I come from a big red barn,

From newlywed dreams of pigs and beef cattle

And maybe a few cats to keep the mice out of the corncrib.

I come from piles of warm, sleepy kittens,

From puffy tails, shaped like Christmas trees,

And insistent mewing than quiets only

When there is something interesting to chase.

I come from Varnes & Hoover Hardware,

From rows of shiny brass lanterns and sparkling Mason jars,

Where the cheerful Amish gentleman behind the counter

Is just as polite to the girl in the T-shirt that reads, in neon green,

“MY FEET HURT FROM KICKING SO MUCH ASS”

As he is to the woman in the pristinely pressed bonnet.

I come from grilled pork in barbeque,

From salads with sugar and mayonnaise

And overstuffed subs sold by the thousand

To pay a boy’s medical bills.

I come from toasted olive-nut sandwiches

At the Olympia Candy Kitchen,

Where patrons shake their heads and say airily,

“You just can’t find this anywhere else.”

I come from wide-open prairie skies,

Blue and hazy all day, inky black all night,

And in between, a glorious palette of golden-tinged pastels

That demands further investigation,

That demands you stop and gaze.

I come from an old, weathered pier, with flaking white paint,

From crawdads and leeches and seaweed

And the delicate balance between the hot skin of the water’s surface

And the cold, murky, uncertain depths below

That vulnerable toes would rather avoid.

I come from prizewinning eggplants and Merino sheep,

From the Big Pig sleeping on a pile of damp hay

And fluffy, trembling rabbits and feisty draft horses

And gowns with perfect, even seams

Made by tiny, deft fingers

Whose skills I can only dream of, three times older.

I come from lazy, roundabout conversations

About kids and baseball games;

From the pause between catching up and resuming a life lived apart,

From counting rail cars at a crossing,

So fully focused on the moment

That weightier matters slip away; instead,

128 (plus two locomotives) is all that ever mattered

in the whole wide world.

Live an interested life. I cannot put this in bold enough face. You are interpreting the world to your child. Is it fascinating for you? Are you engaged in creating, in thinking, in knowing people? Do you make music, take pictures, cook, teach yourself to sew, hike someplace new, learn to fish, eat at a new restaurant, take the back way into town? Are you reading about the history of mental illness, repairing furniture, learning to oil paint? *Show* your child how interesting the world is, and they will love to learn.

And that is what we’re after, isn’t it?

She was talking about homeschooling (she did it with five of her own) but I think it’s good advice for all parents, and godparents, and teachers too.  I’ve always thought it was just fine if students thought I was weird, as long as they saw I was passionate, because maybe it would inspire them to be more passionate toward the things they love to learn about.

Or, at the very least, they’d get a good laugh at my weirdness.  Which is good for both parties.

We marvel at the resilient child who survives the most toxic parents and home environment and goes on to a life of success. Yet the converse — the notion that some children might be the bad seeds of more or less decent parents — is hard to take.

It goes against the grain not just because it seems like such a grim and pessimistic judgment, but because it violates a prevailing social belief that people have a nearly limitless potential for change and self-improvement. After all, we are the culture of Baby Einstein, the video product that promised — and spectacularly failed — to make geniuses of all our infants.

Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.

Besides playing on my biggest fear about parenthood (what if your kids are just plain rotten?!) the article brought to mind another point made, much more lyrically and with a healthy dose of cynicism, by Jason Peters: Too many people are going to college, and college itself is ceasing to do much of anything but harm:

It may be—it is certainly so in some cases—that “higher education” is little more than a poorly wielded blunt sword that maybe strikes, but for the most part glances off, the heads and shoulders of young people, and I suppose this is lucky.

But not in an ideal college experience. There’s a risk to education, and education should be worth the risk, to say nothing of the cost. It should result in better and more thoughtful citizens of given places. It should culminate in full human beings who know better than to be enamored of abstractions. If I allow that education should be driven largely by content, I hasten to add that it should also be ethical, moral, and humane. It should be conducted with respect for both the future and the past, which is to say its should be conducted with measured suspicion of and admiration for both.

Young men and women, if they have been properly educated, should undergo a crisis of conscience analogous to physical growing pains.

By and large they don’t. They undergo a closing of conscience–and of consciousness. They are introduced only to the easiest of moralities—“tolerate difference.”

[. . .]

It is difficult to imagine handing over democracy to such people, but we really don’t have any other choice. We can’t exactly hand it over to the cows.

