Student: If I push these pedals, will stuff shoot out of the sides of the piano?
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.
Posts Tagged ‘childhood’
Overheard in the Studio
Thursday, May 27th, 2010This Teacher’s Thoughts about Unschooling
Friday, May 21st, 2010Pro:
- 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.
Cooking = Salvation
Thursday, February 18th, 2010This is the first week of Lent, so I’ve been at church by night and trying to catch up on school by day. As food for thought, however, you might be interested in this post I wrote for my current grad course, Child & Adolescent Development, about the childhood obesity crisis:
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.
The Freedom to Choose Poorly
Saturday, February 13th, 2010It was always a dangerous question: “Would you like some broccoli?”
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.
A Moment of Zen
Thursday, February 4th, 2010The epic-battle girl stared as I shuffled through my repertoire cards, choosing the ones she can play by heart. Her eyes widened: “I know a LOT of pieces!”
And then, thoughtfully, looking at the discard pile: “And I don’t know a lot of pieces, too.”
Welcome to the world, kid.