More on the contrast effect

I found a definition of "behavioral contrast" which I wanted to try and make sense of, because it seems critical to understanding the repercussions of rewards systems:

Behavioral contrast has been defined as an inverse relationship between rates of responding in one setting and the conditions of reinforcement in another setting (McSweeney & Weatherly, 1998). Many varieties of contrast have been reported in the empirical literature. Contrast can be classified into two primary categories; positive and negative contrast. Positive contrast is an increase in the rate of responding in one setting as a result of a decrease in reinforcement... in another setting. Negative contrast is a decrease in the rate of responding in one setting as a result of an increase in reinforcement in another setting.

As I understand it, the "rate of responding" means how often a target behavior occurs. If you're using positive reinforcement, i.e. rewards of some sort, you're trying to increase a desirable behavior. In this case, a higher response rate means your rewards system is succeeding.

Negative contrast basically means that while a rewards scheme may be successful in one setting, there are unfortunate side effects in other settings. Specifically, the good behavior you've been trying to encourage becomes less common if rewards are increased in other settings. It's all relative, I guess: if payment for good behavior goes up in one environment, it makes other rewards systems that much less attractive or motivating.

Positive contrast means that your "response rate" goes up, or in other words you start having more success at encouraging good behavior, if the rewards start to dry up in other settings. Again, it's all relative: if other rewards are reduced, your own rewards look that much better.

Consider what happens if you send your well-behaved child to a classroom where the teacher happens to use elaborate rewards: tokens to be turned in for small toys, stickers, special honors, lavish praise, and all manner of privileges to be bestowed or revoked. This child is offered a bribe in most instances where a request is made. Time for a math test: the highest scorer gets to wear the Math Genius pin for a day. Remember to raise your hand before speaking: each time you don't you lose one of the magnets off your desk (magnets that can be turned in at the end of the week for little plastic baubles). Keep your desks clean: Cleanest desk gets to line up first for recess. Do your homework: each week without any late assignments earns you an hour's free time on Friday afternoon.

After a few weeks of this, suppose you ask your child to set the table. Can (s)he be blamed for thinking "And what do I get if I do?" It's not simply a matter of greed or laziness or selfishness. They are learning at school that behavior occurs not within a social contract but rather within an economic contract. If they are paid for the least little thing while in the classroom, are they not then entitled to some compensation when Mom or Dad asks them to contribute work?

Conversely, consider a teacher who begins a new school year determined not to resort to rewards and punishments. Suppose that in that part of town, disobedience from kids is not tolerated, and parents typically keep their kids in check with strict rules, spankings, behavior charts, candy used as bribes, and a hundred and one other methods of manipulation. (I do think there are parts of the country and demographic groups where parents are more apt to use behaviorism.)

The kids in that classroom will be expecting an authority figure who cements their position of power by setting the rules, distributing incentives, and doling out consequences. They won't be used to having an adult appeal to their reason or point out shared goals, of having requests explained and having infractions dealt with as "teachable moments". Parents who are fond of time outs and gold stars will not respect the teacher either and will feel that their child is suffering from a lack of discipline and the resulting disorder in the classroom. I still feel such a teacher could succeed, but the first part of the year might be a trial. At every request, a sizeable segment of the class would be thinking "And what do I get if I do?" or "What happens if I don't?" It is particularly ironic that parents might blame the teacher, when their own Skinnerian methods made their kids so difficult to work with.

To sum up: even if a parent doesn't use behaviorism, they can suffer its ill "contrast" effects if it's used liberally in school. Likewise, schoolteachers facing poorly behaved students may be suffering the contrast effects of the authoritarian parenting which is currently making a cultural resurgence.

The epidemic of disrespect

One of the major themes of the NEA website is discipline, or "classroom management." Apparently, simply maintaining order is becoming increasingly difficult for teachers:

There's the feeling among educators that things are worse now than they've ever been, and they aren't wrong, says Jim Garbarino, a Cornell University professor and author of "Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment."

Garbarino points, in part, to an "erosion of adult authority" in today's society that makes it more and more difficult for teachers and other educators to do their job. Although research on the declining behavior of students is scarce, Garbarino says one survey found 82 percent of adults agree kids are less respectful.

