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

Somehow, there is a new level of risque attained when you slap sexual messages on a four month old. I’m still trying NOT to picture this sweet little cherub

kicking about in a T-shirt with “I’m living proof my mum is easy” slapped on the front. Even if he does have four siblings, it does not seem to be the place for opening that kind of cultural dialogue. After all, what is a T-shirt slogan, if not a sort of pre-Twitter medium for expressing your message quickly, succinctly and to a broad audience?

Katherine Hamnett, whose T-shirts The Guardian credits with becoming the cultural signposts of our times, says of the medium:

“I wanted to put a really large message on T-shirts that could be read from 20 or 30ft away,” she says now. “Slogans work on so many different levels; they’re almost subliminal. They’re also a way of people aligning themselves to a cause. They’re tribal. Wearing one is like branding yourself.” The Guardian

Aligning yourself to a cause. Connecting yourself to other people. Branding yourself. You have five seconds and the passing eye of a distracted stranger.

From: Despair, Inc.

What do you want to tell the world about your cause and yourself?

Maybe “The Condom Broke”?  Or “I’m a t*** man.”  (Without the asterisks, of course.)  Or how about “I’m bringing sexy back”?  On an infant!

Julee Gale, director of Kids Free 2b Kids, bought some items at Cotton On Kids (I presume for education purposes) and is outraged by the messages carried by these shirts that may be conveyed to young people.

“I reckon there should be a penalty and there needs to be an awareness campaign with retailers about what’s appropriate and what’s actually harmful,” she said.

“They don’t get that it’s . . . harmful. It’s all part of a continuum of sexualisation of kids. It’s about the mental health of our children.” Herald Sun

But is it really the retailers that need education? What if, in response to this collection, Australia decides to regulate the messages that can be printed on t-shirts marketed to or for youth? Would anything really change? The items on the rack at your local department store are, after all, an effect of the culture we live in, not the cause of it. Certainly there is a bit of a circular relationship between marketers and the market, especially when the marketers are successful in attaching their products to other things already sought after (think High School Musical merchandising!).

But a T-shirt slogan? For this collection to become a colossal flop would speak loudly and clearly to Cotton On and other clothing manufacturers and retailers about the inappropriateness of both the message and the medium. Rallying family groups? Not so long as the collection is turning a profit.

The collection bothers me. That product designers, marketing directors and retailers wanted to design, advertise and sell this collection bothers me.

But really it is the fact that there are parents who are willing to buy them that bothers me most. Your child is not your vehicle for sexual-expression.

t-shirt Cotton On Cotton On Kids

Wired’s recent round-up of games being marketed to “tween” girls has stirred up a few emotions recently.  With titles such as The Clique: Diss and Make-up, Top Model and My Boyfriend, the list reads like a list of the worst stereotypes of the “in” junior high cliques I was so never a part of.  They were reading YM.  I was reading The Communist Manifesto.  Somehow, we never hit it off.

The weird thing is that you can view these “wholesome” games as being just as bad for girls as Grand Theft Auto’s random bloodshed and rampant criminality is for young, impressionable boys. And while GTA’s influence on boys has been dissected to death, what about the Nintendo DS’ upcoming avalanche of games for tween girls? What kinds of values do preteens learn from these titles? Valuable life lessons, or bad habits?  Wired

Dangerous because it is worse for a teenage girl to obsess over fashion than it is for a boy to steal a car?  Salon.com’s Judy Berman extends the thought a little further.

I think these games can be even more harmful than “Grand Theft Auto,” because they have more potential to influence their players’ lives. Your average “GTA” player is highly unlikely to, for example, climb to the top of his city’s highest building and start shooting cops on the street below with a machine gun. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that a game called “Dreamer Series: Top Model” could take its toll on an awkward 12-year-old’s self esteem, or that the multitude of dating games could subtly perpetuate the idea that a girl’s life is incomplete without a boyfriend.  Salon.com

I can see the point…except that the problem with Grand Theft Auto is not that boys are really very likely to go out and really steal cars, any more than girls who play Top Model will suddenly find themselves on the catwalk.  It is the subtle messages which redefine what is cool, what is desirable, what is good that make these games dangerous.  As these games have undoubtedly become a part of the feedback loop of teen marketing, it is not merely their prescriptive qualities which should concern us, but their descriptive qualities as well.

