Category: Culture

Beauty and the modern human

Posted on by Suki

Recently a Facebook “friend” (a young woman I was in a class with for a few months) posted that she had been deemed “ugly” by an app that purports to be able to divine whether someone is “beautiful” using math.

Apparently, her “interocular distance” was too wide, and some other such nonsense.

Well, yes, it’s nonsense—but I’m sure that mathematically, it’s true. This young woman is striking by anyone’s measure. She doesn’t look like anyone else. Her eyes are noticeably far apart. But does that make her ugly?

I was lucky to have been assigned John Berger’s Ways of Seeing as college reading. No doubt it’s terribly dated now, but at the time, it was mind-bending. Using the nineteenth-century oil painting tradition, he showed how “beauty” in many instances is actually more about power and ownership.

Real beauty isn’t perfectly symmetrical faces. It’s not female bodies molded to fit an ideal invented on a computer screen. It’s not the perfection of a Photoshopped landscape that removes all irregularity and dullness.

The Botticelli head cut out by John Berger in the opening sequence of “Ways of Seeing”

When I think about things I find beautiful, I know that it’s the imperfection that sets them off. Why would I find beauty in a face so generically perfect I wouldn’t be able pick her out on the street? I read somewhere that all the most successful actors have something “wrong” with their faces.

But this is the joke our modern culture is playing on us: On the one hand, we prefer imperfection. We find people attractive who have all sorts of imperfections. Sometimes the imperfection itself is what attracts people.

On the other hand, we are pressured to change our own selves to make ourselves more and more perfect, less and less interesting. Women especially, but men more often now, fuss about their faces, their butts, their ankles, their hair. In a world where we actually can change almost any aspect of our looks, people are starting to think that they should.

The problem is, perfection isn’t attractive in the literal sense of the word: humans are not attracted to perfect specimens. I read recently about an experiment that underscores this: viewer were shown two photos of the same subject. One photo was a selfie, approved by the subject; the other was an informal photo taken by a researcher. The viewers overwhelmingly choose the non-selfies as “more attractive.”

This is from a 17 Magazine article about taking the perfect selfie. What a perfect illustration of how repulsive we can make ourselves look when we are trying to please other people!

In other words, what we do to ourselves in the name of social acceptance may actually have the opposite effect. When thong underwear were all the rage, for example, a male of my acquaintance confessed to me that he found panty lines very erotic.

I was very heartened by the responses that came from my “friend’s” real friends: They were appalled, amused, outraged. One of her friends posted something like, “the male half of this species begs to differ.”

I feel like each one of us needs to consider that everyone we meet is subject to this sort of media onslaught. We need to appreciate each other’s imperfect beauties, and do it out loud. We need to appreciate the individual ways in which people make this world more beautiful, whether it’s by what they wear or what they do.

Our culture is hell-bent on making us all feel like ugly, repulsive creatures who need to submit ourselves to daily torture to pay for our sins.

I beg to differ.

 

Support your teen with goal-setting

Posted on by Suki

[Disclaimer: I didn’t write this because I have somehow perfected the art of raising a teen. I’m writing this because the teen-me watched in horror as the adult-me parented my teens exactly how the teen-me knew I shouldn’t. The teen-me was positively screaming in my ear, but did I listen? Well, I did my best!]

My new book is about goal-setting for teens, and I wrote it directly for teens, not parents. The reason for that is that from what I’ve seen, teens pretty much won’t do anything well unless they feel invested in it.

But teens also need the adults in their lives. Though there are those rare teens who seem to be able to handle everything on their own, most teens need—and actually want—guidance. It’s just that the sort of guidance parents tend to offer is, shall we say, not exactly what they’re looking for.

So how do we support our teens?

Give them agency

In traditional cultures, teens were young adults. They got to take up a spear or build a fire. But our culture is significantly more complex. As much as we might wish that our teens will do well in life with a fine spear and good aim, they need education, a driver’s license, and lots of experience sorting real from fake Nigerian princes.

So they do still need our guidance, and few are ready to be modern “adults” at 14. But they also need to feel growing independence as they go into their teen years. They need to feel trusted with real jobs (even though they might complain about them). Lots of destructive teen behavior comes from their need to make a mark in some way.

Follow their lead

We all knew when our babies were learning to walk that we needed to let them fall. It’s so much harder to let our teens fail when their failure might make a permanent change in their life path.

College professors are reporting that more and more, young students are coming to them and asking how they can make sure they get an A, as if success is more important than learning. This attitude leads to kids who have an instinct always to play it safe and to guard what they have. Perhaps this might make for success in getting into college, but it’s not a good recipe for success in life.

Help them find a direction (for now)

If we’re going to let our kids lead, we have to feel like they are going somewhere. And lots of teens really don’t know where they are going. Goal-setting is a way to help them have a direction, even if it’s just for the next week. And having a direction is important, even if, halfway up the path, we decide to go a different way.

Enter goal-setting

That’s why I fixed on goal-setting as a way to communicate with my kids. I figured if I could get them to articulate goals, even the most minor ones, we’d share a common language for moving forward. I didn’t find a book I liked, so in the spirit of being a lifelong learner, I wrote one myself!

