Not School

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

Monday, January 30, 2006

Crippling graduation requirements


    I've been trying to get my head around this topic for a few days. Here in Michigan, where our Democratic governor is at war with our Republican legislature, they've found one idea with bipartisan support: strengthening Michigan's high school graduation requirements.

    Currently, Michiganders can't get a diploma unless they pass one semester of government class (aka civics). This new plan would expand the state-mandated requirements hugely, to include:

    • four years of English
    • four years of math
    • three years of science
    • three years of social science
    • two years of foreign language
    • one year of health / physical education
    • one year of visual / performing arts
    • as before, one semester of civics

    First of all, any of our state politicians should be able to see that this plan cannot be implemented because there are not enough math, science, and foreign language teachers. Predictably, just days after the governor's State of the State speech in which she touted this plan, articles started showing up in local papers saying it isn't feasible:

    Macomb County educators want the state to delay implementation of new graduation requirements for at least two years, in part because there aren't enough certified instructors to teach the new courses.

    . . .

    A major concern is the availability of qualified teachers to teach courses such as chemistry and physics.

    [Gayle Green, chief academic officer for the Macomb Intermediate School District] said there simply aren't enough to go around. "They're just not coming out of the colleges," said Green. "We need more flexibility."

    In order to meet the new standards, Michigan's colleges and universities must begin to produce more teachers certified to teach in those historically more stringent disciplines, Green said.

    Green also said a requirement that all students take a second algebra course means present teachers must be re-trained to be able to reach students who don't normally enroll in that higher level math course. Algebra 2 is an elective course in most Michigan schools and typically attracts college-bound students.

    Macomb County is where I grew up. It's quite well-off compared to the county to its south, which contains Detroit. How is Detroit going to get enough physics teachers to come to its deteriorating schools, get paid practically no money, teach giant-sized classes, and teach to kids who didn't elect to take physics?

    Maybe the good governor thought of providing extra money for teacher re-training and economic incentives to attract math and science majors to teaching? Well, no:

    School board President Susan Amato-Henderson said as she understands the language of the bill, it amounts to an unfunded mandate.

    "There's not a dollar increase (for schools) tied to this," she said.

    [Superintendent John] Vaara said if the bill becomes law, it will place an extra financial burden on schools because of the need to buy more text books and to hire more teachers for the required courses.

    "You can't just put in any teacher to teach any subject," he said.

    So, basically, in the poor districts we just aren't going to have any more diplomas. It just won't be possible anymore. Governor Granholm should have known, when she received the enthusiastic support of state Republicans, that there was something she was missing. That in some way she'd been had. This will be worse for the state's public schools than NCLB was, and it's being pushed by a Democrat... it's just maddening.

    Putting aside the infeasibility of the plan, it also removes yet more student autonomy. Consider a creative and artistic student who wants to take 4 years of band, 4 years of art and 4 years of drama. Under this plan that is impossible, if they also plan to receive a diploma. Or consider a vocational tech student who wants to take computer science, auto CAD, drafting, and some shop classes. They have 6.5 available class slots, assuming there are no scheduling conflicts; is that enough? Is it reasonable to say "Sorry, you won't be able to take that drafting class since it conflicts with Spanish," when the kid has no intention of going to college and no personal use for a second language?

    There are some who get offended when you suggest there are kids who we know are not going to college, as if acknowledging this fact means we're selling those kids short. But in Michigan, only 41% of kids go to college directly after high school, and only 18% eventually get bachelor's degrees. It is not right to deny a kid a diploma because they failed their second year of Spanish or their fourth year of math, when they have no intention of going on to college. This plan will certainly reduce the proportion of students who attain a diploma. And it will certainly increase drop-out rates (if you fail math two years running, what are your chances of graduating anyway? so why bother?).

