Imagining the future

If you stand back and consider current public education trends, and carry them through to their eventual goals, this is what future schooling will look like:

Kids will attend school 45 hours per week, year round, from age 3 to age 18.

There will be no recess.

There will be no talking at lunch.

There will be a uniform (including hairstyles, jewelry, etc).

Daytime curfew laws will help enforce school attendance.

Truant students' parents will face jail time.

Police in the schools will enforce the discipline code.

Police use of nightsticks, pepper spray and tasers will not be uncommon.

Bullying and sexual harassment will continue to be tolerated.

Students distressed by school because they are strongly attached to their parents will be diagnosed with Separation Anxiety Disorder and given drugs.

Students who are scared to attend school will be diagnosed with Social Phobia and given drugs.

Students reluctant to attend school for any other reason will be diagnosed with School Refusal Disorder and given drugs.

Students who resist constant control will be diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and given drugs.

Students who can't sit still or be silent will be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and given drugs.


And for all that, you can bet that literacy rates will remain lower than they were before compulsory schooling, that general knowledge will decline, that voting rates will decline, and that our workforce will continue to lose high-tech jobs to developing nations. What, then, is the point of 15 years of coerced schooling?

The people fighting for more public schooling, the teachers who think 3 more months of class time will solve their problems, the school board members who think preschool will boost academic success, the parents who think more money is the panacea-- these folks think that school is a wonderful thing and more is certainly better. Not only do I personally feel they are mistaken, but more to the point, they aren't the ones in charge.

What I mean is, how does this serve those in power? If public schools made the people more difficult to govern by causing them to demand more from politicians, to stand up for their rights, to exercise critical thinking, then politicians would find ways to reduce schooling. Instead, what they have done is find ways to keep current schooling or increase it, but simultaneously to make it less effective in terms of actual education. The schooling itself, those 180 days, that is still serving those in power. And everyone, on the right or the left, seems to want more days, more years, more hours.

I believe school acts like the chain around the infant elephant's leg in that old parable. As an infant, the chain is an effective control; the elephant cannot break it. As an adult, the elephant is so well trained that a mere rope around the ankle will keep it from straying.

An American spends well over a decade in an environment in which they must obey, have no autonomy, and certainly have fewer rights than the Constitution provides to citizens outside of schools. Questioning the authorities is both futile and likely to be penalized. What is the societal effect of this early training?

We have a Congress that routinely acts contrary to the will of the American people, and does so without fear. We have presidents who did not win the popular vote. We have no enforcement to speak of when it comes to food safety laws, environmental protection laws, or price fixing laws (think gas prices and plane fares). To give a more dramatic example, 9/11 was not just preventable in some vague "if only we had known" sense, but in the sense that the government knew everything about the plot except perhaps the exact date, yet provided less security for New York's airspace than was provided in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics. This was on record as the most colossal government fuck-up in the history of the United States until Katrina came along. But the average American, trained by 13 years of doing what the teacher says without question or protest, feels it's not his or her place to get involved.

The Democrats ask for more money, more days, more hours for the schools-- and the Republicans say "Well sure, but don't think we're going to let you teach anything," and laugh themselves silly. What the new robber barons like about school is the same thing the original robber barons enjoyed: the way that rope weighs heavily around our ankles.

Speechless

From Knight Ridder:

Beat cops and detectives aren't the only members of the Wichita Police Department who are being issued Tasers.

School resource officers are, too.

By the end of the month, all 22 SROs in the Wichita schools -- seven in high schools and 15 in middle schools -- will carry the controversial device.

And a timeline from This Modern World:

February: Wichita Police introduce tasers into schools.

Early March: Students at Wichita West High School discover this and are understandably concerned. Organized by Hope Street, they gather 250 signatures on a letter to the school district asking about health effects and the district’s use policy.

March 16th: A 15 year-old student is tasered during a confrontation at another high school, Wichita North. However, no one except those involved know at the time because the school district covers it up.

The next week: The tasering becomes public thanks to an anonymous tip from a teacher. The Wichita Eagle criticizes the school district for trying to hide it.

Today, March 30th: The Wichita Eagle reveals two other attempts to taser students, including a 14 year-old girl.

Lastly, from Amnesty International via the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - The number of people who have died in the U.S. after being shocked by police stun guns is growing rapidly, Amnesty International says in a report that catalogs 156 [deaths] in the past five years.

Deaths after the use of Taser stun guns have risen from three in 2001 to 61 last year, the international human rights group said....

. . .

Tasers deliver a 50,000-volt jolt through two barbed darts that can penetrate clothing.

Consider this future situation:

• It's illegal to leave school before age 18 unless you graduate, but new graduation requirements make that impossible in many districts due to teacher shortages. This is the pending situation here in Michigan.
• No choice as to where your kids are warehoused-- er, attend school.
  
• Daytime curfew laws as in San Diego, to enforce school attendance.
  
• An increasingly controlled school environment with no respect for the 1st amendment even as an abstract principle, let alone in practice.
• Typically, no constructive attempts to halt bullying, sexual harassment, or student violence.
  
• Tasers being used on students.
  

Welcome to the Hitler Youth camp, here's your bar of soap.

Abandoning the public schools

Many people believe that homeschooling means abandoning the public schools. If the involved and motivated parents leave the schools, doesn't this weaken public education? Shouldn't these involved parents stay and fight for better schools?

Involved parents can't actually do very much for public education except fundraise, act as chaperones, and pull up the test score averages. Do they influence curriculum? Do they increase creativity in the classroom, or improve lesson plans? Do they counter administrators by insisting on teacher autonomy? Do they fight against the incessant use of carrots and sticks, of extrinsic motivators? Do they successfully reduce "kill and drill" in favor of science and history? Do they increase art and music instruction? Do they influence policies on recess, "silent lunch," or busing?

No, an "involved" parent is basically a parent who kisses the school's butt. In contrast, a parent who has the temerity to demand change is simply a troublemaker. And for all their efforts, such a parent is extremely unlikely to successfully change the school. They may win concessions for their own child, but they rarely change the institution.