And of course there’s the other kind of student who will not suffer any crisis of conscience whatsoever. He is the student who has been raised by fundamentalists, either religious or secular. He arrives at college knowing he will be assaulted and he is determined from the start to withstand the assault. He believes St. Matthew was written first and Revelation last. Or he believes all facts of existence can be explained in terms of natural selection, or by brain states, or by the subconscious. The great catastrophe of his existence is that mystery has been dismissed before he even gets a chance really to be confronted by it. He was raised by parents who on Sunday mornings either went Jesus-hunting at the Bible Chapel or warbler-hunting at the Cathedral of the Pines.

All of this is to say that there are both pervious and impervious students and that all of them are being introduced by “higher education” to a lower form of existence. Perhaps all of them are credulous young men and women, at best the trusting sons and daughters of trusting men and women who don’t know that they’re paying a lot of money so that their children can be told things that aren’t so by people who don’t know that they aren’t so.

Really, it’s hard to summarize a good author — you should read it all, though there is some mild adult language and a general jaded tone that belies his good nature.  (He’s the brother of one of my dearest friends, so I’ve met him several times.)

I could (and do) heartily agree that college is too widely seen as an instant fix for everyone: students who did well in high school are expected to cement their social and vocational status with a degree or two, and those who blew off four years are told they can make a comeback with the next four.

I could (and do) also second Peters’ suggestion that higher education should include compulsory manual labor — food preparation, cleaning, gardening or something designed to teach them the value of visceral, tangible effort.  It’s good enough for you that you should be forced to do it even if you wouldn’t have chosen to.

However, I think the important point in both articles is that we (I speak for Americans, though probably some Western Europeans are following suit) are far too empowered for our own good.  We think we can do anything, from changing dispositions to changing intellect.  We are all such complex beings that it’s ludicrous to try to pin ourselves to any one set of influences; we just don’t know where our minds and personalities come from.  We’ve all met nasty people and simple people, and though we’d like to think they wouldn’t ever exist in our families (or, God forbid, ourselves) odds are that some of us will have to accept that reality.  We just don’t want to.

One such example was last week’s issue, which spoke about Art Linkletter.  Apparently, I unknowingly stole borrowed the title of his book to use for one of my most popular tags, The Darndest Things (Three recent examples.)  Linkletter had a television show in which he interviewed children so that others could be amused by their hilarity and unconscious wisdom.

Here’s what I found interesting: how do you think Linkletter found kids that would consistently say interesting and funny things?  Easy.  He wrote to teachers and said, “Give me a few hours with the child you would most like to have out of your classroom.”

This is at once funny and sobering.  Oh, I hate thinking that I might be the teacher who doesn’t appreciate creativity unless it falls within prescribed parameters.  But I’m sure I would have willingly booted out some future TV stars if given the chance.

Two recent Times articles that have to do with parenting, education and food, but come from vastly different worldviews:

On the Best side is this excellent treatise involving a restauranteur who believes that “Children’s menus are the death of civilization.”  Hear, hear!   Based on my experience and observation, kids will eat what they’re expected to eat.  When there are no expectations, you can hardly blame them for eating only macaroni and cheese.  It’s somewhat endearing at four, but downright embarrassing at fourteen; I’ve heard more than one high school girl unabashedly admit that she doesn’t eat vegetables.  At all.  I’m so grateful to my parents for forcing, bribing and tricking me into eating all sorts of weird things — from pork rinds to artichokes and snails and tandoori — those experiences gave me the courage to discover new passions on my own.

In the Worst corner is this article that appears to be making a serious case for labeling foods as choking hazards.  They’re actually printing quotes like this:

“You have a SuperBall that by government regulation has to carry warnings telling people it’s a risk to young children and you can’t market it to them, yet you can have the same identical shape and size gumball and there are no restrictions or requirements.”

Well, maybe that’s because gumballs were INTENDED to be put in your mouth.  And because it’s generally expected that parents will use common sense in feeding and supervising their children.  Truly, can we say that it’s necessary to affix a warning label to a carrot?  People, it’s called common sense and supervision.  And while I can’t imagine the horror that parents who have lost a child to choking have experienced, the reality is that accidents happen, even shocking and fatal ones.  Heaping up onerous legislation can’t stop them from occurring.  We need to make peace with the unpredictability and fragility of life.

Me: Um, no.  Why in the world would you think that?

Student: I saw it in a cartoon one time.

One more reason to ban television, I guess.

• The Good Morning America report. I’m sure it’s easy to find if you want to (yep) but in fact I don’t think I’ve ever watched Good Morning America, and I certainly wouldn’t accept a five-minute special report as unquestionable truth.  In fact, if GMA says it’s “extreme” and harmful, I’m willing to bet it’s a great idea that’s misunderstood and poorly reported.

