Not School

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. -- Mark Twain

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

The science of cooking


    I'm just writing a brief post to recommend Alton Brown's cooking books, I'm Just Here for the Food and I'm Just Here for More Food. Brown also has a show called "Good Eats" on the Food Network, which, like his books, tries to teach you how cooking actually works. He does include recipes, but it's his ability to explain the science and history behind ingredients and techniques that sets him apart.

    A brief excerpt from ...More Food, which is about baking (p. 31):

    What Starch Does in Baked Goods

    In its raw state, starch is stored in tight little botanical hand grenades that are relatively impenetrable and non-soluble in water-- that is until the water gets up to 140 degrees F. Then they begin to gelatinize, that is, the granules begin to soften and soak up water. This water is held along the length of the starches themselves, especially the long, straight amylose. Eventually many of the starches simply burst, spilling their payload like so many overinflated confetti-filled balloons. This process is called gelatinization.

    In baked goods, starch serves three purposes:

    Starch contributes mass by combining with water and other ingredients. You could think of starch as the concrete of the food world. Like concrete, starch needs to set or dry, which is what the cooling step is all about.

    Starch traps and holds water. This includes water that's squeezed out of proteins during coagulation....

    Starch provides yeast food. The problem is, those starch granules don't generally break open until they reach 140 degrees F, at which point any yeast present are dead as doornails. Luckily, up to 30 percent of the starch granules in wheat flour are broken during milling, making their energy available to the tiny fungi.

    He talks about fats, proteins, carbohydrates, eggs, various types of flour, butter, milk, chocolate, and so on. And then he gets into the basic mixing and baking methods behind all baked goods. I recommend both his books (the first is about general cooking: grilling, sauteing, stewing, roasting, etc), as well as his TV show. He's funny and zany, and you wind up learning quite a bit. An interested kid could spin off into acids and bases, the structure of molecules and bonds, the history of food, nutrition, or, of course, cooking itself!

    Tuesday, June 28, 2005

    What on earth did I learn in school?


      I have been wondering, lately, what the heck it was I actually learned in school. For the entirety of elementary school I'm convinced I hardly learned a thing, because my dad showed me math concepts before we were taught them in school, and I was usually reading at a higher level than we were in class. I learned some guff about Christopher Columbus, which, it transpired, was false; I learned the state flower, bird, stone, etc (always so important in everyday life); and I made some pitiful dioramas out of shoeboxes and too much paste.

      I recall a few things from middle and high school. I definitely learned some French, and then there's the random stuff still floating around in there: Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria; igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary; John Wilkes Booth; 6 x 10^23. There's more, but most of it's similarly disconnected. Not much to show for all those years, is it?

      I once read that the amazing thing about the human brain is its capacity to forget. You don't need to remember that the car in front of you on the way home from the store was red, or what you paid to get your oil changed 10 years ago, or the names of the characters on a sitcom you idly watched one evening. If we remembered everything, we'd never be able to call up the important stuff. The important data would be buried under a mound of useless trivia. So, yes, I can see that the brain has a wonderful ability to forget.

      I don't really know how memory works, but I have a vague idea. You learn some random bit of information somewhere, and file it away in a little cluster of neurons someplace in your brain. If it fits into one of your interests or your previous knowledge, you'll probably ponder it a bit, thinking "That reminds me of..." or "So that explains why..." or whatever. That process presumably links up this new data within the larger web of your memory and knowledge. But if the bit of data doesn't relate to anything and doesn't interest you, or doesn't inform your view of how the world works in some way, it fades into oblivion. A few days or weeks later, your brain can't locate that bit of data, because it isn't connected to anything; there is no way to mentally get back to that data again.

      I assume the brain has an optimal way of interweaving knowledge so that we remember it, provided, of course, that we are learning in a natural way. Interfere with learning by forced memorization, and I suspect that the brain doesn't link up to the new information quite so well. Just like I trust that my body can give birth naturally (even to an 11 pound 3 ounce baby, as I found out with T.), and that breastmilk is best, and that I don't want to interfere with my children's immune system development, neither do I want to interfere with the natural process of assimilating new information.

      The reason I don't recall any history is that these bits of data stuck around only long enough to be recalled during tests. Every chapter focused on something totally new, and was filled with names, places, and dates which were not really relevant to the overall gist or narrative, and we were never taught history in terms of its relevance to modern times. History repeats itself, they say, but they don't show you how in school, they don't teach you about the pendulum between fascism and individualism, or corporatism and workers' rights. Somehow, by repetition and mnemonics, you can get disconnected data to stick around for a while-- but only for a short while.

      Better to learn about just a few eras or events in history, and know them really well because you're interested, than to memorize and then forget the set of facts which someone else has decided is important. When a child is interested, they'll read about something in more than one place, and come upon the same idea or data several times over in slightly different contexts. It's an axiom among homeschoolers that everything seems to relate to everything else, and you can start a discussion about Ren and Stimpy and get to Darwin somehow. When you learn this way, webs are formed, and the information is therefore remembered. In school you just get data in a single sentence in a book, much of the time. You get it in one context only, without anyone pointing out its relevance (you learn it because you'll be tested on it). The information sits in a little neural cluster by itself until your brain can no longer find it again.

      And that's why I can't remember a thing I learned in school.

      Wednesday, June 22, 2005

      How school food is hurting kids


        One of the things I didn't like about A's preschool was the snack food, which was brought by a child's parent on their assigned day. The teachers asked for healthy food, and they provided a list of ideal snacks in the parents' handbook, but most parents had a different idea of "healthy" than I did.