The reforms that do occur (led by educators and politicians) have not altered the basic structures of school which impede learning, such as age segregation, learning on a set schedule, and short class periods. They have not resulted in interesting textbooks, nor reduced bullying and sexual harassment. We're going backwards in terms of administrative overhead, with twice the number of administrators per teacher than we had 50 years ago. And NCLB is a giant leap backward. Graduation rates are at a historical low, literacy rates are still lower than before compulsory schooling--

In short, reforms have never been particularly successful. Not only are they not parent-led, but they consistently strip away students' and teachers' autonomy. They consistently add to the bureaucratic burden of schools, and they consistently shrink the breadth of information taught.

This is a situation where we do not need reform. We need revolution.

Revolution, though, requires some vision of what education could be. Of what it might be if we invested this much money and effort in a system not designed by Henry Ford, Frederick Taylor, the robber barons and a bunch of fascist Prussians. How are we going to create that vision, when people have no faith in natural learning and abhor giving children autonomy? People mostly believe that education is inherently a difficult, fraught, unpleasant process. They don't believe children can learn reading and basic arithmetic in (as John Gatto claims) under 100 hours of instruction. They don't believe that handwriting, typing, spelling and most grammar can simply be absorbed by avid readers and writers. They're scared by the idea that different children might learn different things, that one might know about internal combustion engines and another about fossils. Such children cannot be compared and ranked, nor is it usually obvious which is the more "important" knowledge. For two centuries the elites have strictly defined the "important" knowledge; they aren't going to give up control easily.

The only way to convince people that an alternative path is possible is to live one. I don't think "school at home" fulfills this role, personally (though it's still better for the kids than school). But as an unschooler, I would hope that the example of my kids learning with extremely little coercion or adult direction would cause people to question our system of schooling.

My family is a living example that there are other ways. And I think that's the best thing I can do for education, though it's certainly inimical to public schooling as we know it.

Studying tools instead of using tools

From a Columbus Dispatch article:

A new survey made public today found that 71 percent of public schools have cut back on at least one subject in favor of reading and math. One-third of the 299 districts surveyed in 50 states have cut back social studies time this school year, 29 percent have reduced science, and 22 percent have shrunk time for art and music. Most reported that students are getting better at reading and math.

The thing about reading and math (except for some very high-level math) is that they are tools. Reading allows you to learn things, identify things, follow instructions, and of course, be entertained. Math allows you to handle finances, understand science, and make plans for things like vegetable gardens or birdhouses. They're tools. Studying math and reading as ends in themselves is like having classes on hammers and measuring cups and charcoal pencils without actually building, cooking, or drawing anything.

Although most Americans read every day (even if it's food labels or the TV guide), we don't use math beyond simple arithmetic. We would have fuller lives and be better informed if we'd spent more time in school learning about other countries, about trees, about insects, about nutrition and cooking, about politics and lobbying, about mortgages and credit cards, about basic car repair, about CPR and first aid, about early child development. When we just teach math and reading, we aren't informing kids of anything.

So this is yet another way in which NCLB is resulting in a more ignorant populace.

On parenting toddlers

Tristan, now 21 months, has been throwing tantrums lately. He actually threw his first tantrum at around 9 months, but these are Tantrums, Capital T. I don't say "No" to him often, but if he gets hold of something dangerous I obviously have to take it away. Much of the time, I'll simply ask him to give it to me, and (astoundingly) he will. Other times, we're in for ten minutes of enraged hollering, crying, and throwing things. Another trigger is when he figures out that we'll be going out soon, and it's taking too long to get into the car. Once the meltdown is underway, he refuses any comforting until he's cried the rage out (he'll hit me or throw additional objects if I try to hug him). I just sit close by and look sad (my attempt at empathizing) until he's ready for me to pick him up. If the tantrum is bad I sometimes get desperate and start offering juice popsicles or "car choo-choo" (the scene in Harry Potter II when the train almost hits the flying car). It's hard when he's miserable and I can't do anything about it but wait.

Our culture has one primary way of understanding tantrums: the kid is trying to manipulate you. This is utterly illogical, because kids don't have tantrums until all their ingenuity and self-control have been exhausted. If they were trying to manipulate you prior to the tantrum, they certainly aren't anymore. They aren't trying to do anything, they're at their wit's end and at the mercy of their emotions.

A few decades ago men used to believe that women cried for manipulative purposes (calling it "turning on the water works" or other such phrases). The implication was that a husband who was influenced by his wife breaking down in tears was just falling for an act. If that idea pisses you off, then it ought also to piss you off that we see children in this way. How convenient for the modern parent to dismiss unhappiness and anger in one's children as merely a "power struggle." How 1920's to suggest that parents should turn a deaf ear to their child's pain.

Once when Anya was 3, I decided to try the parenting book advice of not giving in to a tantrum, because supposedly it only teaches the child that a tantrum is required to get what they want. It turns out there is an enormous flaw in that logic, which is: it assumes that at some point the child will give in. Anya wanted to eat some M & M's before lunch, and I said no, healthy food first. This was at about noon. Fast forward to 4pm. We've had hours of argument and crying puntuated by TV shows or other distractions, but Anya hasn't touched her lunch. By this time I'm begging her to take one sip of orange juice, that if she just takes one sip I'll give her the M & M's, but no. All along I've been thinking that if I just make the "No" stick once, it'll be easier next time. But by 4pm I had to start dinner and she had to eat, so I gave in. She ate one M & M of each color and then promptly ate her whole lunch, and I felt like the world's biggest idiot. I still regret that I wasted a miserable afternoon "giving it a try" when my instincts told me better.

Incidentally, I never encountered a time when something major was at stake (i.e. safety) and Anya refused to listen or compromise. But the "healthy food before chocolate" rule had little logical basis that I could point to (we were only talking a few M & M's, it couldn't have ruined her appetite). Basically it came down to a battle of wills because nothing, in fact, was at stake except my desire vs. hers. She would never have put up that kind of fuss if I had been able to say "Look, if you don't do X you could get hurt." The futility and inanity of half the parenting battles are what provoke defiance and opposition in children, if you ask me. "Pick your battles" isn't simply about saving your strength, it's also about preventing resistance for resistance's sake.

