On leisure and busy-ness

For both the adults and children in our family, one of the biggest challenges to forming and sustaining friendships is that nearly everyone seems to be busier than we are.

Other people's weekends are crammed with children's soccer (or baseball, basketball, etc.) games and church; their weekday afternoons with homework, soccer practice, and, on Wednesdays, more church. School and church alone, with their offshoots like family reading nights and science fairs and vacation bible school and mission trip fundraisers, take up a huge chunk of other people's lives.

I sometimes feel I should apologize for not being busier. Instead, I offer our flexibility as a way to make it easier to get together with others. "Name a time," I say, "and we can probably make it happen." Or I speak sympathetically about my own three children's scheduled activities, which currently are ballet, karate, drum lessons, scouts, and gymnastics, though actually they leave us with ample time to get together with friends, read books just because we want to, make homemade meals, and, most of the time, get enough sleep. We sometimes rush out to the car with me worried we won't make it someplace on time, but the hurrying is because I have mismanaged time, not because our lives are overwhelmingly busy.

Privilege is a big idea these days, and I acknowledge that our family is very, very fortunate to make a go of it on a single salary. We are also fortunate that my husband and I have had the life experiences to make us confident about unschooling.

And yet.

For at least middle-class families, factors other than family economics play a big role in chronic busy-ness. In his 2012 op-ed "The Busy Trap," Tim Kreider laments:

Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups. I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from surfing the World Book Encyclopedia to making animated films to getting together with friends in the woods to chuck dirt clods directly into one another's eyes, all of which provided me with important skills and insights that remain valuable to this day. Those free hours became the model for how I wanted to live the rest of my life.

While acknowledging that all latchkey children might not have as easy a time as Kreider (a Gen Xer like me), can we recognize something that has been lost here? Might children who spend all day in school and after-school care benefit from a couple of evenings a week just hanging out at home? Will a child's chance of succeeding at high school baseball or softball be destroyed because he or she does not play t-ball as a four-year-old? Can we recognize that playing in adult-directed sports leagues doesn't bond children in the same way as throwing dirt clods at each other?

After connecting his own decision to become a writer with the leisure time of his youth, Kreider reminds us of the relationship between leisure and creativity. His argument recalls one of my favorite passages from school-reformer-turned-unschooling-advocate John Holt's book Learning All the Time:

Real learning is a process of discovery, and if we want it to happen, we must create the kinds of conditions in which discoveries are made. We know what these are. They include time, leisure, freedom, and lack of pressure.

I love many things about the life we have created, but one of the things I love most is that we have the time to experience each day unfolding and to pursue interesting avenues of learning. Because our children are accustomed to sane lives, I suspect they will, like their parents and Kreider, gravitate toward ways of supporting themselves and their future families that aren't soul-sucking. I am more than okay with that.

Can we please stop repeating this "fact" about reading?

A foundation in my county has done all sorts of great work to improve the quality of life for local citizens. Thus I hesitate to criticize any of their efforts, which I think are mostly well-intended. But when I came across this promotional piece about the foundation's efforts to increase "kindergarten readiness" among local children, I must admit I was gobsmacked.

I could write a very long post about all the claims in the piece that make me uneasy, but instead I will focus on one statement that I find particularly dishonest:

"Until third grade, children are reading to learn to read. From there on, they are reading to get information."

To be clear, this statement is not original. It can be found, in slightly different form here and here, among other places. You can probably find some document from your local school district that makes this claim. It has become a predictable component of the "kindergarten readiness" speech parroted by school administrators, grant program overseers, and testing company representatives.

But it's not true, and more of us need to stand up and say so.

For my children, and for every other child I've known, reading has emerged from a complex mix of motivations. To say that beginning readers are reading solely to "learn to read" is reductive and insulting. It does, however, explain why so many schoolish beginning texts are incredibly boring. Why would content matter if learning to "decode" is all that beginning readers care about?

Do you know what my eldest son carried off to bed every night during the couple of months he crossed that magic bridge from not reading to reading? Transformers graphic novels intended for older children, and the Kentucky State Driver Manual. Why was he willing to expend effort, night after night, on these books? He wasn't attending school; no one was pressuring him to learn to read. He expended effort because he was interested in Transformers story lines, and fascinated by the hidden meanings of road signs, especially the unusual ones. In other words, he was reading to get information, even though he was five years old and, if schooled, would have been in kindergarten.

My daughter is nine, and homeschooled like her brothers. If she were in school, she would be in the third grade, and by now supposedly "reading to get information." But, in fact, her reading skills continue to improve the more she reads. Like her older brother, who has been reading for five years, she is learning how to read (better) as she reads, picking up new words as well as a more complex understanding of how structure, tone, punctuation, figurative language--the whole kit and kaboodle--create meaning.

And what about all the other reasons that people--children and adults alike--read? What about reading to escape our present difficulties, reading to be entertained, and reading to be inspired? No sane educator would disagree that people, including children, read for these purposes. So what does the current educational establishment really mean when it proposes an imaginary change in reading intent that occurs precisely before third grade?

It means that starting with third grade, you are expected to be a fluent reader as defined by the current educational establishment. It means that starting with third grade, if you aren't reading to the current educational establishment's standards, you are on your own. It means that in some states, you will be held back in third grade until you are a fluent reader as defined by the current educational establishment--that is, unless your parents take you out and homeschool you, or put you in a private school that is more tolerant of individual children's unique learning schedules.

The current educational establishment likes to cite evidence that if children aren't reading fluently by third grade, they are screwed. But this appears to be a self-fulfilling prophecy driven more by the withdrawal of teacher support for later readers than by a brain-based missed window of opportunity. Just because one isn't yet reading fluently doesn't mean one is incapable of learning about all kinds of important things. Peter Gray's study of unschoolers provides a compelling look at unschooled children who learned to read later than the schools now deem acceptable, without lasting negative consequences, and with plenty of positive ones.

