I was rather surprised and humbled to find myself on the list of nominees for the Homeschool Blog Awards so a heartfelt thank you is in order for whoever thought my blog worthy.  I’m in the Best Current Events, Opinions or Politics Blog of 2009.  And we all know I have the best opinions because even I agree with me most of the time.

Take a moment to check out the awards, and all the other great blogs listed.  Or if you don’t have time for all that, just vote for me and call it good.

Happy voting!

A repost, in honor of the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989:

This, for me, was the most powerful image depicting the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The Ziggy-like figure drawn here is der Deutsche Michel, a national self-portrait much like Uncle Sam is to the US. With no words, the cartoonist successfully foreshadows the central problem to the unification of Germany. Namely, there are two Deutsche Michel. And the suitcase to the right of the pair signifies that the Michel from the East plans on moving in with the Michel from the West. The day was triumphant, but problems lay ahead. It, however, was carried by a force stronger than any reason or doubts about what the future would bring.

Otto Graf Lambsdorff, FDP chairman, said of the fall (my translation),

The force of freedom is stronger than concrete and iron.

The German word freiheit and the English word freedom are closely related, sharing a common root in indoeuropean frijaz* and sharing cognates across the Germanic languages of Europe. Freedom (Freiheit) has strong roots in Germany, and these concepts stayed with the Angles and the Saxons as they settled England. It is, in fact, a very unique concept, completely unrelated and in some ways opposed to Latin and Greek notions of liberty and eleutheros which I will talk about later.

According to David Hackett Fischer in his book, Liberty and Freedom, (p. 5),

Free meant someone who was joined to a tribe of free people by ties of kinship and rights of belonging.

These tribes were ruled not by kings or chiefs, but by law. Freedom was viewed as a birthright, and with it came rights and responsibilities within the clan. The laws were recited before the highly critical clan members and disputes over points would be settled by calling in five legal experts to judge the matter. One 11th century historian wrote of Iceland, “there is no king but only law.” (Fisher, p. 6) Regardless of station, all were viewed as equal before this law. Most important in their conception, however, was the connectedness. The ultimate punishment for not adhering to the law of the clan was banishment.

“At some point, every wall falls.”
Photo courtesy of frederick.

A person was free because he belonged to the group. Freedom was closely associated with kinship ties and responsibility to fellow members as well as personal rights.

This is very much the sense of freedom meant in Otto Graf Lambsdorff’s statement above. There was a force behind the two nations coming together. Part of that strength originated from notions of rights and a desire to be free of the oppression of the GDR. Just as strong, however, were the kinship ties and and feelings of connectedness between the two Germanies. As the wall came down, a nation rejoiced and complete strangers embraced and shared toasts.

East Germans greeted with flowers, cash and interviewers.
Photo courtesy of frederik.

In this sense of the word, our freedom is an inherent birthright which cannot be taken away by men. It, however, stems from our belonging to a group of free people governed by law. Our connection to one another is as important as our rights. I think these concepts are also very applicable as we raise our children. As they grow and mature and desire more freedom, it is time to let them begin to experience what true freedom is: a combination of rights and responsibilities.

* an asterik following a word in linguistics signifies that the word is reconstructed from its “descendants.”

The cartoon is from a publication put out by the Federal Republic of Germany, and to my knowledge is in the public domain. The publication is Die Wende in der DDR from the Kontrovers series and is published by the Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung (July 1990).

Wes’ Corner shares some insights about rights and responsibilities in a more modern sense. (If you follow this link, some of the comments are aggressive.)

freedom, berlin, homeschooling, history

A commenter recently pointed me to Rod Dreher’s book (and blog)  Crunchy Cons in response to my thoughts on the politicization of choosing an agrarian lifestyle. Truth be told, I’ve always had an uneasy feeling reading about this idea of “crunchy” conservatism. What does a political philosophy have to do with your choice of breakfast cereal and how do entire movements get identified with a brand of shoe? How have values connected to returning to the land, living more simply, considering where your food comes from and what happens to the waste that leaves your home become so connected with far-left ideology that a conservative feels uncomfortable expressing any of them?