CatieCate of Shakesville takes a swipe at the marketers:

As usual when a strongly men-dominated industry hurls itself headlong without the most basic research treads carefully into the (no doubt to them) bizarre world of girls who like games, the results are pretty spectacularly misogyriffic. It’s not Wired I’m after here, but the game companies.  Shakesville

And that’s just it.  They tread very carefully.  These games were not created by a room full of men throwing out random ideas based on this “bizarre world” they don’t really understand.  Millions of dollars are invested into the development of a new video game, and that isn’t the kind of money you throw at a project without some market research.  The deeper problem here is that they do understand their market.  They are actually quite intimate with it, coming right into the bedroom, “hanging out” and finding out what “the market” thinks it wants so that the company can package its goods accordingly.  They do their best to find out what the market thinks is cool so they can package it and sell it right back.

The video game companies had nothing to do with the wild popularity of The Clique series, for example.  They are just trying to capitalize on it.  They had nothing to do with the development of the cliques in my junior high.  They are just trying to market to them.  In so doing, they reinforce certain values and attitudes.

But then, so do parents every time they give in.

video games gaming cliques, tween teen

Responding to an earlier opinion column, Should evolution be taught in school?, Kalamazoo Gazette reader Lawrence Kapture throws out some thoughts on home education.

Homeschooling is essentially a protest movement. Regardless of motivation, homeschoolers believe public schools are unable to prepare their children to live in the world.  mlive.com

Perhaps for some.  Or perhaps it was at one time.  Or perhaps we are falsely perceived by a public who only hears from us when we are protesting a proposed law.

I am full of criticisms of public education, as are many of my fellow homeschoolers.  But then that is hardly unique to homeschoolers.  We didn’t write “Nation at Risk,” or “Why Johnny Can’t Read.”  Our measly 2% of the population hardly influenced President George Bush, Sr. to bill himself as “the education president.”  And I know his son wasn’t listening to us when he drafted No Child Left Behind.  Education has been a bit of a battle ground for some time, and homeschooling is only one (very small) part of that public conversation.

Being critical is not a protest movement.

Supporting reform is not a protest movement.

Choosing an alternative is not a protest movement.

It is only a protest movement if our decision to homeschool is directed at what is going on in public schools.  Like an organized boycott, a sit-in or march of some sort.  I can only speak for myself, but I did not choose to home educate because of what is going on in the public schools.  I chose to home educate because of the virtues inherent in this form of education.

Some people garden as an act of protest.  Most of us, however, just prefer the taste of homegrown produce or enjoy the hobby for its own rewards.  It is the same with home education.

Unfortunately, what homeschooling can do is isolate children from the market of ideas, especially when it comes to biological science. There is a large amount of fringe literature published by religious groups that support the claims of creationists while providing no real information about the vast field of evolutionary biology.  Ibid.

There is a large amount of fringe literature available on any topic imaginable and you don’t need to be a homeschooler to find it.  I do find it interesting that we’re talking about the “market of ideas” in public school, although by and large there is only one idea presented, taught and tested.  And that isn’t exclusive to the whole evolution debate.  There isn’t enough time to present anything like a marketplace of ideas with testing looming overhead, and all the baggage students bring with them to school.

And again, this isn’t about homeschooling.  We only account for approximately 2% of the population.  Yet according to a recent Gallup poll, only 39% of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution, 25% do not and 36% don’t have an opinion.  Education was a factor in the beliefs, as was church attendance. Surprisingly, a poll in Britain revealed that only 25% of Briton’s thought the theory of evolution was “definitely true.”  This isn’t even an American issue.

If I were concerned about Americans’ lack of knowledge regarding Darwin and his theory, I would look first at why people are graduating high school…public high school…without this knowledge long before I’d jump on the homeschoolers.

Homeschooling allows families to isolate their children from good information by providing them only with information that is comfortable with their own biases.  Ibid.

The potential is there.  The potential is there anywhere someone has control over the curriculum.  Should that control come from the state or the parent?  What about when parents disagree?  What about when students disagree with the content that is being taught them?  One of the more interesting questions in one of my ethics courses dealt with this very debate.