There's a possibility that there is no actual trend where kids are getting less respectful. Sometimes our society holds a consensus opinion which is, in fact, a myth. Remember the crime wave of the 1980's, the one that made every politician from dog-catcher to president declare how "tough on crime" they were? The one that led to mandatory minimum sentencing and the Willie Horton campaign commercial? Yeah, well, it never happened. Utter media fabrication, that was. Violent crime declined over the course of the 1980's. Property crime went down fairly dramatically. Yet I'm sure 82 percent of adults would have agreed that crime was on the rise, had they been similarly surveyed.

But let's assume kids really are getting less obedient ("respectful" is usually just code for "obedient," as I'm sure it is for the NEA).

When most of the parenting books focus on discipline, taking control, and asserting your position as household dictator, how on earth can we have an erosion of adult authority? Nowadays, there is a positive terror of "permissive" parenting, with adults (especially those without children) speaking scathingly of badly behaved "brats" they seem to run into everywhere they go. I can't tell you how tired I am of reading the old saw "parenting is not a democracy." The culture is positively obsessed with adult authority. This is the era of the TV show Supernanny:

Hailed by the New York Times as "fascinating" and "required viewing;" praised by Oprah Winfrey, David Letterman and Kelly Ripa; acclaimed by such publications as Newsweek, Hollywood Reporter and The New Yorker; and lauded by parents and nannies across America, Supernanny is a hit.... Supernanny is now an international phenomenon; it airs in 47 countries.... Her book, Supernanny: How to Get the Best from Your Children, spent 17 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, hitting No. 1 for much of that time.

Supernanny's top ten list of parenting rules:

1. Praise and Rewards
2. Consistency
3. Routine
4. Boundaries
5. Discipline
6. Warnings
7. Explanations
8. Restraint
9. Responsibility
10. Relaxation

This is our culture: parenting is about attaining obedience from one's children. There is nothing in the above list that suggests any concern about empathy, social responsibility, creativity, imagination, enjoyment, or learning. Any "erosion of adult authority" is entirely mystifying when the primary concern of many adults, when dealing with children, is to insure their position of authority.

Back to the NEA article:

"Teachers probably have to do more to establish their individual authority because they don't have a cultural foundation to build upon," Garbarino says.

Some blame parents—in fact, 82 percent of teachers in the Public Agenda poll say parents simply don't teach their kids discipline. Many kids come to school with little regard for rules. "They're used to getting their own way," says Sheila Cornelison, an algebra teacher in northern Alabama, who trains colleagues in Alabama Education Association-sponsored I Can Do It! Workshops—seminars offered by some state Associations to help teachers with classroom management.

I very much doubt that your typical American parent lets their kid rule the roost. Something is going wrong in our relationships with children, but that eternal straw man, the "spoiled child" that results from permissive parenting, is not the problem. If you've been reading earlier posts, you probably know what I think it is: behaviorism (Supernanny's #1 parenting technique). Far from having a new, permissive culture which grants children too much autonomy, we have kids who are scheduled 24/7, are rarely if ever given unsupervised time, and are, in many cases, incessantly manipulated with time outs, star charts, cookies, spankings, and all manner of carrots and sticks. This leads to poor behavior and lack of respect for adults for several reasons:

• Bribing and threatening kids does not show them any respect. It means treating the child as if they cannot be reasoned with or appealed to, as if they cannot understand the world around them, as if they are animals. Ergo, they don't respect us either.
• Behaviorism stresses the power structure between parent and child, which gets in the way of mutual affection and can inspire resistance for resistance's sake (everyone wants a measure of freedom). De-emphasizing the power structure through discussion and negotiation will actually make for a more "manageable" child.
• Children whose parents regularly explain the purpose behind their requests, which is what you have to do if you aren't using rewards and punishments, learn to trust that adults have good reasons for their demands. Even when a reason is not provided, the child is more likely to assume a reason exists, and to do what they're asked. In short, trust has been established.
• The "contrast effect" creates a backlash of even worse behavior once the Skinnerian system is no longer in effect, meaning that a child who is highly controlled in the home will exhibit worse behavior at school. Teachers may use certificates, tokens, and endless tchotchke to purchase decent behavior, but can they really compete with the personalized system of manipulation used by some parents? Not likely. For the child whose behavior is economically driven, there is little reason to be well behaved for a teacher.
• Paying a child for positive behavior indicates you have low expectations or even a low opinion of them. Children will internalize these low expectations over time, and therefore act less responsibly.
  

It is frustrating to say the least that teachers want parents to take kids more in hand, which, in our society, usually means setting up more rules and enforcing them with an even stronger economy of rewards and consequences. And yet that system is in fact the root of the problem (along with, in my opinion, overscheduling and lack of unsupervised time).