    What is the purpose of this plan for the majority of students who are not going straight on to college? Are the politicians going to argue "universal knowledge" and say these classes will enhance the lives of all students? My rebuttal to this argument is that if school courses were really about enhancing people's lives, the required curriculum would include things like:

    • home finance (credit cards, mortgages, 401ks, etc)
    • cooking
    • nutrition
    • early child development
    • human physiology
    • probability, percentages, and statistics
    • local government

    Trigonometry enhances no one's life. And I say this as a math major. Much more useful to know how to take some chicken and some pasta and some vegetables and make a meal. "Universal knowledge" was a concept invented by the aristocracy, to distinguish themselves from upstart nouveau riche merchants in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. It's a concept that needs to be retired, in favor of more individual autonomy.

    These graduation requirements are taking us in the wrong direction on so many levels.

    Saturday, January 28, 2006

    Early education materials


      I've been going through Anya's books, trying to find something that is easy enough for her to attempt to read, but without being as boring as Hop on Pop or Go Dog Go!. There are some better Seuss books that we are missing, which might work. The dozens of cheap Scholastic books which we purchased while she was in preschool (and I felt pressured to hand in book orders nearly every month) are for the most part useless here. Some of them (the "Froggy Does X" series, for instance) I don't particularly want her reading, as the behavior and scenarios involved are questionable. Some books are infantilizing, e.g. a Scholastic book about sleep that begins "A horse's eyelids go down when they go to sleep. A chicken's eyelids go up. Which way do your eyelids go?" Other books use a combination of boring, simplified language and difficult vocabulary which leaves me mystified: what reading level is it aimed at, exactly?

      Thankfully, though, I've hit upon The Boxcar Children (and its 18 sequels, though I haven't read those yet). I liked this book as a kid, and was a little surprised to learn that it was written using only the most common 500 words in the English language. The vocabulary repeats fairly often, as in the first scene where the words "bread" and "bakery" and "boy" and "girl" are each used a few times, which gives kids practice. The text uses basic words which come up frequently: day, night, table, chair, walk, carry, happy, hungry, smile, said, and so on. Compound words are used liberally, as in "Greenfield Road" or "blueberries," which seem like long words to a kid and yet they're easy to sound out. In short, the author put considerable thought into the educational aspects, but the story (4 siblings surviving all on their own) is still interesting to most young kids.

      (As an aside: I'm always afraid that Anya will be seriously upset by the idea of orphans, and yet, from Harry Potter to Pippi Longstocking to The Boxcar Children, kids are intrigued by life without (much) adult supervision, and Anya is no exception.)

      Still, this book is considerably above Anya's reading level at the moment. I've made up a pile of miniature flashcards with words I've gleaned from Chapter One. I figure that if she can learn to sight read these words (around 60 or 70 of them, I'd guesstimate) then she can make quick progress in the book.

      As you may have noticed, my "unschooling" mentality has kind of gone out the window here. I'm encouraging her, though not pushing her, to look at the flashcards with me, and I never thought I'd use flashcards at all. But Anya has been saying things like "When will I be able to read?" or "When will I be able to read Harry Potter?" about ten times a day, and there is no other way to get there except to get a certain basic vocabulary under her belt so she can read a bit faster and thus avoid frustration.

      Having mentioned the variable quality of early reader books, I'll also say that many math workbooks are not well designed. We have the Miquon Math workbooks, and on every page the arithmetic problems occur in a certain pattern which is designed to lead a kid toward some insight. For instance, they might have a series of problems such as: 2+4, 2+5, 2+6, 2+7, etc. This is designed with the hope that kids will have an epiphany: if you can't remember 2 + 6, maybe you can remember 2 + 5 and just add one more. Similarly, they introduced multiplication by writing 2 + 2 + 2 and on the next line, 3 x 2, so that kids would see this equivalence over and over again. Every page has some such purpose, and is not merely yet more drilling. In contrast, the workbooks we buy at the grocery store or Target contain problems written down at random, it seems. They are good for drilling, but only for drilling. There's no "a-ha!" moment induced by these generic books.