I also use the book (in its previous nascent form and now as a published book) in goal-setting classes I teach online at Athena’s Advanced Academy. It’s fun to work with teens who aren’t my own and find out that just like mine, they thrive when they feel that they have agency, choices, and a direction.

The Value of Goal-Setting

Posted on by Suki

Last year I made a sort of self-referential decision. I had been working on goal-setting with my kids, first my older one (just about to take off for college) and then with my then-13-year-old. I thought, “Wow, the goal-setting materials for teens that I’ve found are so hard to use with homeschoolers… I should write my own!” So, in order to make sure it got done, I set an explicit goal to finish a book about goal-setting by the end of the summer.

I met my goal-setting goal!

My new book is about to be hot off the presses! Join my email list in order to be notified when you can purchase it.

That book is now on the horizon. Homeschool with Confidence: a goal-setting guide for teens comes out May 15. I wrote a draft of the book, used it in an online goal-setting class that I taught at Athena’s Advanced Academy, reworked the book, and then realized it was that “now or never” point that I hope kids learn to recognize as they use my book.

This first book is explicitly for homeschoolers because homeschoolers face a much different set of choices than school students do. But my thoughts about goal-setting in general apply to all teens.

Goal-setting—I hope I made clear in my book—is not about making a plan and sticking to it no matter what. For all sorts of reasons, our plans change. Flexible people are generally happier and more successful than inflexible people, but at the same time, people who feel that they have purpose and direction in their lives are also happier and more successful.

Successful goal-setting is the balance between knowing what you want and being open to changing if the need arises.

Successful goal-setting is also a balance between understanding what “success” means to you personally versus what it means to your friends, family, and our society at large.

Why goal-setting for teens?

I can’t stress how important this process has been for our family. Goal-setting offers a framework for families to discuss decision-making. This framework serves to defuse the emotion that often arises when making decisions with teens. Once you have a common goal-setting language and your family lays out goals together, it becomes much easier to debate the different possibilities. Of course, you parents are going to have to give up a little bit of your sense of control, but you will be repaid by the reduced stress and the confidence that your teen will gain.

What next?

I will be offering workshops for parents and teens both in-person and online. My first workshop is a free chat session on May 22 in Aptos. Click here for more information. I hope to give other workshops throughout the summer. I will definitely be offering workshops for parents and teens at July’s  HSC Conference. Please see my to do list below so that you can keep in touch if you’re interested in my workshops or the book!

A sense of satisfaction

The very best thing about successful goal-setting is that it makes you feel…successful! Self-published books seldom make much money (heck, these days this applies to books of any stripe). But the great thing about publishing a book is that it crystallizes the work you’ve been doing. Working on goal-setting with my own kids, other kids, and parents, has been extremely rewarding. I can check this goal off my list with a great sense of satisfaction.

Parent to-do list:

4 reasons why schools shouldn’t play “immigration police”

Posted on by Suki

Amongst the various proposals put forth to deal with illegal immigration there is a perennial one: catch ’em at school. People generally want their children to get educated, and also, free public schools are free childcare, right?

School children in New Mexico in 1941. (Wikimedia Commons)

So the thought goes like this: Figure out which “illegal kids” are at schools, and then go after their parents.

Britain is already doing it. And with conservatives in control of the U.S. federal government, we might be following close on their heels.

Here’s why forcing schools to track undocumented kids is a bad idea:

An educated population is always better

This is a rule that never changes, no matter which kids you’re talking about: If you want your country to function better, you want educated people.

Educated people are healthier, they have fewer children, they provide more skilled labor, they pay more taxes.

If you force undocumented adults to keep their kids at home, the only net change is that our country has fewer educated people, which means they’ll have more kids, be unskilled workers, and pay less in taxes.

This is not what we want.

Healthier kids make a healthier society

Children eating school lunch in Virginia. (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)

Our public schools don’t just educate. They offer free health testing such as vision and hearing. They screen kids for severe dental problems. Teachers are trained to watch for signs of physical abuse.

The reason we put this money into our public schools is that it is paid back many times over. Healthier kids are cheaper to have in our society than sick kids. Sick kids turn into sick adults, who need more care, and more expensive care.

This is not what we want.

The job of educators is to educate

When we attempt to turn teachers into anything but educators, we end up with conflicts that muddy their job descriptions and decrease their effectiveness. This is something that you’ll hear conservatives say often: Teachers should just be teaching the “three R’s.”

In that case, it looks like we agree on this: If we turn teachers into immigration police, they will have less time to teach, and less focus when they are teaching.

This is not what we want.

“Street Urchin” by John George Brown, 1885 (Wikimedia Commons)

Going after children is not only unethical, it’s un-Christian

The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin. [Deuteronomy 24:16]

We have a long tradition in Western culture of not blaming children for what their parents do. If we decide to change this tradition, should we imprison children whose parents are convicted of felonies? Should we refuse to feed children whose parents are unwilling to work? Do we leave children with abusive parents simply because the child was born to those parents?