        A. was introduced to Capri Sun, having never before drunk anything but water, 100% juice, and organic milk. She ate store-bought cookies full of trans-fat (the sugar isn't great, but the trans-fats are awful). She started campaigning for me to buy Go-Gurts, which are so foul that when I once tasted one, the fake berry flavor was so strong it made my throat feel thick and tight. She ate cupcakes with frosting chock full of artificial colors, non-natural peanut butter (have I mentioned trans-fats?), and jello (which is nutritionally less than zero).

        It's not that we are health nuts or that I never let her eat sugar or anything that strict. A. loves Tic-Tacs and M&Ms, which are also full of artificial colors and flavors and sugar. She loves the various Morningstar Farms soy products, which possibly I should not let her eat because of the plant estrogens, but the faux burgers are my savior when we haven't been to the store in a week. And I can say with absolute certainty that she doesn't eat enough vegetables.

        The problem is that the preschool snacks come in recognizable plastic and tinfoil containers, which A. then spots in the grocery store and requests. Every day she attended preschool, it seemed, she learned one more junk product by sight. A. doesn't see advertising, so in our case it was obvious she was introduced to these foods at school. I can take her down the cereal aisle and she doesn't utter a peep unless we're out of Cheerios, because they never served cereal at preschool. But enter the juice aisle, the cookies and crackers aisle, or pass by the yogurt, and it's Let the Hassling Begin! I wind up buying 8 small tubes of Stonyfield Farms yogurt at $4.19 a box (!!) just to avoid the argument over the similarly packaged Go-Gurts.

        * * *

        It turns out that there are broad, aggregate effects of a poor diet within the schools. One alternative school for troubled kids in Appleton, Wisconsin changed their cafeteria food service to include only organic and unprocessed foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and no artificial anything. They removed the soda and candy vending machines. The result?

        The reports Principal LuAnn Coenen files with the State of Wisconsin reflect the results of this new lunch program—drop outs, expulsions, drug use, weapons brought to school, and suicides are all at zero. Now “grades are up, truancy is no longer a problem, arguments are rare, and teachers are able to spend their time teaching,” according to the Pure Facts newsletter. Teachers are happier because they can spend time teaching instead of disciplining or dealing with interruptions. “Since the introduction of the food program, I have noticed an enormous difference in the behavior of my students in the classroom,” said teacher Mary Bruyette. “They’re on task, they are attentive. They can concentrate for longer periods of time.” Even their stamina, attitude, and health has increased from eating the food available at school. Students are happier because it is easier to concentrate in class and easier to get along with other students.

        You can read more about Appleton's new food programs here. It sounds pretty dramatic, but there are some other examples where healthy foods improved schools. At Gordon Middle School in Philadelphia, the results were similarly amazing, as recounted by the school's principal:

        "One aspect of creating a new Gordon was accepting the premise that a hungry student body was not fueled to achieve.... I began making trips to the housing project, bringing coffee and rolls with me, to meet parents and grandparents. We talked about packing snacks for kids to eat in class at school. They agreed to send in the fruits, veggies and pretzels needed to get the kids from our 7:45 am start, till lunchtime, ready to deal with their heavy math, science, and language courses scheduled in extended time blocks.

        "Kids were pleased that it was OK to eat in class when they got hungry, and that having food at school outside the cafeteria was no longer forbidden. When students and teachers jointly approved the kinds of food to be eaten, candy and gum virtually disappeared.

        "As an extension of the `snack' idea, home ec teachers, supported by the nurse and phys ed teachers, decided to offer snacks to students during breaks when they were taking mandatory state tests - the very tests that ranked the student body at the bottom of the scoring range. Weeks of preparation and encouragement included the idea that students were going to be `fueled for success.' They were served by their teachers and me with fruit juice and high energy snacks prepared in our home ed kitchens....

        "Six weeks later when the test results arrived from the state scoring center, the results were staggering. Not only had our Gordon kids scored at the top among our three district junior highs, but placed second among junior highs in the county and ranked among the top ten percent in the state. A new attitude for success was born in this impoverished inner-city middle school that was repeated for the next three years. The school drew accolades from our Pennsylvania Department of Education and from the U.S. Department of Education, naming Gordon a Blue Ribbon School - one of the best 200 secondary schools in the U.S. during 1992-93.

        A 1986 study done in New York City public schools concluded the following:

        The introduction of a diet policy which lowered sucrose, synthetic food color/flavors, and two preservatives (BHA and BHT) over 4 years in 803 public schools was followed by a 15.7% increase in mean academic percentile ranking [i.e. from 39th to 55th percentile] above the rest of the nation's schools who used the same standardized tests. Prior to the 15.7% gain, the standard deviation of the annual change in nation percentile rating had been less than 1%. Each school's academic performance ranking was negatively correlated with the percent of children who ate school food prior to the diet policy changes. However, after the policy transitions, the percent of students who ate school lunches and breakfasts within each school became positively correlated with that school's rate of gain (r = .28, p < .0001).

        To recap: before the dietary changes, the more students within each school who ate the school food, the worse the test scores were; after the dietary changes, the more students who ate school food, the better the test scores.

        Apparently you can even see the behavioral effects of junk food in mice (see second article).

        One group called the Feingold Association believes that many behavioral problems and many cases of ADHD are attributable to certain chemicals in food, some of which occur naturally, but many of which are found in artificial food dyes, flavorings, or preservatives. The anecdotal stories from parents, such as this one, make me believe that certain food additives do indeed affect certain children behaviorally, in addition to the more obvious effects of sugar and caffeine. (The precise percentage of hyperactive children that might be helped by the additives-free Feingold diet is too big a controversy for me to wade into in this post.)