      Education is an area where I am not convinced there has been any progress over the past few decades, in terms of the actual science of teaching. The Boxcar Children was first printed in 1942, and the Miquon Math stuff is from 1964. The little workbooks with the pointless pictures and decoration, circa 2004, are mostly crap. I had no idea I'd have to be such a discerning consumer of educational materials, but I guess I do. And a pre-1970 copyright date, in my limited experience, is a good sign!

      Tuesday, January 24, 2006

      Throw this book away


        [Anxiety in parenting part IV]

        I doubt there's any book more capable of inducing stress in a parent than What to Expect When You're Expecting--and before you're even officially a parent, no less. I went hunting for excerpts from this foul book on the web, and it was worse than I remembered. I once owned it myself, and a few other pregnancy books in the "encyclopedia of disasters" prenatal genre. I eventually decided these were psychologically detrimental, and purged them from my home. I gave most of them away, but I thought What to Expect... was too hideous to inflict on any other mother-to-be, and I threw it in the trash. There are far better sources of similar information, minus the guilt and fear.

        I mean, consider this advice:

        If you're a first-time expectant mother, enjoy what will probably be your last chance for a long while to focus on taking care of yourself without feeling guilty.

        Yeah. 'Cause after the baby's born, you're only allowed to live vicariously through your children. You have a few more months, and then no more funny novels or blogging or Project Runway for you!

        I mean yes, parenting is hard, but when the baby's asleep, why should I feel guilty for reading Janet Evanovich or watching TV or reading blogs?

        Or how about:

        Napping when you're mothering may also be difficult, but if you can time your rest with the children's nap-time (if they still nap), you may be able to get away with it -- assuming you can tolerate the unwashed dishes and the dust balls under the bed.

        Translation: "If you're the kind of slob who doesn't care about her children's living conditions, if you have no concerns over hygiene or cleanliness, well then, go ahead and sleep during the day. But don't come whining to us about the dust balls afterward."

        This book is also notorious for the utterly impossible to achieve "Best Odds Diet." First of all, what's with the "Best Odds" business? You eat their 15 servings of vegetables and 10 servings of raw wheat berries or whatever it is per day (which, I once calculated, adds up to more than the absurdly small number of daily calories they advise), and you just might, with a little luck, avoid... what, birth defects? Incurable disease? A 39-hour labor? "Best Odds" of what, exactly? Do they have to remind of us the awful unspoken possibilities at every turn, such that we're too scared to indulge in a chocolate bar?

        I know I'm not alone on this one. Friends have expressed similar sentiments, and one Amazon.com reviewer wrote:

        This was the first book on pregnancy I read when I was pregnant. The diet and nutrition section scared the Hell out of me! By the time I was done reading that section, I was terrified that eating peanut butter or having a cup of coffee would result in my giving birth to Quasimodo.....

        After reading this book, I felt scared and depressed....

        Another reviewer said, under the heading "To the expectant fathers":

        Guys ... consider this a warning; this will be the worst book that your significant other can read and will make your life utterly miserable for the next nine months.

        It may have been intended as a self-help guide but instead seems to act more as a bible for every worst-case-scenario imaginable. After spending a few hours perusing this book's contents, your significant other will become so overworked and paranoid that every little ache, pain, and irritation will become a sign of the baby being born with a forked tongue and three heads.

        Or:

        I am a physician and I can honestly say this has to be the WORST pregnancy book ever written. It is written by a paranoid for the paranoid. This book is full of useless, over-the-top advice (like avoiding all refined sugar and installing shower guard-rails) that will drive even the most relaxed first-time mother into insanity.

        Much of this book involves discussing what happens at prenatal exams, including descriptions of tests for (insert improbable but terrifying diseases, disabilities, etc). It also promotes, directly or indirectly, what seems like every intervention or procedure known to obstetrics. It's no wonder people find it scary and depressing. And yet, if you check out the New York Times bestseller list, What to Expect... still makes the top five under "Paperback Advice." It's almost impossible to avoid owning this book once you become pregnant-- either you cave in and buy it yourself, or someone gives you theirs, or you get it as an early shower gift. And at some point you can't help but open it up and skim a bit... and thus begins the propaganda campaign to convince you that nature cannot be trusted. Your body cannot be trusted. You cannot be trusted. Only the experts can save your family.

