Why Do We Scrutinize Parents?

"Oh, you must be a parent from the generation that lets their kids ride the subway alone?"  This is, of course, a reference to Lenore Skenazy, an advocate of free range parenting.  I responded "No, but I am of the generation that lets her kids stand at a bus stop while I am 30 feet away looking to see if the bus is coming."  It was probably more like 50 feet, but I was completely in eye shot of them.  We were at Elmwood and Virginia where there is quite a curve in Elmwood Avenue and you can't see even the previous stop.  I suspect there was a bit more to it.  We had just finished watching the pride parade and she was one of two people I saw with a Bible.  We had just come from church ourselves, but as Episcopalians we embrace gays.  We are reading the Bible cover to cover right now, but we wouldn't bring it to the pride parade.  The people who do tend to be sort of protesting.  They completely miss that Jesus is for everyone, particularly the marginalized.  I imagine she disapproved of taking the kids to the parade.  Regardless, she felt totally comfortable providing me with her opinion on my parenting.  She even seemed to want me to thank her and praise her for being concerned.

She isn't the only one.  A couple of weeks ago, we were riding the bus and a person was having a very loud cell phone conversation.  First, he was discussing his need to lose weight in some detail with the other person.  He did appear to be about 350 pounds which I would ordinarily consider none of my business.  He then went on to talk about a boy on the bus in pink sandals and purple sunglasses and how his mother wouldn't sit with him and that some people don't know how to parent.  This was at the same volume as the weight loss discussion.  Clearly, this was about Thomas and I, who was sitting next to Carmella at the time (often we get on and it is full enough we each sit separately) once two seats together became available.  I couldn't help it, when we were about to get off the bus, I said "Now that we all know all about your weight loss situation, I hope it goes as well as my parenting!"  He claimed he didn't know what I was talking about.

Are you seeing a theme?  The same day as the pride parade, I was having a discussion with a few others about the issues facing the school district.  These are very good, smart, and well intentioned people, some of the best I know.  We all agreed on the level of complexity and regulation of the modern education system.  I said that I thought ending compulsory schooling and turning the money used over to the parents is the best thing.  They could either homeschool or put their child in an unregulated school that met their needs.  These very good people told me that parents would just pocket the money and not teach their kids and that child labor would result.  Aside from the idea that I would argue school is child labor, why do we assume parents would not want what is best for their children?  The funny thing is that, of anyone, I have probably lost the most faith in our culture.  I just finished reading, and loved The Twilight of American Culture.  When instances occur where I don't believe parents want what is best, I can get comfortable that it is OK for them to be susceptible to their own parent's foibles in preparing their children.  While we hope for good parents all the time and want them to be just like us, except for the most extreme situations, our intervention the natural parent-child relationship is inappropriate.  On the other hand, if we are going to trump parental rights with compulsory schooling, there should be no room for any result other than better than what the parent would have done.  You can see that most school districts, particularly troubled ones, are not doing a better job than parents who homeschool or even others if they tried.  Therefore, compulsory schooling is inappropriate.  When you examine it in the context of natural rights rather than what is recently customary, it is easier to come to a conclusion that is not the conventional.

The theme seems to me that we are suspicious of any parenting choice other than the one we would make.  We criticize and then pat ourselves on the back for being concerned.  Amazingly, institutions, like homework, are completely unchecked.  Yes, there is debate about the volume sometimes, but not a full examination.  "It's worth asking not only whether there are good reasons to support the nearly universal practice of assigning homework, by why that practice is so often taken for granted - even by the vast numbers of parents and teachers who are troubled by its impact on children.  The mystery deepens in light of the fact that widespread assumptions about the benefits of homework...aren't substantiated by the available evidence."  (Kohn, Alfie, The Homework Myth , page 3)  Of course, there is little to no criticism of homework, but watch the dirty looks I get for reprimanding one of my kids for forgetting their bus pass.  It is OK to teach responsibility artificially with homework, but not something real like keeping track of a bus pass.  Am I guilty too?  Sort of and yes.  Noticing such inconsistencies, I am probably way more critical in my own mind (or quietly to friends) than most people, but I rarely say anything to specific parents.  On the other hand, our very different lifestyle is a total indictment of other parents.  Clearly I have chosen differently because I think the mainstream is wrong.  No wishy washy "Homeschool isn't for everyone" nicey nice statements from me.

Why is there so much inconsistency as well as scrutiny of parents in our culture?  I think it goes back to school.  In school we are trained to be susceptible to praise as well as punishment (Alfie Kohn talks about this too and including its zapping of the desire to learn).  I think we are looking for praise.  We want to be the hero that called CPS when we saw the kids walking alone down the street to the park.  We secretly hope we have saved them from some abusive of neglectful parent so those around us or even the media will tell us how wonderful we are, the same way we were told, in school, how wonderful we were for having all the homework.  We want to hold our heads up as the good people and get recognized for it as if "A+"s and gold stars were for grown-ups too.  Essentially, our way of schooling has created this narcissistic sort of scrutiny. 

How to deal with it?  I am not sure except try to have clever responses lined up to call people out on it.  What do you think?

Hollywood's "Left Wing" Agenda (spoiler if you are going to see Night at the Museum 3)

I am terribly fascinated by all the hype that the there is a left bias in Hollywood and the main stream media.  Perhaps, I have spent too much time reading Manufacturing Consent, but it seems to me that there is a corporate agenda at work which is more right than left.