As for toddlers "manipulating" parents... well, obviously I am my children's best tool. If Tristan wants juice, how's he supposed to get some without "manipulating" me? If he wants his car puzzle off a shelf he can't reach, he must necessarily "manipulate" some taller person to obtain it. What is the big horror about kids "manipulating" adults? Why have we defined this to include disrespecting adults?

Modern parenting advice rarely if ever acknowledges that the drive for autonomy, being a force innate to human beings, deserves respect. Toddlers' desire for independence is usually to be curbed (unless it saves the parent work, as in getting dressed or using the potty). Any independence that doesn't assist grown-ups has no purpose, it seems, in the eyes of most of society.

My son is a kid who gets so excited if I put on a Baby Einstein video that he stands up on his tip-toes and thunders, "Uh-huh!" with a huge grin. He squeaks with excitement when he plays chase with Anya, he cries like his heart is breaking if I accidentally startle him or hurt his feelings (e.g. because he's about to do something dangerous). In one of our books there's a cat that gets stuck on the roof, and he says sadly, "Oh no, dog" at that part. (All small 4-legged creatures are dogs except our two cats, who are cats). If Anya cries he will pat her shoulder with one chubby hand. He's an emotional kid, prone to getting overwhelmed-- he's not "testing limits".

[Insert pithy, witty, amusing concluding sentence here.]

And I repeat....

From the Wiki entry on attachment parenting:

One criticism of attachment parenting is that it can be very strenuous and demanding on parents. Without a support network of helpful friends or family, the work of parenting can be difficult.

Another criticism is that there is really no conclusive or convincing body of research that shows this labor-intensive approach to be in any way superior to what attachment parents term "mainstream parenting" in the long run.

Criticism #1 is a valid consideration for parents. They may need to find ways of getting support if they're committed to attachment parenting. But from the kid's point of view this is not a criticism.

As for criticism #2, attachment parenting is, in my eyes, quite obviously more pleasant for the kid. Whether it's "superior in the long run" is moot. I'll say it again: childhood is not preparation for life, it is life.

Why is that so easily forgotten?

Back to basics

School is remarkably invisible to most people. It involves something so fundamental: you are giving your child to someone else for hours out of the day. How can that happen with so little consideration? With so little concern over the adult who will be in charge of your child, who will be their caretaker? John Gatto says this was not initially accepted as normal, that violence against schoolteachers and riots in or around schools were commonplace in the early years of compulsory schooling. For instance:

Bruce Curtis’ book Building the Education State 1836-1871 documents the intense aversion to schooling which arose across North America.... Many schools were burned to the ground and teachers run out of town by angry mobs. When students were kept after school, parents often broke into school to free them.

At Saltfleet Township in 1859 a teacher was locked in the schoolhouse by students who "threw mud and mire into his face and over his clothes," according to school records—while parents egged them on....

Or-- again from Gatto:

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns — by an estimated 80% of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

When you homeschool, people ask you why. Parents have raised their children to adulthood since before we were homo sapiens, but now we are asked to explain? Why shouldn't I ask other parents why they send their children away?

Not only does school now strike me as-- well, frankly, a rather bizarre arrangement (would you leave your child with a babysitter who also had 23 other children to look after?)-- but I find the tone of schoolteachers and principals to be extremely off-putting. Their tone is so often one of "We know what is best for your children, not you."

Consider this stern paragraph from a Michigan elementary school newsletter:

Our [Kindergarten] Round Up meeting will be held on Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 7:00 P.M. At this meeting you will receive pertinent information about the curriculum, kindergarten options, immunizations and complete the necessary forms. Childcare will be provided.

Translation: If you have a child who is about to turn 5, you must show up at this location, on this date, at this time, and we will take your children to another room while we make you fill out forms and pressure you about vaccinating. [This school district has printed lies on some of its websites regarding the supposedly mandatory nature of vaccines. I don't know about other states, but in Michigan vaccines are not mandatory.]

Our local school's newsletter states that "it is a district guideline that parents may not request a specific teacher for their child." You have no say over who babysits your kid, in other words.

The mental health community helps to justify the division of children and parents by inventing separation anxiety disorder, school refusal disorder, and social phobia to explain and stigmatize any resistance to separation. Regarding such diagnoses, I can only say: bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. These people never question the society, never question the schools, never take the point of view of the child. They define mental illness as "not thriving in mainstream society," as if mainstream society were natural and eternal instead of arbitrary and changing, as if our culture ought to be monolithic, as if we all should follow the same lifestyle and the same rules. I have a word for these psychiatrists, as well, and it is: Soviet.

I may start answering the "So why did you decide to homeschool?" question with "Because our species cares for its own offspring." I don't say it has to be the mom, or even the parents (we traditionally have lived in broader family clans, after all). And I am sympathetic to the economic impossibility of a parent staying home, for many families-- but then I have to ask why the "richest country on earth" (as we're always told) accepts a culture in which parents cannot afford to care for their own children?

Politicians and other leaders talk about "the children" and "family values," but let's face it. We've set up a culture which is hostile to children and then we've diagnosed the kids who can't adapt to such hostility. And then, if you try to opt out of some of this by homeschooling, people wonder why.

How about these basics: children need the care of relatives, children need joy, children need autonomy. Or, even shorter: childhood is not preparation for life, it is life.

On not comparing children

When we first decided to homeschool, I wandered around on a hundred and one homeschooling and unschooling blogs, hungry for descriptions of people's daily lives. It was great to read so many personal anecdotes, but I also felt many a twinge of anxiety, because everyone's kids seemed so gifted. They had these areas of expertise-- some made amazing art or played instruments, some were learning chemistry at age 9, some were experts in lizards or insects or small electrical appliances.

Because of my own years of schooling, I would inevitably start to compare my kids and their imagined future to these homeschooled kids. Would Anya get so interested in ancient Egypt that she'd know the names of the pharaohs and their pyramids in another year? Would she learn HTML code by age 10? Would she start cooking meals at age 8? Would she start writing her own skits and filming them before age 12?

