Category: Culture

A passionate plea for more mud pies

Posted on by Suki

You’d think that hanging out with homeschoolers, as I do, would insulate me from people who feel the need to do academics with kindergarteners. However, amongst new homeschoolers you hear this common refrain: I really don’t know how to homeschool, so I just want to find a curriculum in a box I can do with my five-year-old. The people saying this mean well—they really think that a curriculum-in-a-box will be better for their children than just hanging out with mom and doing whatever lame stuff she comes up with. But those parents have fallen into the same trap as the administrators of our public education system. They think this is some kind of race, and they’ll be hurting their children if they don’t get them on the track and running as soon as possible.

I should have read it long ago, but I recently read what should be required reading for new homeschoolers, Tammy Takahashi’s Deschooling Gently. Takahashi’s book is considered a classic amongst homeschoolers, who see the process of “deschooling” a child who has attended school before homeschooling as key to homeschooling success. However, I found that the book had a lot more to say to me as an adult: How many of my ideas are residual bits of misinformation planted by my many years in school? All of us have this stuff stuck in there, even if we’ve consciously denied its validity.

Our feelings about “academic” education, in particular, are strong. Many of us inherently believe that “earlier is better” and that there’s something wrong with letting a child play if he can’t read yet. We haven’t turned out in mass protests as our public schools are pushing academics earlier into the curriculum, forcing out such kindergarten staples as finger painting, story telling, and free play on the playground.

The thing is, every single educator worth listening to has read the data and knows this simple fact: The most educated people in the world are not necessarily the people who had academics shoved at them at an early age. Forcing academics earlier into the American public schools is not going to slow the decline of our kids’ education. In fact, it might hurry it up.

Finland is an oft-cited example. There, they don’t even start teaching reading till around the age of 7, and academics, such as they are, are hands-on and cooperative until the higher grades. No tests, no grades, just fun. How can that be?

Well, I can give you plenty of examples closer to home: Millions of successful adults in America. If you went to public school in the 70’s, it is very unlikely you did any sort of academics in kindergarten. Sure, you probably sang the alphabet song and learned to write your name, but you spent as much time learning how to tie shoes and, yes, doing finger painting as anything academic. Those Americans who were educated in the 60’s and 70’s are no sorry bunch. You’ll find them at every successful technology company, in every important medical lab, in government buildings making decisions about our national safety, and making fabulous art, music, and literature.

Keep in mind, these people did not do academics in kindergarten. They didn’t get recess canceled because they couldn’t read. Their schools didn’t get denied funds or have every teacher replaced by a stranger because of their parents’ socio-economic status. And yet, here they are, leading the fastest technological and scientific change ever before seen by humankind.

There are better ways to educate than to force five-year-olds to study. I say, Let them make mud pies! Let them develop their minds at the same time as their hands, their bodies, their hearts, and their souls. There will be plenty of time for them to sit in front of a computer. But as we adults know, there’s limited time later in life to contemplate the wonderful feeling of mud between your fingers.

This neighborhood’s going to the dogs!

Posted on by Suki

Out for my walk this morning, I decided to take a longer route, as I often do on Sundays. I started down a stretch of road that I don’t walk every day, and within thirty seconds, I saw the problem: two large dogs sniffing at the side of the road, apparently unaccompanied. I slowed and watched them, waiting to see if anyone was with them. They were alone, no human to be seen.

Then they saw me.

Here’s what I imagine was going on in the dog brain: Out here with my buddy, sniffing the road. Hey, is that Fido who came by here on his walk? Darn, I woulda liked to bark at him. Mm, squirrel. Where is it? I want to chase it. Out here with my buddy, alpha-dog inside in bed. Ooh, yeah, I smell that Flora came by this morning. Man, I’d love to get together with her when her alpha-dog didn’t have her by the leash. Wait: What’s that coming down the road? Someone else’s alpha-dog? Hey, Buddy, Look!

My family has had dogs—big dogs—all my life. So I get dogs, and I’m not unusually sensitive about them. The thing is, I also grew up in the Midwest where few people fenced or leashed their dogs, and I was a long-distance runner. So I know a lot about dogs whose alpha-dog/master isn’t around, and what they think of humans moving fast toward them. They think: Alpha-dog is inside in bed. I am now guardian of our property. I must defend against this fast-moving intruder!

Of course, as soon as the dog noticed me coming toward him at a fast pace, he started to growl. His growl attracted his buddy, who stood next to him and barked madly. Again I slowed to see if a human would come, but none did.