        Fear and stress make no one a better parent... so why do they bombard us with so much of these? We have a cultural focus on "family values" and yet the implication at every turn is that families are failures unless they bow to expert guidance. That children are "at risk" and it's a daily struggle on the part of dedicated doctors and teachers to keep them safe and prevent them from falling by the developmental wayside. Meanwhile, a lot of money is made off this mindset.

        It's made me into a downright curmudgeon, it has. My attitude toward most popular and mainstream parenting advice is... well, probably not suitable for mixed company, let's put it that way.

        Monday, January 23, 2006

        Feel bad yet?


          I went to the website of Parents magazine, and clicked the "Look Inside" link to take a look at some of their recent issues. I took some of their front-cover article titles, and put in my own translations:

          Be a Better Mommy in 2006! [Because as of now, you really suck as a mom.]

          How Early Bedtimes Boost Your Child's Immunity [That cold your kid has right now? That's your fault for letting your kid stay up till 9pm.]

          READ THIS! 5 Lifesaving Moves Moms Should Know [What kind of an irresponsible mother are you, that you don't know these Five Moves?]

          Plan a Perfect Playdate [What, you don't normally send rice-paper invitations? Are you or are you not a devoted mom?]

          WARNING: Signs Your Child Is Sicker Than You Think [Scared yet?]

          10 Important Foods Your Child Needs [...and we bet he/she won't eat a one of them, which is, as usual, all your fault.]

          Stop Yelling! The Brand-New Way to Discipline [Yelling is so... uncouth. What's the matter with you anyway?]

          Stop a Tantrum in 10 Seconds [Okay, no, we've never heard of our method actually working in practice... but nonetheless, if your kid's tantrums take longer than 10 seconds, you must be doing something wrong.]

          Raise the Nicest Kid on the Block [Not just nice, but THE NICEST. Anything but "best" is failure.]

          Teach Little Kids to Stay Safe in the Pool [Gee, we didn't mean to conjure up any fears... honest.]

          What's really sick is that this stress-inducing theme (under the guise of "we're here to help you!") isn't accidental, and it's not just meant to guilt-trip you into buying the magazine, either. It is, in fact, designed to make you better fodder for the real business of the magazine: the advertising. Advertisers want anxious readers. They actually pay more for anxious readers. Magazines like Parents or Vogue or Ladies' Home Journal actually "sell" their readership to the advertisers, as in "Hey Diet Coke, want to reach 10 million women who want to lose weight?" A "motivated" audience member is code for an audience member with an inferiority complex, and "motivated" viewers or readers attract more advertising revenue. (My all-time favorite example of a media outlet "selling" their audience was from an old MTV ad, hawking its viewers. The ad featured a typical MTV fan, a young trendy guy in grunge clothes with odd hair, and the print read "Buy this 24-year-old and get all his friends free." Which gives you some idea of how little media outlets respect their audience. We're just here to have our attention sold to Madison Avenue. We represent a commodity, nothing more and nothing less.)

          Advertisers paying tens of thousands of dollars to place ads in Parents magazine want parents who feel like failures before they even peruse page one. Anxious readers are looking to prove they're trying, looking to assuage their guilt and their feelings of incompetence. Anxious readers buy products. Anxious parents are a cash cow.

          These people are not here to help us.

          Friday, January 20, 2006

          Aren't you thrilled?


            Sticking with the "anxiety in parenting" theme:

            Some of the blame for an average parent's insecurities must go to the smiley-faced cheery enthusiasm parents are supposed to feel toward school. A lot of the homeschoolers I know have not experienced this first-hand, so I thought I'd dedicate a post to this.