We almost never go to the movies, choosing more often to watch older movies and shows (particularly British mystery shows as they are more cerebral and less sensational) once they have gotten to some of the streaming services, but some extended family members wanted to go.  It had been so long that I had forgotten why I don't like going, but then the full ten minutes of commercials happened.  They were loud and very conformist in the sense that they encouraged you to go to more movies presumably so you would be able to talk about them with your friends and fit in.  They also seemed over the top in terms of the shock and action value presumably so you think you deserve more excitement than your boring life and strive to consume more.

After the ten minutes, it was safe right?  Not exactly.  I love that the security guard main character has such a magical life.  To me it is synonymous with the rich inner life of security guards I know fueled by the freedom often to read on the job and discuss important topics with peers  (they need to be watchful, but aren't busy the way many jobs are).  Even with the extraordinary magic and the responsibility that went with it, the writers told us his life was less than par because he didn't have a job requiring college.  There was the whole conflict with the son over college as well as the awful ending where his next step was to get a degree and become a teacher.  Do the writers know how many degreed, in-debt and unemployed teachers there are in Buffalo that end up working as aides or nannies if they are lucky.

The message is clear and multifaceted.  You are only worth something if you have the capacity to consume at high levels.  You aren't a real human adult without a degree is another message even though it often comes with high debt loads and doesn't guarantee a better job.  It is permitted nowadays and expected to look down on those in certain kinds of professions despite the major structural problems with the huge disparity of wealth in the U.S.  One's whole value is determined in one's ability to please those that hire people.  This wouldn't be unfair if all those that worked hard received just income and opportunity as occurred more often fifty or sixty years ago.  The message is you can control what happens to you and that the system is fair and that it is one's own fault if you don't make it.  Don't question the corporate system, it is fair!!!

My husband's job as a security guard allows him much freedom in terms of how his mental time is occupied and the low levels of stress allow him to concentrate on our family life more fully as well as managing our home which is partially a business as it includes a rental unit.  Still, there are people in our lives that look down on us for our simple life despite its necessity for my health and its better situation for our kids.  These same people speak highly of others who have high level fancy careers despite, in some cases, having situations that are fundamentally complicated by the need for more income to consume more.  How come no one looks down on the two high earners with their kids in daycare or with a nanny?  Once you have one high earner, is it fair to the kids to leave them most of the day to chase more money even if one "loves" their job or can "do more" for them.  I am not sure I, myself, think it is wrong, but it is irritating that fewer people question it than the number of people who look down on security guards (or wait staff, or cashiers, or you get the idea).

I wish people would understand that the rich people are laughing all the way to the bank and that it isn't the poor people who are to blame.  The more people away from home in the workforce the more wages get bid down.  It is supply and demand.  Since there is only so much paid work out there, few people question the morality of working when you don't need to just to be socially acceptable, rather news and movies have convinced most of us that it is those poor people who aren't working hard enough are the problem rather than look up and see how much has been hoarded outside our reach.  It is incredibly stupid when the bottom 90% of us families only have 25% of the wealth.  Hollywood is telling us to better ourselves to compete like heck for that 25% and not to look up at the top 10% percent of people.  We don't have to try communism, there are many mechanisms that can force our form of capitalism to reward hard work with more resources without giving some people so many that the rest of the people worry about the basics.

I am not sure I am going to go to another movie theater for a while.  I just don't need Hollywood to tell me our lives aren't good enough!

The Freedom to Take on Something Bigger

My son's joining the training choir at St. Paul's Cathedral caused me to reflect on the great gift of flexibility that homeschooling provides.  As kids progress in the choir program (an excellent free music education), the commitment can grow from one day a week to several.  Several days a week on one activity is a significant commitment that I am not sure I could have done it when I was a child.

The transition from kindergarten to first grade was horrific for me.  It wasn't the change in the work even though the academics got quite a bit more difficult between the two years, but the big change in schedule.  Kindergarten was was only half-day.  We had a focused three hours of school, reading groups and all.  Then we went home to have lunch and free time.  First grade was the first year of full day school.  Despite being six and a half and having plenty of recess time, I remember crying every afternoon for two weeks at the beginning of the year.  This also happened for one week at the beginning of second grade too.  I don't remember the details as much as would be helpful, but I know that my mother explained that I had to go to school no matter what.  After that, I am pretty sure I did my best to hide the crying as much as I could since I was the compliant type.

I know now from everything I have read on homeschooling why this happened.  It isn't natural to expect kids under 7 or 8 to be away from their parents for such long periods of time, 7 or 8 hours if you include the bus ride.  Now it is worse, of course, since kids go to full-day pre-k even younger and there is less recess time.  Many kids are more resilient than I was and can handle it better than I did, but that shouldn't justify the thinking that such things are normal or healthy.  I am not sure that it is right to blame my mother personally.  Homeschooling was very remote during the 1980s.  I am not sure that the option was even known to her.  If she had known about it, the pressure of doing exactly what she and my grandfather had done may have overridden her decision anyway, nevermind the possible griping by extended family members.  Certainly before the internet, resources weren't as readily available either.  Of course I didn't hate school, just the full day part.  Going half day, even year round probably would have been fine for me.

This difficult adjustment, however, limited the activities I got involved in.  I remember trying to go to brownies in first grade and hating it.  I think it was mainly that it extended the day too much after the long school day.  My mother tried to come with me, but it just didn't work out.  I also didn't like the arts and crafts focus.  One of my issues with first grade was also that you couldn't just circle answers on worksheets, but had to spend the time coloring.  The work was just drawn out.  In my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn't necessary to be cooped up for such a long day and I knew it was the source of my misery.