One last point is that teachers cannot possibly detect all infractions or always be accurate in determining which child caused a given problem. They only have 2 eyes and they may have 30 kids in their room. This means that rewards and punishments cannot possibly be given out fairly in all cases. The same NEA article includes this:

Unfortunately, [Cornelison] and others say, gone are the "good old days," when teachers could rely on parents to catch their backs. Now, one out of two teachers report having been accused by parents themselves of unfair discipline.

Well, naturally. This is the inevitable consequence of having one person attempting to administer a complicated economic system of detentions, certificates, extra homework, tokens, and so on, for 20 to 30 kids. Kids get paper money that they didn't earn, and other kids get held in at recess (incarcerated, so to speak) for crimes they didn't commit. And what does that do to morale?

Unfortunately, rewards and punishments are, to most Americans, what the water is to the fish. Such methods are thought to be natural and right and go unquestioned. The worse the behavior gets, the more Skinnerisms we pile on. I don't know where this will end, but we're not on a good path.

Recent homeschooling

Anya has become interested in "playing school" lately (her term). She wants to get out the letter blocks and make up sentences together. She wants to play a game where we spread out some word cards and I say "Where is 'fox'?" and she finds the word, until all the cards are gone. This one is a good game because she doesn't have to sound it out entirely, she can use process of elimination based on the first or last letter only, and yet she still learns the words by sight. I'm going to pick a short early reader book, identify all the words in it, write them on cards, and play the "Where?" game until she knows them by sight. This way, she should hopefully get excited about reading the book, as opposed to having it drive her nuts because sounding it out goes so slowly.

On impulse, while at the grocery store, I bought a little math workbook. I was almost sheepish about it, since first of all I think of myself as an unschooler, secondly many of the homeschoolers in my area follow Waldorf curricula and don't feel academics need to be emphasized at age 5, and lastly, aren't worksheets dull as dust and repetitive?

Well, Anya loves the workbook. She brings me pages and asks me to read the instructions. I bought three more at Target today, along with a package of sparkly pencils and some neon colored cap erasers. I am already eyeing a silly pencil sharpener that looks like a nose (guess where you stick the pencil) as a stocking item. I was surprised how geeked I got about the pencils. I guess one never outgrows the excitement of new school supplies-- even if they are nominally unschooling supplies.

I've also been reading her Little House in the Big Woods. A couple days into it, I went over to a corner of the room where she'd built a fort, and had been playing mother dog to four little stuffed puppies. Alongside the puppies was a pile of food: applesauce cups, Goldfish, juice boxes, Cheerios, etc. Apparently, since it's autumn, it was necessary to lay in a store of food for the puppies. I also keep hearing her telling the puppies things like "Hurry up! There are panthers in the forest!" During times when she is Anya, as opposed to "Woofy," her dog identity, she occasionally thinks of another item to ask me about, as in: "Did they have gum when Laura was living in that house in the woods?" Which of course is followed by "NO GUM?" and a look of horror.

Tristan, the World's Most Irate Toddler, is doing very well but has a tendency to yell "Bah! Bah!" while scowling and throwing objects to the ground. He also prefers that I never stand or walk without carrying him, which is a bit tough, but oh well, he'll outgrow it.

Hope my readers are all doing well!

Columbus Day

Christopher Columbus is one of the major reasons we decided to homeschool our children. Seriously. I could not stand the thought that they would go to school and be taught that this man was a "brave explorer" and that he "discovered America" or was the first to think the world was round. He was a monster in search of slaves and gold, mediocre in every respect except his avarice, and in the pursuit of his greed he decimated entire populations. There were perhaps 3 million Arawaks living on Hispaniola when Columbus arrived (estimates range from 1 to 8 million). By 1508 there were only 60,000 left. Shortly thereafter there were none.

Ask anyone who discovered America, and they'll probably say Columbus. Never mind if others discovered it first, people from Siberia, Indonesia, Japan, the British Isles, West Africa. Never mind if at least 20 million people were living in North America in 1492, people with trade routes and treaties, crops and medicine, history, religion, culture, and art. Some people defend the absurdity of Columbus's "discovery" by saying "Well, we just mean that he was the first European to discover the Americas." Uh-huh. Because, you know, the Europeans are the ones who count, so it's okay if theirs is the only perspective we get.