This tendency to compare has dissipated almost entirely. "My child can't do all that!" is no longer a lament, it is simply a neutral fact. No child can learn everything. You can't be an Egyptologist, a cook, a painter, a pianist, a speaker of Mandarin, a math guru, a computer geek, a prolific writer, a voracious reader, a botanist, a chemist, and an astronomer. Some of these things, but not all. Once that sinks in, what other people's kids are doing becomes interesting... but moot, in terms of assessing your own child's learning.

I was once at the public library and this very competitive mom asked my daughter, out of the blue, if she could read yet and whether she could spell her last name. I related this galling tale to another unschooling mom I know, and she had this excellent comeback: "I would've asked her kid if he knew how the komodo dragon immobilizes its prey!"

Schools have to teach "the basics" to all children, and give them no opportunity to develop their own intellectual interests, in order to continue to rank them. You have to spend all your time on math and reading and certain basic facts (Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria; igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary; scalene, isosceles, equilateral). Otherwise you cannot create competition, you cannot classify, you cannot grade, you cannot rank. We have to be able to peg kids on the same narrow spectrum, to know who's successful and who isn't.

In unschooling, and much of homeschooling (even if a curriculum is used for part of the day), kids learn all sorts of other material. Imagine if two unschooling moms could be implanted with the cutthroat competitiveness of many a yuppie academic parent-- what would the conversation look like?



Mom 1: Little Tommy spent last week studying Monet. We're going to take him to Chicago for that big impressionism exhibit.

Mom 2: Oh, really? Well, Susie has been so interested in amphibians and their sensitivity to environmental degradation... we're doing the frog survey this spring.

Mom 1: Oh, isn't that nice. And Tommy's been so interested in electricity and magnetism, I think we're going to spend Saturday at the science museum....

Mom 2: Of course, Susie's other love is geometry. We just can't get our hands on enough math manipulatives to keep her happy!


They might try to compete, but they'd wind up talking past each other. Two actual yuppie academic moms are more likely to announce their child's reading lexile [a metric used in the Open Source reading program] or their percentile on the last standardized math exam. Competition is bound to be rampant when there are only two primary metrics: reading and math scores. Any other intellectual interest is "extracurricular" and qualifies as a hobby, not as academics.

Competition usually involves reducing people to a set of numbers, but the reverse is also true: reducing people to numbers breeds competition. We're all socialized to compare, without even meaning to. If someone tells you their weight, their income, the price of their home, their SAT or GRE score, you're immediately aware of whether the figure is higher or lower than your own, even if you don' t really care.

Why do parents put up with this dehumanizing practice in schools? And how do they stand the simmering-under-the-surface competition?

Drugs for boredom

Recently, there's been a flurry of news reports on the risks of ADHD drugs. This Bloomberg article is representative:

March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Drugs children take for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder should carry stronger warnings about the risk of side effects like hallucinations and paranoia, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

The agency since 2000 has received more than 500 reports of psychosis in children 10 and younger who took attention drugs including Shire Plc's Adderall, Eli Lilly & Co.'s Strattera, and Novartis AG's Ritalin and Focalin, a staff review found.

. . .

ADHD drugs have been previously criticized by other FDA advisory panels for potentially increasing the risk of heart attacks, strokes and suicides. Last month, a different advisory panel unexpectedly suggested putting the FDA's strictest warning, a black box warning, on ADHD drugs advising users of heart-attack and stroke risks.

These risks have actually been known for a while, but the US government has not chosen to publicize these risks nor do anything about them. Canada, for instance, banned Adderall some time ago after a series of sudden deaths (by stroke or heart attack) which were attributed to the drug. Yet still the FDA was silent. On a related topic, certain antidepressants have been banned for use in children in the UK (e.g. Paxil) due to an increased risk of suicide, and the FDA has done nothing concrete to protect children from those medications, either.

What really irks me about the ADHD drugs is that school is usually the problem, yet the child is somehow seen as defective. Take these excerpts from an overview of ADHD available at the Help for ADD site:

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a disorder characterized by a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity/impulsivity that occurs in academic, occupational, or social settings. Problems with attention include making careless mistakes, failing to complete tasks, problems staying organized and keeping track of things, becoming easily distracted, etc. Problems with hyperactivity can include excessive fidgetiness and squirminess, running or climbing when it is not appropriate, excessive talking, and being constantly on the go. Impulsivity can show up as impatience, difficulty awaiting one's turn, blurting out answers, and frequent interrupting.

Such a child is obviously bored out of their ever-loving skull, to the point where their skin is crawling. Possibly 6-year-old children should not be sitting at desks for 6 hours a day-- have they thought of that? Possibly they need one-on-one attention, autonomy, more physical activity? Perhaps they need to be actually learning instead of listening to some classmate struggle to read aloud, especially if they've already finished the reading book? (I remember reading somewhere that ADHD kids tend to test higher on IQ tests and may be more intelligent than average. That would partly explain the boredom.)

Another excerpt:

One perplexing aspect of ADHD is that a child's symptoms can vary considerably at different times and in different settings. For example, it is common for parents to wonder how their child can have ADHD when that child focuses intently when watching TV or playing Nintendo. Similarly, when engaged in free play activities, children with ADHD are often indistinguishable from their peers. In other settings, however, particularly those where activity must be restricted and attention sustained to tasks that seem uninteresting, the symptoms are quite evident. For children with ADHD, this variability in symptoms does not indicate laziness or defiance (although these can be issues that must also be dealt with). Instead, it demonstrates that ADHD symptoms are simply more likely to be evident in some settings rather than others. Unfortunately, the classroom is one setting where ADHD symptoms are very likely to be prominent, and sometimes this explains the very different views that parents and teachers have of the same child.

Right, the kid is defective but we just tend to notice it in the classroom. The parents don't notice any difficulty, but the teacher (a Trained Expert, don't you know) recognizes the symptoms. Give me a break.