For now, T's involvement in the training choir is only one day, but if it grows, he will have the free time and low stress to be able to tackle it.  It won't be piled on an overscheduled week.  This is good, because he has such an interest in singing.  He walks down the streets of Buffalo singing all the time.  He will really get a chance to do what he loves. I think that the overall social influence will be good too.  The boys in the program, all of which are older than T, went out of their way to welcome him and I overheard them saying that they want to set a good example for the younger kids.  I was impressed by this conscious effort from 8 and 9 year old boys.  The best part was when he came out with a big smile on his face saying that he couldn't wait for next week.

His activities don't need to be limited to choir.  Since academics take up only about an hour and half a day for T, he has plenty of time left for something else if he likes, maybe a sport or dance.  This experience this week reinforces that homeschooling is such a good choice for opening up opportunities.  Have you had a similar experience?  Are your kids able to take on more because they aren't in school?

The First Day of School and Other Missed Milestones

Until my reunion, I checked facebook weekly at most.  It just feels overwhelming.  I am not entirely sure why, but I usually blame it on my fibro since my mother also finds it overwhelming.  However, since I have been spending more time on it, I can't help but notice all the "First Day of School" pictures that people put up.  Should I put up a picture of my kids with a caption "First Day of Not Going to School" or some other like post?  It is very tempting, I can tell you.

Of course what kind of picture would capture the homeschooling spirit the most?  A picture of C sleeping in with Dad after he did a late shift?  The kids playing a board game with Dad in the middle of the day before he heads off to work?  A picture from a day trip (more like half a day, I didn't feel up to a whole day) we took to nature trails earlier in the week?  T reading?  The kids working on their lessons on the computer?  A picture from our play date yesterday?  A picture of us getting on the NFTA bus?  A picture of them with one of their dolls with a homemade paper dress?  What about weighing bulk items to buy at the Lexington Co-op?  Cooking?  Caring for the worm farm?  I suppose I will need to analyze this carefully since there are so many choices.  How about this one - sending Dad off to work while we head out to the playground?

Am I a bad person to say that I find the whole "first day of school" and "back to school" somewhat cheesy, for lack of a better way to put it?  It seems like such a manufactured milestone.  Ending a school year presumably means accomplishing something, but at the beginning of the school year kids haven't done anything yet.  If parents were really interested in learning wouldn't they be more excited about their kid learning to read (or swim or paint or sing) than turning a certain age by a certain deadline to be included in a school class?  Is some of the frenzy that everyone does it and that you have to shop for it?  After all, Americans love comparing themselves to other people and shopping is part of it.  I guess this is it, I am just disturbed by the materialism and pressure to be like everyone else, rather than the pride of other parents.

Am I depriving my kids of the attention that comes with these sorts of milestones?  T didn't have a kindergarten graduation, just a trip out for dessert just the four of us (it was last December, not even when graduations normally are).  Certainly, the grandparents would have gotten excited about a graduation.  I suppose that I could have bragged about it online or at the playground or at church.  How would it have been received if I showed up at church in December and told my friends that T finished kindergarten?  I am not sure it would have been the same.  Regardless, I see it more as he completed the skills that are considered kindergarten in conventional school since my research has yielded the fact that the sequence is somewhat arbitrary.  Also, the completion was just the core curriculum we use, but not the things that the kids come up with that are of interest.  Can I really put a grade level on those things?  The paper Barbie dress, the handmade paper skirt?  The perfect freehand drawing of a princess?  Baking?  Making patterns with coins?  Totaling up scores for board games using different methods?  Learning to ride the NFTA bus?  I think you get the point.

Am I doing my kids a favor by focusing more on the learning than the milestones?  It feels like I am.  Since I was so compliant about school and the whole work-hard-and-get-ahead, I always felt like I was living for the next school break, year completion, or graduation.  There was too much pressure to savor the learning.  I don't recall nurturing my outside interests all that well either.  Research supports that focusing on the learning is better.  If you read anything by Alfie Kohn, you will find this out too.  Focusing on reward or punishment always takes away from the intrinsic value of the learning.

This homeschool year (if you want to call it that, since we don't take summers off) I want to do more unschooling.  I am afraid to give up a structured curriculum completely, but we are going to do less of it.  Time4Learning is already pretty efficient, but we are going to, where appropriate, test first and only do the areas that we don't know to free up time for whatever the kids want to do or read.  We are going to read as many of the classic books as we can without overwhelming the kids.  My health permitting, we are going to do more outings and field trips and play dates.

What about you?  What are you going to do this "homeschool year"?  What do you think about "back to school"?  Am I the only one?

Reunions and My Decision to Homeschool: A Reflection

We are coming upon the 20th reunion of my 8th grade class from St. Joan of Arc School in Chicopee, MA.  Since we were a tight small group of under 30 students, it is a reunion I am going to make every effort to make.  Until facebook, I fell out of touch with everyone, partly because I moved to Buffalo in 1997, but mainly because I was the only one from the group who went to my high school.  Recently, I have been excitedly checking my facebook for info on the reunion.  I go on almost daily, up from about weekly.

One of the funny things is that there was talk of who the class couple was.  Despite seeming to be nominated, I don't have much of an opinion on it.  However, I keep getting the funny feeling that if there is a "most changed" or something of that nature, I may be sure to win.

I wouldn't win at first glance, since other than being quite grey on top, I actually look quite a bit like I did twenty years ago.  I don't have too many wrinkles and I am within 15 pounds of my graduation weight.  Of course, in between I was 40 pounds heavier than now, but I had to lose weight to help my sleep to help my fibromyalgia.  Of course, depending on the kind of fibro day I am having at the reunion, I may be hobbling or waddling around especially after the long car trip out there.  We'll have to see about that.  The best part for everyone though will be when I open my mouth and they hear the slight but distinctive western New York accent I acquired.