Administrators, teachers, and the parents of schooled children should read Pam Sorooshian's description of her "late" reader jumping up and down at the mere idea of reading The Borrowers and ask themselves if public education might possibly learn something from unschooling families, rather than spreading made-up facts about reading.

Three books for critical thinking

I have many reasons for thinking my children are better off learning at home than at school. One of these is that schools are notoriously poor at fostering critical thinking. Critical thinking is hard to assess with multiple-choice tests, and finding time to nurture it may seem impossible to those charged with teaching kindergarten students to identify pronouns, or with keeping kids from walking on the wrong color square in the hallway.

As Chris Liebig at A Blog About School has written, "Real critical thinking always involves challenging someone's authority--not an easy skill to teach when you're otherwise busy sending the constant message of 'do as we say and don't talk back.'"

Adults who agree that critical thinking is important might be interested in three books, appropriate for older children, that embody the spirit of critical thinking. These books also make useful resources for those trying to figure out how to expose children to religion without indoctrinating them.

Mapping a Changing World by Yvette La Pierre

Essentially a history of maps, Mapping a Changing World is packed with facts about cartography across time and cultures. Some of its finest passages, however, are more philosophical in nature, raising important questions about how we know what we know, why we tend to mythologize to fill in gaps in our knowledge, and what happens when we make decisions based on incorrect maps.

Describing the oldest known map of the world, a fragment of a Babylonian clay tablet dating to 500 B.C., La Pierre says, "You'll notice when you look at the tablet that Babylon is in the center of the world. Early mapmakers commonly put themselves in the center of the universe, just as we can be self-centered in our view of place today." Even children are capable of heeding this warning. 

You Can't Read This: Forbidden Books, Lost Writing, Mistranslations & Codes by Val Ross

Any of these eighteen stories about reading is fascinating on its own, and collectively they illustrate the complex relationship between literacy and power. Recurring themes include censorship, legal prohibitions against reading, reading as tool of and threat to religious authority, and the struggle to decode unknown languages. The chapter on girls in Afghanistan is dated (because of the Taliban's resurgence) but still likely to help children understand the precarious nature of rights.

This is another book whose strength lies in the questions it poses. Ross asks, "[A] language that expresses the thoughts of one culture may lack words that are vital to another. In that case, how can the translation ever be accurate?" and "Sooner or later, we come across a book that we decide we should not read because we think it is false or dangerous. But do we have the right to make that decision for other people?"

The Brick Bible: The Complete Set by Brendan Scott Powell

It may surprise some to learn that Powell's The Brick Bible has both a strong atheist and a strong fundamentalist Christian following. Powell brings the books of the Bible to life in an easy-to-read translation of his own, illustrated with some of the most imaginative Lego builds ever seen. The book of Revelation is just . . . well, really something. 

From a critical thinking standpoint, Powell's book is better than the typical children's Bible because it doesn't edit out the stuff that makes Yahweh and Jesus seem a little nuts--thus the atheist appeal. And some fundamentalists don't see a problem with this (presumably because they are okay with God's vengeful side), and flood Powell's inbox with requests to reproduce pages from The Brick Bible for use in Sunday School classes. Also, Jesus isn't the implausibly light-skinned, blue-eyed guy from the typical children's Bible. He's a bright yellow Lego mini-figure.

While some of the most graphic passages have been cut from the print version of The Brick Bible (they are available at Powell's website, with a warning about mature content), there is still plenty here to give children a broader exposure to the Christian text than they are likely to get in most Sunday School classes. And while parents will need to take into consideration the age, temperaments, and existing knowledge of their children, they are likely to find that the crucifixion of Jesus on a plastic Lego cross isn't likely to inspire Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ-style nightmares.

Because I believe that children should be able to choose their own reading material (with parents available to provide assistance when it's wanted), I don't recommend assigning or even pressing kids to read these books. What I have done with the first two is to read them myself, then refer to passages or illustrations from the books when it seemed appropriate. For example, my daughter recently became interested in Helen Keller and sign language, and when she asked for help locating some more sign language videos I casually mentioned that the Ross book has a chapter about how Braille was developed. She replied that of course she was interested! Similarly, she has been learning about the Holocaust, so I referred her to several maps in La Pierre's book that trace the changing national boundaries in Europe from just before World War I to the present.

These are the kinds of books that don't have to be read in one sitting. And I know from past experience that once my children are exposed to books in our house, they tend to search them out later when seeking information.

When it came to The Brick Bible, I engaged in what Sandra Dodd calls "strewing." In other words, I left the books on the coffee table, where they were eventually discovered.  

More reasons to like screens

Some people are convinced that the Internet and social media are making us dumber. I am weary of this argument. It seems obvious to me that my children know more about the world than I did at their ages, and that technology has much to do with this.

One of the cool things about being 41 years old is that I remember when remote-controlled televisions came on the market. Serendipitously, my family's black-and-white set broke down around the same time the local Radio Shack got its first shipment of remote-controlled televisions. So our first color TV came with a two-inch chunk of a remote that was the fascination of the neighborhood. This is especially remarkable given the fact that my dad was practically a Luddite, with a special fondness for rotary-dial telephones.

Anyway, as remotes caught on, parents worried that children would become lazy (or lazier) because they no longer had to get up off the couch to change the channel. I actually remember teachers and other adults voicing this concern. As I don't know a single person who chooses to change the channel manually, I think it's safe to say that we got over our fear of remotes.

Worrying about the moral effects of technology is not a new thing, and even pre-dates remote-controlled television. Apparently Socrates fretted that the high-tech act of writing would have fatal consequences for traditional Greek dialectic. This information comes to us via a new book, Smarter Than You Think, by Clive Thompson. A book review in The New York Times commends Thompson for

avoid[ing] both the hype and the hand-wringing so common among digital age pontificators . . . He comes across as a sensible utopian, tending toward the belief that our digital devices and social networks are, on balance, enhancing our lives and improving the world in the same mixed-blessing sort of way that writing, paper, the printing press and the telephone did.