        The book Fast Food Nation talks about how the junk food industry has maneuvered its way into schools. Food advertising is in the hallways and on the school buses, on Channel One and even in the textbooks; soda pop and candy vending machines abound; and I think I read that one third of high school cafeterias include a fast food franchise. According to Fast Food Nation, some soda pop contracts require schools to sell 50 sodas per student in a given school year, in order to receive promised funds.

        Schools believe they're making money off such deals, but I think they're being had. The organic and fresh foods lunches in Appleton, Wisconsin cost a total of $20,000 a year more than their previous, heavily processed, fatty lunches. That's probably made up by having several students remain in the school who would otherwise have dropped out or been expelled. Meanwhile, junk food seems to cause discipline problems and lower test scores, side effects which undoubtedly waste school resources. The money schools get from Coke is likely to be lost if test scores decline and funding begins to wither under No Child Left Behind.

        And anyway, I thought the whole idea of the public schools was in loco parentis. Never mind how it hurts the school as an institution, it's just plain wrong for a school to foist junk food on children (and in that category I include most school lunches).

        Monday, June 20, 2005

        "Every kid has to get beat up a few times...."


          It's been 11 weeks since we decided to homeschool, and already I'm tired of hearing about socialization / social development / social skills. People who have been homeschooling for years must grit their teeth and change the subject when this stuff comes up-- I mean, there are only so many times you can give your personal lecture on why your children will be perfectly socially healthy, thank you very much.

          Even some of my oldest friends, who I know from first-hand observation were absolutely miserable for the entirety of high school, mention socialization. I am beginning to wonder if most of the nerds and loners and unpopular kids in school (which included me) now feel that they were better off in the long run because they endured the crucible of school social life. That it was good that they were teased or bullied or subjected to a hundred petty cruelties, because it made them into stronger people.

          This is the immune system theory of social development: you need to suffer minor assaults or you'll overreact to them later in life, the same way a child who grows up in a spotless home is more likely to have allergies and asthma. An immune system needs to be challenged in order to calibrate itself, to develop the right degree of response; so does one's social persona.

          One homeschooling journal asked readers to write in with some of the dumbest stuff people had said to them about homeschooling. Two of the quotes were:

          [S]he challenged my home schooling saying my son would still miss out. "It's important for him socially too. He needs to be offered drugs so he can turn them down." (link)

          An acquaintance said, "Every kid has to get beat up a few times in public school or they won't be able to cope in the real world." (link)

          That's the immune system theory in action.

          First of all, the analogy fails because my friends and I did not fight off the taunting and teasing. We did not combat it; for the most part we endured it in silence and confusion. Looking the other way and keeping your mouth shut is not a defense, it is acquiescence. Some of us might claim to have been unscathed, to have brushed it off without a further thought, but if that's the case, it's due to some innate fortitude that we didn't learn in school.

          Secondly, if a kid needs trials and tribulations for proper development, then why shouldn't parents holler at them, insult them, revoke the things they enjoy on a whim, and generally mistreat them? If what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, why not give them some trouble? Why not drop them off at the bully's house for a play date?

          Parents don't do that because we know nurture is what allows children to grow up, grow wiser, and yes, grow stronger. You don't tend to the seedlings in your garden by introducing aphids and fungus and salt to 'toughen them up'. And yet there is this common wisdom that in school, a hefty dose of adversity is a good thing, because it's the real world, and kids better damn well get used to it. I kept wondering how anyone could say homeschooling was not the real world, whereas the artificial environment of a school was, but I think I'm starting to get it. They mean that learning is after all not any fun, that people after all are cruel and lacking in empathy, that people would never engage in meaningful work without tangible rewards (grades and prizes for kids, money for adults). Cynicism is a driving force behind this notion of the real world and the need for kids to be 'socialized' to accept it.

          John Gatto talks about the ways in which school makes children behave cruelly toward one another. He points out that having 20-some small children vying for the attention of a single adult breeds competition, jealousy, and hostility. I'd like to devote a future post to this, and other reasons why I think schools create an artificially nasty and hostile environment, but for now I'll just say that the real world is in reality not as mean-spirited as school. If attention and approval (either from adults or fellow students) are resources, it's a classic situation of too few resources breeding warfare. There is no reason for it to be like this. It's not real life.

          But suppose we set all of these objections aside for a moment. Suppose I stipulate that children grow through adversity and wither under shelter, and that the "real world" is as hostile and undemocratic as schools. Suppose people are right: a homeschooled child will be incapable of accepting current society and all its nastiness, lack of cooperation, lack of freedom, insistence on conformity.

          Well, good then! I'm glad if they wouldn't be willing to put up with it. They might decide that such a harsh culture needed to be improved, and set about trying to change it. Whereas a kid who's been to school and learned to take their lumps in silence would continue to take their lumps in silence. What's so fantastic about that? What if all you really learn by enduring abuse is to endure abuse? Wouldn't we rather our kids learned not to tolerate abuse?

          Another objection I have is that some of what I saw happen in high school was not a matter of minor challenges to a person's system. There are ways that a kid's life can be derailed by what happens in those teenaged years. This isn't a matter of how Laura learns to deal with Nellie Oleson. And it is not, unfortunately, true that whatever does not kill us makes us stronger. Some things make us weaker, less certain, less confident, less independent.

          And lastly, does anyone really think I can protect my kids so well that they never have to deal with disappointment, rudeness, inconsiderate treatment, anger, disrespect, or hostility? Do they think my children will reach college never having had their feelings hurt before?