I actually do think that there are environmental influences that can cause problems for kids, e.g.: mercury, dyes and preservatives, lead, arsenic, too much sugar, antibiotics (these can destroy the healthy intestinal bacteria we need for proper nutrition), trans-fats which prevent the body from utilizing omega-3 fatty acids (which in turn are critical to brain development, learning, and mood). Our kids have many strikes against them because of our food supply, our overuse of antibiotics, and pollution. But most ADHD cases are diagnosed only once the child begins school, and the symptoms are seen primarily in the classroom. In these cases, the problem isn't physical.

Our society is obviously willing to risk psychosis and stroke rather than question the modern classroom.

Pass me the vomit bag

This is from an NEA "classroom management" publication:

Examples of reinforcing classroom expectations include:

• "I see so many people ready to start meeting. I see hands in laps, legs crossed, eyes front."
  
  
• "I noticed that many people remembered to look at the person they were greeting today...."
  
  
• "Thank you for a very efficient clean-up today. I see caps back on markers, pencils with points down in cans, paper off the floor."

Now compare that with this excerpt from our local elementary school newsletter:

I want to take the time to thank [School Name] Parents. Each day I see parents working alongside staff as part of the educational team.... I see the positive impact of parents each day. I see well cared for children that are full of fun and eager to learn. I see you volunteering in the classrooms, in the workroom, on the playground, in the lunchroom and at special events....

And I see that someone needs to give this principal the bug-eyed, slack-jawed, furrowed-brow look of shock and horror that she deserves for treating parents like they're four years old.

Sociodiversity

According to its Wiki entry, biodiversity has four main benefits:

1. It insures that all natural processes are carried out, making the ecosystem less vulnerable.
2. It provides a wealth of resources: a variety of foods, medicines, tourist climates, and industrial materials.
3. It insures that all species are allowed to exist (very basic ethics!).
4. Greater diversity means a wealth of data for scientific study, providing clues into evolution and current biology.

Now apply this idea to human beings... let's call it sociodiversity. Sociodiversity has the same benefits to society as biodiversity has for ecosystems:

1. It insures that all jobs and services are carried out, making the economy less vulnerable.
2. It provides a wealth of human resources: a variety of ideas and skills, more innovation and invention, different kinds of intelligence.
3. It insures that all kinds of human beings are allowed to express themselves.
4. It allows us a fuller understanding of our own species, our many ways of life, our disparate styles of thinking and expression.

And then consider this bit from an old 1996 American Psychological Association article (thanks to another homeschool blog -- only I can no longer locate which one! -- for the link):

[S]chool exposes children to many different teachers with varying attitudes and values, notes psychologist Carole Rayburn, PhD, a consultant to the Maryland public schools. Children who stay at home only hear their parents' philosophies and have little chance to form their own views, she says.

"What if parents are teaching a narrow view that goes against what society values?" Rayburn wonders. "The school is more apt to represent what society as a whole values."

I will reiterate that parents have the right to teach their children what they want. Some parents may teach their children to believe some really despicable things, but what's the alternative? Total fascism, that's what.

Secondly, this article is quite out of date and reflects the old misconception that homeschoolers keep their kids hermetically sealed in the home or refuse to allow them to speak to anyone with differing beliefs.

But lastly and most importantly, when parents teach their kids a particular set of values, particularly when they are non-mainstream or an eclectic mix of beliefs, they are increasing sociodiversity. When China begins to eat up the world's supply of crude oil, we're going to need innovation to maintain our economy. When global warming changes our climate and wreaks havoc on agricultural practice, we're going to need a bunch of different ideas. I think virtually everyone would appreciate a greater diversity of politicians. And then there's the fact that sociodiversity is just more fun.

[Regarding fun and the lighter side of diversity: Have you ever been wandering the internet and discovered that, for instance, there are square dancers willing to pay $300 and up for a gigantic poufy gold lame petticoat? And your mind boggles? Or maybe you've wandered onto a web page run by someone who attends Star Trek conferences in furry animal costume? Or maybe you were trying to replace the hinges on the entertainment center door, which broke after your daughter hung on the door one too many times, and you find yourself reading a woodworking site's flame war about Blum vs. Mepla European hinges? See, I love that stuff. I say, bring on the diversity.]

When people talk about "fringe beliefs" or mutter about children needing to grow up ready to accept mainstream society, I think that somewhere in there is a fear of differences, a fear of bullheaded people whose ideas might not mesh with yours, a fear that we might have to have debate, that our neighbors may one day not be like us.

In other words, there's a fear of the very diversity they claim to be enamored of.

Adults teaching kids games

This story from Scotland caught my eye today:

CHILDREN are being taught skipping and traditional games in schools by specialist instructors, costing up to £160 a day, as part of a move to tackle inactivity and obesity among Scotland's young people.

One in five Scottish 12-year-olds is classified as obese and, as children spend more time playing sedentary video games than in active play, it is feared many playground games like skipping and hopscotch, which used to provide exercise, are in danger of being permanently forgotten.

. . .

The lessons, once written off by cynics who claimed children did not need to be taught how to play, have sparked a craze for skipping and other games unseen in playgrounds for years.

In one Glasgow primary school, hand-clapping games are back in vogue, with children learning complicated rhymes in English and French to impress their friends.

Kellie Currie, who teaches for Skipping Workshops, said: "You wouldn't believe the number of schools I go into where kids don't know how to play games....

I'm all for kids learning how to jump rope, play 4-square, hopscotch, or rhyming games. It's just kind of sad that adults have to teach them, instead of other kids.

What kids really need, in terms of the big S-word (socialization), is lots of free and largely unsupervised time with other kids. Soccer practice and the classroom are too highly structured for this purpose, in my opinion. One of the benefits of just "hanging out" with other kids is that you come to see each other as a resource for preventing boredom. I might suggest Chinese jump-rope, my friend might later suggest a game of "round the world" (basketball, of a sort), someone else might come along and want to ride our bikes down the Big Hill. That's the bond that spurs friendships and social groups... you need each other for entertainment (even if it's just Canasta and Connect Four).

One expert quoted in the above article blamed the lack of physical games on a "safety culture" that fears injury, particularly on the school playground. Parents don't want to let their kids roam the neighborhood either, they way parents used to, due to similar fears of accidents or worse. And then, there's the pressure to fill up a kid's time with "meaningful" activities that look good on paper or can be seen as "investing in the future." It's not all the fault of TV and Xbox.