"Sensible utopian" also aptly describes teacher Andrew Simmons, who recently took to The Atlantic to consider (and mostly praise) the effects of social media on high school boys' writing. His argument is anecdotal but worth considering, especially when paired with Thompson's claim that social media and blogs have meant an increase in writing for most Americans.

It may seem like I'm all about "screen time" these days. After all, my last post was something of a tribute to the learning possibilities represented by the television-DVD player combination. Even I am surprised by my enthusiasm for screens, as I began life as a homeschooling parent with the grim determination to keep electronics in the background as much as possible. (I also began homeschooling with a firm belief in the inferiority of practically every activity to reading books. I'd like to blame this on time spent in college English departments, but it may well have been my own problem.)

The writings of Sandra Dodd and other unschoolers helped me to reconsider my suspicion of digital media, to rethink the very notion of "screen time," and to stop arbitrarily limiting the time my children spent using the television, DVD player, computer, and other devices. It was only a matter of time until I was noting the very real ways in which my children were using screens to learn.

We all love Lucy: why my husband and I are thrilled about our daughter's TV watching

This summer, while education experts were going on morning talk shows to bemoan "summer learning loss" and to suggest preventive strategies, my eight-year-old daughter was watching I Love Lucy. She was watching lots of it, in fact: the entire first five seasons, or 154 episodes. Many episodes she watched twice; a special few she watched five or even ten times each. Obviously, my husband and I allowed this Lucy Fest. We allowed it not because we are lazy, but because we are unschooling parents who believe that learning is everywhere, and that having a personal interest in a subject, and parents who support that interest, is the best way to ensure that learning will take place.

Neither my husband nor I can remember exactly why it occurred to us that Hadley might like I Love Lucy, but I think we'd noticed how much she enjoyed other examples of physical comedy, as well as movies set during earlier periods, and how many questions she had asked about the collectible I Love Lucy Barbie dolls in her cherished Barbie collector's guide. Regardless, sometime in early May, I ordered the first season on DVD from Amazon, opened the box in front of Hadley when it arrived, and asked if she'd like to watch a bit of it with me. She was instantly hooked.

Subject classifications, while unavoidable in schools, can actually hinder natural learning; thus I am reluctant to cram everything my daughter gained from I Love Lucy into neat boxes that would satisfy some curriculum committee. Yet a little borrowing from the language of schools might be useful to those who find unschooling a questionable educational approach, or to those who are attracted to unschooling ideals but can't help worrying, "But what about the math? What about geography?"

So here, in very broad subject terms, are some of the topics Hadley learned about this summer via her favorite red-haired comedienne:

History

• The United States' "Good Neighbor" policy toward Latin America
• The coup that brought Batista to power in Cuba and the resulting immigration of Desi Arnaz's family
• Castro's Cuban Revolution and the exodus of Cubans to the United States
• The gay nineties
• The flapper of the 1920s
• Discrimination against African Americans and their virtual absence from 1950s television comedy
• How constitutional monarchies work
• Changing of the guard at Buckingham palace
• Reign of the current Queen Elizabeth (Elizabeth II)
• Edward VIII/Wallis Simpson abdication crisis

Sociology and Psychology

• Why people get divorces
• The differences between public personas and private lives
• How changing domestic technologies in the 1950s affected gender roles and women's lives
• Mid-century social games: bridge, canasta, mahjong
• Mid-century gender roles and stereotypes (e.g., women are irresponsible with money, men aren't good at taking care of children)
• Public perception of and discrimination against multi-cultural families

Geography

• Why there were only 48 states in the early 1950s
• Methods of patrolling international borders
• What a passport is and how to obtain one
• Public transportation vs. car ownership in New York City and other major metropolitan areas
• The Alps and avalanches

Cooking and Cuisine

• Traditional Italian winemaking
• Traditional Cuban foods
• Breadmaking
• Etiquette surrounding escargot

Art, Drama, and Design

• Use of facial expressions, stunts, and special effects to make physical comedy
• Mid-century clothing, including garments rarely worn today in the United States (e.g., girdles, slips, smoking jackets)
• Costuming and how often particular items are repeated during a season
• Makeup techniques
• Set design, including architecture, props, set changes between episodes and seasons
• Popular furniture styles of the 1950s (mid-century modern, early American, modern Chinese)
• Vaudeville performers
• Advantages and disadvantages of filming before a live studio audience
• Sponsors, advertising, and product placement
• Child actors and child labor laws
• Aesthetic differences between black-and-white and color film and implications for set design
• Old Hollywood (actors/actresses and significant Hollywood locations)
• References to I Love Lucy in the contemporary movie Rat Race and people who act professionally as Lucy impersonators

Literature and Language Arts

• How puns work
• Figures of speech
• Plot devices and narrative patterns
• Narrative differences and similarities between radio shows and early television sitcoms

Economics and Math

• How checking accounts work and what it means to bounce a check
• How store credit works and why it's rarely used in the U.S. today
• Meaning of the adage about not mixing business with friendship
• How the value of collectible items is determined
• Rights and responsibilities of landlords
• Home-based businesses and the importance of correctly figuring one's profit
• Currency exchange rates
• Counterfeit money
• Inflation
• Minimum wage
• Exporting of American jobs in second half of twentieth century

Music

• Operetta as a genre and how it differs from opera
• Traditional Latin music and Latin jazz
• What bandleaders and conductors do
• Square dancing and rockabilly music
• References to I Love Lucy in popular music (Jimmy Buffet's "Pencil Thin Mustache" and Weird Al Yankovic's parody song "Oh Ricky")

Health and Biology

• Health effects and changing public perception of cigarette smoking
• Physical and behavioral effects of alcohol consumption
• Changing medical advice and social norms surrounding childbirth (e.g., mid-century bottle feeding, homemade baby formula, Dr. Spock)
• Biological causes and emotional effects of miscarriage

While television watching is often characterized as "passive" and a withdrawal from "real life"--especially when children are the watchers--Hadley's I Love Lucy-thon was neither. Would a passive viewer bother to pause a program two or three or five times an hour to ask her dad to explain some word or name or concept, or wait excitedly while her mom searched the internet for more information? Would a passive viewer replay a scene over and over until she was certain she got the joke? We had some deep hour-long conversations, just before going to sleep or in the car, after new ideas from I Love Lucy had percolated and given rise to new understandings or questions. And how lovely it was for my husband and me to snuggle with our sweet daughter on the couch and watch her face as she smiled and thought deeply and laughed! Those times will provide special memories when all of us are older, and when opportunities to gather on the family couch aren't so plentiful. Sometimes our family will be out and about and Hadley will say, "Do you know what that reminds me of?" and we all share a good laugh because we know exactly which Lucy episode she has in mind.