Much of what is taught about Columbus in US history textbooks is literally pulled out of thin air, written in for dramatic flair, added to the story completely gratuitously. It is our national creation myth, and they've made it a right good tale. A one-month crossing in good weather with plenty of supplies turns into three months of violent seas, starvation and fear, near mutiny, and then a joyous cry of "Land! Land!" It's like Chapter One was crafted by someone who used to write Made-for-TV movies based loosely on actual events.

The truth is more like this, from James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me (p.62-63):

In the words of Hans Koning, "There now began a reign of terror on Hispaniola." Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system. Ferdinand Columbus described how it worked: "[The Indians] all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished." . . . Columbus's son neglected to mention how the Spaniards punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands.

. . .

On Haiti the colonists made the Indians mine gold for them, raise Spanish food, and even carry them everywhere they went. The Indians couldn't stand it. Pedro de Cordoba wrote in a letter to King Ferdinand in 1517, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth.... Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery."

Priest Bartolome de las Casas detailed other atrocities: Spaniards cutting into natives' flesh to test the sharpness of their knives or beheading natives for no apparent reason. Some of Las Casas's descriptions are thought to be exaggerated:

And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby.

This goes on, mind you, for another paragraph or so, and details burnings at the stake, amputations, rape, and so on. I would like to think it is exaggerated. But much of what Las Casas wrote is confirmed by other letter-writers or Columbus's own accounts. For instance, Columbus wrote complacently to friends about the sexual slave trade, noting that "...there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

The precise degree of cruelty may be arguable, and I realize that many thousands died because of small pox and other diseases the Europeans brought. But the native Americans in what is now the United States also died from these diseases, yet they did not disappear in a matter of a few decades. It is undeniable that Columbus and his men, along with successors like his son or younger officers, committed genocide. Millions were living on Hispaniola, Haiti, Cuba, and smaller islands in 1492; by the mid 1500's, none were left. We might as well have Hitler Day as have Columbus Day.

Obviously there is a gigantic discrepancy between primary historical sources and the guff invented for school textbooks. (One textbook has Columbus dying unappreciated and penniless, not knowing he had discovered a new continent. Just for the hell of it, I guess-- sounds better that way. Never mind that it's contradicted by Columbus's own journals.) But this particular discrepancy, as hideous as it is, is pretty much par for the course. We learn about the brave and noble early colonists, but not that they gave small pox-laden blankets to the native Americans; nor that some early colonies were successfully overthrown by slaves, who then maintained peaceful and mutually beneficial relations with native Americans; nor that some of those captured by natives refused to go back when 'rescued' by fellow colonists.

I think that our creation myths are fictionalized and dramatized in proportion to the evils we committed, and the evils were considerable. A friend once said I seemed determined to demonize the Europeans, but this reaction simply points out the huge difference between historical data and what's in the textbooks. From her perspective, I'd gone off the deep end and was choosing an insupportable interpretation; from my perspective, the textbooks have jaw-dropping audacity in manufacturing a false and rosy history. I really have no desire to paint the Europeans as evil. I think stealing an entire continent through genocide more or less speaks for itself.

I could no more allow Anya and Tristan to be taught the Fantastic Fake History of Our Superior Nation than I could allow them to be taught that the Holocaust never happened. History is not a single, objectively "true" narrative, and yes, many viewpoints can be argued, but some interpretations are bunk. American History in most public schools is way over the line.

Pandemic Flu Awareness Week

Bloggers from every part of the blogosphere are participating in a week-long effort to increase awareness of the coming influenza pandemic, and I thought I'd join them for one posting.

Pandemics occur when a new type of influenza, one which has never infected humans before, mutates and becomes contagious between humans. No one on earth has antibodies to this new type of influenza, which is why it's able to spread unchecked across the globe. Currently, the new H5N1 virus is widespread in wild and domestic birds in Asia, and has occurred in humans in several countries, but it has not been very contagious up to this point. It may now have achieved easy transmission between people in Indonesia, but it is difficult to get much information.

Whatever the current state of things, it is only a matter of time before the necessary mutations occur in some particular strain of H5N1 and a pandemic begins. The trouble is, we can't know which strain, which set of symptoms, which mortality rate will be involved in this looming plague. We had global flu pandemics in 1957 and 1968 which were relatively mild, and basically looked like a worse-than-usual flu season. On the other hand, the pandemic of 1918 was catastrophic, killing between 2 and 5 percent of all human beings alive, in a matter of a few months.