The fact that these games are now being taught in school by adults not only indicates a problem with physical inactivity; it also points to problems with socialization. Next time you're gritting your teeth as someone mutters vaguely about "social issues," just remember that homeschoolers have enough free time, at least, to learn hopscotch.

Professional vs. parental teaching

There's an old Doonesbury cartoon where Zonker is at the typewriter, writing:

Most problems, like answers, have finite resolutions. The basis for these resolutions contain many of the ambiguities which conditional man daily struggles with. Accordingly, most problematic solutions are fallible. Mercifully, all else fails; conversely, hope lies in a myriad of polemics.

Mike comes in and asks, "Which paper is this?"

Zonker says, "Dunno. I haven't decided yet."

I was strongly reminded of Zonker's b.s. when I came across this paragraph in the California Standards for the Teaching Profession:

Teaching is more than methodology. Philosophical and theoretical understandings of teaching and learning empower teachers to make thoughtful, informed decisions about instructional strategies and ways to support students' learning. A teacher's practice cannot be viewed or evaluated separately from her or his professional ideas and understandings; all aspects of teaching are interdependent. The Standards are broad and interdependent because the professional practice of teaching needs to be seen comprehensively as a complex, dynamic process in which practical and conceptual elements are woven together as a seamless fabric.

There are people who would read this hooey, and think of all those teacher's colleges, and all those libraries full of education journals and research papers, and conclude that homeschoolers are rejecting an entire field of social science. They might conclude, in fact, that homeschoolers reject science generally, and have an appalling lack of respect for expert knowledge. Because science has become part of the great political divide, with many progressives claiming science as 1) the only appropriate means of comprehending the world and 2) exclusively theirs, a minority of progressives just cannot abide a homeschooler who appears (in their eyes) to hate science.

There's no arguing with someone who writes you off as positively medieval because you avoid formal schooling. But, just to get my own thoughts clear, I would make these points:

1. What makes teaching difficult and complex and worthy of reams of scientific studies is the absurd adult-to-child ratio. The Big Questions like "Sight reading or phonics?" are a moot point when you're using individual instruction, because then you just use whichever one works best for that child.
2. Administrators complicate teaching in order to justify their own employment. (There are at least twice as many of them, per teacher, as there were in the 1950's.)
   
3. Because I am an expert in my own children, I have an enormous advantage over a stranger who only has minutes per day in which to get to know my child.
   
4. I have a major advantage in being able to "strike while the iron is hot" and explain concepts at precisely the moment when my child is curious.
5. Autonomy increases learning (e.g., see Alfie Kohn). Enough said.
6. Anxiety decreases learning; school is a hostile social environment.
7. Attempting to teach a concept too early results in lost time, lost effort, and much frustration for everyone involved. Not having a schedule is thus another advantage.
8. Assessment is basically pointless when you homeschool. I can't imagine how any parent could do it without having a pretty good idea of where their children were in math and reading skills, without understanding their depth of knowledge in the topics that interest them.

To give an example of these ordinary, everyday advantages enjoyed by homeschoolers, last night at about 10:15pm I introduced Anya to the topic of asexual vs. sexual reproduction. I admit, it was long past bedtime and I didn't want to get into it, but we homeschool, and thus we had the discussion. She was confused about how tribbles (from Star Trek's The Trouble with Tribbles) can have babies even if there's no boy around to mate with. I gave her the jargon, and then we talked about how it's mostly plants that use asexual reproduction, although not all plants-- and that no, I could not think of an animal that reproduces asexually. (There must be some, though. Earthworms? I'll have to use Wiki or Google....) She won't quite remember these terms, the first time around. I know that because I know her (see #3). "Asexual reproduction" is too many syllables to be absorbed on the first go at 10:15 at night. But over the next few days, I'll find a way to say them again (maybe once I find an animal that reproduces asexually), and in another week or two she'll have it down.

The "science is on my side" zealot says "You think you can emulate a scientifically trained professional? You think you're an expert educator?"

My reply is, "You think all the professional training in the world can make up for the teacher being a stranger, having only minutes a day to spend with my child, having 24 other children to look after, wasting my child's time constantly, making learning drudgery, holding them back, eliminating autonomy, enforcing an unreasonable schedule, destroying intrinsic motivation, and teaching in an environment of competition, hostility and anxiety?"

They think a teaching degree can do that?

Hostility

Some time ago I had promised to post about the vicious hostility occasionally displayed toward homeschoolers, generally by folks on the political left. I'm a progressive myself, but I've run into other progressives who suggest unschoolers will grow up to be mass murderers (scroll down to the purple text). Or I've had them say things like "Spare me your homeschooling propaganda!" when I'm merely mentioning that my daughter enjoys doing math problems. Most progressives do not respond this way, but the minority who have this reaction are positively rabid in their hatred of homeschoolers.

Of course, homeschooling isn't the number one all-time hot button issue for progressives. That would be vaccination. I was on a blog two nights ago and said that I had not vaccinated my children, and someone replied, and I quote:

You are a complete fool. You don't vaccinate your children? They should be taken away from you because you are an irresponsible moron.

I don't know why I let this upset me. I've been told I should have my children taken away from me before-- in fact, it happens every single fucking time I mention vaccination on a liberal political blog (pardon my language). People pile on the "Recommended!" votes for any comments suggesting you are an unfit parent, if you dare to admit that you thumbed your nose at modern medicine.

Another of these hot buttons would be mercury. Anyone who believes the mercury in vaccines, the air, and dental fillings may (just may) be harmful is stupider than dirt, in the opinion of the fascist progressive. It's a litmus test. If you express any reservation about having mercury placed in your mouth, for instance, that's it, you're incapable of scientific thought. Never mind if the World Health Organization concluded:

Human studies and experiments in laboratory animals indicate that dental amalgam contributes significantly to mercury body burden in humans who have amalgam fillings (IPCS, 1991; US DHHS, 1993; Weiner & Nylander, 1995; Health Canada, 1997).