The question was whether it was ethical to pass a student who demonstrated a knowledge of evolutionary theory that surpassed the course requirements, but who didn’t believe it.

There is a fundamental question about control here, but it isn’t about homeschooling.  We are just a bit of a catalyst for the discussion.

Like homeschooling is a protest against public schools, creationism is a protest against anything that opposes a literal interpretation of the Bible. When it comes to the origins of life, creationism is not a scientifically educated movement.  Ibid.

Kapture never supported his assertion that homeschooling is a protest movement against the schools, and now he’s claiming that creationsim is a protest as well.  It isn’t.  It is simply a belief.  One that existed prior to Darwin and prior to his predecessors who had already begun to look at the world outside a religious worldview.

Back in February, academics and scientists across Europe got together in Germany to discuss difficulties regarding the acceptance of evolution.  Some fear these lingering beliefs in creation are a danger to scientific thought in this country and the Western world in general.  I don’t exactly buy that, but our schools’ ability to graduate students who can scarcely read just might.

homeschool homeschooling creation evolution Darwin

The Patriot News has a positive article on homeschooling which strives to dispel the myths about homeschool students being taught at home.  As in isolated, secluded and lacking any interaction with anyone off the plantation.  Nice to know that the existence of co-ops, field trips, proms and graduation ceremonies so elevates us in the eyes of the masses.  There was one statement in the article which left me pondering, however.

At one time, home schooling was looked at as not simply an alternate form of education, but an alternative form. Pennlive.com

Meaning, I think, that Americans increasingly view homeschooling more as one choice among many and as another path toward the same goal: an educated child.

Other than a slight urge to shout out “Stop the presses!  Homeschoolers are normal!” after reading them, I do appreciate the many positive stories on homeschooling which attempt to portray us as something approaching normal.  But I wonder sometimes if this portrayal is entirely accurate.

Choosing between homeschool and public school is not quite like choosing between Coke and Pepsi, McDonald’s and Burger King, Target and WalMart.  It’s more like choosing a religion, going green or becoming vegan.  It is not a simple choice between two forms of education, but a lifestyle choice.

An as of yet alternative lifestyle choice.  Accounting for a whopping two to four percent of the population hardly makes homeschooling “normal.”  It just means there are enough of us that most people have run into a homeschooler or two at some point in their lives, making everyone a self-professed expert on “all” the homeschoolers they know anytime the subject comes up for discussion.

Personally, I’d prefer to spend less time trying to convince people that we are “normal,” and more time asking what that really means and how it applies to a remarkably diverse society.

homeschool homeschooling home education

As I read Milton Gaither’s review of Jennifer Lois’ “Emotionally Layered Accounts: Homeschoolers’ Justifications for Maternal Deviance”, I sort of got stuck on the title and place of publication.  While the article itself sounds interesting while it looks at how we as homeschooling mothers respond to social criticism (as opposed to leaders in the homeschool community), I just never pictured myself featured in the journal Deviant Behavior.

Homeschooling certainly isn’t the norm, but is it deviant behavior?

de·vi·ant

Adjective

deviating from what is considered acceptable behaviour

degenerate

pervert

miscreant

reprobate

homeschool homeschooling

Grandparents in West El Paso, Texas left their five grandchildren home alone while they ran into town to “take care of some business.”  The eldest was thirteen, the youngest four.  They never expected to receive a call there at the IRS from the fire department telling them they had to come home.

They never expected their house to catch on fire.  Fortunately, all five children were rescued, with the eldest being taken to the hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.  She was upstairs, where the fire began, but is expected to recover fully.

Hopefully we can all agree that the fact that this couple was homeschooling these children is fully irrelevant, but it does bring up the question of supervision.  At least to the local news channel reporting on the story.

But some may say that 13 years old is too young to be a babysitter for four other kids.

According to Texas law, there is no specific age said to be too young to be left home, and each child and situation should be taken into consideration.There is a law, however, that defines something called neglectful supervision. A law that states a child should not be put in a situation that a reasonable person would realize requires better judgment and maturity than the child has. KFOX14

I’ll play that “reasonable person,” but there are too many other questions in my mind that would need to be answered before I could definitively say that this thirteen year old lacked the judgment and maturity to be put into this situation.