• A lot of kids’ time and effort in school is wasted, much more so in the early years.  The teacher dismisses a child to go to the bathroom, helps another one find a tissue, allows three to sharpen pencils, and after ten minutes of directives, everyone is finally ready to go over the Math lesson.  Once it’s finished, it all happens in reverse, and the process begins again during the Reading and History lessons.  There is something to be said for learning patience with others, but invariably, the smart kids get bored and retreat into themselves (me) or goof off and get in trouble (my brother.)

• The teacher controls the classroom at the vast majority of formal schools.  Again, learning obedience to authority is a virtue, and one that many modern children lack.  However, this can become tiresome very quickly, and I’m not sure it’s valuable in the long run; it seems to me that it promotes unquestioning submission.  As much as I detest the constant complaining of parents at my school, I’m glad they feel they have the right to complain.  I also don’t mind ignoring them, since we all know I don’t need correction on any points.

• Kids in formal school are stressed. Period.  They know far too much about schedules, and “dates,” and they have very little time to explore things they’re interested in.  An unschooled child might choose to spend the whole day planting seeds and waiting anxiously for them to sprout, or reading about and drawing dinosaurs, or learning how to bake bread.  S/he will have learned far more than in a cramped, authoritarian classroom.

Con:

• Most parents lack the discipline, creativity and time necessary to expose their children to a wide variety of subject areas, such that the child truly has the wealth of knowledge necessary to make his or her own choices regarding education.  This may sound harsh, but I’m just speaking from experience.  My cousins are stellar examples of unschooling parents, but I have seen many more who only encourage their children (consciously or not) to pursue areas they know something about and are interested in.  This is natural, and maybe it’s okay, but I prefer the Liberal Arts philosophy, since:

• I learned a lot from taking classes I was forced to take. In high school, to graduate with honors I needed four History credits.  My only choice in my senior year was an AP Government class. Government?!  I thought.  Ugh.  How boring!  But the teacher was dynamic and funny (a drill sergeant, he had an unnerving habit of pointing and yelling “Go!” when he wanted an answer) and the class filled with overachievers like me, who pushed each other to succeed.  Last weekend at coffee hour I recalled the details of Plessy v. Ferguson, fifteen years after studying them in class.  I could quote more examples, but the point is, I never would have sought these interests out, especially if my parents had suggested them.

• The world doesn’t revolve around your kids, as much as you may want it to, and I’m a little concerned that unschooling may allow them to believe that.  We all have to learn to do things we don’t want to, and yes, sometimes it’s annoying and completely useless, but well, that’s life.  You don’t always get to choose what you want to do, especially when you’re young.  That’s a privilege that grows with age.

Conclusions:

• We’re pretty solidly in the homeschooling camp if we ever have children, at least for the elementary years.  There are certain formal programs I would support, but for the most part, we couldn’t afford Waldorf or Montessori and there is no Orthodox classical-education institution near us.  I’m not signing any pacts, but that’s where I am now.

• I don’t think I could unschool, and I’m a pretty skilled teacher and a pretty well-rounded person (if I do say so myself.)  I would worry that I had left something out that my kids might have wanted to learn.  I also think most ideas work better if implemented with a plan.

• One of my favorite bloggers, who recently retired, spoke about vocations in words I heartily commend.  She homeschooled five children, beginning with very basic instruction: a half-hour or so of formal math and reading every morning until about age eight, plus a wide variety of family activities that educated them enough to choose very diverse and specialized vocations.  I especially love what she says about organized activities: why young kids need to be on a soccer team or in an art class, instead of playing with their friends or drawing on their own, is an important consideration.

I blame parents.

Easy to say for one who is not a parent!  But I have heard too many caregivers lament that their child “will only eat” macaroni and cheese or hot dogs.  As one of my classmates points out, when given the choice, any child (or human, if allowed to act on his basest impulses) will gravitate toward the sweeter, more calorie-dense food.  It’s our instinct, derived from the days when such foods were very hard to come by — restricted to finding a patch of berries or a hive of honey.  Today, as others have already stated, such foods are actually cheaper (with externalized costs, of course) than nutritious foods, and they are certainly easier to serve.  But since when do we allow a child’s preference to govern his rules for living?  We don’t let him choose whether or not to brush his teeth, go to school, or say his prayers.  Why would we let him choose what’s on the dinner menu, beyond such reasonable choices as “green beans or broccoli?”