            I actually wrote about this once before, months ago in a post titled Socializing parents, based on my experience when Anya was in preschool. There were all these things asked of me, and they were always asked with the assumption that I would be gung-ho and exuberant about participating. "It's your weekend to..." was a phrase I came to dread. One of the teachers would come up, smiling, her attitude one of bestowing gifts, and say "Oh, it's your weekend to...." Our weekend to borrow the class photo album (why exactly would I want to look at other people's family photos or have them look at mine?), our weekend to borrow a stuffed bunny and then haul it around with us everywhere so we could write a little story about our weekend (ugh), our weekend to borrow the Mystery Box with its Mystery Item and write down 5 of its characteristics, so the other children could guess what it was-- and I could go on. This was on top of the Scrip program, chaperoning field trips, bringing in the snack and a toy for show and tell once a month, remembering a vegetable for the Stone Soup, charity drives, buying books through their fundraising program, and on and on. And this was for fricking preschool. We did all this when Anya was only attending school 6 hours per week.

            Basically this meant that every time I brought her in, I was faced with some chore which I had no desire to carry out, and then the consequent guilt and anxiety because I wasn't "into" my kid's education. Other moms actually seemed to enjoy this stuff. I'd hear: "We're so excited about the Rodeo party, my husband's taking off work...." and just try not to stare, bug-eyed, at the Donna Reed imitation going on in the hallway. But maybe that's just me?

            As another example, consider the recent school newsletter I would have received if Anya were attending our local kindergarten. The newsletter begins with this "Note from the Principal":

            WELCOME TO 2006! We want to express our gratitude to all the [school name] families for a tremendous 2005. We are very pleased with all that has been accomplished and look forward with great anticipation to many more successes in 2006! It is hard to believe that we have nearly completed the first half of the school year-- Wow, time does fly! Your children have demonstrated much progress and growth so far, and they will gain so much more knowledge and experience before the end of the school year. Take time to notice and celebrate your child's uniqueness and creativity. Many more exciting days are in store. I enjoy and look forward to being a part of your child's educational experience.

            I don't know how that makes you feel, but the life is sucked right out of me. I'm exhausted just reading this stuff. This school, by the way, is for kindergarten and first grade only. 'A tremendous 2005'! Oh, the accomplishments! The progress! The growth! The experience! The excitement! (Did we mention we saved a small war-torn nation from famine?)

            "Many more exciting days are in store!" For me too? Really? Getting the kid on the bus by 7:35am (the time we'd need to have Anya on the bus-- still half dark at this time of year)? Getting calls from the teacher to discuss some problematic behavior (while ceding authority and expertise to the teacher, since they're the "one in charge" during school)? Remembering the permission slips, the snacks, the show and tell items, the homework (in our district, kindergarteners have homework every day), the school events, the book sales, the Scrip program, the food and clothing donations on given days? Can I be excused from the breathless anticipation?

            I went and looked at the kindergarten classroom on their website. It's fine, I guess. Institutional white covered over with colorful drawings, artificial bouquets, banners and number lines and maps. They cover up those white walls with a kind of desperation (look! paintings and crayon drawings and flowers! it's cheerful! it's child-friendly! it's not a prison!). Why do they make schools like this, with the white tile and white walls and fluorescent lights? The waiting area at our local DMV is so much cozier (seriously). I'm supposed to get geeked that my child goes (or would go) to this room every day, to be told what to do nonstop, learn rudeness from other kids, be removed from me, and learn essentially nothing? And I'm supposed to participate joyfully like June Cleaver, and feel bad if I don't?

            Much of this participation benefits the school directly, but one's own child only indirectly, if at all. And yet, I always felt that any lack of enthusiasm would be taken as bad parenting.

