Lift Up Your Hearts!

One of Janet's classes was discussing the causative have, such as "I had my hair cut" and "I had my bike stolen." She noted that the latter can make it sound as if the person caused his bike to be stolen, though that is not the way it is normally used. That set me thinking. To me,

I'm glad I learned English as a child, when accepting such subtleties was still easy! Any comments, grammar experts?

Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000)

My nephew is going into seventh grade, and this was part of his required summer reading. He didn't have much to say about it, not surprising since it's hardly a title, nor a story, I would expect to appeal to most middle school boys. Or girls, for that matter. At that age, I would have picked up the book, assuming it was a science fiction story, then put it down in disgust when I discovered what it really was.

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this book, since the setting is high school and the themes adolescent, yet the intellectual level seems more geared towards elementary school.

Nonetheless, when I picked up the book recently to check it out, I became intrigued when I discovered that the title character was homeschooled before making her way into public high school—and definitely not fitting in. So when my nephew left for home, taking the book with him, I borrowed it from the library so I could finish reading the story.

I also picked up a few more, similar, books (some by the same author, some not) for comparison. Back when our children were home, I read hundreds of children's books from the library, and was generally dismayed by the genre of modern adolescent school-based stories. Things haven't changed much. As the genre goes, this is among the better, so I almost hesitate to say I found it oftentimes insipid and vulgar. Compared to most of what is out there, Stargirl has much to recommend it.

Back to the homeschooling idea. I don't know if the author actually knows something about homeschooling and is distorting the idea to make his point, or if he is just using the idea as a device to explain why Stargirl is so different. How else to explain someone who is immune to peer pressure, works hard at being kind to everyone, and is unafraid to sing aloud in the school cafeteria? Certainly he gets one thing right: homeschooling allows ordinary parents to raise extraordinary children.

What I really can't understand is why Stargirl would be required reading at the middle school level, unless some teacher wanted an easy way to begin a discussion on peer pressure. For literature, we must stop feeding our students pap! We can no longer hide behind the fiction that they cannot handle more complicated reading. The Harry Potter books are longer and more complex, deal with difficult subjects, and are replete with literary allusions—and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was on the personal summer reading list of countless children much younger than seventh grade.

In my nephew's case, he fit Stargirl in between Harry Potter and Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. Stargirl is okay. It was an interesting diversion. But something is wrong when the books a child reads for school are so much below the books he reads of his own accord. Wrong with the modern American educational system, that is—something is obviously very right with the child!

Janet is currently in Japan, preparing to teach English. Perusing an old diary today, I discovered an inclination toward that profession appearing much earlier in her life than I had supposed. The incident took place in the fall of her third grade year.

So today is National Teacher Day. (I know because Google told me so.) Since this blog includes rants against the terrible damage done to children and families by an inhuman and inhumane government-sponsored school system, and such private schools as seek (or are required) to emulate it, it is meet and right to make space today to recognize teaching as an honorable profession, and good teachers as incomparable treasures. The monstrosity that is school destroys teachers as well as students. In particular, today I honor:

• All the teachers among our family and friends
  
• Teachers who struggle year after year in increasingly difficult situations for the sake of making a schoolchild's day less bleak
• Teachers who quit the system for the sake of conscience
• Teachers who brave dismissal and lawsuits, daring to hug their students
• Teachers who still believe that rigorous study and high achievement are important goals for everyone
• Teachers who work with parents and not against them, respecting their values, insights, and goals
  
• Students who succeed in making their education their own business, in spite of school
• Students who take back the joy of learning and refuse to submit to school's stultifiying regimen
• Parents who embrace their responsibilities as their children's primary teachers, exercising extreme caution when delegating any of the work to others
• Parents who not only love but respect their children
  
• All babies and very young children, who know that learning is the most fun game of all, and who excel at it, until we crush their spirits

God bless you all, on National Teacher Day and every day!

"Socialization"—the homeschooler's "s-word," the final recourse of opponents and skeptical relatives who, unable to discredit homeschooling in any other way, declare that if children don't attend school they will not be properly "socialized."

Homeschooling families puzzle over this concern, having observed that their children are much more at ease with people of all ages than are most schoolchildren, arguing that peer-socialization is unnatural and generally negative, and pointing to the vast array of sports teams, musical ensembles, church groups, and other associations to which they belong. Why this concern, they wonder, with something as natural and easily attainable as socialization?