Many of you have indicated causes of childhood obesity with which I can’t argue: working parents, busy schedules, child-centered advertising.  I think there is one more vastly important factor: the demise of home cooking.  Statistics show unilaterally that fewer and fewer people cook for themselves — even when “cooking” is widened to mean putting together a sandwich from purchased ingredients.  Children are not learning how to come home from school, cut up carrot sticks and peel an orange — and, at a later age, to saute onions and garlic for a sauce or set bread to rise in a warm place.  They certainly are not learning where the carrots and onions come from, when to plant them and how long to wait before pulling them up.  I was lucky enough to be raised by parents who did everything themselves, but I constantly meet people my age and older who say they can’t (or just don’t) cook, and that number seems to rise exponentially as age decreases.

At this point I’d like to surrender my point of view to two gentlemen who are far more convincing and knowledgeable than I.  One is Michael Pollan, who has already been referenced several times on this board.  Please do read all of his books; they are wonderful.  However, this article (it’s long, but worth it) from the New York Times Magazine last year reinforces my argument by illuminating one of the strangest dichotomies in modern times: the huge popularity of cooking shows on television and the dearth of skilled home cooks.  We spend untold amounts of time and money watching Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray and Emeril, but we are less and less likely to translate that enthusiasm into our own kitchens and dining rooms, mostly because we haven’t seen and modeled that behavior from a young age.

However, on that note, the second reference I want to make is to this excellent lecture (about 20 minutes) by Jamie Oliver.  Yes, Jamie Oliver, the English chef / television personality.  It turns out he’s also a compassionate, dedicated humanitarian who is shocked and pained by the current crisis in child obesity, and determined to do all he can to alleviate it.  For me, the most moving moment in the film is when he confronts an obese mother with a dining-room table covered with pizza, corn dogs and sodas — all the food she typically feeds her two (also obese) children in a week.  “You are killing your children,” Oliver says simply.  It cuts like a knife, but it’s absolutely true.  This mother, by failing to pass on the skill set she never learned herself — how to make nutritious, satisfying, diverse meals — is setting her children up for severe health problems and an early death.  Sobering, but verifiable fact.

But, as Oliver points out, this crisis is entirely preventable.  Children who couldn’t identify a beet or a tomato (watch the video, seriously) can be taught to.  Children who will only eat macaroni and cheese can be taught to love spinach (and not only, Mrs. Seinfeld, through trickery.)  They love to help in the garden or in the kitchen, and they are far more likely to try diverse foods (and thus to learn weight-management behavior) when they have participated in the entire process of harvesting and preparing food.  We can fix this, one household at a time.

Dangerous, because it wasn’t really a question.  If I said “no,” I would incur a Look until such time as I meekly helped myself to a moderate amount and polished it off without complaint.

Believe me, I think parents have the right to do this, and I think they should do it.  I have little sympathy for the mother who complains that her children won’t eat anything but macaroni and hot dogs; few children would behave differently, given the choice.  I think my appreciation of healthy and diverse foods stems from this strictly-imposed rule growing up.

But where should we draw the line?  If that mother’s behavior is ridiculous, it is equally ridiculous for the government to ban products it deems sufficiently unhealthy, like hydrogenated oils or cigarettes.  Clearly, adults are granted the freedom to choose poorly.  Call it one of the perks of adulthood.

I remember when our school made the switch from junk food to health food.  I went to a private school where there was no hot lunch; we ordered out several times a week for pizza and Chick-Fil-A, but the other days we had to bring our own lunches, supplemented sometimes (or all the time) by the offerings on the table outside the cafeteria.  Doritos, M&Ms, and Coke ruled the afternoons.

When we had a schoolwide Health Day, the cafeteria switched to selling yogurt, granola bars and juice.  Surprise!  They found that when they have no other choice, kids will eat more healthy foods.  Shortly thereafter, they made a permanent switch.  There was grumbling, but the kids who had to have junk food just brought their own from home.  The rest of us enjoyed crackers instead of chips, fruit instead of candy and Spritzers instead of sodas.  It wasn’t a big deal.

The question, as always, has to do with degrees. This recent article from the Times hints at it, wondering about how far schools and parents should go to keep their children from eating junk.  What about fundraisers that sell candy bars and lollipops between classes to support the endless stream of new uniforms and sports equipment?  Bake sales that raise money for charities?  Should we draw a line between yogurt and ice cream, or apple juice and soda, when they boast an equal number of empty calories?  And should we give seventeen-year-olds the benefit of the doubt, or treat them just like seven-year-olds?  Once you begin to legislate lifestyle choices, it becomes awfully difficult to pin down where and how the rules should apply.

And then, thoughtfully, looking at the discard pile: “And I don’t know a lot of pieces, too.”

Welcome to the world, kid.