          * * *

          It is curious that socialization tends to be the first thing that pops out of someone's mouth when they hear we're homeschooling. If my friends had been happy and popular in school, perhaps I'd understand this, but they weren't. My friend who was roughed up in 9th grade because he looked at a jock's girlfriend during English class mentioned social skills right off the bat, as if school is a good place for kids to learn respectful and kind behavior. When even he trotted out the social skills issue, I started to think that there's something defensive about mentioning socialization. That it's more about seeing the tough times we had in school as beneficial, because to feel otherwise is to question the system (our parents and teachers included). When you have kids of your own, and don't plan to homeschool or cannot, the motivation to see school's social environment as ultimately helpful is obviously much greater. So, while no one seems particularly interested in my children's actual learning, people are positively chomping at the bit to suggest what a great thing it is for everyone to be teased, taunted, and bullied in school.

          All of this strikes me as analogous to 'spare the rod, spoil the child,' another maxim that has rationalized ill treatment of children for too many years.

          Friday, June 17, 2005

          The mercury in vaccines


            A recent article in Salon magazine, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., suggests that there is abundant evidence of neurological harm done by thimerosal (a preservative which is about half mercury by weight) in vaccines. This tangentially relates to schooling, since thimerosal may be responsible for many autistic spectrum diagnoses as well as language delays and other impairments. Mostly, though, it was just too important for me not to post on it, even if it's slightly off topic. From the article (you can view it without subscribing by simply watching an ad):

            Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

            More from the article:

            Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin."

            . . .

            "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children."

            Thimerosal has long been banned in most other industrialized nations. The US government considered banning it from vaccines used on animals way back in 1991, the same year they recommended a new vaccine schedule that caused infants to be injected with thimerosal (and thus ethyl mercury) hours after birth.

            Most vaccines are now available in thimerosal-free versions. If you have young kids, you can request that they receive only vaccine which does not include this preservative. I have friends who have done this and I don't think they ran into any difficulties (my own children have never been vaccinated).

            If your children have already received thimerosal-containing vaccines, you could consider giving them probiotics for a while. Probiotics are the healthy bacteria which live in the intestine (lacto acidophilus, for instance), and you can buy them in capsule form. Probiotic bacteria can convert mercury from organic forms into inorganic forms inside the intestine. As I understand it, mercury is excreted into bile, but just winds up getting reabsorbed again in the intestine unless it gets converted to inorganic form. These healthy bacteria can do that, and then the body can rid itself of the mercury. My whole family takes probiotics for other reasons (better calcium absorption, fewer cavities, lower cholesterol, decreased chance of ear infections or asthma, etc-- it's great stuff).

            My next post should be back to our regularly scheduled programming....

            Wednesday, June 15, 2005

            Slowly but surely


              In a previous post, I had included this excerpt from Ellwood Cubberley's Public Education in the United States, regarding the difficulty of implementing mandatory schooling:

              The history of compulsory-attendance legislation in the states has been much the same everywhere, and everywhere laws have been enacted only after overcoming strenuous opposition.

              . . .

              At first the laws were optional...later the law was made state-wide but the compulsory period was short (ten to twelve weeks) and the age limits low, nine to twelve years. After this, struggle came to extend the time, often little by little...to extend the age limits downward to eight and seven and upwards to fourteen, fifteen or sixteen; to make the law apply to children attending private and parochial schools, and to require cooperation from such schools for the proper handling of cases; to institute state supervision of local enforcement....

              Keeping this in mind, I find it somewhat alarming that most states now provide public preschool, even if it's optional. In Alaska there is an effort underway to provide such preschool, which educators say will help disadvantaged students:

              What has people really excited is the idea that such a program would help out students who struggle the most. Minorities and children from low-income homes average poorer scores on tests than white and middle-class students. This long-standing gap above all else shapes education policies and trends today, from the federal No Child Left Behind Act on down.

              Many teachers and principals say a quality early childhood program could get disadvantaged kids on track before they start elementary school and help shrink this achievement gap....

              "So many young people come to kindergarten or first grade and are so far back that even with the most effective teachers, we can't help them along far enough," Sampson said....


              First of all, to suggest that a child who is 5 is so far behind that they'll never catch up strikes me as absurd. Only someone who believes in the age-segregated, rigidly timed, assembly-line school as the only means of education could believe that a 5-year-old child presents a hopeless case.

              I'm really tired of the achievement gap being used to promote even more mass schooling. The fact is that schools have not succeeded in closing this gap. When you are digging yourself into a hole, the first rule is to stop digging, not to dig faster and with a bigger shovel.

              Educators seem to feel that the achievement gap is not the fault of the schools:

              [American Federation of Teachers President Sandra] Feldman says the charge that schools are failing to educate poor children "is a total myth." As to why the achievement gap persists, she says, "One of the main answers can be found in the 68 percent of a child's waking hours outside of school versus the 32 percent spent in school." To drive the point home, Feldman also proposes extended-day and extended-year schooling along with new summer programs.

              The NEA, the PTA, and various organizations point to abundant research that parental involvement in the schools is crucial to students' success. They use this to suggest that failures are the fault of parents. Well, they can't have it both ways. They can't blame the parents for failures but take the credit for successes: if there's an achievement gap, it's the parents' fault; if there is not an achievement gap it's because of extended schooling, including public preschool. They can't ask to have our children from age 3 to age 16 and then blame us if they fail to come through with their egalitarian promises.