Has conservatism so lost its sense of self that it, too, believes the hype about being soulless, mindless adherents to a consumerist culture of greed? The environmentalist movement with all its emphasis on “green living” has annoyed me for some time. Cleaning with vinegar and baking soda, turning out the lights, conserving water, considering purchases more carefully, reusing, recycling . . . these aren’t the sudden discoveries of a political class more concerned about the environment than your average gun-toting red stater. They are the tangible expressions of the values I grew up with: Work hard, remember what really matters and clean up your own messes.

When the World Wildlife Fund organized Earth Hour, an hour of “lights out” across the globe, I thought it a little hokey, and wondered what they really thought they’d gain by it. When conservatives stamped their feet and declared that not only would they not participate, but they’d turn on every light in the house, I was annoyed. Those types of temper tantrums are wholly reactionary, and completely disconnected from any coherent political philosophy. Being conservative isn’t about turning on lights, wasting resources and higher utility bills, so why the foot stomping? So the lights in Chicago dimmed and people enjoyed the stillness for an hour. Welcome to my world, where I can see the Milky Way from my backyard.

Russell Kirk, who gave shape to the conservative movement of the 1950′s wrote in The Politics of Prudence,

The best way to rear up a new generation of friends of the Permanent Things is to beget children, and read to them o’ evenings, and teach them what is worthy of praise: the wise parent is the conservator of ancient truths.

Permanent things. Like love, duty, justice, charity, hard work. To “conserve” means to save. To protect. To preserve. To economize. It is not synonymous with consumption, waste and the interests of major corporations.

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order. Ten Conservative Principles by Russell Kirk

This state of mind, this type of character, this way of looking at the civil social order can be accomplished in a variety of ways. But “returning to the land” certainly fits with the essence of all that is conservative, and connects us to part of America’s spiritual heritage. It is not inherently liberal, and I have no desire to separate myself from the label “conservative” with the addition of an adjective that implies that somehow what I’m doing really isn’t.

conservative crunchy con homesteading back to the land

Dreams are curious things.  They provide a certain sense of purpose and drive, pulling my thoughts ever into the future.  My thoughts have been racing along this path since we decided to make this move.  Now that we have actually taken the first major step toward those dreams, they are faltering.  Hesitating.  My thoughts are slowing down and giving way to the present.

Carrying a load of cleaning supplies into the house, I pause on the porch and look out over the land.  The same wind is blowing, though nippier than it was a month ago.  The same sounds rise out of the drying feed corn still on the stalks, though grasshoppers no longer scatter at every step.  The same openness surrounds me on every side.  But I don’t see the goats browsing in the pasture, nor chickens darting about after insects.  The orchard, like my garden, is just a field of overgrown grasses.

Sometimes it can be difficult for me to slow my thoughts down and just be, but for the moment, all that lies before me is real and is now.  And I find a sense of satisfaction and contentment I’ve never found in a dream, as thrilling as working toward a dream can at times be.

There is something about taking that first tangible step that is bringing me out of my own dreams into the peacefulness of this moment.  I savor it.  And notice this moment holds a sense of peace for my children as well.

After a brief argument about who should carry the first board they came across, they settled into their work, collecting materials for their little dream castle in the woods.

And this, more than any of the plans for animals and crops I have made, is why I have wanted to make this move for a very long time.

When we bought our four little chickens, I inadvertently stumbled into the curious world of the backyard chicken.  One of the most active forums I have ever participated in is about keeping chickens, especially in suburbia.  I guess farmers in rural Nebraska are probably not looking for a support system for their chicken habits, nor tips on dealing with authorities like the renegades I have met online.  One woman lives in a suburban area where the city limits her to three chickens.  She has thirty.  She keeps them in the garage, letting them out in groups of three throughout the day so no one catches on.  Another family is even more daring keeping not only chickens but a rooster in an urban area where chickens are outlawed.  A coop in the basement and strategic eggs delivered to the neighbors have kept this operation under wraps as well.