1. How long were the adults intending on being away? An hour or two?  Most of the day?
2. How old were the other children? We know the youngest was four, but a twelve year old could help and a ten year old could be responsible more or less for him or herself.  Just knowing the age of the eldest and the youngest leaves me a tad suspicious that the reporter is trying to stir controversy where perhaps none need be.  But I’m just suspicious that way.
3. How mature is the thirteen year old? I’ve known thirteen year olds who were quite capable and responsible and full grown adults I wouldn’t trust with my puppy.  I would hope that the grandparents would be better judges of her maturity level than any arbitrary age level.
4. What are the relationships between the children like? I wouldn’t leave my ten year old with any of them just yet, but I’d sooner leave her alone with her two sisters and baby brother than with just her six year old brother.  He is “active” and they do not get along very well.
5. What about the neighbors? If you know your neighbors and your children have some place to go in an emergency, the situation looks a lot different.  Especially if those neighbors know the children are home alone and are keeping an eye out on the house.

Here in Nebraska, you can send your eleven year old to the Y or to the American Red Cross to earn their babysitter’s certificate, even though I have a hard time imagining leaving my daughter responsible for another child at that age.  But just because I wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean it constitutes neglect.  It reminds me a bit of the discussion last spring surrounding the columnist who allowed her nine year old son to navigate the Subway system to get home.  Alone.  In New York City!  My first reaction to that story was a resounding “She did what?!”  But I was born and raised in the Midwest and I would be uncomfortable navigating the NYC Subway system alone.  This child, on the other hand, has grown up with it.

There was a time when a thirteen year old girl could expect to marry soon, have children and raise her own family.  This, in fact, still happens in parts of the world.  And young Sarah Noble was but eight when she left with her father to explore the wilderness and cook for him.  Granted, these children had/have a far different upbringing than most of our suburban youth.  Today, they would probably be placed in protective custody.

But I still wonder.  Was this couple neglectful in leaving their grandchildren home alone?  Or has our culture artificially extended childhood by becoming too overprotective of children?

Przybylinksi parenting homeschool neglect

I have been doing a bit of reading recently about the internet, communities and the concept of virtual communities which develop over time.  The internet seems to offer an incredible ability for us to connect regardless of geographical boundaries.  To find information on a broad range of topics and often to find first hand accounts of how the stories we see in the news are affecting communities around the world.  To engage with people we might not otherwise ever talk to and find points of commonality as well as develop a certain level of respect for ideas we disagree with.

But I have found that the more I read other blogs, particularly political blogs, the more I appreciate my readers here.  It seems that in any serious discussion, there are two basic types of comments left: “Amen” or “You’re an idiot.”  There is very little meaningful or respectful discussion of any issue.

Maybe it is the nature of the blog and the internet.  A million voices are shouting through the noise and the easiest way to attract a following is to market outrage.  The e-newsletters I receive never merely outline an issue, provide some background and offer suggestions for organizing against an action.  Mixed in with this purported goal of the newsletter are hyperbolic statements about the end of America.  The end of homeschooling.  The end of the family.  The end of worker’s rights.

Everything is sensationalized.  There is never a middle ground.  There is always a call to arms.  And someone like me who generally believes that most of the consequences we get ourselves so upset about were unintended consequences of an action designed for good is passed off as “blind to what is really going on.”

Speaking about the recent outrage over Prince Harry’s comments about the Taliban and an Pakistani officer, Bookworm Room (via To Love Honor and Vacuum) puts it best,

The level of anger and hysteria about everything nowadays — absolutely everything — just puts me off, especially because it leaves no room to paint with the real brush of outrage.  If calling your enemy by a pejorative, or using a very low level slur in a sarcastic way to refer to someone who is obviously a comrade in arms, is exactly as horrific as using children as human shields, you’ve rendered your moral compass useless.  To use an analogy only those of us over 40 understand, if you play your records at 78 rpm, they all sound like indistinguishable gibberish.  We live in such a hysterical era.