Doesn't matter. The point is, doctors and dentists and the CDC know what is best for you, and you are to click your heels and say jawohl and hand over your kids and shut up about it.

I think the hostility toward parents who eschew mainstream schooling or mainstream medicine is all based on the same core issue: a certain group of progressives sees such decisions as a rejection of science. To them, it does not matter if I am homeschooling as a Christian evangelical fundamentalist, or as an atheist. It does not matter if I choose not to vaccinate because I'm a Christian scientist, or because I have examined the evidence and concluded it is not in my children's best interests. Either way, I have rejected science, because they get to decide what's rational. The American left increasingly views itself as the One True Party of Science.

This is also at the root of the undying stereotype that homeschoolers are primarily motivated by religion. It's not that they don't hear us when we say "Look, at least half of us are secular." It's that they throw us into the same boat with fundamentalists on the basis of our rejection of public schooling itself. They go right on implying that homeschoolers, in general, keep their kids home to teach them intelligent design instead of evolution. But you know what? Even if that were true, parents have every right to do that! Otherwise we would have to legislate 1) what constitutes truth, and 2) legal repercussions for telling your children anything but The Truth. I happen to believe dietary cholesterol is unrelated to heart disease. Does that qualify my family for a visit from Social Services?

Similarly, these vaccine fascists ought to realize that any number of things are more dangerous than not vaccinating even if I stipulated that their facts were entirely correct. Even then, it would be more dangerous to:

• not breastfeed
• smoke in the house
• let a 6-year-old sit in the front seat
• feed a kid McDonald's on a daily basis
  

Are we going to take those kids away too?

The irony is, this subset of progressives who are fascists are exactly like religious fundamentalists. Any disagreement with them is a rejection of science, just as to a fundamentalist, any disagreement with them is a rejection of God.

You're either with us or you're against us.

Bullying... the video game

It turns out there is a video game called Bully, in which you play a student at a reform school and fight your way to the top of the pecking order. It isn't out yet, but is scheduled for release in the next few months. The early advertising claims:

As a troublesome schoolboy, you'll laugh and cringe as you stand up to bullies, get picked on by teachers, play pranks on malicious kids, win or lose the girl, and ultimately learn to navigate the obstacles of the fictitious reform school Bullworth Academy.

I really can't reconcile that with this screen shot:




From the Mirror (UK):

Horrified child welfare campaigners and teachers' groups are calling on the [UK] government to ban the Bully game.

Liz Carnell of campaign group Bullying Online says: "This game should be banned. I'm extremely worried that kids will play it and then act out what they've seen in the classroom.

"Bullying is not a game by any stretch of the imagination. We have around four suicidal children contacting us every day."

Two million children in the UK are bullied at school, with 40 per cent enduring abuse twice a week or more.

And the effects can last a lifetime. One in 12 youngsters is so traumatised that their education, relationships and even their job prospects are affected.

Between 10 and 15 children each year commit suicide after being picked on.

And in the United States:

MIAMI -- The Miami-Dade County School Board is taking what could be described as a pre-emptive strike against what some critics fear could be the latest in a line of video games they say promote violence.

South Florida attorney Jack Thompson, along with the support of the Miami-Dade County School Board, is leading an attempt to prevent a soon-to-be-released video game called "Bully" from making its way into the hands of children.

"The killers at Columbine were victims of bullying, and they became the ultimate bullies, killing people to settle scores with those who gave them a hard time, and that's the theme of this game," Thompson said.

The school board resolution requested parents not to buy the game, and requested that local retailers not stock it. The attorney mentioned above has also filed a lawsuit to ban the game from sale in Florida, claiming it constitutes a public nuisance.

If bullying weren't widespread to begin with, this game would never have been developed. Clearly the marketing idea is that victims can seek some sort of revenge, however artificial, within the game. And there are, of course, plenty of victims.

An anecdote about socialization

We're part of an unschooling group in our area with around 30 or so families, and a little while ago we had a decent-sized gathering. About a dozen kids, anywhere from roughly 4 to 10 years old, were playing "ship" together. (The ship caught fire, sharks attacked, pirates attacked, people fell overboard and so on. The "ship" was a big, sturdy wooden table.)

In light of the fact that people often ask homeschoolers "What about socialization?" I have to say that my daughter is the only kid in our group, to my knowledge, who said:

• "Oooooooh, you're in trouble!"
• "He started it!"
• "It's her fault!"
• "I didn't get that out."
• "Don't you know the rules?"

And my daughter is also (almost) the only child who has ever attended any school.

At times I find myself apologizing to other moms, often adding: "Well, she went to preschool for a year and a half... that's where she learned that." Not only do I say it, but other moms know exactly what I'm talking about! Generally the other kids just give Anya an uncertain look and more or less ignore such competitive statements. I really don't think Anya says this stuff with much hostility, I think it's just that large groups cause her to revert to preschool "Lord of the Flies" dialogue. I assume she will outgrow such statements, especially as they get her nowhere with the unschooled crowd.

The vast majority of the time, though, Anya enjoys herself tremendously-- it's just that when she says something negative my ear always catches it because of her tone of voice. The kids actually play remarkably well together and without any power hierarchy, in spite of the age range. But then, I've been noticing Anya's awareness of other kids' ages for a couple of years now. We'd be at a playground and she'd say to a toddler -- with gestures and slow, emphatic speech -- something like "Oh, don't come down that way, come over here, this way's safer." Or, "Make sure you hang on tight!" Sometimes she might misjudge a child's age, but she was quite accomodating to whatever age she perceived them to be. This is how it generally works at the homeschool group gatherings (although not necessarily between siblings, perhaps). There's one 8-year-old boy who is protective of the littler ones without being overbearing, saying stuff like "Hey man, get down from there, that's not safe!" He tried to play cops and robbers with Anya (she being the appointed criminal), and she was scared by it. He caught on to that, so he came up and said "I talked it over with the chief of police and he says we should drop all the charges, so I'll have to let you go...." Cracked me up.