              Another program that I found alarming was San Diego's "6 to 6" program, which, if you read the overview, seems to have been motivated largely by a desire to keep kids locked away for the safety of the community:

              San Diego's "6 to 6" Program was the third phase of the Mayor's Safe Schools Initiative. Other elements include a daytime anti-loitering law aimed at preventing minors from congregating off campus during school hours and a new teen curfew. In 1995, the Mayor's Safe Schools Task Force was formed consisting of the Mayor, City Manager, City Attorney, Chief of Police, superintendent of San Diego Unified School District, school principals, a County of San Diego juvenile court judge, County juvenile probation officers, and other interested parties. The task force developed three goals for the safety of students:

              • To close school campuses during lunch time.
              • To enforce curfew and truancy laws.
              • To open schools before and after school to provide San Diego's "6 to 6" Program during hours that most parents work.

              Each of these three goals has been implemented for the safety of children and families in our communities.


              I like how overt they are about bringing in law enforcement authorities in designing a better warehousing program. Real nice.

              In Arizona, 45 schools operate year-round. In one such school district, students go for 9 weeks and then have 2 weeks off, with a slightly longer break during summer. I thought this was an interesting paragraph:


              Studies show test scores are about the same between year-round and regular schools, Christensen said, but he likes the extra help Longfellow can give students who are a little behind.

              If you increase any test scores, say by giving extra help to students who are slightly behind as suggested, you necessarily increase the average score-- unless you have another set of students whose scores deteriorate at the same rate. In any case the key part of the above quote is that regular and year-round schools have the same test scores, so I am not sure why Arizona's state school superintendent says summer break is too long. People accept this lament, that kids forget everything over the summer, but the evidence in the article contradicts that notion.

              What's worse, some students in this example school district have to attend remedial programs during their two weeks breaks or in summer. And any student may attend these programs. Thus 180 days becomes more than 180 days for many-- yet still test scores don't improve.

              To sum up, educators want to start schooling earlier, extend the school day, and extend the school year, for reasons including closing the achievement gap, for the "safety" of students, or to remedy an imagined barrier to better education (summer break). The evidence or reasoning supporting these arguments is dubious to nonexistent, but hey, it's mostly optional, right?

              Well, just remember Ellwood Cubberley:

              At first the laws were optional... later the law was made state-wide but the compulsory period was short.... After this, struggle came to extend the time....

              Tuesday, June 14, 2005

              The school disease


                Last night I was hanging out at DailyKos (a political blog, nothing to do with homeschooling) and ADHD came up. I said I had some skepticism about its existence, which was not a popular point of view, let me tell you.

                Several people wrote about how much stimulant medication had helped their kids, and what I thought was interesting was that this seemed to be defined mostly by school performance. One mom wrote that her son had been absent minded but that now he was better at concentrating and that his grades had improved. Another mom wrote that her son had gone from F's to A's in school and now is better at bringing his bookbag home and copying down the homework assignments. Another parent wrote that her son had almost been kicked out of preschool because he was so wild and physical, but Ritalin had really helped him. She went on to say: "He is not hyperactive anymore but he does take medication during the school year to help him focus, and having had to help him with assignments that he put off until after the meds wore off, HE NEEDS IT."

                According to the ERIC Digest:

                Presentation of symptoms can be affected by family interactions, school expectations, and other demands placed on the individual child. Part of the reason that attention deficit is usually diagnosed in school age children (e.g., first to third grade) is attributable to the demands placed on the child when beginning school (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000).

                Also, teachers usually fill out a questionnaire and participate in the decision to diagnose a child and/or to medicate them. These things make me wonder whether ADHD is simply the "school" disease-- remove school from the equation, and is there still a problem?

                There are medical studies showing that people diagnosed with ADHD have different brain activity compared to "normal" people. Yes, well, women and men have differing brain activity, as do children and adults, as do gays and heterosexuals (when exposed to various pheromones). But we are choosing to take a group of people with a particular style of thinking and classify them as ill. We call them diseased primarily, it seems, because they cannot succeed in the public schools.

                I argued on DailyKos that I found it hard to believe that 15 million people, out of a population of 300 million, had a disease; that it must be part of normal variability. Another commenter asked if I would classify cancer as normal variability if 2/3 of the population had cancer. No, of course not-- but neither would I blame that level of cancer on people's genes. The vast majority of cases of ADHD are thought to be genetic, apparently (and yet somehow their parents got this far, in spite of being denied stimulants as children).

                When there's an epidemic of a non-communicable illness, either a) it is being caused by the environment, b) it is being caused by a cultural shift in behaviors, or c) it's an imagined disease, of which there have been many in the short history of modern medicine. (See Drapetomania.)

                So, though it may mean I'll get flamed left and right out there in the blogosphere, my skepticism about ADHD only seems to get stronger. Parents writing about how their kids' lives were improved by stimulant medication, but then defining "improvement" as better success in school, only solidifies the notion that it's "the school disease."

                Sunday, June 12, 2005

                Getting inspired... and then doing the dishes


                  I've been shopping for birthday presents for A. [she'll be 5], which started me daydreaming about all the cool unschooling activities in our future. The Klutz company has a lot of good stuff: a cat's cradle (string figures) book with strings, kits for making your own jewelry, that giant bubble maker thing I had as a kid, great art supplies, Chinese jumpropes, magic trick equipment, etc. We invested in a big Lego set for her birthday, which I am at least as excited about as A. will be. My brother and I played Legos constantly for about a decade, and I still play with them when I get the chance.