But what about the more substantive changes?  Is anyone expecting a home schooling, bus riding, urban, Episcopalian, stay at home Mom with no car (I'll rent one to go there), no yard, no makeup and a home hair cut to boot.  Heck, I have a worm farm composter in my kitchen and rarely go to grocery stores.  I get my food from a CSA and a neighborhood food co-op.

I feel like there may be some surprised people whether they say it or not.  When I was at St. Joan of Arc and high school - undergrad too - I was a really hard worker and good at school.  I did every bit of homework, worked ahead, thought about school all the time, felt stressed about it, only read for pleasure during the summer, and had little other interests.  I wouldn't say I was smart for two reasons.  I had to work hard for my grades and I am pretty sure now that I only had (or only developed) the intelligences recognized in school.  School wasn't the only institution I was all about.  I was a Roman Catholic who never thought I would ever be anything else.  My Catholic school teacher mother would never have let me miss church.  I had visions of working super hard in Catholic high school and going to college with the best scholarship I could get.  While I may not have expressed it at the time, I bought into the importance and order of the institutions in my life.  I was going to get a good job, be thoroughly devoted to it, and live the same life as my parents.  I'd live in a similar neighborhood and drive a similar car and have a similar house and go to a similar church even if in a different region of the country.

In some ways, I didn't disappoint.  I graduated high in my high school class, got a full scholarship to college, got a good job, became a CPA, and went to graduate school part-time while I worked.  I kept getting better and better jobs.  My last job involved overseeing 3 departments at a large school district.  These were pretty good accomplishments, if I may say so myself.

As I went along, I became tired, physically and mentally.  Some if it was the fibromyalgia starting slowly and some of it was lack of satisfaction.  Regardless, I gradually started to question the conventional life and institutions to which I had been devoted.  I first realized that I wasn't living my faith, but punching the metaphorical church time clock.  I became Episcopalian because it felt more like who I am.  I got my traditional church service with women priests and openness to views on issues that I had.  Next, I got tired of the mindless (despite NPR), waste of time, environmentally horrifying commute to my cozy condo in one of the two cars we had.  As soon as I got it worked out we moved into the city in walking distance to my new job at the time.  We immediately shed a car and actually started participating in things since we were closer to them again.  Then Tom and I switched places.  I stayed home with the kids to care for my health and he went back to work.  I eventually found out I had fibromyalgia (shed the last car at the same time), something my mother didn't get until she was 50, 20 years later than I got it.  Obviously, the genetics weren't in my favor, but without an traumatic triggering event, I can only surmise that it is the result of the pressure I put on myself to comply and be good at school and career.

This combination of realizing that whole schooling to career to consumption lifestyle was unfulfilling and realizing that all that hard working couldn't safeguard against (and maybe even caused) the onset of a lifelong chronic illness led me to researching homeschooling for my own kids.  I also saw that despite being sold on school and college, that my husband with a masters degree was in and out of low wage collections jobs all the time.  Fortunately, now he is a security guard which is more stable (and he loves it), but is still not in line with what we were told growing up about getting a good education.  With all this, I wanted my kids to have a childhood rather than be cooped up 7 hours a day plus several hours of homework.  I want them to explore all their intelligence types.  I wanted them to have interests other than traditional academics.  At home, academics can be handled in a fraction of the time and at one's own pace leaving time for bigger multifaceted project experiences.  Certainly I put pressure on myself when I was young, but conventional school encourages and rewards this kind of compliance.  It is also a mission with enough flexibility for me now that it looks like I won't be returning to the career I had.

So what am I saying about St. Joan of Arc if I am homeschooling my own kids?  Nothing against it.  If someone is going to sent their child to conventional school, I know of no better place.  I enjoyed great classmates and the best teachers you can find.  Without the great people, I wouldn't be the person I am today.  I received an education from caring people with great values.  I just reject the full time job school is for kids, especially now 20 years later (no more half day kindergarten and pre-k a year earlier). Homeschooling just feels like the right thing to do.  The funny thing is that my kids are healthier than I was as a kid, happier, and further ahead than I was academically to boot.  The other funny thing is that I don't spend any more time on hard core academics than my friends do just getting their kids ready for school and helping with homework.

If you are a homeschool parent, are people from your past surprised?  Are you even a little surprised at yourself?

Old Fashioned Travel for an Old Fashioned Education

If you have been reading my companion blog, you know that on July 6, 2012 we took an unusual trip with the help of the grandparents.  Driving from Buffalo to Chicopee, MA is nothing new for our family, especially me.  I have been making the trip regularly since 1997 when I moved to Buffalo.  We've always taken the NYS Thruway with the most choice being where to stop, like the supply of fast food was a big variety, and whether to stay on the thruway or stay on Interstate 90 when with goes around Albany.  With the kids the trip takes around 7 hours, pretty efficient like most modern travel.  Modern travel with its well placed conveniences and efficiency is centered very much around getting where you are going, and not about the trip.  Interstate highways have taken motorists off of the traditional US highways where people actually work and live.  Worse is the way people fly around place to place without even having to think about the people they pass by or the real distance they are going.

For a long time, I thought about how interesting it would be to travel on the old US highways across the country, like US 20, or up a coast, like US 1.   It reminds me of old movies from the 1930s and 1940s before the interstate system.  It was a time where, if you drove somewhere, you couldn't help but go slower and experience the places you passed through.   I can't see a situation where we will be able to do the whole thing at once, but I thought we may get to do it in increments.  We started on July 6, 2012 by attempting to pick up US 20 as soon as we could outside of Buffalo and take it to Springfield, MA.  Because we ran out of time we picked up the NYS Thruway just outside of Albany.  While we decided to go at the last minute and I didn't have time to review Carschooling, the kids brought maps and followed some of the town names.