You may hear talk of a vaccine, but there is no vaccine. We don't know which strain will go pandemic, so we don't know how to make vaccine. Also, we have extremely limited manufacturing capability, requiring us to start making vaccine 6 months before we need it, even assuming we did know the genetic sequence of the future pandemic bug. Furthermore, it turns out vaccines even for normal flu are largely ineffective. I hate to be so negative, but there is nothing much people can do to stop this thing. We can only hope that the form of influenza that causes a pandemic is a mild form, with a low mortality rate. That is not how H5N1 looks right now, but it's not in its final form yet.

A lot of people don't really understand what flu is. It doesn't help to have medications labeled "Cold & Flu" as if influenza is just a bad cold. Actual flu can attack not just the respiratory system but also the digestive system and the nervous system. My family had a bad H3N2 flu, the Fuji strain, two winters ago. We had shooting pains in our joints, dizziness, ringing in our ears, spots in our vision, and a bizarre recurring twinge that my husband described as feeling "like your head was suddenly on sideways". Severe depression following recovery is a possible side effect of flu, and I certainly felt depressed while we had Fuji. After about 3 or 4 days, you can start to believe that you are never going to get any better. A few more days and you stop remembering what it is like not to be sick. Depression is a consideration when you think there's going to be a bad flu season. Lay in some P. G. Wodehouse or Janet Evanovich, maybe a copy of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (gotta be the funniest movie ever).

Two things you can take to boost your immune system are N-acetyl cysteine (an amino acid) and beta glucan (a "glycoprotein" or polysaccharide found in oats, barley, brewer's yeast and other things). Adults can take 600mg NAC twice daily and 100mg beta glucan twice daily. Children can take roughly half that (NAC can be stirred into juice, beta glucan sprinkled on cereal or oatmeal or bread). NAC in particular has been shown to prevent or reduce flu symptoms quite substantially as compared to placebo; beta glucan is more generally known to induce macrophage activity (one of the "front line defenders" of the immune system).

Sambucol, a liquid berry-flavored medication derived from black elderberries, has been shown in clinical trials to reduce the duration of flu by 4 days, as well as reducing symptoms, in double-blind randomized clinical trials. This makes it significantly more effective than Tamiflu, which is the only prescription antiviral that seems to be effective against H5N1. However, at least double the usual amount of Tamiflu is required, which is not how it will be dispensed; and the US has so little Tamiflu that it's essentially irrelevant. Mainstream medicine has got nothin', but you can buy Sambucol fairly inexpensively (try vitacost.com) and it's over the counter. You take 1 tablespoon 4 times per day for 5 days, or about half that for children. This costs less than $15 per adult or $10 per child if you go through vitacost (you need about one 8-oz (large size) bottle per adult). This is perhaps the single best thing you can do to prepare, along with having Tylenol and ibuprofen.

It is safe to take Tylenol and ibuprofen simultaneously, if necessary for controlling fever. Anya was taking children's ibuprofen when we had flu, and she became utterly lethargic and it turned out her fever was 105.1. We stripped off her clothes, put cold wet cloths all over her, and gave her Tylenol. I was taking Tylenol at maximum dosage and I could barely keep my fever below 103, which was very distressing as I was 2.5 months pregnant and had been told not to let my fever exceed 102. My husband's fever was 104. This went on for 4 full days.

You may want to have canned soups, frozen TV dinners, cereal, and bottled juice around if flu comes to your area. It's likely no one will be able to cook for a few days if your whole family comes down sick. Gatorade and Pedialyte are good to have on hand.

When someone starts to recover, they need to behave as if they are still sick for another couple of weeks afterward. They need to rest, push fluids, sleep more than usual, and limit exposure to public places and germs. Flu can recur, and the immune system will take weeks to regain its strength. I had a coworker who got flu, seemed to have recovered, and then went jogging. A few hours later his wife rushed him to the ER, where his blood pressure crashed and he went into a coma. It turned out he had pneumonia, and he then developed septicemia which did not initially respond to antibiotics. Thankfully he came out of the coma 10 days later, against the expectations of his doctors.

Bush has been tossing out the idea of quarantine on TV in the past few days. I don't think this will happen, but some flu community folks have stocked up on canned foods, dried beans, toilet paper, bottles of juice, rice, flour, and so forth. Some simply want to be able to avoid the grocery store if flu is circulating, but others expect quarantine measures and don't want to be caught short of supplies. N95 masks and gloves are also being purchased, for when outside trips are necessary.