                  Yep, I'm inspired all right-- I've got a "to do" list as long as my arm:

                  1. Bake cookies-- ideal time to learn arithmetic, measurement units, fractions.
                  2. Get a beginning drawing book, let A choose some figures, help her draw them.
                  3. Figure out how to start A. learning French.
                  4. Get out the recorders and show her the (very basic, general) idea of musical notes.
                  5. Use our fields guides on a nature walk.
                  6. Investigate frogs, cranes, various things on the web.
                  7. Read from her library books more often.
                  8. Get to the beach, already!
                  9. Learn more card games (all A. knows is Uno, without the complicated cards).
                  10. Play Memory, Chutes and Ladders, etc more often.
                  11. Do a science activity every week.
                  12. Learn a new word a day (make list of useful words).
                  13. Learn to spell one more word per day.
                  14. Fly a kite.
                  15. Teach A. to make paper airplanes.
                  16. Shall I go on?

                  The problem, of course, is that I am carrying T. around half the time because he is teething (and when is he not?), the house looks like a bomb hit it, I'm barely cooking at all these days, the yard is slowly reverting to a weed jungle, etc. I have a ton of inspiration and could fill a notebook with all my plans, but in my daily life I seem to be treading water.

                  I remind myself that if A. were in school, right now would be vacation time, and I wouldn't be bothered that she's learning more from animated software characters than from me, or that she often likes to spend virtually the entire day playing with her farm animals. And that fostering her imagination is incredibly important to me, so what's the problem if she's "playing pretend" for most of her waking hours? And that when it's 90 degrees and so humid you'd be better off with gills, it's not the ideal week to haul out the badminton, balls, and frisbees to develop A's gross motor skills.

                  It's not very unschooling of me to make a list in the first place, I suppose. That's not a list of A's ideas, it's a list of mine, although I wouldn't insist that we do any of those things unless she was interested. And it's not so much that I feel compelled to accomplish all those things, but just that I get so many ideas... and then I realize that I have no clean clothing, there's an odd smell in the fridge, the kitchen floor is so dirty T's knees are black, we have videos overdue at the library and we're out of orange juice.

                  I don't know how you homeschoolers do it! But I'm hoping to be a better unschooling mom once T turns... oh, about 3, maybe 3 and a half....

                  Saturday, June 11, 2005

                  No tie, no diploma


                    Thomas Benya, a student in the Washington DC area, was denied his diploma at his graduation ceremony because he had worn a bolo tie rather than a traditional one. According to Benya, the bolo tie reflects his Native American heritage. He explained, "I did not feel that I should change my heritage for an hour and a half to wear an actual tie...."

                    The school district, which will deliver Benya's diploma at some later date, stands by its decision not to allow Benya to graduate along with his class. Said a school spokeswoman:

                    "We have many opportunities throughout the year to express cultural heritage. But we don't do that at graduation."

                    Thursday, June 09, 2005

                    Diversity


                      The main concern I've heard from friends and relatives since we decided to homeschool has been that our kids won't be exposed to a diverse group of people. 'Diverse' seems to mean people from different ethnic groups and economic levels, and with other beliefs and other ways of thinking. The implication is always that public school guarantees this, whereas my children will be locked inside our hermetically sealed home for the duration of their childhood.

                      First of all, I don't think most public schools do much to expose kids to other ethnicities and income levels. The district where we live now is homogenous: I'd guesstimate that it's 90 to 95% white and upper-middle class. Because housing prices depend in part on school districts, and because schools are funded by local property taxes, we have strong economic segregation in our schools. Because we still have de facto racial segregation in many towns, and students usually attend the nearest school, we still have a large degree of racial segregation between schools.

                      Perhaps more importantly, students are segregated by race and economic level even within school districts that are fairly diverse. I went to a high school that was at least one third African American, and I had only one black friend (though I never saw her outside school), because there were so few blacks in the college prep path. Regular English class was half black, half white; AP English was white with one or two black kids. Our classes were divided the same way our neighborhoods were divided outside of school, even if the ostensible basis of the segregation was test scores. My preppie classmates were middle class just like I was, though there was real poverty within our school district. There is a tracking system in our schools, though it may not be formalized, and it discriminates against those who are not white or affluent. I pointed to some evidence of this in an earlier post on racial and socioeconomic inequalities in student achievement. It's not easy to pinpoint the subtle mechanisms that are at fault, but since homeschooling doesn't produce differences in achievement by race or socioeconomic status, some sort of discrimination takes place in school. Unfortunately, some students might come to the wrong conclusions when noting that all the kids in their advanced math class are white. I think it's just as likely that damaging stereotypes are reinforced in school, as that personal relationships occur to disprove those stereotypes. If you're sending your kid to public school to meet kids other than those in your neighborhood, you're going to be disappointed.

                      Secondly, as far as differing beliefs and other ways of thinking... well, I certainly learned about other points of view. My family was progressive, and the kids at school were not. In my family using a racial slur would have been absolutely unthinkable. In school, my best friend got called a "chink" several times a week on the playground. At home, the word "fag" was never heard, and my mom had several homosexual friends. At school, 'fag' was used incessantly to bully boys into a rigid, hostile version of masculinity; actual homosexuality did not, apparently, exist. At home, girls received as much respect as boys, and had just as many options in life. At school, girls were divided into goody-two-shoes vs. bitches, ditzes vs. nerds, prudes vs. sluts, and it was impossible to walk any imaginary fine line between them.

                      I am not sure how I could be said to have benefitted from being exposed to so much hatred. Am I a more well-rounded person for having attended school with a small group of neo-nazis, who once came to school wearing trenchcoats with swastika armbands? Am I a more well-rounded person because I learned that a 'bear trap' is a woman so ugly that after you sleep with her, you'd rather chew off your own arm than wake her? Am I more well-rounded because when I yelled "You're being racist!" at a boy calling my best friend a gook, he just grinned at me and said "So?" These were things I eventually learned to ignore, because to protest meant swimming against a strong tide and getting nowhere. But there is nothing good in becoming desensitized to slurs like this. Outrage is the right response, but in high school you can't afford to be outraged every moment of the day. You get used to hateful labels and ugly prejudices.