At first glance, they seem a little nutty.  Worse than the cat hoarders.  But reading the discussion and the linked articles introduced me to a small little social world not so very different from ours as homeschoolers.  Many of the arguments used at city hall sound rather familiar, and the goal of any meeting involving chickens and laws is to bring as many people as possible to speak up for the humble backyard chicken.

After owning chickens for awhile, I’m beginning to understand.  Top on my list of purchases once we move to our little slice of country life is more chickens.  But there are other things we want, too.  Some geese for weeding (and meat), guineas to help with insects (and meat), goats, sheep a large garden and an orchard.  This, too, seems a part of a larger movement, a heavily politicized back-to-the-land movement, seeking independence from Big Oil, Big Business, Big Ag.  When looking for information on a variety of topics, it is Mother Earth News that Google continually delivers me to.  We’re talking hard left there, and it seems that this general philosophy is a driving force among many making the choice to live a more agrarian lifestyle.

It seems odd to me.  In my mind, there is nothing so quintessentially conservative as growing up working the land.  But as I read blogs and websites and magazines and books about returning to the land, I am increasingly aware of my unique position within this countercultural trend as a conservative.  One with no particular disdain for industrial agriculture, even.  I have stumbled across a movement with which I share certain perspectives in common but of which I am not really a part.  That leaves me feeling a little on the outside, though I can’t say I did before reading up on the issue.

I wonder how I’d look in a granny dress?

Hey, did you know we’re Mexican?

says the little girl at craft table at the library.  She couldn’t have been older than six.  Her little friend across from her dropped her scissors, mouth agape.

Don’t you call me that!

She was clearly insulted and the table fell silent, all eyes on the offender.  She averted her eyes, but there was no place to go.  She and her two friends had been told to stay there and color and stay she did.  Just before hurling this horrendous insult, she had been happily counting and singing . . . in Spanish.  Clearly, neither she nor anyone at the table had any particular issue with the country of their obvious heritage until it was named.

Mexican.

After a long moment of silence, the third girl leaned in and whispered, “It’s called Hispanic.  We’re Hispanic.”  With that, the tension eased and they went back to their playful chatter about school and television and friends.  They forgot about that dirty word.

Mexican.

She may as well have said, “Hey, did you know we were spics?”  Or niggers.  Or chinks.  Or any number of racial slurs.  I can’t help but wonder how a child growing up Hispanic in an Hispanic home with Hispanic friends, watching Dora the Explorer, who happily sings songs in Spanish in the library learns that Mexican is a dirty word.

This is socialization.  Learning what is “other,” labeling it and trying to make it conform.  This is the “leavening effect of democracy” which compulsory schooling offers.  It does not teach us to value difference, but to conform.  It does not teach us to handle conflict, but to submit to the capricious and cruel tendencies of small children with inadequate supervision.

Humans are fundamentally social creatures, and I would be the last to argue against teaching our children how to function within our social groups.  Socialization is a natural part of being human.  But how do we best teach this to our children?  Seated in neat rows while the teacher talks?  Or perhaps better seated in circles?  On the playground while an adult with a whistles chats with an aid and watches for any grievous rule breaks?  Or within the context of the family where true, selfless love can be experienced alongside daily modeling and guidance specific to each child’s needs?

_________________________

Uppercase Woman’s daughter, too, is learning her place in her social world (language warning) at the tender age of three.  Fortunately, she has a loving mother to help guide her through it as she wrestles with the question of how to educate her daughter.

Also, we’re still sorting out this whole moving blog thing.  Posting may be erratic and the blog may go down when we finally get that far.  Sleeping for hours in a row is doing me wonders, however, and I am brimming with things to write about once I have my blog back!

socialization homeschool home education

This blog should be moving servers over the weekend.  For once, it will be down because it needs to be down rather than just some problem with the host!

The only real problem is that the person doing this all for me has a life, so I’m not exactly sure how long it will take.  Hopefully not long, but if you miss me, you can visit me over at A Very Nearly Tea where my blog design prowess has given me two titles.  Maybe I’ll fix that, but my eyes are going blurry from staring at this screen for so long this evening.

Hopefully the blog will be back Monday, and I’ll be full of things to write.  We are supposed to close on a house, after all.