Critics of unschooling like to speak of the importance of "well-roundedness"--a characteristic they can't imagine an unschooled child possessing--and thus I find it satisfying to share that while watching 154 episodes of I Love Lucy this summer, Hadley still found time to attend weekly gymnastics and karate practice, enjoy the county fair, swim in our community pool, play with the neighbor kids, attend a few birthday parties, complete two challenging sewing projects, build with Legos, help in the garden, attend a week-long art day camp, hunt for fossils, tour a lighthouse, play on numerous playgrounds, compare and calculate prices of things she wanted to buy with her allowance, and visit a history museum. That certainly seems well-rounded to me.

The next time you hear parents worrying (or boasting!) about limiting their children's "screen time," or when you encounter experts bent on convincing you of television's inevitable addictive lure, I hope you will consider my family's Lucy experience. With a positive attitude and parental involvement, television can be just another great resource for learning, and a conduit for family closeness and joy.

Reasons matter: homeschooling, unschooling, and priorities

Homeschoolers come to homeschooling for different reasons. I get that. But I do think some reasons for homeschooling are better than others.

It is better to homeschool because one cares about children's well-being than because one wants to exercise certain parental rights.

It is better to homeschool because one wants to help specific children learn well and happily than because one wants to give the government the middle finger, or make some other kind of political statement.

It is better to homeschool because one wants to make a child's world larger, with more opportunities, than because one wants to make it smaller, with fewer opportunities.

John Holt, the former teacher and founder of Growing Without Schooling magazine and the first to use the term "unschooling," was a great friend of children. I think it's safe to assume that Holt would be disturbed by the attempts of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) to become the voice for all American homeschoolers. The HSLDA argues for the right of parents to use corporal punishment on their children and takes political stances on subjects like gay marriage that have nothing to do with homeschooling and everything to do with religion. The HSLDA has undermined decades of work by state-level homeschooling groups to secure reasonable homeschooling statutes, and the organization uses hyperbolic and distorted reports to scare parents into becoming dues-paying members in exchange for legal defense they don't need.

Michelle Goldberg's "Homeschooled Kids, Now Grown, Blog Against the Past" reveals much that is wrong with Christian fundamentalist homeschooling, and with the HSLDA. The article makes it clear that many fundamentalist homeschooling parents are not only harming their children, but actually making the legal right to homeschool shakier for everyone. The general public is rightfully concerned about homeschooling that involves abuse, neglect, sexism, and anti-intellectualism--that is, with homeschooling used to make a child's world smaller instead of larger.

Another threat to homeschooling, and to unschooling in particular, comes from a different place on the political spectrum. Certain unschoolers who see unschooling as inseparable from a libertarian or anarchist world view are actively courting media attention these days, in the name of bringing unschooling to the mainstream. (As with the HSLDA, both economic and political motives seem to be at work here.) Unfortunately, some of these advocates seem to think that any attention is good attention. They imagine that the portrayals of unschooling on shows such as Wife Swap are wonderful even if the privacy of their own children is violated by camera crews and their children's reputations damaged by unscrupulous editing. No matter what the media-seeking unschooling advocates say their intentions are, if the public is left with the impression that unschooling means children being left to fend for themselves in the name of "liberty," the legal right to unschool will be jeopardized. The kinds of media representations that are good for unschooling (and there have been some of these, though never on Wife Swap) look deeply at how people learn, and are thoughtful and nuanced in their discussion of how parents partner with their children. They are designed to be informational and not entertaining (which is to say, they don't include guests uttering bleeped-out words and ranting at each other), and generally don't offer financial compensation to the participants.

While I am glad to know some wonderful homeschooling families, I don't see myself as part of "the homeschooling community" or "the unschooling community." I am wary of homeschooling where the priority is not helping children thrive, and of homeschooling and unschooling advocates with political and economic agendas that can too easily eclipse actual children's needs.


*UPDATE*: Those interested in how priorities can help or hinder unschooling and/or peaceful parenting should check out Sandra Dodd's page on Priorities. I don't know anyone who has written more clearly, or helpfully, about the subject.

Better getting-to-know-you questions for unschoolers (and everyone)

A friend of mine who recently saw my children for the first time in over a year told me that she had trouble thinking of what to say to them on this particular visit. She said that she usually asks kids their grade level, or how they like their teachers, or what their favorite school subjects are. (In fact, I can recall her asking my kids some of these questions during a previous visit, and receiving a few blank stares in response.)

Because she has read my blog, and we've had some conversations about how unschooling differs from the kind of homeschooling that attempts to replicate school, she now realizes that those questions aren't particularly appropriate. But alternate questions didn't readily come to mind. After all, what kind of getting-to-know-you questions do you ask children who neither go to school, nor homeschool in a school-at-home kind of way?

I really appreciate my friend's honesty about this subject. And for the record, I think that the getting-acquainted questions adults ask each other often fall short as well.

My children enjoy talking about what interests them. "So, what do you enjoy doing?" is a great getting-to-know-you question. 

It is much, much better than the favorite school-subject question because the answer can be, "I like reading and watching movies about different U.S. presidents," but can also be, "I like playing Minecraft and watching YouTube videos about how to play it better." The answer can be, "I like reading the Little House books with my mom," which involves reading and history but doesn't need to classified under those headings to be both fun and worthwhile to the child. In fact, I'm quite sure that while reading the Little House books with me, my daughter is not thinking about which school subjects she might be checking off.