I think adults who only know schooled kids or remember their own school days imagine that kids are naturally mean to one another, particularly to younger kids. In fact, in more natural settings, I think older kids imitate parental care when dealing with younger ones. I think back to when our school district was consolidating and the middle school was going to be moved into one of the two high school buildings. Many parents were freaking out, as if the high school students constituted an enormous danger, either from physical violence or due to drug use or sexual harassment. This is really sad. My experience is that older kids take care of the younger ones, and can probably teach things to younger kids even more efficiently than an adult can convey the same information. Mixed age groups ought to be seen as a wonderful thing.

Which brings me to an excellent comeback to the eternal "What about socialization?" question. I was over at the Joyful Living and Unschooling site and found this:

When they ask the socialization question you can ask how public school kids learn to relate to people who are not the same age as themselves.

Good point.

Stealth privatization

Suppose that a company provided a school with textbooks, curriculum, guidance for teachers, grades, and the criteria used to award diplomas. Suppose that, nationwide, revenues from similar products and services were in the billions of dollars per year. Would we consider that school to be privatized?

If that sounds like privatization to you, then many American schools have indeed been privatized, right under our noses. The three biggest educational testing services, which account for close to 100% of all standardized tests administered in the US, are Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin (source).

I don't know about you, but I recognize those names. Harcourt? McGraw-Hill? Houghton-Mifflin? Those were the names written on the spines of my public school textbooks.

Textbook publishers don't merely provide passive information, to be used as the schools and teachers see fit. They provide discussion topics, summaries and highlights, selected vocabulary terms, and homework sets-- as well as (in the teacher's guide) quizzes, lecture suggestions and classroom activities. John Gatto has written about how "school editions" of literary works control classroom learning:

Soon after I began teaching Moby Dick I realized that the school edition wasn't a real book at all but a kind of disguised indoctrination. It provided all the questions... [and] if you read those questions, let alone answered them, there would be no chance ever again for a private exchange between you and Melville.

The editors of the school edition had provided a package of prefabricated questions and over a hundred chapter-by-chapter abstracts and interpretations of their own. If I didn't assign them the kids wanted to know why, and unless everyone duly parroted the party line set down by the book editor, those used to getting high marks became scared and angry.

There was no avoiding the conclusion that the school text of Moby Dick had been subtly denatured and was worse than useless -- it was dangerous. So I pitched it and bought a set of real Moby Dick's with my own money. The school edition of Moby Dick asked all the right questions, so I had to throw it away. Real books don't do that. Real books demand that people actively participate, ask their own questions. Books that show you the best questions to ask aren't just stupid, they hurt the mind under the pretext of helping it just exactly the way standardized tests do.

Now, in addition to this control of the classroom, teachers are often "teaching to the test." Three companies decide what goes on the test, and therefore what information is of importance, and furthermore, they dictate how we assess educational achievement. Some schools, in an effort to boost scores, purchase supplementary materials such as lesson plans, workbooks, and practice exams, provided (naturally) by the designers of these tests. These preparation materials then dictate, even more meticulously, what will be taught in the classroom.

With an increasing number of states now relying on high school exit exams which must be passed in order to obtain a diploma, these same three companies are also setting criteria for graduation. Some states place test scores on the students' high school transcripts (e.g. Washington). Such scores then provide a measure akin to an SAT or ACT score, likely making them more important than individual semester grades to many employers or college admissions boards.

This is assuming things work correctly. Gross mistakes have been made. For example:

School officials yesterday revised the number of students mistakenly assigned to summer school upward to more than 8,600, but Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Board of Education officials argued that parents of those children should be grateful for the mix-up because the faltering children were given a chance at more schooling.

"If I were a parent of one of the children, I would say, 'Thank you for having the child in summer school' because the child got more education," the Mayor said at a City Hall news conference....

The Mayor, who had strongly pushed the summer school program as a way of getting tough with failing students, spoke in response to questions about the revelations by Chancellor Rudy Crew that thousands of students in the third and sixth grades were erroneously required to attend summer school because of a scoring mistake by CTB/McGraw-Hill, the company based in Monterey, Calif., that designed the exam.

So, to recap:

Three companies write the books, heavily influence classroom learning, encourage teaching to the test, design said tests, decide who is promoted, decide who must attend summer school, decide who graduates, and label students with numbers that play a significant role in their future prospects.

How is that not privatization?

Applied math

From a December 2004 article:

U.S. high school students match their peers in other nations when it comes to math skills. But ask them to apply those skills to real-world situations and things begin to look a bit bleak, a new study suggests.

The nation's 15-year-olds make a poor showing on a newly released international test of practical math applications, ranking 24th out of 29 industrialized nations, behind South Korea, Japan and most of Europe. U.S. students' scores were comparable to those in Poland, Hungary and Spain.

. . .

The test goes far beyond the multiple-choice questions many students see on standardized tests these days.

. . .

[Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy] adds, "Maybe American kids know more math than they did before, but they don't know how to apply it in practical situations."

Or, take this report from early this year:

More than half of students at four-year colleges and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills no matter their field of study.

. . .

They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, ...compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees, or summarize results of a survey....

. . .

Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.

I've been pondering why so many of us are unable to apply math in everyday life. Is the problem that we introduce concepts too early, before we can really "get" the techniques involved in solving a problem? (Take carrying and borrowing: if you really understand the ones, tens, and hundreds places, these are obvious tricks to use. If you don't have a gut-level grasp, these are just cookbook rules one must memorize.)

Is it that "kill and drill" ignores the conceptual and demands rote memorization in its place? Is it that "story problems" are those last few items in the homework assignment, almost like extra credit, rather than the meat and potatoes of math? Is it that we teach a superficial overview of too many concepts in math, instead of taking techniques one at a time, examining each one in depth in a dozen different contexts?

And furthermore, why is "math phobia" a widely recognized phenomena? I haven't heard anyone say they had "reading phobia" or "science phobia" or "history phobia." Yet a sizeable proportion of Americans experience an impenetrable brain fog when confronted with math.

I don't have a theory to put forth here, really, to explain why learning mathematics is so fraught. But I've been pondering it, and thought I'd post about it. Anyone have any ideas?