The trip was a great time even though it wasn't exactly the way I expected.  First of all, I thought the kids would be into seeing all the farms as we passed, but after the first few, the fascination wore off a bit.  Despite being city kids, I suppose seeing cows from the car is only so interesting.  We did, however, get to stop at lakes, farms, and dairy stands that we hadn't seen before despite frequently driving within a few miles of them.  Here are the highlights:

This kind of travel is like homeschool, where being able to take your time and ignore the conventional ways gives your a more full experience.  I don't remember how many times I have driven from Buffalo to Chicopee, but we won't forget this trip with all the sights and fun stops on the way.

Urban Homeschooling: More Traditional Socialization and Weathering Tough Times

WARNING: this may be considered radical thinking by some! I wrote a couple of months ago thinking I would rework it and post it at some point.  Since Dad is out of work again, it seems like a good time to post. 

This past Easter, since it was just the four of us, I decided to make spaghetti.  At first I guilted myself for not putting the effort into a ham or other traditional meal.  For my parents and grandparents, spaghetti is not what you eat on Easter.  I remembered many years of Easters with ham or some other meat-potato-vegetable type food.  Then I thought about my great-grandparents.  Half of mine and half of my husband’s likely ate spaghetti on at least some Easters.  At that point, I stopped feeling guilty.  By being less traditional we were being more traditional.

For several weeks after that, I contemplated that same concept with our home schooling and urban lifestyle.  Our grandparents pioneered suburban living as they became adults and our parents perfected it.  As generation X kids we had nice childhoods of school and church activities, playing in the yard and, of course, riding everywhere in the comfort of a car.  Certainly we had friends and it was a nice childhood, but I don’t remember being particularly connected to neighbors, or the familiar faces at the library, the bank, or the grocery store.  We didn’t even have that much time to enjoy the yard (except for summer) because of the focus on being outside the home at school and work.  School friends eventually became acquaintances or ended up living far away.

What was tradition for us, was a dramatic departure from the life most of my great-grandparents lived.  They lived in small cities either in two family homes with relatives or with their place of business.  While they didn’t home school, they were in walking distance from the school and my grandparents had the time to come home for lunch if they wanted.  Church and local businesses with people they knew were close by.  My great-aunt talks about going down to the local small grocery to get items and my great-grandfather would settle the account weekly on pay day.  If they weren’t friends with everyone in the neighborhood, they certainly knew everyone by face at the very least.  It wasn’t an easy life, of course.  It was a tremendous amount of work and there were hardships in the forms of illness and increased mortality, but the avoidable stresses created by modern life didn’t exist.  My great-grandmothers did the large amount of work it took to run a house with fewer conveniences, but never worried about day care, if the amount of homework was too great, if they followed the right parenting advice or if their commutes were too long.  If they wanted to pop out to the store, they yelled up the stairs to ask auntie to keep an eye on the kids.  My great-grandfathers worked close by, not wasting time on long commutes and sometimes even making it home for lunch.  They didn’t have much, but they also didn’t take on a lot of debt or manufactured stress either.  There was a simplicity and a connectedness.

Expectations for their kids were different too.  Certainly they were expected to be good citizens and work hard as they grew up, but they weren’t necessary expected to achieve the resource intensive independence of moving away from the family that later became the norm.  It was OK to stay in the home if there was room or move to the other apartment in the same house.  This is very different from the way we grew up.  My parents had specific ideas in mind about my leaving home.  My husband made a hasty decision on a part-time graduate school program (while working) to avoid being required to leave home before he could afford it.  Thank goodness he didn’t go into debt for the degree that turned out to not be much help in the job market.

It is about 80 years after my great-grandparents were our age now and we are moving back toward their lifestyles and away from the ones of our childhood.  For reasons that are a combination of conscious choice, health issues, and economic issues, we live in a thriving urban neighborhood so we can ride the bus, and walk to stores, the bank, playgrounds, and the library.  We live in a two family home with no back yard, no cable, home hair cuts, and mostly home cooked meals.  While we don’t necessarily have the whole neighborhood over for a visit, we know a significant number of people in the neighborhood by name or face.  My kids regularly see and talk to the same kids at the playground, tellers at the bank, librarians at our local branch, and cashiers at the local food co-op.  When I popped into the bank early one morning without the kids, the tellers all asked where the kids were (Dad was home that morning) and were relieved to hear that I was getting a new tenant rather than being paid the rent in installments often times.  Some of the cashiers at our co-op ask about our home school activities that day and how I am feeling and if switching to organic has helped with my fibro.  The librarians are always talking to the kids about their homeschool days and telling them about upcoming library activities.  We even say a polite hello to the street guy who sells hand-made jewelry.  It isn’t exactly the lifestyle of my great-grandparents, but it is as close as is feasible given modern life.

While not as bold as moving across an ocean for a new life, we are demanding a new life for our kids as urban homeschoolers.  We have decided on a lifestyle of learning, conservation, and socialization in our urban environment rather than the stresses of conventional schooling.  Like our Easter, we are living a more traditional life by being less traditional.  Our kids learn from reading, games, and hands-on activities as well as being out in the world in our city neighborhood (with a small amount of structured curriculum).  We also take the bus to the museums and attractions Buffalo has to offer, a pretty large number given the size of our city.