                      Even the argument that one must face facts about the cultural composition of our nation, that one must be realistic about the presence of racism and sexism if one is to be politically educated, does not hold water. There is far more hate in high school than in real life. It is an environment of competition, cliques, and hostility, in which kids busily classify and label themselves and others, and it is not representative of the adult population.

                      When people say they benefitted from going to school with kids from different backgrounds, I have to admit, it sometimes sounds a bit sanctimonious to me. Just going to school with kids of other ethnicities doesn't mean you learn about, say, the causes of racism and why it is immoral and unfair, or about immigration and xenophobia, or about other cultures. Just going to school with poor kids doesn't teach you about poverty in America. You certainly aren't going to get the full story in social studies class, because history and social studies have been patriotically whitewashed. I feel as if people are saying "Look how tolerant and liberal I am," and then attributing that to the public schools because they've bought into a myth.

                      I trust that my kids will learn more from reading books set in foreign cultures than from merely sitting beside a child with a different skin color. And that being aware of poverty in the United States, trying to understand its causes, and volunteering in some charitable capacity will teach them more about class structure and social responsibility than they would learn by watching the kids with hand-me-down clothes get treated with taunts and derision.

                      I want my kids to meet people from plenty of different backgrounds, but in an environment where diversity can actually be appreciated, not in one where everyone is merely trying to keep their head down and attract as little attention as possible. We are lucky enough to live near a college town where you can walk through campus and hear six languages, where you can get sushi, Indian, and gourmet French practically on the same block, where we get visitors such as Ugandan basket weavers and South American steel drum bands. Thankfully, I'll be able to take my kids to experience these things, since they won't be closed up all week with the same 30 or 40 white kids dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch.

                      Monday, June 06, 2005

                      School disrupts sleep patterns


                        A new study published in this month's Pediatrics confirms that high school-aged students lose sleep due to school schedules. The study included 60 incoming seniors, who kept sleep logs in August, November, and February. They were also given computerized and paper-and-pencil tests at different times of the schoolday. The researchers concluded:

                        Adolescents lost as much as 120 minutes of sleep per night during the week after the start of school.... All students performed better in the afternoon than in the morning. Students in early morning classes reported being wearier, being less alert, and having to expend greater effort.

                        The results of this study demonstrated that current high school start times contribute to sleep deprivation among adolescents. Consistent with a delay in circadian sleep phase, students performed better later in the day than in the early morning.... Both short-term and long-term strategies that address the epidemic of sleep deprivation among adolescents will be necessary to improve health and maximize school performance.

                        So if you get any grief from friends or relatives about your homeschooled teen being a night owl or sleeping till noon, well, click on the link above and send 'em the abstract!

                        Sunday, June 05, 2005

                        The importance of being earnest


                          I've been reading some articles in the NEA's "Classroom Management" section, and in theory, I like some of the advice. There's a series of articles about the "Responsive Classroom" method, which focuses on principles such as:

                          • be specific and direct
                          • talk to kids rather than about them
                          • praise or criticize the deed, not the doer
                          • provide choices

                          This sounds like the respectful (rather than sheerly manipulative) parenting advice which I gravitate toward, the sort which is more about effective communication than mindless behaviorism. The problem is, some of the suggested language is so inauthentic that it makes me squirm to read it. It's like the worst dialogue imaginable in a novel or a movie-- it makes my skin crawl. Consider these examples of what a teacher might say, from the Responsive Classroom series:

                          I noticed you got your math done this morning with no interruption. That took lots of good concentration, Jeremy.

                          Show us what it looks like to raise your hand and wait in a respectful way.

                          I see so many people ready to start meeting. I see hands in laps, legs crossed, eyes front.

                          You need to sit. When you are ready to use your careful walking steps, you can try again.

                          Now take a short break and let me know when you're ready to use your good words.

                          Your careful walking steps? Why not say "Hey, sit back down, we don't run across the classroom like that, you're going to knock somebody down."

                          Your good words? Why not "Take a minute and think of a nicer way to say that."

                          Why not? Well, my version, which is what I'd say off the cuff, probably wouldn't work as well. It doesn't have the advantage of embarrassing kids, which I suspect is a lot of the reason the above language works. Surely a 9-year-old wants to avoid having someone tell them, no doubt in a falsely pleasant voice, to "use your words," a directive they've probably heard given to 2- and 3-year-olds. "Show us what it looks like to..." is the way you might speak to a three-year-old, but if you say this to an elementary school student, it's a bit humiliating. I'm reminded of Professor Umbridge again, who J K Rowling describes as having a voice like "poisoned honey," who never loses her cool as she speaks to them all like they're small children.

                          This sort of artificiality would've driven me right up the wall when I was in elementary school. I would have resented being treated like I was younger than I really was, and I would've distrusted the teacher because of how fake (s)he was. I've written before about problems with praise, but if teachers are going out of their way to say "That took lots of good concentration!" instead of "Good job finishing all those math problems," it only introduces another set of problems. Speaking to a child with odd and detached language is not the same as conversing with them in earnest. If your conversations are that highly managed, you're 'managing' the child as opposed to developing a bond with them.