In my Midwestern running years, I carried mace. It was technically illegal in my state, but there was a loophole that allowed it to be shipped in front out-of-state. I found an ad in the back of Runner’s World Magazine. My parents thought it was a fine idea for me to carry it. Here in California, I am seldom threatened. The last serious time was when I was pregnant with my son. A dog (different dog) on this same stretch of road barked at me. It was a German Shepherd, but didn’t seem like it was too serious, so I walked on by. I misjudged. He rushed at me and caught the back of my shorts in his teeth. I screamed, a neighbor who was out in his yard yelled, and the dog retreated. No harm done, but that particular stretch of road does seem to be spooked with bad dog karma.

The growling dog looked like a Chow mix. I didn’t like the look of him. The ruckus they were making attracted all the other (fenced in) dogs in the neighborhood, and a mad barking started up. Not a single human looked out to see what was happening. I decided that this was not my battle to fight, and turned back to go the other way. The two dogs followed me at a distance, then lost interest as I left their territory.

Now, I know what some intense dog lovers are going to say: Those were perfectly nice dogs. They’d never bitten anyone. You were in no danger. The thing is, those intense dog lovers are fooling themselves. Dogs follow their instincts and their training. If you own a big dog, you know that it’s your job to become that dog’s alpha-dog, so that it responds to your commands. But when you’re not there? It’s not going to be the same dog, because it depends on your presence to follow those behavior patterns you’ve set up. A dog on the loose can always be a danger, especially to a fast-moving human coming into its territory.

Despite being raised around big dogs, my son went through a period of intense fear of dogs, as many young children do. I couldn’t count the number of times that an unleashed or long-leashed dog rushed him and the owner called out, “Don’t worry! He’s friendly!” The thing is, my kid was crying, screaming, and flailing his arms, not normal behavior for a child, as far as the dog knows. I worked with him each time we went for a walk, reminding him that when a dog rushed at us he should go completely still and quiet and he would be safer. But until my training kicked in and his fears were soothed, he was a danger to himself and to the dog, and any responsible owner should have seen that.

Some ago I wrote this article about the problem with kids and dogs in parks in Santa Cruz. All the parents I spoke to were reasonable. None of the pro-dog people returned my calls, so I can’t speak for how reasonable they are. But the fact is this: if you choose to bring an animal into your home, you choose to be responsible. And one responsibility you choose is to keep that animal from harming others or getting harmed because others fear its behavior.

No, I’ll never know whether that chow’s growl was serious. But if I’d had that can of mace in my hand, as I always did as a teen, I would have been willing to use it. So much easier, it seems, to keep your gate closed and your dogs off the street.

The importance of buddies

Posted on by Suki

My daughter’s public homeschool program has had a buddy system since we started there five years ago. Since it spans K through 8, there are lots of opportunities for older kids to pair up with younger kids.

I always thought the buddy system was nice—when it worked, my daughter was able to complete an activity that before she might not have been able to. But I didn’t realize just how important the buddy system could be until everything clicked.

Last year, my daughter was pretty much not able to deal with school at all. She tried out two different class days, and finally ended up not wanting to go at all. But the activities she did enjoy, I was surprised to see, were the ones she did with her Big Buddy.

Her buddy is a teenage girl she’s known since kindergarten, a graduate of her homeschool program who now volunteers there as a high schooler. I don’t remember them connecting much when her buddy was younger. But somehow, as her buddy grew from a shy girl into a self-assured teen, a chemistry grew between them.

Last summer, my daughter was so fed up with her inability to handle class days at school that she was insisting she wanted to go to our neighborhood public school full-time. (If that sounds like a weird way to solve a problem, well, welcome to my life!) It wasn’t until she found out that her buddy was going to volunteer at her school on her class day that she gave up on this idea. Suddenly, she wanted to go to school.

Lots of homeschoolers and other “fringe” educators have been talking lately about the importance of mentors, and how our culture has lost mentoring as our society has become more fragmented. Some blame this loss on parents giving up their obligation to educate their kids to the state. As public schooling became more prominent, they say, families stopped thinking that education was primarily their responsibility, and community members stopped feeling responsible for taking youngsters under their wings.

I am less willing to blame public education (which I support) than a variety of cultural trends: Culturally, we are losing a sense of what parenting is. We are less likely to talk to our neighbors. We are less likely to live in the same community we work in. We are fearful of strangers—and even our kids’ baseball coach—as potential abusers. We are the perfect product of tabloid newspapers and sensational TV.