"Do you have any special activities coming up?" is another good question. A child asked this question can talk about an upcoming dance recital, or a birthday party, or a trip to the mineral museum, or the purchase of a new video game once enough allowance has been saved.

It's simple, really. The kinds of questions my children respond to with enthusiasm tend to be the same kinds of questions that I respond to with enthusiasm. Even when I had a paid eight-to-five job, it seemed strange to be defined so completely by my job title that it was the first thing I was expected to tell people about myself.

I once had a boyfriend who ended up seated on a plane next to a woman who said she was an artist. Things were all friendly and chit-chatty until the woman explained that she paid her bills working as a medical receptionist. You see, my then-boyfriend felt it was deceptive of her to call herself an artist when she spent forty hours a week answering phones and sending faxes. I mean, how dare she? (That boyfriend and I broke up not too long after an argument about the airplane seatmate, whom I defended.)

Here's the thing: If what you most want me to know about you is that you work professionally as a marketing consultant, and I say, "So, what sorts of things do you enjoy doing?" you can say, "I LOVE working as a marketing consultant!" and tell me about a big client you just snagged, or a great campaign you successfully executed. But if you are a marketing consultant who happens to hate your job, my question gives you an opportunity to share something positive about yourself--something about the person you understand yourself to be. You can say, "I love designing fondant cakes!" or tell me about how you volunteer Saturday mornings at the Humane Society, or how you're an avid reader of crime novels and are thinking about trying your hand at writing one. And instead of just performing some empty social ritual, I've actually given myself a chance to know something real about you.

Philip W. Jackson's 1968 classic education study Life in Classrooms reminds readers of "an important fact about a student's life that parents and teachers often prefer not to talk about . . . This is the fact that young people have to be in school, whether they want to be or not." While we may encounter a child who is thrilled to say that he's in third grade, or that social studies is his favorite subject, I think most children have more interesting things they'd like to tell us. We really should give them the chance.

An Interview with Grown Homeschooler Amanda Scott

I recently had the opportunity to interview Amanda Scott, a grown homeschooler from Alabama who is also an atheist.  I met Amanda, who is nineteen, on the Freedom From Religion Foundation Facebook page, where Amanda is known for her extensive knowledge of First Amendment caselaw.  Amanda is also the administrator of a Facebook Group called "The Wall of Separation," dedicated to the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state, the Framers' intent, and Supreme Court jurisprudence.


Did you homeschool from early childhood on, or did you have some school experiences along the way?

AS: I attended public school until the fourth grade.

How did you and/or your parents arrive at the decision to homeschool?

AS: My parents decided to homeschool me because of my health.  I had a health problem that required me to go to the doctor at least three times a week which conflicted with my school schedule.  But my parents saw that I did better at home than at school, so they decided to continue to homeschool me for the rest of my school years.

Did your parents have any particular homeschooling philosophy or approach?  Did you ever use a formal curriculum?

AS: At first my parents used a formal homeschooling curriculum with homeschool textbooks, but later on they used an online curriculum and I did most of my studying online on various educational websites.  On a side note, I remember my first homeschool textbooks were published by a Christian company and included a Bible verse question at the end of each chapter. 

Were you raised in a freethinking home, or did you abandon religious ideas somewhere along the way?

AS: I was raised without any religion.  My parents never baptized me, took me to church, or sent me to Sunday school or vacation Bible school.  We never read the Bible.  I am not even sure we owned a Bible!  We celebrated Christmas and Easter as secular holidays.  We always decorated our house with trees, garland, wreaths, mistletoe, Santa Claus, elves, reindeer, and snowmen, but we never put up a nativity scene, an angel, or even a star signifying the Christian origins of Christmas as the birth of Jesus Christ.

However, when I became a teenager, I became interested in learning about religion, and I read the New Testament, the Torah, the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects, the Satanic Bible and a number of other religious texts.  But I was not interested in converting to any religion.  I am still not interested in converting to any religion now.  Religion is not for me. 

Some might find it hard to believe that a teenager would do so much reading if it wasn't assigned by a teacher.   How would you respond to those who argue that teenagers need formal incentives (rewards, sanctions, etc.) to learn?

AS: I think, to quote John Holt, that the human animal is a learning animal.   Children are naturally interested in learning.  But when you put children into the traditional public or private schooling system, teach them for eight hours a day, and then assign them homework and prepare them for tests, they lose their natural interest in learning once they leave school.   Fortunately I haven't lost my natural interest in learning.

And how did your parents respond to your researching various religious traditions?

AS: My parents encouraged me to learn about religion.  My mother took me every week to our local Barnes & Noble store and let me browse the Religion & Spirituality section and select a new book on religion.  I recall one interesting experience where I was looking for a copy of the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey but couldn't find one and my mother asked the Barnes & Noble sales managers if they had any copies left in stock.  Their reaction was priceless!  I became a regular at the book store until it closed down two years ago.  Now I buy all of my books online through websites that sell used textbooks and ex-library books. 

Did you ever find that when you identified yourself as a homeschooler, people assumed you were Christian?

AS: Yes they did, and they still do.  When I tell people I was homeschooled, they assume I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household where I was taught that Jesus rode on the dinosaurs, but it was the exact opposite.
 
You are very interested in, and knowledgeable about, constitutional law.  When and how did this interest develop?

AS: Last year I discovered the Freedom From Religion Foundation after a local friend reported the city of Bay Minett's "Operation Restore Our Community" program which would have allowed misdemeanor offenders to choose between going to jail or attending church services for a year.  The Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other national civil rights groups intervened and put a stop (or at least a halt) to the unconstitutional program.  I became very interested in learning more about the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.  I began researching the Supreme Court Religion Clause cases like McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948),  Abington Township School District v. Schempp (consolidated with Murray v. Curlett), 374 U.S. 203 (1963), and Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).  I also researched Circuit Court cases. 

