When The Fox Minds the Hen-House

So Michelle Obama, referred to elsewhere on this blog as "The First Ingrate," is taking on childhood obesity. Two of the culprits she's identified in this epidemic are busy families who choose convenience foods over healthy ones and sedentary kids who choose computer screens over bicycles.

Well, now. How many busy families are pressed for time because Mom and Dad BOTH have to work to pay the confiscatory taxes they owe? With her hubby spending money like a drunken sailor, I don't see the stress on American families easing up any time soon. So Michelle, tell The Man to stop spending other people's money as fast as they earn it -- let them slow down, take a deep breath, and enjoy a meal that didn't require two incomes to put it on the table.

Well, now -- part two. Kids DO spend a lot of time tied to their electronic devices -- computers, video games, cell phones, etc. They also spend a lot of time sitting down doing hours and hours and hours of homework (not to mention all the seat time in school). The Man has gone on record on more than one occasion expressing his belief that longer school days and longer school years are needed for American children. How, exactly, are our kids going to get off their duffs according to this plan? Perhaps Michelle and her hubby need to coordinate their agendas better.

Deja Vu

This is from a site called http://www.joyfullyrejoycing.com:

Question:

"They're 2 1/2 years away from college and their skills aren't good enough.
They're 2 1/2 years away from graduating high school. Their written usage, punctuation, and spelling aren't that good. If they didn't want to go to college, I wouldn't worry. But they do, and they need scholarships."

Response:

"You're seeing an artificial deadline and worrying because it's looming. They don't need to go to college at 17. They can wait until they're 19 or 25. They can take time off to explore the world before they become burdened by responsibilities.

That will give them time to mature and play with the skills they have in an adult arena. It will give them time to form a better idea of what they enjoy and don't enjoy in the adult world and what directions they could head in to support themselves.

Preparing for college doesn't take 2 1/2 years. It takes as long as someone wants to spend on it once they set their mind to wanting it. The deadline is what's scaring you. Forget the deadline. Forget the standard timeline kids follow to get into college.

If they want college as a goal, then they will prepare themselves when it comes time. It may take longer than expected, but ... so what? What will be the harm if they enter college at 18 rather than 17?

Even better than college as a goal, is figuring out what they want to explore in their lives. College can be a means to an end, but as a goal in itself, it can be a rude surprise at the end when someone has subconsciously expected college to provide a clear path beyond and it's either set someone on the path of the rat race, or left them at the train station of life with no choice on the destination list that seems exciting and worth pursuing. "

I've never seen myself as an unschooler -- with varying levels of structure in different subjects, I'd call us "eclectic." And adopting the above philosophy doesn't, in and of itself, make us unschoolers. So I was stunned at how the passage above resonated with me. Then I thought back to our baby-rearing days, when my husband and I took a fairly relaxed approach to certain things -- we didn't push sleeping through the night or toilet training at what the books said were the "right" ages, for instance. A very wise pediatrician told us that a parent could *force* a child to do what the parent wanted, but that if the child wasn't ready, he would find his own way to win the battle; in his opinion, it made more sense to, when possible, choose your battles in such a way that you preserved your relationship with your child. Was he right, or were we just lazy? Whatever it was, we chose the path of least resistance and didn't push when it didn't seem necessary. It just seemed a) easier to avoid unnecessary conflict and b) more respectful of a child's inner timetable. Now, many years later, I see a parallel in the above passage -- we can treat college as yet another milestone that MUST be achieved at an age prescribed by society, or we can see it as an optional destination that is reached according to an individual's unique timetable. As before, it's about respect.

His and Hers

"If there's one thing that I regret this year is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values," Obama told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview at the White House.

When WASN’T he speaking directly to the American people on one subject or another? He spent so much time in front of cameras in the past year that one would be hard-pressed to believe the election was over.