Hysteria and outrage, not simple disagreement.  This incident can be exchanged with so many issues going on in our culture and our government.  That whole Subway thing?  Sure, if you were upset about it you don’t have to eat at Subway.  But the comparison to “Negroes need not apply” were a bit over the top for me.  The Motrinmoms thing?  I was all for baby wearing mothers to bring attention to the ads and to baby wearing in general.  But in the end it reached a level of outrage which went a little beyond rational.  Especially once I began to see blog posts popping up asking if Motrin’s actions were “enough” once they pulled the campaign.  Even the current outrage over CPSIA.  I am totally against this law, and believe that we do need to act against it.  But do I believe that our elected representatives are sitting around in darkened rooms thinking up ways to kill small business and take books away from children?  Hardly.

The Economist has an interesting article which Lynn of Bore Me to Tears linked in my comment box and I’ve been meaning to come back to ever since:

“We now live in a giant feedback loop,” says Mr Bishop, “hearing our own thoughts about what’s right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear and the neighbourhoods we live in.”  The Economist

It doesn’t seem to be about community anymore, but about isolation.  The paths of communication between groups are getting narrower with the advent of the internet rather than broader, pushing us to the extremes of our political philosophies as there is a decreasing need to get along with anyone who disagrees.  We are in a “giant feedback loop” as American society becomes increasingly fragmented according to religious and political views.

There is a danger in this. Studies suggest that when a group is ideologically homogeneous, its members tend to grow more extreme. Even clever, fair-minded people are not immune. Cass Sunstein and David Schkade, two academics, found that Republican-appointed judges vote more conservatively when sitting on a panel with other Republicans than when sitting with Democrats. Democratic judges become more liberal when on the bench with fellow Democrats.  Ibid.

At first, I thought what I was seeing on the internet was a combination of providing a platform for extreme views to be expressed and the lower level of social inhibitions in online communication.  But now I’m not so sure.  As it becomes easier to associate only with those we agree with, we are pushed to the extreme.  Outrage is cultivated and rewarded through attention, traffic and a following.

What could be an excellent tool for community building and crossing political and religious divides may actually be making those divisions deeper and more difficult to cross.

Every year, Christmas seems to be thrust into the center of the culture wars as businesses determine how to promote their goods to us and we decide just how upset we are at being wished a Happy Holiday.  My concerns began with an email alert I received from the American Family Association regarding the lack of the word “Christmas” in Costco’s holiday, er, Christmas, marketing campaign.

TAKE ACTION

Send your email to Costco.

Let Costco know that you will exercise “your privilege” of shopping only at stores that recognize Christmas. Remind Costco that their competitors are vying for your business too, and you will shop accordingly.

So far as I can remember, I’ve never set foot inside a Costco, so my scathing emails and promises to “shop accordingly” would mean very little. Of course, they don’t need to know that, but that is what started my musing. That and being told to boycott. That sort of strikes at my rebellious nature and really isn’t the best way to get me to do much of anything…especially when it comes in the form of an email newsletter I can only assume I signed up for at some point.

Anyway, that led to the Naughty and Nice lists put out by The American Family Association and The Liberty Counsel.  And I just noticed this, but what am I to do with Barnes and Nobles? They made the AFA’s “Naughty List” and the Liberty Counsel’s “Nice List.”

I’m a rather conservative Christian. Perhaps a bit too conservative even for the AFA and The Liberty Counsel for as I look down the Nice List, I’m not impressed by well-meaning companies paying honor to my Lord and Savior.  Instead I see a list of companies who would very much like to replace any Christian meaning there may be in the season with the Almighty Dollar. The name of my Lord and Savior is slapped on sales, bath soaps, cookbooks, linens and toys, all to be delivered in time for Christmas in hopes of clinching a sale. I wonder sometimes what exactly Christ would say if he were to walk through the “naughty” Bloomingdale’s or the “nice” Macy’s.

How dare you remove my name from your holiday flyer!

Er, Christmas flyer.  That seems stranger yet. And a bit out of character. But as a Christian, I’m supposed to “take on the mind of Christ.” To be His light to a fallen world. And it really seems there are ways to do that which are much more effective than engaging in what comes across to me as a publicity stunt to garner attention to a cause outside of the mission of the Church.

No man will live or die, be saved or condemned based on the welcome phrases used at a place of business.  If I had my druthers, I would much prefer to have the name of Christ connected with missions to aid the poor, the widows and the orphans than to have it connected to boycott after boycott of issues which are little more than expressions of cultural dissatisfaction and do nothing to help those who are truly in need.