Children of those who have immigrated to the U.S. without legal papers have done nothing wrong. They shouldn’t have to fear going to school. We may as a society decide that undocumented adult workers should fear our government. But allowing immigration officials to catch families through their children imposes immoral burdens upon the children.

This is not what we want.

In other words, quite simply, Britain is doing the wrong thing. Our government has historically done the right thing. Let’s keep it that way.

Math Stories: Fun, Deep Learning for Elementary Students

Posted on by Suki

Readers: This is an update and consolidation of previous posts on this topic. Hopefully I’ve gotten all the resources in here!

It started one night when my seven-year-old daughter explained to her father how you can determine the number of faces in a geometric solid from the number of points. I’d ordered a Sir Cumference book from the library on the many recommendations I’d seen, and for the fact that my daughter was obsessed with knights.

Sir Cumference was our introduction to math stories.

It didn’t occur to me that this would be an efficient way to teach math. Since then, I’ve been on a quest for math stories.

First, a definition: What I’m calling math “stories” are books in which the story is more, or at least as important as the math it contains. I’m not confusing them with “story problems,” the bane of many a standardized test-taker. A math story is a really great story that happens to contain math.

It’s also a very effective way to spark interest in and understanding of math in elementary-aged kids.

The first books we tried, the wonderful Sir Cumference series, are picture books about medieval times peopled with wonderfully named characters: Lady Di of Ameter, Geo of Metry, and of course Sir Cumference himself.

The books have the lush pictures and captivating storylines you’d expect from picture books, but they also teach math concepts in a deep way.

In learning about pi, that confusing number associated with circles, Radius (Sir C.’s son, of course) actually experiments with a pie. The shape of King Arthur’s table leads to a discussion of circles and their particular attributes.

The success of Sir Cumference led us to seek out more math stories. A friend recommended The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat. Author Theoni Pappas has written a number of math books for a range of ages and abilities. They all seem to center around the idea that if people just understood all of math’s lovable attributes, they’d love the discipline as well.

We instantly fell in love with Penrose. If you have a cat, you will recognize Penrose in an instant. He learns mathematics because his mistress (Pappas) is always looking at her math papers. So like any good cat, what does he do? He inserts himself between his mistress and the papers. Fun and learning follow.

The charm of Penrose is, first, that he is a real cat. Though the illustrations are in pen and ink, there’s a photo in the beginning of the book of the real Penrose, poised in mid-play amongst his mistress’s papers.

The fictional Penrose not only enjoys getting attention, but also gaining knowledge. He starts to wonder about what’s on the papers, and soon the numbers and shapes come alive and talk to him.

This is a consistent metaphor in the books, and is a good metaphor for what happens to a child charmed by Penrose. At the end of each story there is a small box with an intriguing question. My daughter, who screams in frustration at a page of math problems, took the initiative in finding paper and pencil to answer the first chapter’s conundrum.

We’re on to our third Pappas book now, hungrily lapping up Penrose’s forays into tessellation, prime numbers, and equiangular spirals.

We were on a roll. Someone else suggested The Number Devil. There are a couple of caveats about this book: First, this is a playful take on religion, with a Number Heaven/Hell and the Number Devils that live there, so beware if this doesn’t fit with your world view. Also, this book starts with the main character, Robert, having nightmares, and given that our household was being turned upside-down at that point with nighttime wakings, I was leery of adding more ideas for bad things that happen at night.

I decided, however, to give it a try, and it was a hit. Not only did Robert’s nightmares not scare my daughter, but the Number Devil soon invades the dreams and drives away all the bad thoughts. They are replaced by dreams of number theory, explained through colorful language and ever-changing scenery.

We loved the Number Devil not just for the math but for the fiction.

The book has a therapeutic as well as didactic approach: Robert’s fears of the big, scary world and also of his detested math teacher, Mr. Bockel, are replaced by musings about the beauty of numbers. By the end of the book, Robert becomes a number devil himself, having earned a place in Number Heaven (or Hell, depending on how you look at it) and a license to think about the cool stuff that number philosophers have thought about since ancient times.

This may all beg the question: What did my daughter get from this? Is she learning useful skills?

First, I have to say that all this reading will probably not translate directly to any increase in her testable numbers. Standardized tests look for mastery of skills; these books encourage excitement about ideas. Standardized tests focus on grade-level standards; these books throw that all out the window and figure kids should learn about the cool stuff… leave the boring, repetitive stuff for another day.

What math stories do is introduce kids to the big, enticing ideas that make all the work on boring stuff like multiplication facts worth the effort. A child who is excited by triangles is going to learn soon enough that having to pull out a calculator or multiplication chart over and over to remember 3×3 just delays the pay-off.

Math stories also teach math concepts in a deeper way, embedding them in a narrative that fits into the way children learn in the real world, through experience and need.

If you’re looking for math stories for older children, check out the British Murderous Maths series (which I’m happy to see is now available in the US) and Theoni Pappas’s The Joy of Mathematics, both of which teach the history and ideas behind the math that kids will need to tackle in late elementary and middle school.

Resources

  • Living Math is a website full of great math resources

Here are various math stories that we read and enjoyed or that other readers have recommended:

Now available