Our expectations for their futures are different too.  College and resource intensive independence at any cost are not what we have in mind.  Certainly, debt will be out of the question since one never knows what will happen with one’s health or place in the job market.  We wouldn’t be surviving with our current problems if we had student loans.  Obviously, we expect some sort of productivity and societal contribution from our kids which will hopefully be natural with the community values we are instilling.  However, there are more options than high stress careers.   There are many types of work, businesses to start, staying at home with kids, and volunteering.  We fully accept the possibility of their remaining home or moving to the upstairs apartment and sharing the lower expenses of a house that will be paid off by then.  With lower expenses, they probably have a better chance of going to college if they choose because they will more likely be able to pay for it as they go even if part-time.  They will have a better chance to stay home or have their spouse stay home with kids since there won’t be the pressure of high expenses.  Rather than the traditional milestones in life, there will be life-long learning and thoughtful family centered choices.  Of course, if they want to pursue what is now the traditional resource intensive life, they are free to, but at least not expected to. 

Of course, if it is the latter they choose, we won’t be much help.  It just won’t be possible for us.  While our parents generously made sure we had at least an undergraduate education (we paid our own graduate school as we worked and went part-time), all we will be able to provide our kids are more choices in the way of less stress, less pressure, and perhaps more of a chance to find their true selves.  I think many generation Xers and Yers are feeling a pull this direction for many similar reasons.  The best thing to do is to embrace these more sustainable and family-centered ways to benefit their family’s health and life.

Speaking of health - what is more of a physical education: team sport skills or establishing a true active lifestyle of moving by walking and working?  Given the less modern healthcare 80 years ago, my great-grandparents lived relatively long lives because of the healthier food and more active life including less reliance on the door to door transportation of a car.  My kids seem much healthier for this type of lifestyle than many supposedly sports involved kids I see.  Just another aspect of urban home schooling to think about!

We believe that life can be more family-centered and less stressful which is becoming more important in light of economic and educational trends today.  I hope you continue to check in with us!

Urban Homeschooling: A time for activism?

In light of some of the very recent developments regarding Buffalo Public Schools, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the recent posts at City Kids Homeschooling regarding Kerry McDonald's interview with Huffington Post.  Kerry McDonald is a very eloquent and informative advocate for urban homeschooling.  Overall, I am extremely pleased that articles are being done on the topic by the media and that she is a resource.  When her first post on it hit, I laughed at myself and told my husband that it is better that she was interviewed than me since I would not have been so diplomatic.  Apparently since then, as per her second post on the topic, some people feel she was too diplomatic.  I have mixed feelings on this.

When it comes to individuals, diplomacy is more than warranted.  With the current societal structure, some people simply can't homeschool.  There are too many pressures many of which are outside of one's control.  Further, no matter how well you know someone and think you know what options they have, it is often impossible to know what their pressures are.  It would be wrong to look at an individual and judge them for not homeschooling.  This happens to me all the time with my fibromyalgia since it often limits my activities.  People judge me all the time about what they think is really wrong with me or what they think I should be able to do.  When I was first getting it, many thought I was just lazy or distracted by my young children or had depression or whatever.  It is amazing the ideas that some people have about other people about all kinds of things.

When it comes to looking at society and education as a whole, however, I am much less diplomatic and more cynical about the choices that people make.  First off, homeschooling has been legal for quite a while now and data has been accumulated on its effectiveness.  The fact that 5% or less of students are home educated despite the compelling evidence tells me that parents generally care too much about being like everyone else to even research it.  They either don't want to be thought of as different or care too much about what the second family income can buy.  For many, it is a lack of confidence after being told that only professionals should educate.  However, even the confidence issue could be remedied by reading a few books on homeschooling.  After all, what could be more important than the right educational choice for your kids!  I know that this sounds harsh, but with the current educational crisis, we need to be more willing to try dramatically different approaches, especially homeschooling.

This week in Buffalo, the headline is Parents Vote To Recommend Pulling Students Out of School .  The state education department wants teacher evaluation to include all students, the teachers don't want to be held responsible for the educational results of chronically absent students, and the District can't afford to lose any money needing the teachers to agree to the new evaluation measures.  Parents are naturally appalled by the idea that over $9 million will be taken away instead of used to educate their children.  The problem here is that no one is wrong.  The state education department needs to be interested in all students and not just some students.  The teachers can't teach students who are chronically absent.  The District can't run smoothly when resources are being taken from the schools and students who most need it.  Parents who care about their kids' education have a right to expect the District to obtain all funding to which it is entitled and that if they turn their kids over to professionals on nearly a full-time basis that results will be good.

With all parties being right and the students losing out anyway, it is time to rethink whether the conventional schooling model with its competing interests can work.  Conventional public education has been around long enough with mediocre results that it has been given enough of a chance.  It isn't the fault of teachers, administrators or parents, the model just isn't that great.  Homeschooling could be the answer.  For the chronically absent students, it probably is the answer.  A few parents may be irresponsible, but my guess is that most families of chronically absent students have some challenge in their lives that homeschooling would solve: student chronic illness, parent chronic illness, family members out of state or the country requiring extensive time away, or many other problems.  For the other students, why waste years in a situation that won't be fixed since in the current paradigm it almost can't be.

While I think urban homeschooling advocates could stand a little less diplomacy, I agree with Kerry McDonald that we can do a tremendous amount to help other families by showing the advantages of our homeschooling lifestyle.  She has one of the best urban homeschooling blogs.  I am adding a new blog to document our daily activities to give a real nuts and bolts look at our lifestyle.  These are valuable things to do.  I, like her, didn't seriously consider homeschooling until I had my own children.  I also have graduate degrees in education.  It is interesting that when the chips were down and we made decisions about our own kids we chose homeschooling.