Accepting the importance of mentoring requires us to question our cultural messages. Mentoring requires that we believe that the adults in our community have an obligation and a right to help us in raising our children. Mentoring requires us to allow that our child will go out into the world without our protective arms about them. Mentoring requires adults to express interest in other people’s kids, even though adults have been taught the lesson, over and over again, that if they do that, they’re likely to suffer from our suspicions about adults who actually like kids.

If you look at any successful person, it’s more likely than not that s/he had a mentor, an adult who shared interests and who supported the young person’s learning. Sometimes that person is a parent, but more often it’s someone they came across as they focused on their areas of interest. A mentor is a guide, a coach, and in a gentle way, a critic. Americans love stories that feature strong mentors, but somehow in our culture, we have lost a sense of how important mentoring is.

For my daughter, having someone at school who is there for her and who only wants to support her has been invaluable. The teachers in her program are wonderful, but it’s her buddy she looks up to the most. Her buddy is the reason she can make it through. As she develops her interests and grows, this is a valuable lesson for her and for us. Sometimes it’s not a teacher or a parent that’s needed to help a young person develop her skills.

Sometimes it’s just another person on the path ahead of her. And when that person is willing to look back and lend a hand, the most difficult path is easy to navigate.

I am not a homeschool anarchist

Posted on by Suki

I read with interest this piece in the New York Times: My Parents Were Homeschooling Anarchists. It’s an interesting piece that is so resonant of the era in which it took place. I enjoyed reading it and learning what the kids are doing now as adults.

However, articles like this reenforce the idea that all homeschoolers are eccentric weirdos who don’t care if their kids learn to do math.

So, I’m wondering, can we just call off this idiotic conversation, already? You know the one: Homeschoolers are right-wing separatist Christian child-abusers whose kids don’t know how to talk to other people and are learning only the parts of the Bible that their parents agree with. Alternately, homeschoolers are left-wing anarchist child-worshipers who don’t discipline their kids and let them run wild with flowers in their hair.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not telling you that there are no homeschoolers who fit these descriptions. And I’m not telling you that homeschoolers are normal. In fact, fierce pride in bucking societal expectations is pretty much a necessary ingredient in homeschooling parents.

However, I am here to say that homeschoolers, just like everyone else, are not stereotypes. Stereotypes are amplified from the most shocking, unusual, and outrageous examples within a community. When white actors put on blackface, they didn’t make themselves up to look like Denzel Washington. When anti-Semites talk about money-hungry Jews, they don’t hold up Elie Wiesel as their example.

I urge you to read the New York Times article, and then flip back here for a few rebuttals:

OK, I admit that this much is true: Some homeschoolers prefer the company of goats to humans. But really, can you blame them?

1) We are not anarchists.

OK, we’re also not card-carrying members of the middle-of-the-road club. My husband and I are both people who are willing to go against societal norms when it’s important to us. We’re both big believers in an open society in which people should be allowed to be themselves, as long as it’s not harming other people. So yes, we support gay marriage though we are heterosexual. Yes, we support religious freedom, though our household is largely secular. And yes, we support every person’s right to wear whatever outrageous clothing that makes their heart flutter with joy!

But we also believe in a society with laws, behavioral norms that allow us to live closely and comfortably, and reasonable ways to dissent.

This description would fit hundreds of homeschoolers I have personally met.

2) We parent our children.

Our children are not running wild. Although one of them has behavioral difficulties that might make it seem like we don’t teach discipline, we do in fact believe in discipline. Hopefully, if we’re doing the job we think we’re doing, we’re teaching our kids self-discipline. Because discipline imposed for no obvious reason teaches kids nothing. Teaching them to understand themselves and other people, to think about how their actions affect the world, and to work to change themselves when they see room for improvement is an integral part of our parenting.

On the other hand, we are not stifling our children. We do allow them lots of free play time. We do allow them to make their own choices even when we know that it’s probably not the right choice. We allow them to make decisions about their own bodies, which is how we ended up with a boy with long hair for four years and now a girl with short hair who wears boys’ clothing.

This description would fit hundreds of homeschoolers I have personally met.

3) We believe in education.

We are homeschooling because we believe in education, and when we looked at our child’s needs, we decided that homeschooling was the best choice for now. We are not anti-school, and we fully hope and expect that our kids will seek advanced degrees at university. We want our kids to be exposed to all the knowledge that they would in school and more. We want them to master all the math they’ll need to pursue a technical degree at college, all the understanding of geography, history, and society that will help them understand world events that happen in their lifetimes, and all of the science that will allow them to pursue college level science and at the very least, understand what a scientific study really means and question people’s assumptions about scientific truth.