Perhaps because getting along with people and functioning well in the world is not the only working definition of socialization. In consideration of the following quote from The Underground History of American Education by former New York State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto, the idea that socialization is a school function not commonly duplicated by homeschoolers makes much more sense (emphasis added):

A friend sent me the following Frazz comic and I was immediately hooked. The setting is an elementary school, and the main characters are Frazz (school janitor and Renaissance Man), Caulfield (a genius who hates school because it bores him; he hangs out with Frazz a lot), Mrs. Olsen (Caulfield's teacher), Mr. Burke (the school's best teacher, and Frazz's best friend), Mr. Spaetzle (the principal), Miss Plainwell (first grade teacher).

I've never been much of a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. fan, but his short story, Harrison Bergeron, has haunted me since I first read it, long before frustrations with our chidren's schools brought us head to head with its stunning reality. Written in 1961, Vonnegut's warning is yet more accurate and more frightening today.

American Sign Language to the rescue! In New York, a choking woman dialed 911, but was unable to speak. Her three year old daugher, whom she had taught some basic sign language, conveyed her mother's signed plea for help to the operator. This recent news story illustrates just one of many good reasons for teaching your baby as much ASL as you can manage.

Learning another language and culture is a huge benefit. Not only does it broaden your understanding and appreciation, it also increases your brainpower! It would be best, certainly, to teach your children (and yourself) to the point of fluency in ASL—and in several other languages as well. Even a little is much better than none, however. Children can sign before they can speak, and anyone who has experienced the frustration of not know what a screaming baby wants will appreciate this means of communication. Signing does not slow down speech acquisition, but rather accelerates it.
Related links
An article about the research of Marilyn Daniels
(author of Dancing with Words: Signing for Hearing Children's Literacy)

An online ASL dictionary

A personal story

Lex America/HIPPO Family Club
(not ASL, but a family-cenetered approach to language learning based on natural language acquisition)

When you walk into Heather and Jon's house, you can't miss the Periodic Table that takes up most of one wall. It was an extraordinary gift to Heather years ago from an extraordinary friend.

Science museums around the world should hope to have such extraordinary friends of their own so that they can acquire the new interactive Periodic Table displays produced through a partnership of Theodore Gray and the Red Green and Blue Company. If you can't wait until the exhibit is available at your local science museum, check it out online. If you can be deal with the relatively long download times, you can click on the individual elements and get a glimpse of how wonderful the physical display must be. I was most fascinated by how many of what I thought were unusual elements turn up in common use, something I first learned from The Radioactive Boy Scout.

My friend knew she would get a reaction from me when she sent a page from the Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin. She might not have expected a blog entry, but she knew I would be upset. Amy Blumenthal's Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Read should disturb every parent. As many children do, Ms. Blumenthal's daughter suddenly discovered, in the middle of her kindergarten year, that she could read. Initially thrilled, she suddenly stopped, saying, "I don't want to read." When asked the reason, she replied, "Because my teacher doesn't want me to."

When the startled mother approached the teacher, asking her to clear up this obvious misunderstanding, she was berated for "pushing" her child. What she did at home was her business, of course, but such behavior certainly wasn't going to be encouraged at school. There were children of many different levels in the class, she was told, and it was important that they "all catch up to each other in school."

It's tempting to dismiss this as an aberration, an isolated problem with one particular, crackpot teacher. I know a number of teachers who will be as appalled by this as I was. However, this is not the first time I've run into the attitude that the purpose of kindergarten is to get all children on the same level. In practice that philosophy is at least as much about holding some children back as it is about bringing others forward, resulting in a bland mediocrity.

I couldn't say that our own children were actively discouraged from learning, except insofar as school required so much of their time and gave so little in return. Certainly they were not encouraged to learn very much. One of our daughters, thanks to her avid curiosity and an older sibling, entered kindergarten knowing as much about mathematics as most children several grades above her. When she left public school at the end of second grade, she had gained almost nothing mathematically—and this in a decent, suburban school with good, caring teachers. Her mathematical ability meant only that her teachers had more time to spare for the rest of the class; encouraging her to learn material beyond her grade level was not even considered. Another teacher, learning of her plight, sneaked her an unused workbook from a higher grade, which fed her happy hunger for a while—but only at home.

Not that this is a new problem. In my elementary school days, nearly half a century ago, school officials explicitly told parents not to interfere in any way with their children's schooling. Education was to be left to the professionals, never attempted at home, leaving children all the more at the mercy of whatever their schools chose to teach—or not teach.

If you believe John Taylor Gatto, the problem is older still, and not accidental, but a deliberate attempt since the late 19th century to breed mediocrity through the schools. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Read makes his conspiracy theories sound almost reasonable.

That's the intriquing title of an article by Vigen Guroian, a professor at Loyola College in Baltimore, who warns that unsuspecting parents have been "persuaded that they must send their children to college with no questions asked, when in fact this [is] the near-equivalent of committing their sons and daughters to one of the circles of Dante's Inferno." That comment is only slightly less blunt than the title of a book I heard about but never read, I Spent $75000 To Send My Child To Hell!