Myself, I have one remaining question regarding flu preparations, and it is: How does one sterilize Netflix materials?

You can keep track of what's happening with flu at Recombinomics or read more about pandemic flu at the invaluable Flu Wiki. At the moment there is a mystery illness in Toronto which may or may not be flu (false negatives in flu testing are common, so it is hard to know for sure). It is probably not H5N1, but whatever it is, it's a vicious bug.

More and more school

In California, where over half of this year's high school seniors can expect to be denied their diplomas (see preliminary exit exam scores here), the authorities are getting rather nasty about enforcing compulsory education:

ESCONDIDO, Calif. -- Parents could go to jail for up to six months under a daytime curfew ordinance for schoolchildren that goes into effect in Escondido Monday.

The ordinance, approved by the Escondido City Council in July, makes it unlawful for students ages 12 to 17 who are "subject to compulsory education" to "loiter, idle, wander" in public places on days when school is in session.

Students who violate the curfew could be fined up to $250 or have to do 20 hours of community service, while their parents could face six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000.

In Massachusetts, school districts are being offered increased funding if they go to an 8-hour school day:

Boston, Springfield, Cambridge, and at least 17 other Massachusetts school districts are moving forward with plans to extend the day in some of their schools, rejecting the traditional 180-day, 6-hour schedule because educators believe there is not enough time to teach students what they need to know.

The 20 districts met Friday's deadline to apply for grant money that the state Department of Education is offering to districts that want to explore adding about two hours to the day in some of their schools....

With its grants, Massachusetts becomes the first state to officially sanction a longer schedule, though some schools in Massachusetts and around the country already are experimenting with a longer school day or school year....

Mary Russo, principal of Boston's Murphy K-8 School, said the benefits of a longer school day are worth the complications. ''Right now, as we think about our school, we think about it as not having enough time within the confines of the 8:30 a.m.-to-2:30 p.m. day to teach everything that needs to be taught, everything we'd want kids to have," Russo said. ''The hours in the school day just aren't enough for us."

Keep in mind that many kids have a 45-minute bus ride, one way, to get to and from school. If the school day is increased to 8 hours, their day is increased to 9.5 hours, excluding all extracurricular activities. Assuming 8 hours of sleep and an hour or two of homework per night, an active child who is in sports and marching band and swim team will get no more than 2 or 3 hours per day with their families, while the school will get 4 times that much. Who is raising the child, exactly?

The idea that 6 hours per day is not enough relies on the unspoken assumption that the school is creating the child, that everything the child will know in life will be poured into their heads in school. Reading, writing, and arithmetic has become "Everything we'd want kids to have." Evidently children cannot be expected to learn anything of value outside of school.

Another unspoken belief comes into play here, that old saw about how we live in "an increasingly complex world," therefore it is much harder to teach kids enough to prepare them for adulthood. True, our technology is more complex, but it's not as if school teaches you to set your voicemail message, reduce spam in your inbox, or set the clock on your microwave. Nor does school teach you how your credit rating affects the interest rate on your mortgage, how to set up utilities when you move, how to take a flight or book a hotel room, how to choose the healthier items on the menu, how to do your taxes, or how to renew your driver's license.

Reading and writing the English language is much the same task that it always was. Multiplication works the same way. Science courses have been taught for many decades now, and while inert gases are now called noble gases, and we now know Newton wasn'tentirely correct, little has really changed at the high school level. We may live in an increasingly complex world, but it does not follow that school subjects have grown more complex. (Actually, I think the whole idea of the "increasingly complex world" is sheer malarkey, because most of us don't sew our own clothes, take care of livestock, plant and harvest, carve furniture, brew ale, assist women in childbirth, or can or pickle or smoke or dry or salt-preserve foods, and those were all complex tasks as well.)

Our neighbors' son started kindergarten this year, and they're already giving him daily homework. It's one thing to believe that high school classes may need to teach more material because of our high-tech world, but kindergarten? The real purpose of that homework is just to get the kid used to having to do homework every day. I don't understand why parents in Massachusetts would tolerate having an 8-hour day, 1.5 hours on the bus in some cases, probably 2 or more hours of homework in the higher grades-- I mean, when these kids grow up and get full time jobs, it's going to seem like a real relief!

John Gatto has said it takes only about 100 hours to transmit reading, writing, and arithmetic to children. Yet our kids attend over 14,000 hours of schooling before we reward them with a diploma. Obviously education is only part of the purpose.