school systems in Europe to try and smack down vouchers here in America, we have a good answer.
OK, there's my dork post for the day. I'll try to keep these to a minimum!

John Stossel's "Stupid in America"

2006-02-22T16:50:00.000-06:00

I mention it below, but if you don't click on any other link I ever provide, you have got to read John Stossel's report on failing American government schools and the lack of competition which is driving this failure. I had only glanced through it when I linked earlier, but I just finished reading the whole thing. You need to read this and forward it to people you know. We simply cannot afford to keep participating in this broken system. Ok, I'm done for now.

NEA having conniptions

2006-02-22T14:41:00.000-06:00

Apparently the NEA is having another conniption fit. And this time it's actually over something remotely related to how teachers do their jobs rather than supporting abortion, anti-war movements, radical feminism and all those other things so critical to making sure the nation's teachers have what they need to do their jobs well. Apparently John Stossel from 20/20 did a piece called "Stupid in America" that was critical of our government schools, the amount of money being pumped into them with no corresponding results and the monopoly the government has over schooling and funding. So now the NEA is taking off from the important work they do bilking members and supporting left-of-Stalin causes to protest John Stossel. How dare he use facts and logic to criticize a monopoly they've worked so hard to secure! Isn't there some way to bring these people down? This union is a self-contained argument for never putting your child in a government school!
Dad's Corner has a post about why homeschoolers should care about this nonsense here. Warning: it's filled with the sort of quotes and information which makes homeschoolers and those who support their right to do what they're doing want to buy a shotgun, move off the grid and start making their own soap out of animal fat (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
Thanks to this week's Carnival of Homeschooling being hosted by HE&OS for directing me to this one.

Ancient Hebrews and Creation

2006-02-22T11:35:00.000-06:00

I don't know how many of you are interested in this sort of thing, but since I spent some time on it this morning and found some interesting stuff, I thought I'd share. Everyone is aware of the conflicts in our country over evolution vs creationism vs ID. Religious folks who reject evolution usually point to the bible as back-up for their POV. Such people will surely agree that the bible is unchanging. However, they forget/do not know/ignore the fact that the words they read are first translations, second often mean something very different to the modern reader than they did to the people to whom the text was originally given. If the bible truly doesn't change, it can not have been meant to convey one meaning to those to whom it was originally given and something entirely different to us today. We must not impose our own views, cultural prejudices and assumptions onto scriptures. Instead, we must strive to understand the original intent of the text and the way it was understood to the people it was originally speaking to. Not that one cannot be a Christian if one doesn't know all the background details, but one is likely to be a Christian with a whole bunch of erroneous ideas.
What this has to do with the evolution debate is that when one looks at the original text of Genesis (ie in the original language) and what it meant to the people to whom it was originally given, we find that much of the thinking which underpins today's objections to evolution would not have made any sense at all to the ancient Hebrews. Their understanding of their text hardly allowed, much less required what we in our modern thought process view as a literal understanding of the creation story.
Like I said, I don't know if any of you are interested in such things, but here are a couple of articles on the subject which I found interesting (warning rather scholarly, language examination and dense stuff, but worth fishing through, I think):

The Bible Idea of Time: How Archaic Hebrew Thought Is Constructed Differently than Our Thought Today
Genesis, Cosmology, and Ancient Semitic Thought

There ya go. If you're a huge dork like me who reads scholarly papers in your spare time, you're in hog-heaven. If not, please continue on with your regularly scheduled non-dorky day!