The president said he made a mistake in assuming that if he focused on policy decisions, the American people would understand the reasoning behind them. "That I do think is a mistake of mine," Obama said. "I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we're making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.

Oh, the tough life of a misunderstood genius tasked with shepherding the Great Unwashed.

What Are These People Thinking?

If you are enough of a public figure that there's even the slightest chance that an "indiscretion" could result in your name and face on the cover of the National Enquirer accompanied by the words "Love Child" --

Don't you think it might just be a good idea to use birth control during said "indiscretion"?

Whatever else might be said about Tiger Woods, apparently he had the presence of mind to be absolutely sure. (Though we'll have to re-evaluate the situation in, oh, nine months or so.)

Surely "spnntaneity" isn't worth the damage an "accident" can cause to the reputations of all involved ... including that of the "love child." It's going to hurt when Quinn Hunter-Edwards is old enough to realize how long it took her father to publicly associate himself with her.

One wonders whether Rielle *told* John that she had the whole protection issue taken care of. That, of course, smacks of entrapment.

At the very least, it's troubling to think that a man who thinks himself fit for the presidency doesn't know how babies are made -- or, worse, doesn't care.

So Many Thoughts, Part Two

This is by Allan Fromme, PhD, from the intro to John Holt's How Children Fail:

"Does [the teacher's] relationship with the child have the intimacy ideally necessary for intellectual growth or is it a dull, contractual one which fosters non-learning as much as it does learning?

Naturally, we cannot expect teachers all to be clinical psychologists. But neither do we expect husbands, wives, or parents to have doctoral degrees in marriage and family life. We expect them to be sensitive human beings who will make an effort to perceive many things in their relationship for the purpose of getting the most out of it. Teachers can be no more successful in the classroom than they can be in their marriages without this quality of sensitivity. The reason for this is that there is as much intellectual intimacy in the teaching-learning relationship as there is emotional intimacy in the husband wife relationship.

Not every teacher is able or even willing to accept a relationship of such intimacy. Nor, for that matter, is every student. It would be reasonable, however, to expect the teacher to make a greater effort than the student does to promote interaction between them. But how? What can the teacher really do?

We cannot legislate sensitivity and intimacy into existence. We can define curriculum and theorize about motivation, but we cannot promote perception by command. Only by specific, concrete examples can we encourage teachers to learn to see their pupils, not their subject matter.

I am slowly starting to rediscover some of the vision which I had when we first began homeschooling. It has a great deal -- a very great deal -- to do with my relationships with my children and how learning itself is (or should be) an outgrowth of those relationships. I really believe that that is what we need to focus on and that that is what we have lost, and this passage was like a light in the darkness for me.

So Many Thoughts, So Little Time

I am, as usual, in a mad rush to do a zillion things, but I just had to stop in here and at the very least type a little bit of what's on my mind this morning. I hope I'll be able to stop back later and expound on it. But for now, here's the gist of it: Life is sacred. It is sacred because it is a gift from God. Rather than fearing it and treating it as the enemy of the planet, we should revere it because of where it comes from and Who alone creates it.

Wounded By School, by Kristen Olson

http://www.kirstenolson.org/wounded.php


During one of those random Web searches, I stumbled upon the name of this book (published within the past year), and now I can't wait to read it. It's called Wounded By School; the author has also written another book called Schools As Colonizers. an anthology of writings from names many homeschoolers will recognize: John Holt, Ivan Illich, etc.

Okay, I get excited by less-than-mainstream stuff like this, but tbis particular author (Kirsten Olson) comes from an unlikely source: the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

There are almost as many reasons to homeschool as there are homeschoolers, but one reason that I think gets less attention than the others is the harmful effect -- whether physical, psychological, or emotional -- that school can have on a child. No, it doesn't happen to every child; and for those to whom it does, removal from school is not always necessary. But spare me the inevitable cry of how such wounding "prepares kids for the real world!" That's nothing more than an excuse for doing nothing in the face of abuse.