On a personal note to those families who struggle with the current educational system particularly those who have trouble with attendance.  While some people can't homeschool, we almost have to homeschool.  It has been a solution for us.  With my fibromyalgia, it often takes me over an hour to get out of bed in the morning.  I am not sure I could always have T & C ready for a bus.  Further, a great homework burden is placed on parents.  There is no way I could guarantee that my kids homework would be done since I am often quite tired by 3 pm.  My days vary a great deal and I never know exactly how I am going to feel.  With homeschooling, my kids get me at my best in the middle part of the day.  While they work on lessons, I can do a few household chores and then we get our other activities, outings and errands done before I get tired.  If we do a longer day out, we can (sleep in and) follow it with a shorter day the next day.  We can spend time on lessons on the weekend if we want.  I am sure that for a great number of you out there with problems, homeschooling can be a solution too.

I hope policy makers are paying attention to what is happening.  A dramatic overhaul of education funding should be undertaken if results are so important.  School districts receive money to educate students whether the results are good or not.  Some money is taken away, of course, like the $9 million in question in Buffalo, but most of the District's budget will remain intact.  I am getting results in my homeschool and remain unfunded.  Is that fair?  For families that currently can't homeschool due to economics, funding may really make it an option.  Perhaps the future of public education should be large tax credits for families with school age children and some sort of online curriculum bank with tie ins to landmarks and museums.  There are many ways homeschooling could be set up to work for many more people.

Learning Spanish in Homeschool

While I seemed to excel in other subjects throughout my schooling, learning languages was difficult.  I learned a small amount of French in elementary school, Latin in high school, and Spanish in college.  Little if any of it stuck in those traditional environments.  My husband was a little more successful with Spanish, but not enough where he can claim to be bilingual and do better in the job market or anything.

We hope that with the extra flexibility of homeschooling that our kids can spend more time on Spanish while learning at their own pace.  Of course, even though we are trying to learn with them, it isn't the same as speaking to native speakers or even going to a well run class in Spanish.  At some appropriate point, we are going to need to find some sort of class or environment to help with this, but in the meantime, we are working on exposure to the language.

So far, until they can read and do a more sophisticated online course or go to a real class with native speakers (maybe in a couple of years), we play Spanish Bingo or have them watch Kids Love Spanish.  We have had them watch many different sets, but this seems to be the favorite.

Spanish is important for several reasons.  First of all, in an urban environment it is clearly an important language.  When we ride the bus, many of the signs are in English and Spanish indicating the prevalence of people speaking Spanish.  Also, the hispanic population is growing at a faster rate than other groups in the United States so that Spanish will continue to be of value in the job market.

That said, I am not sure the need to speak Spanish will proportionately boom even though it will be pretty important.  Hispanics are one of the newest immigrant groups and are likely in another generation or two to blend in more language wise.  Just as my great-grandparents spoke fluent Italian (Sicilian dialect with one great-grandmother refusing to learn English only going to Italian stores in her neighborhood), my Dad, just two generations later, doesn't speak any Italian.  Ironically, my sister now is learning it to travel to Italy where my brother-in-law has dual citizenship.  Funny how things end up.  Anyway, we are going to try to emphasize learning Spanish as much as we can.  Any suggestions would be helpful!

The Homework Lie, Modern Child Labor

At first, I wasn't going to read this book because we homeschool and don't deal with traditional homework:

 

However, since most of my childhood and teenage years were consumed by homework to the point that college was more of a break, I was drawn to it.  The book is well written and hard to put down, even though it is a research type book.  It pretty successfully debunks the mainstream ideas about homework showing that there really are not compelling studies for it.  Often times, the researchers defaulted back to the myths despite no research evidence.

It was hard not to get angry about all the wasted time in my life on homework.  According to the book, I was likely to be just as successful without it and probably healthier and less stressed since I would have had more free time and more sleep.  It is scary that no one challenged it including myself.  I suppose I could have gotten lazier like some of my peers and not been so good about it, but since it was assigned, being the conformist that I was, felt inclined to push myself.  I kept pushing until I completed graduate school and further into my career until, due to health, I was forced to slow down.  Crash!  Homework can't be blamed completely.  My mother has similar health issues so there seems to be some genetic predisposition.  Still, hers set it at about age 50 and mine by age 30.  She had a lot of homework too, from the same catholic schools, but not as many of the career and graduate school stresses in her twenties, not getting her masters degree until her forties.  Perhaps after all those years of stress, when we heaped full-time work and graduate school onto them, it got to the tipping point with the genetics.  Who knows? But worth contemplating when I think about my own daughter, C.

Should I blame my parents?  In the 1980s, there was not anywhere near as much literature challenging traditional school so I can be more sympathetic to going with the flow back then than would probably be appropriate now.  Also, even though homeschooling was legal, without the internet, resources were quite scarce more challenging to come by.  Given this extremely high likelihood of going with the traditional school grain, my parents were far better than most.  While most parents kept their money for new cars and vacations, my parents sent me to the best catholic schools money could buy in our area.  When most parents thought education was so unimportant that they pulled kids out of school to go to Disney, mine had a whole family schedule: daily, weekly, and yearly that put the focus on school.  Education was the top priority even though it was manifested in the misguided idea that everything about school was good for us.

Now that I am grown up with my own kids, like my parents, education will still be important to the point that I am outside of the mainstream in homeschooling despite the still significant peer pressure to use conventional schools.  "School", however, will not be the priority.  Conventional school takes too much time from the family robbing it of the true education, health, emotional, and spiritual needs.  While I have said before that our homeschooling doesn't have anything to do with religion, we do have more time to read the Bible and make it to Church more consistently because we homeschool.  My kids can sleep when they need to get sick less than their peers despite lots of exposure to germs in parks, libraries, museums, and buses.  Instead of my husband struggling to help them with "homework" when he gets home, he has the joy of playing educational board games with T & C and reading with them, low stress family time.