Unfortunately, because I am not a law student (yet, anyway), I do not have a subscription to professional legal search engines like WestLaw or LexisNexis.  I use scholar.google.com which allows me to search through legal documents including Supreme Court cases and Circuit Court up to about the 1930s.  For the State Court cases predating the 1930s, like State ex rel Weiss v. District Board 76 Wis. 177 (1890) or Board of Education of Cincinnati v. Minor, 23 Ohio St. 211 (1872), I use Google Books which allows me to search through digitally archived copies of case law reports like the South Eastern Reporter or the Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Ohio.  I also bought a used copy of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation and learned how to cite court cases properly, quote judicial opinions, omit quotations, and use signals.  Because I was homeschooled/unschooled, I learned how to teach myself without a formal teacher.  But I understand that I need to have a formal university education and I am hoping to enroll in paralegal studies next year and apply for a legal internship with the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the next couple of years.

You clearly seem to have learned to locate and apply information for yourself.  Are there any other ways in which you see homeschooling as having been advantageous?

AS: Yes.  My parents gave me access to the Internet as young as eight years old.  At a very young age, I developed the skills to efficiently use search engines to find information.  I also developed the skills to create websites by coding HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and create graphics in Photoshop which enabled me to open my own fansite for my favorite band at the age of thirteen.  I think being homeschooled has been advantageous to me because I developed skills that some people have to go to school for.

What, if anything, has been the downside to homeschooling for you, as compared to conventional schooling?

AS: I think the only downside to being homeschooled is anxiety.  I am anxious about going to college after being homeschooled for so many years.  I will have to adapt to sitting in a classroom next to other students listening to a teacher again.  However, my anxiety is only in a school setting.  I don't have any anxiety in any other social setting.

What was it like--and is it like today--being a nonbeliever in Alabama? 

AS: My family and I have done very well in Alabama.  Religion and politics are not topics that come up in our everyday lives.  When someone asks me where I go to church, I just politely respond that I don't go to church.  If someone hands me a religious pamphlet, I just politely accept it and say thank you.  I don't discuss my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) or political views with strangers because it's none of their business.

What do you think are the most important qualities, practices, habits, etc. that secular homeschooling parents should model to their children?

AS: I think Dale McGowan's book Parenting Beyond Belief is a good place to start.  I think the most important quality parents can teach their children is charity, regardless of whether they are religious or secular.  My parents taught me to be charitable by example.  My mother and father would always do random acts of charity, like helping the person in line at the grocery store pay for their groceries when they came up short, or stopping by the side of the road and giving someone a ride when their car broke down, or letting someone stay over at our house when they had nowhere else to go.  When I was a little girl I didn't understand why they did the things they do, but now I understand why they did them.  Charity knows no religion. 


I want to thank Amanda for sharing her experiences and insights, which I hope are as interesting (and encouraging!) to other secular and unschooling/homeschooling parents as they are to me. 

The Unschooling-Atheism Intersection

While What to Tell the Neighbors was still in the conceptual stage, I wondered if it might be problematic to focus on both unschooling and atheism.  After all, not all unschoolers are atheists, and certainly most atheists are not unschoolers.  

Yet for me the two are linked in some important ways. 

First, both unschooling and atheism are significant departures from the typical, not only here in western Kentucky, but in most parts of the United States.  Unschooling atheist families may be viewed as doubly odd and thus must be extra thick-skinned when facing criticism.  Often, they must make a concerted effort to find the support they need to sustain them.  Blogs can be an important part of that support--both for writers and readers!

Second, successful unschooling (generally defined as an approach to homeschooling in which children learn without pre-designed curricula, grading, standardized tests, and other conventions of traditional schooling) requires parents who are convinced that children learn better from love than from fear, from being allowed to explore than from being forced, and from formulating questions than from memorizing someone else's answers.  Thus, unschoolers tend to be people whose worldview is not fundamentalist anything.  While not all of the unschoolers I've encountered identify as atheist, many do identify as atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker, skeptic, etc. 

A few months ago, I "met" (in that virtual Facebook way) a young woman who is both an atheist and a grown homeschooler.  Her name is Amanda Scott, she is nineteen years old, and she never fails to dazzle me with her knowledge of constitutional law.  In addition to being an active participant on the Freedom from Religion Foundation's Facebook page, Amanda is the administrator of a Facebook Group called "The Wall of Separation," which is a great source of information on Supreme Court jurisprudence related to the First Amendment.  I thought it would be interesting to interview Amanda to see how her experiences learning outside of a traditional school environment influenced her atheism, and vice versa.  Amanda agreed to the interview, which will be appearing soon as my next post.  If you are an unschooling or homeschooling parent who is raising your child without religion, you won't want to miss this one. 

The Grades My Kids Aren't In

Here is something new.

When someone who knows we homeschool asks what grades the children are in, I'm no longer going to spout off a number. 

Instead I'm going to say, "We don't do grades, but this one is eight years old, this one is seven, and this one is five."  If the person looks at me with confusion--or contempt--I'm going to try very hard not to add, "If they were in school, they'd be in such-and-such grades."

The reason for this change is that I've stopped thinking of my children in terms of grade levels.  I no longer care what grades they would be in if they were in school.  It's no longer important to me that their skills are at or above grade level, whatever that means.  In fact, that goal seems utterly incompatible with the kind of deep, joyful learning my family values.

I have seen each of them, in turn, learn about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln because they were interested in money. 

They have learned about fractions because they are interested in being fair.

They are learning to write, at different paces and in different ways, because they have things they want to say.  Yesterday, one of them set up a booth with our face/body paints (the safe kind, in case anyone's wondering) and a sign that said "TATTOO CITY."  The other two paid a quarter each for custom-designed body art.  A few hours later, I noticed a discarded piece of paper that read "TATTOO SITTY."  I don't know the process by which the spelling was corrected, but neither I nor any other adult was involved.