The article is lengthy but valuable, and you can read it here. According to what I hear from my own campus spies, Dr. Guroian is unfortunately more accurate than not. I once laughed when I read about a college at which the lack of dormitories was a matter of principle; now I recognize a noble attempt to swim against the sweeping tide. Perhaps it is time to rethink the entire college experience, to heed John Holt's advice and ask ourselves, "Where are we trying to get, and are we getting there?"

Update 5 April 2009  The link to the essay on why the college does not provide dormitories no longer works, so I have removed it, but the school in question is New Saint Andrews in Moscow, Idaho.

Yee-Ha! I just pushed Florida past Wisconsin to take over the #33 spot in the Geography Olympics. Pennsylvania (#31) here we come!

When I started keeping track, Florida was down at #45, so I feel that I (and many others) have made good progress. Currently Nebraska is #1 (Andy must be helping out.)

This is a great game for learning geography, though it does require patience (many games) and/or iniative (studying a world map between games), because the program itself doesn't tell you the true location of the country you guessed wrong. I know I've learned much, although I'm still shaky on the countries of the former Soviet Union, and the Pacific island nations.

Thanks, Jon, for introducing us to the Geography Olympics!

Homeschooling is legal in Pennsylvania, but the regulations imposed on homeschooling families are among the strictest in the nation. Recently, one family decided to sue the state on grounds that the rules impose an unreasonable restriction on their freedom of religion. Reading that article, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's editorial in response, reminds me that we must never, never become complacent about our rights, nor take our freedoms for granted. The Post-Gazette wonders,

To us, the requirements seem rather minimal. Parents must submit an annual affidavit to the local school superintendent outlining their educational goals. They must turn in a log at the end of the year showing what subjects were taught and when. A neutral, certified teacher reviews the work and interviews the child. Standardized tests are required at several grade levels.

What is the problem with that?

One problem is that such an attitude betrays appalling ignorance of what homeschooling is all about. It is not about taking the philosophies, methods, systems, procedures, and materials of school and trying to squeeze them into one's living room. Rather, homeschooling liberates children and families to pursue learning in creative ways that are not possible when subjected to classroom-mentality restrictions.

Putting unnecessary shackles on independent learners actually inhibits learning. Requiring logs of “what subjects were taught on what days, what work was done and the time spent on it,” and similar attempts to force a “school at home” mentality on Pennsylvania’s home educators would have stifled our family’s liberal—and liberating—approach to education.

I'm glad we lived in Florida when our children were of school age. Florida's homeschooling regulations are still unnecessarily invasive, but require less than a quarter of what Pennsylvania demands. Pennsylvania would definitely not have approved of our home education program. However, even the most ardent critic of homeschooling would have difficulty saying that our approach did not provide a proper education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the University of Rochester, the Eastman School of Music, and Pittsburgh’s own Carnegie Mellon University are among the schools that considered our children’s educations to be very fine indeed. Our success was due in great measure to freedom from the “school mentality” that Pennsylvania’s rules impose.

I wish this couple, and others who are pursuing the freedom of religion angle, success in their efforts to reduce the Commonwealth's intrusion into that most personal, and critical, area of ours lives: the education of our children. However, I would hope that all of Pennsylvania's homeschoolers would see this as their issue as well. The right to educate our children in the way that we deem best should not be limited to those with strong religious convictions.

Pennsylvania’s educational, historical, and cultural resources would appear to make it an ideal location for a homeschooling family. Florida offers less culture, but more of the freedom that breeds enthusiastic, lifelong learners. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Pennsylvanians could have both?

I can't find an official Baldo website to advertise with a link, but today's comic says a lot about some folks' attitudes toward grading:

Today's For Better or For Worse comic strip, though it's talking about an actual school, expresses neatly the technique I used when required to produce a curriculum and transcripts for our homeschooled children. "Educationese" isn't hard to speak once you've read enough of it. There is one difference, however: In the comic, the teachers are fitting the material to the students' interests; with homeschooling, the interests generally come first, and when necessary one finds official words to describe the educational results.

The proper place and best place for children to learn whatever they need or want to know is the place where until very recently almost all children learned it—in the world itself, in the mainstream of adult life. If we put in every community…resource and activity centers, citizens’ clubs, full of spaces for many kinds of things to happen—libraries, music rooms, theaters, sports facilities, workshops, meeting rooms—these should be open to and used by young and old together. We made a terrible mistake when (with the best of intentions) we separated children from adults and learning from the rest of life, and one of our most urgent tasks is to take down the barriers we have put between them and let them come back together.

John Holt, How Children Fail