While I enjoyed the book, it may be more important to recommend it to our traditional school parent peers!  Maybe it will at least get people to change the debate from how much to whether or not to assign homework or even use conventional school.

Homeschooling: Why Not?

Another great post at:

City Kids Homeschooling

Read it and my comment!

Skipping the Mall

I haven't been too big on malls generally because I hate shopping and the setting is pretty artificial compared to shopping in a thriving urban setting.  There have been times in my life though that I have gone to malls more often.  One time was when the kids were babies and we wanted to walk during the winter.  When I used to work, I went a little more often to shop too even though I still thought of myself as less of a mall person than many.  Recently, though, I have gone very rarely and hadn't been in several months until this last time.

The kids were long overdue for new sneakers and I exhausted the really close to home places.  Then our coffee maker broke.  Tom and I decided to take the kids shopping at the Boulevard Mall to buy the items we needed.  I am not stupid in that I know that certain stores have sexually suggestive ads in them.  When you walk by Victoria Secrets there are exploitive photos of women.  When you walk by Hollister, there are pictures of teenagers (thankfully at least female AND male) engaged in intensive kissing.  This time, however, it seemed worse.  The ads for some stores were in other parts of the mall, not just their own store.  Perhaps it had always been like this, but now that T & C are 5 and 4, I am noticing it more.

I am not big on shielding kids from everything because that just makes them more curious.  I am probably less apt to worry about hiding the occasional racy content in movies than many parents are.  I would rather them encounter things with us than not with us.  However, exposure to sex or nudity in art or even in movies (providing it isn't gratuitous) as part of the story is completely different from the blatant, in your face, way it is used to sell products.

That's when I was thankful for homeschooling.  It is bad enough that kids see these things when visiting the mall to buy near necessities, but what about the pressure in schools to go to the mall.  In schools there is a lot of pressure to fit it which includes hanging out at the mall or at least buying the right things to wear to fit it in.  If I am uncomfortable about C seeing pictures of women in underwear all over the mall on the rare occasions it happens, how bad is our society that many girls, who spend all week in school away from their parents, go more frequently to the mall (than C) and even feel pressured to do so?

Many would argue that parents should just restrict how often their kids go to the mall.  I am not sure that is the complete answer.  With the level of peer dependency so high, the peer pressure of not fitting in may cause more stress and thus more harm.  Not fitting in may seem like nothing to parents who know better, but to a kid who is couped up with peers full-time, it is everything.  Explain the many child/teen suicide stories on the news.  Eliminate the peer pressure with homeschooling.  That is the answer.

Being Thankful for the Bus

We are finally getting the snow, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for the bus, the NFTA Metro bus.  When we had a car, I remember how nail biting driving in the snow was.  We would avoid unecessary/semi-necessary trips out.  Work, school, and maybe church were it, not much else.  Today, however, I went out walked a few places and took the bus downtown to the central branch library of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library.  I didn't need to go to the library - I just wanted to - so I did without any stress and without risking my life (which we all should acknowledge we do when driving a car especially in the snow).

Public transportation is critical for homeschoolers even though most people in a smaller city, like Buffalo, don't think of going without a car.  First of all, using public transportation is a good skill for kids to learn including reading schedules and maps.  Second, there is an opportunity to learn about science and climate change.  Third, homeschoolers can more safely go on local field trips.  Fourth, there are all kinds of people on the bus and that builds general community awareness.  Fifth, and maybe the most important, is that the bus is less costly than a car.  This is critical because expense reduction is the best way for a parent to reduce their work hours to be able to homeschool.  Certainly it isn't easy in all cases, but would both parents need to work if the family went carless, got rid of cable, went to prepaid cell phones and Skype, did their own hair cuts, and ate out less (not hard if one parent is home to cook)?  Something to think about.

Our bus dependence is a little more complicated than just homeschooling, because there are other financial factors with which we are dealing.  That being said, strong public transportation may be the way to combat some of the lack of upward mobility going on these days.  Saving money on transportation may be one of the final sources of funds for the middle and working classes if the economy stays in its current state for the longer-term. If you live in Buffalo, please sign the petition to restore NFTA funding.  If you live in another small to middle size city, pay closer attention to public transportation in your area and support it.

Reinforcement of Materialism: Parents vs. Peers

Today was the kind of day in Buffalo that it was so cold that you wouldn’t venture out unless absolutely necessary. Except for the little bit of shoveling I needed to do, I (Liz) did as much housework as I could handle and listened to a lot of NPR in between our lessons today.

On “Tell Me More” on NPR today, there was a segment on when parents should give in to the desire of their kids to wear expensive brand names. Overall, the segment was very good. It talked about the way people are treated based on their clothing/appearance as well as the inverse relationship between altruism and wealth. Definitely things that are of interest to frugal homeschoolers especially those concerned about the character of their kids.

However, one thing was very interesting about the program. One of the experts made a statement that the parents are the main source of socialization in this area with peers as a close second. I don’t know about you, but it seems that kids are concerned about what they wear more because of their peer group, at least if they go to school. Certainly, parents’ priorities affect kids. If parents want the latest brands in order to fit it, it certainly sets an example; but it seems that the core amount of pressure in this area is peers. Is this an accurate observation? If not, are parents broadly deceiving themselves about this peer influence and similarly the effect of full-time peer immersion in schools?


http://www.npr.org/2012/01/03/144621365/when-to-put-the-brakes-on-brand-names-for-kids