            I realize that I should, by this age, be able to go about my business without paying much heed to the opinions of near strangers. No doubt, I was over-reacting to perceived social pressures. But for most parents this involves the opinion of the person in charge of their children for hours out of the day, and everyone knows the "good" kids bound for college prep have the "good" parents. You forget those Scrip coupons or the required cardboard shoebox or the donated pencils one too many times, and maybe your kid won't seem quite so yuppie class. So it's very hard to ignore. They grin at you as if to say "Aren't you thrilled?" And you madly grin back as if to say "There are no words to express just how very thrilled I am!"

            Luckily I can log on to blogger and vent my spleen through snark. I feel better already!

            Anxiety in parenting


              [Well, we had the holidays. We had the post-holiday cleaning and "where are we going to put this?" phase. And then we got besieged for over a week by some sort of awful illness which I maintain must have been three different viruses we caught simultaneously. But I am hoping to now resume blogging on a regular basis... if there's anyone still checking in here after all this time!]

              I've been enjoying our homeschooling group a lot lately. There is no discernible competition between the moms, and if you reveal some shortcoming they give sympathy and advice, not raised eyebrows. This is very different from my experience when Anya was in preschool. Hanging out with those moms, I never felt comfortable and always felt Anya and I were being judged.

              There are a number of forces at work in making parents anxious, in inducing that background level of competition and comparison which can make parenting a lot less fun. It starts off with the pregnancy books, carries on with parenting books, is stoked by visits to the pediatrician (a friend was just told her son is "ahead on fine motor skills, but a little behind verbally"-- both being utterly pointless observations), fueled by sports (which now start before kindergarten) and of course fed and encouraged for 13 years by public schooling. All of it is based upon the idea, and further solidifies the idea, that there is a "standard" course of development, discovered by scientists, which we are all supposed to meet. And the excuse for imposing this psychologically harmful apparatus of "milestones" and "competencies" is that it's better for the child if we find out they're falling behind as soon as possible. Constant vigilance, is the motto of the experts-- constant testing, constant observation, and for the parents and kids, absolutely constant anxiety.

              At our homeschooling group, mothers talk about when a child learned to read -- typically between ages 5 and 8 or thereabouts -- the same way they mention that he or she loves reptiles or has been obsessed with astronomy. There is no "standard" time to learn to read. Everyone learns to read anyway. You don't actually need the fear and testing (so... what is their real purpose?).

              The standardization of human beings is not, of course, actually attainable. Everyone will have shortcomings, because everyone has their own individual collection of strengths and weaknesses. But using individual variability to create feelings of anxiety and inferiority makes us more likely to seek and accept the advice of experts. (It also destroys much of the natural solidarity we would feel with other parents.) It's not a conspiracy, but it's damned convenient for schoolteachers, doctors, coaches, authors, toy manufacturers, and the Gerber company if we're all feeling a bit uncertain about our parenting skills, a bit worried, a bit inclined to spend big bucks on an educational gizmo if it might help our kids outperform the neighbor's kids.

              The public schools play a larger and larger role in this parental culture of fear, due to increased testing, increasing numbers of kids diagnosed with ADHD, increasing numbers of kids diagnosed with learning disorders, and so on. The assembly line and quality control models weren't quite so prominent when I was in school, I don't think. Nowadays normal human variability is used to tell virtually every parent that their child has an "area of concern." I mentioned my friend whose son is supposedly slightly behind verbally, at the age of 18 months, although he's ahead in other areas. Well, what kid isn't "slightly behind" in one area and slightly ahead in another? What is the point in even saying so? Doesn't this go without saying? The point of announcing that a kid is slightly behind some average is to make sure you bring them back in for the next well visit, out of fear that something might be wrong, or because you want to hear them say that the verbal skills are now normal.

              So many "experts" on children ultimately depend on this same model: first we assume that "standard" is the goal, then we scare you (we can always find something that isn't standard in your kid), then you feel compelled to continue working with us to solve the imaginary problem. Which, incidentally, is exactly how advertising works: we define the goal, we suggest you're deficient, we induce anxiety, and we tell you our product is the solution.

              There's no way to be within the system and to beat the system. Mainstream medicine and mainstream schooling-- I've checked out of both.