                          I have even more of a problem with this kind of overly careful and unemotional language when it comes to parenting. What does it teach my child if they see that no matter what their behavior is, I'll talk to them in the same calmly pleasant tone of voice, employing the same carefully chosen and expert-approved phrases? Doesn't it suggest that I'm impervious to them? Obviously, I exercise self-control and I try not to raise my voice very often, but I don't hide all traces of annoyance when A. wakes her brother up on purpose (again), nor do I hide my horror on the rare occasions when she does something plainly dangerous. I am a human being with emotional states, not a Stepford mom. Anyway, kids have a healthy intuition-- they'll know I'm being fake if I'm aiming for cheerfulness while trying to get cheese out of the carpet. Frankly it might come across as sarcasm. No one likes to be treated so artificially.

                          You can't speak to adults this way, of course. Imagine your boss addressing you with this kind of language: "I notice your lunch breaks have been rather long lately. Show me how we use our time management skills, okay? Remember, eyes on watches!"

                          Friday, June 03, 2005

                          Pet tags


                            A. has a small stuffed cat named Cherry who is very dear to her. We recently got Cherry a collar and a pet tag, with "CHERRY" on one side and our address and phone number on the reverse. I wanted to mention this idea, because it's a great way for a small child to memorize that information. Plus, if the stuffed animal ever goes missing (which in our case would be a catastrophe, because Cherry accompanies us everywhere and A can't sleep without her), some kindly person will hopefully give you a call. If you have a cell phone and you put that number on the tag, it could even be useful if your child gets separated from you.

                            Wednesday, June 01, 2005

                            Harry Potter and moral development


                              Okay, yes, I have Harry Potter on the brain-- but this is something I've been thinking about for quite a long time. [Note: I edited this post slightly on 6/3.]

                              According to Lawrence Kohlberg, whose stages of moral development seem to be the foundation for this field of study, the highest form of morality is called post-conventional morality. This is characterized by two stages:

                              Stage 5. The social contract stage means being aware of the degree to which much of so-called morality is relative to the individual and to the social group they belong to, and that only a very few fundamental values are universal. The person at this level sees morality as a matter of entering into a rational contract with one's fellow human beings to be kind to each other, respect authority, and follow laws to the extent that they respect and promote those universal values. Social contract morality often involves a utilitarian approach, where the relative value of an act is determined by "the greatest good for the greatest number."

                              Stage 6. This stage is referred to as the stage of universal principles. At this point, the person makes a personal commitment to universal principles of equal rights and respect, and social contract takes a clear back-seat: If there is a conflict between a social law or custom and universal principles, the universal principles take precedence.

                              There are some Christian groups that positively hate Harry, in part because they see him as disobedient and therefore immoral. But it's important for children to see that there are times when you break a rule because you have a higher goal. Young children will often say that it is wrong for a man to steal medicine to save someone's life, for example. Early, conventional morality holds that everyone must follow the letter of the law unquestioningly, even while trampling on higher moral principles. The morality of the Potter books is more sophisticated than that.

                              Harry, Ron, and Hermione go up against the arch-villain Voldemort and involve themselves in the struggle of good vs. evil. If necessity arises, they will sneak out of their dorm at night, search the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library without permission, or brew an advanced potion in secret (stealing ingredients from the potions master in the process). They take on this struggle at great personal risk, and not to suit any selfish purpose, but for the benefit of wizardkind. To call this "disobedience" is taking a very unfair view of Harry and his friends. They are not saints, because the books aren't Pollyanna and unrealistic. But they are moral.

                              In the third book it transpires that a character who was sent to prison without trial is actually innocent. Almost everyone, unaware of the facts, continues to believe he is a villain. This dissonance between conventional wisdom and the truth, between widespread belief and reality, also encourages greater sophistication in children's thinking. No WMDs in Iraq? But didn't "everyone" believe they were there? How can this be? Well, didn't everyone think Sirius Black was a murderer? And yet he wasn't. (The importance of presumption of innocence is a nice bonus.)

                              That not everything is as it seems is also borne out by two characters, Professor Lockhart (who turns out to be a fraud), and Rita Skeeter, a reporter who drastically distorts the words of her interviewees.

                              In book 5 there are further layers of complexity. The wizarding world is made not just of good and evil, but includes a third group who are willfully ignorant of Voldemort's return, and defend their bureaucratic powers by refusing to acknowledge that a crisis is underway that might unseat them. (Modern politicians will also ignore crises, if optimism will get them re-elected.) Fred and George Weasley, who routinely disregard the rules but are nonetheless moral and considerate characters, actively resist the bureaucrats. Their older brother Percy, who did extremely well in school and became not only prefect but Head Boy, signs up with the willfully ignorant crowd. Conformity and obedience does not equate with morality; Fred and George are critical thinkers, while the well-behaved Percy is not. Proper behavior and being obsequious toward your superiors is not sufficient to put you on the side of good.

                              When Dumbledore is forced to leave Hogwarts, and his position as headmaster is taken over by the horrible and totalitarian Umbridge, chaos ensues. A nearly impassable swamp in one corridor, fireworks that never go out, "dungbombs" and "stink pellets," and the destructive school poltergeist all cause havoc. To say the students are disobedient doesn't cover it; the school is resisting a really loathsome character, one who is bent on leaving wizardkind unprepared for Voldemort's renewed campaign of violence. Resistance in the face of injustice and dangerous incompetence is a lesson I would want my children to learn. Understanding civil disobedience requires post-conventional moral thinking, and whether the students are behaving morally or not is a tricky issue for a younger child.

                              I haven't time to write about it, but Rowling also takes on class differences and discrimination on the basis of blood (whether someone is a pureblood wizard, a half-blood, or "Muggle born"). All in all I think there is a lot to be learned from the Harry Potter series besides vocabulary.