By the way, I didn't come to this decision (realization?) about the kids' grade levels by myself.  A few things Sandra Dodd wrote crossed my path at the right time.  One was the essay, "How Holly Takes the World for Granted," from Moving a Puddle, though there may have been others.  Sandra has written a lot, for which I am grateful.

The Gideon Problem, Part 3: The Board of Education Says There Isn't a Problem

The Superintendent responded to my letter of complaint about the Board of Education's plans to bring the Gideons back into Muhlenberg County Schools under a revised policy.  The main points conveyed in his letter are that 1) the Board of Education believes its new policy is protected by the district's "Community Use of School Facilities" agreement; 2) the Board will allow any nonprofit group to distribute literature at designated school functions, even if doing so results in controversy; 3) the Board has no plans to put the new policy in writing, or to take any steps to make the public aware of it, since the press already attends Board meetings.

What puzzles me about the Superintendent's response is that the district's "Community Use of School Facilities" agreement, which is supposed to justify the new policy, seems only to set forth the conditions under which nonprofit groups can rent school facilities during non-school hours.  It would, in fact, be constitutionally permissible for the Board to rent district facilities to the Gideons, during times the district isn't using them.  (And if the district rents its facilities out to any community groups, it must not discriminate against groups simply because they are religious.)  But that is not what the new policy, as explained by the Board and Superintendent, is about.  The new policy is about allowing the Gideons to distribute literature at official school functions such as open houses and reading nights.  The distinction is not a small one.

I'm also dissatisfied with the Board's unwillingness to put in writing, and announce, its new policy.  Doing so would actually offer the district some measure of protection by making it clear that the policy is not being amended on a case-by-case basis to include or exclude certain groups.  And if the Board's intent is to establish a constitutionally defensible open forum, in which various religious and non-religious viewpoints are represented, then the boundaries of the forum need to be better defined.  It remains unclear if all school-sponsored events are included, or just open houses and reading nights.  What about basketball games and other sporting events?  Will nonprofit representatives be confined to a table, or permitted to circulate among students?  As I've said before, refusing to clarify these issues gives the impression that perhaps the Board doesn't want those with religious viewpoints different from the Gideons to know that the forum exists.

I want readers to know that I am sticking with this, although it might be a while before I have anything new to report.  I also want to answer two questions that have reached me, in slightly different forms, through numerous channels--including the comments section of this blog.

Q: If your children aren't in school, why do you care if the Gideons are there distributing bibles?

A: Liberal homeschooling parents have been accused--most notably by Slate columnist Dana Goldstein--of withdrawing much-needed support and involvement from our nation's public schools.  What kind of citizen (or human being) would I be if I didn't care what goes on in the schools simply because my children don't attend them?  As I said in my first post on the subject, I am particularly concerned about recent trends that infringe on students' civil liberties.  While the First Amendment's Free Exercise clause guarantees freedom of religion, the Establishment Clause offers citizens protection from state-sponsored religion.  Because these two clauses work together to provide Americans with tremendous religious freedom compared to other countries, the cause I am taking up does not belong solely to atheists.  I admire the work of Americans United, an organization made up of American citizens of various faiths and "dedicated to preserving the constitutional principle of church-state separation as the only way to ensure religious freedom for all."  The organization is headed by the Reverend Barry Lynn, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

Another reason I am voicing my concerns is that I recognize the many ways in which speaking out against religious proselytizing in the schools is a risky proposition.  Many who share my concerns will not speak out for fear they will be socially ostracized and harassed, or even lose their jobs.  I also think it's a good idea for people to identify the cause of church-state separation with a local citizen, as it helps to dispel the myth that challenges to state-sponsored religion are always the work of "outside agitators."  It seems too easy for some to ignore the fact that the reason local fifth-graders aren't still receiving bibles (and an exhortation to read them!) during instructional time is that a local parent of a fifth-grader reported the violation, albeit anonymously.

Finally, in justifying my interest in the district's handling of the Gideons, it seems ridiculous that I should have to point out the fact that I am a taxpayer.  Our public institutions--including libraries, roads, parks, and schools--belong to all of us.

Q: What if you are wrong in your disbelief, and hell is a real, terrible place?  Aren't you concerned about your and your children's salvation?

A: No.

On Knitting, Knowing, and Cultivating Passions

I am learning how to knit.

This was not on my summer to-do list.  What was on my list was getting halfway through revisions to my novel.  And getting back to regular yoga practice.  And spending more time with the fiddle, which I began playing two years ago but have neglected the past several months.

Of course, being my children's learning facilitator/guide/partner is always on the list, which is why, when my super-crafty seven-year-old daughter wanted to sew with a machine, I signed her up for some sewing classes at the nearest fabric store.  While my husband and I often take turns serving as our children's "competence model," to borrow a term from unschooling writer Robyn Coburn, in this case there was simply no competence to model: I don't own a sewing machine, and have never even used one.  I drag out the needle and thread once every few months to sew on a button.

Hadley loved the sewing classes so much that she decided to spend the summer trying every single children's class the fabric store offered.  I negotiated her down to a slightly smaller, more affordable list of the classes that most appealed to her.  Knitting was one of them.

Fifteen minutes into the first of two knitting sessions, Hadley and the only other student, an eight-year-old girl, were discouraged; they hadn't expected it to be so tricky.  The teacher, a kind and patient expert knitter named Becky, said to me and the other mother, "You know, they will pick this up a lot easier if you learn, too."

I had been afraid she was going to say that.

It's not that I'm completely uncrafty.  Though my sewing skills are a bit limited, I adore weaving potholders on those nifty little metal looms, and I went through a counted-cross-stitch phase that began when I was nine and lasted until I was thirteen.  But knitting?  It just seemed so big league.

I'd considered learning once, years ago, after it was recommended by a therapist I was seeing during the lows of our infertility struggle and the constant anxiety that accompanied my medically complicated first pregnancy.  Afraid you're never going to get pregnant?  Knit!  On bedrest to stave off premature labor?  Why not knit with all that free time?  The therapist even loaned me some needles and patterns, which I looked over for about fifteen minutes before deciding I wasn't up to it.  Instead I spent weeks poring over The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding  and Your Baby and Child from Birth to Age Five and watched, for the first time, The Godfather and its sequels and a mountain of less memorable movies that my husband brought home from the video store.