On the other hand, we don’t believe that kids need to be bored in order to learn. We don’t think that doing well on standardized tests is a full measure of a student’s achievement. We don’t think that our kids should be force-fed anything, should ever have to deal with a teacher who doesn’t respect them and their intelligence, or spend their time doing nothing while waiting for other people to catch up.

This description would fit hundreds of homeschoolers I have personally met.

4) We want our kids to be socially adept.

On any given day, our children deal with a wider range of people than any school child ever could. They have five very different and very wonderful teachers in their homeschool program, each of whom inspires and challenges them in a different way. They work with other homeschooling kids and parents on projects almost every week. They count as their friends people from a few months old to eighty years old. My son volunteers in the community. My daughter works with therapists and other teachers to learn correct social interactions, which are difficult for her. Our children see how the world works while other kids are in school.

On the other hand, we don’t think our kids should stay in situations where they are being abused. We have taught them to speak up when there’s a problem and to respect themselves. When they go off on their own, my hope is that they will never suffer through a badly taught college course, because they will vote with their feet as soon as their professor proves herself inadequate. They will not be sexually abused because they will seek out loving relationships. They will not put up with abusive social groups because they know that there are great people out there who will someday be their friends. They will know how to be alone with themselves and enjoy the company.

This description would fit hundreds of homeschoolers I have personally met.

5) We are not homeschooling in order to insult you.

Lastly, homeschoolers do not choose this path in order to insult parents who have chosen school, in order to insult teachers, or in order to insult schools. We chose it each for our own reasons, but our choice is ours. Just as my choosing to wear black leather boots doesn’t offend your sneakers, our choosing one method of schooling does not make any commentary, negative or positive, about yours.

So let’s get this straight: Homeschoolers, like all people, are not stereotypes. We are people who care deeply about our children and believe that we are giving them a good education. We do tend to veer a bit off the beaten path, be divergent thinkers, and choose a more interesting over an easy route. But in general, I think we’re a pretty tolerable bunch. So when you read articles like this, uninformed opinions like these, see nutty homeschoolers on reality TV, or read books in which we’re stereotyped over and over, remember that stereotypes, by their very nature, can never tell the full story.

Food Day!

Posted on by Suki

I have long been a fan of an amazing and wonderful organization called the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. It seems that every time there is positive movement in the kids’ entertainment world (such as Disney’s admission that Baby Einstein is not educational), the CCFC is behind it.

Food DayTheir latest missive to their supporters is about Food Day, something I hadn’t heard of before. It sounds like a great idea that many parents could learn from. From CCFC:

CCFC is proud to be a supporter of the first annual Food Day!  We hope you’ll join us today in celebrating the power and possibility of food as we work to create a healthy food culture.  Here are four great ways to get involved:   

1. From potlucks to film screenings to special farmers’ markets, there are thousands of Food Day events around the country today.  Visit foodday.org to find an event near you.

2. Cook with your kids!  Check out these great Food Day recipes: http://foodday.org/why-eat-real/recipes.php

3. Take a stand for children.  Join our friends at Corporate Accountability International in telling McDonald’s to stop junk food marketing to kids.

4. Tell Congress to support the Eat Real Agenda, a six-point plan to fix America’s broken food system including ending junk food marketing to children. You can read the entire agenda and send a message to Congress by visiting Moms Rising’s website.

I wish we didn’t have to have a “food day” in this country. Wouldn’t it be great if people just understood how to eat? If parents taught their kids healthy eating habits that they’d learned from their parents? Unfortunately, somewhere along the way our culture lost this essential parent-to-child transmission. There are kids out there being raised by people who never ate home-cooked meals, and who have no idea that their health problems stem directly from  the “food products” that were marketed to them in lieu of real, wholesome cooking.

It’s time our country fixed this problem. We’ve fixed plenty of other problems, so it seems like this one, which is really only about fifty years in the making, should be pretty easy to undo.

The problem is, the money is on the other side. And in this country, money is speech. Money is power. Money is why when you’re in the grocery store trying to buy real ingredients to make into real food, all your kids notice is Spongebob on the salty, fatty, nutrition-free product on the next shelf.

All parents owe a debt to people who spend their lives yelling at people who have no interest in listening to their message, except when it comes pre-lubricated with campaign donations. Every day is Food Day in my house, and it may be in yours as well. But pass this on, in case this information can change the lives of other children in your community.

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