It’s that time of year again.  With 25 categories, you should have ample opportunity to show some love to all of your favorite bloggers in this year’s Homeschool Blog Awards.

I’ve decided to go all out for the Occasional Homeschool Blogger Award.  I’ve never occasionally homeschooled and occasionally blogged so well as I have this past year!

What? That isn’t a category?  Must have gotten overlooked somehow…

Max and Ruby is quickly becoming my favorite children’s show.  Each episode is a slow-paced, whimsical tale of everyday life, told from the perspective of a child.  Little Max is adorable, and has the coolest toys ever.  Let’s face it, what kid wouldn’t want an ear splitter space cadet or a jelly ball spitting spider?

There’s only one thing that bothers me.  Where is their mother?  Ruby is only seven and Max is her little brother.  But still, all this cake baking and bus riding and shopping trips totally without any parental supervision?  Max and Ruby do not appear to have any sort of parental unit looking out for them.  It isn’t as if theirs is a world completely without adults.  Adults drive the buses and keep the shops.  They have a grandma who makes frequent visits, elegantly making room for Max’s energetic boyishness and drawing it into Ruby’s perfectly planned tea parties.

But there is still no mom.  Why?

As the passing thought fixed itself in my mind, I began to think about all the other children’s stories where the mother is either killed early in the story or is merely not present:  Bambi, Snow White, Hannah Montana, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Tarzan, Heidi and Nemo, just to name a few.

The trend is so common in Disney films that many have asked why Disney hates mothers.  And there’s that whole thing with the death of his mother.  Some have concluded that this is all part of Disney’s plan to destroy the family.  Most of Disney’s films are based on older stories, though, so none of that really makes much sense.

The fact is, mothers are powerful.  They mean comfort and safety, warmth and nurturing.  A story about coming of age, overcoming an obstacle, or finding independence becomes fundamentally different if a mother is present to guide and protect the child.  The audience suddenly becomes less tolerant of a genuine challenge, or the mother is viewed as neglectful or the child as rebellious.  Think of the Lizzy Maquire movie, if you’ve seen it.  A teenage girl goes on a class trip to Italy and sneaks off on the drill-sergeant like principal to hang out with a teenage pop star.  The movie is about Lizzy finding herself, but what would it have been about if it were a family vacation and it were her mother she were lying to?

Mothers are powerful, and in literature it seems easier to dispose of their influence in someway in order to allow the child to face a challenge or grow to maturity.  Unfortunately, as a culture we seem to believe this.  Somehow, we believe that a child can’t mature, deal with challenges or be properly socialized except when removed from the influence of the immediate family and placed in school.

I’m still not exactly sure why.

So, we’re moving.  That’s not exactly news.  We’ve been moving for a year, at least.  With a house closing a week away, however, it all seems a little more real this time around.  We have been talking and dreaming and planning for so long, it really was beginning to feel like it was just talking and dreaming and planning. 

Over the past year, my time has been taken up by planning a new business, having a baby, a serious illness, having a baby, selling a house and having a baby.  This blog sort of hung out in the background, sometimes arousing feelings of guilt for long periods of neglect and sometimes providing a welcome distraction when I actually got time to compose my thoughts enough to write.  In the in between times, however, my thoughts keep returning to exactly what it is I want from this blog.

I sit to write, but my mental energy isn’t focused on homeschooling like it was a year ago.  I have spent much more time reading about intensive rotational grazing than I have about socialization, and articles about heritage breeds are much more likely to be bookmarked than are articles by yet another journalist who obviously doesn’t “get” homeschooling.

Still, the adventure we are about to embark on is all about home education.  When we began homeschooling, I thought we’d be doing school at home.  I’d teach, my children would learn and the big difference would be the location.  Sure, there’d be that nice stuff about catering to my children’s needs, family togetherness and all that, but I essentially thought homeschooling would be the same in function just different in form.

What I didn’t expect was how much this adventure would change me and my views on family, parenting, education and society.  I didn’t expect life to become so . . . intentional. 

And yet I don’t know what that all means for this blog.  Now that my baby appears to have made peace with sleeping at night, I should even have more time to write.  I’m just suddenly not so sure what to write about.