But there was my daughter in knitting class, imploring me with her huge brown eyes, and the other mother, who had snatched up an extra pair of teacher Becky's knitting needles and, after glancing at the handout on the casting-on process, was now casually whipping loops onto her left needle.

I walked out into the store and bought the big needles and oversized yarn from the class supply list.  Becky suggested I let her cast on for me, so that I could start right in on the knit stitch.  She modeled the stitch several times, but when I attempted to imitate her, I'd insert the needle in the wrong place, or the loops would slip off the end of the needle, or I'd lean over to help Hadley and forget where I was with my own work.  Then I'd need Becky to get me back on track.  By the end of the session I had four imperfect rows of stitches.

When we returned two days later for the second and final session, Hadley had a few rows of knitting to show for her efforts.  I had a tangled mess of yarn and empty needles, having made some mistake eight rows in and, in the process of trying to fix it, pulled the whole thing apart.  (I tried not to notice that what the other mother brought back practically qualified as a blanket.)  Fortunately, I was more rested than the first afternoon, and I'd had more time to adjust to the idea that I would be knitting.  I also had an obscenely large latte in hand.

After multiple demonstrations and attempts, and the entire enormous latte, I finally got the hang of casting on.  Then I caught on to the knit stitch.  As my hands began knowing what to do, I realized that knitting might be something I could enjoy for my own reasons.

Before we left the store, Hadley and I walked back to the yarn section and examined the various types to see which we liked.  I traded in the scratchy acrylic starter yarn for a super-soft skein of organic cotton.  I also picked out some smaller needles.  Hadley decided to stay with the large needles and yarn, but she picked a new color--a lovely mulberry shade--that she hopes to work into a scarf.

Two evenings ago I finished my first simple project: a small purse for Hadley.  Yesterday morning I sat down with the knitting books we checked out from the library and attempted to do the purl stitch.  I'm happy to report that I had some success before I had to stop and help my five-year-old prepare lunch.

Knowing how to purl will give me access to a whole new world of knitting projects, and allow me to model purling to Hadley, if and when she's ready to use it.  My knitting competence--however little or much I have by then--will be available to her in the same way as my competence at calculating sales tax and baking bread and resolving health insurance billing problems and pronouncing the names of Greek goddesses.

The idea that people are learning all the time is central to unschooling.  Instead of dividing children's activities into categories like "educational" and "recreational," unschoolers strive to take all of their children's interests seriously.  Reading a classic novel is not regarded as an inherently better use of time than playing with Legos; a fascination with Beyblades receives as much parental support as a fascination with The Scholastic Atlas of the United States.  A list of my three children's interests through the years would include--in addition to sewing, knitting, Legos, Beyblades, and The Scholastic Atlas of the United States--construction vehicles, the Eiffel Tower, Pokemon, chess, Barbie dolls, marble runs, rocks, Caillou, the First Amendment, face painting, woodworking, satellite dishes, surveillance cameras, the Titanic, Star Wars, Bruce Springsteen's The Seeger Sessions, constellations, The Kentucky Driver Manual, and the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Some of these interests have sparked related interests, some have grown into passions, and some will surely accompany my children all the way to adulthood.

I've learned from all of them, even when I wasn't expecting to.

Hadley's first piece of knitting, which makes a perfect rug for Ariel

My first project: a little purse for Hadley

Why I Can't Stand Those Pledge of Allegiance Memes Circulating on Facebook

Maybe it's because Independence Day is upon us that the Pledge of Allegiance memes are once again making the rounds on Facebook.  Perhaps you've seen one of them in your own news feed.

One version reads:

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!  MY GENERATION GREW UP RECITING THIS EVERY MORNING IN SCHOOL WITH MY HAND ON MY HEART.  THEY NO LONGER DO THAT FOR FEAR OF OFFENDING SOMEONE.  LET'S SEE HOW MANY AMERICANS WILL RE-POST.

Another version replaces the actual pledge with an illustration of schoolchildren saluting the flag.  The caption reads, "We no longer do this for . . . fear . . . of offending someone!!! Let's see how many Americans will re-post this."

I want to go on record as saying that I find these memes aggravating.  (Can we say excessive capitalization and exclamation points?  Garbled syntax?  And what's up with that very weird use of ellipses?)  I also find them dishonest.

A whopping thirty-six states require public schools to lead recitation of the pledge.  Another six states give schools the option of requiring it.  Clearly, it's absurd to claim that "we no longer do" the pledge.  Further, many who have objected to the pledge being used in public schools (which isn't quite the same as being offended by it) have done so because of the phrase "under God," which wasn't part of the original pledge at all.  It was added in 1954, sixty-two years after the original pledge was written, during the fear-mongering era of McCarthyism, when invoking God was a handy way for those with political ambitions to prove they were hard on Communism.  My own father grew up saying the pledge without the "under God" insertion.  Anyone who is advocating a true return to tradition would more sensibly call for a return to the secular version of the pledge.

Because we are unschoolers, my children do not say the pledge of allegiance at school.  And, unlike some homeschoolers, they don't line up and say it at home.  (Some homeschoolers also pledge allegiance to a Christian flag, as depicted in the documentary Jesus Camp, but that is another story.)  Personally, my husband and I are not fans of forcing kids to pledge allegiance to anything.  Those who have spent time with us know that we are kooky in that way.  As part of living in our house, our children are, however, part of an ongoing conversation about the history of this great country and the Bill of Rights and the real meaning of democracy and freedom and standing up for one's convictions even when it makes one very unpopular.  I have, for the record, never known one of my children to respond to someone of a different opinion by telling that person to get the f*** out of the country, like the friend-of-a-friend who defended one of those Facebook memes.

And, just in case those circulating the memes didn't know, the pledge's author, Francis Bellamy, was a socialist.