HippieMommy

posted by amanda on Jun 5

Picking up where I left off…

So if grades don’t equal money, and the school is only protecting itself, then what is the purpose of mass schooling? Mr. Gatto has some ideas

Reading, writing, and arithmetic can’t be the answer, because properly approached those things take less than a hundred hours to transmit — and we have abundant evidence that each is readily self-taught in the right setting and time.

True.

Why, then, are we locking kids up in an involuntary network with strangers for twelve years? Surely not so a few of them can get rich? Even if it worked that way, and I doubt that it does, why wouldn’t any sane community look on such an education as positively wrong? It divides and classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other, and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying them as “low-class” material. And the bottom line for the winners is that they can buy more stuff!

Uh, yeah, it really doesn’t make sense when you put it that way, does it? Are we really that materialistic? Well, yeah… probably.

So what is education?

Discovering meaining for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How this can be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me.

I mentioned The Purpose Driven Life in a recent post, and the above quote really struck me for this reason. Perhaps if we were able to explore and learn the things about ourselves when we were younger, then we wouldn’t have to have someone spoon-feed it to us through a book… y’think?

Do we need networks in order to accomplish complex tasks? Are they just a neccessary evil?

The Cathedral of Rheims is the best evidence I know of what a community can do and what we stand to lose when we don’t know the difference between these human miracles and the social machinery we call “networks.” Rheims was built without power tools by people working day and night for a hundred years. Everybody worked willingly; nobody was slave labor. No school taught cathedral building as a subject.

So what possessed these people to build this cathedral? How was it done without brute force?

We know the workers were profoundly united as families and as friends, and as friends they knew what they really wanted in the way of a church. Popes and archbishops had nothing to do with it. Gothic architecture itself was invented out of sheer aspiration — the Gothic cathedral stands like a lighthouse illuminating what is possible in the way of uncoerced human union.

Very interesting indeed. So we could do that again? That’s tough to imagine.

And yet, despite examples like this throughout history where mankind accomplished far more amazing things without being forced to do it, there is a push in our society to extend the reach of schools.

Schools, I hear it argued, would make better sense and be a better value as nine-to-five operations or even nine-to-nine ones, working year-round. We’re not a farming community anymore, I hear, that we need to give kids time off to tend the crops. This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, and a whole range of other services, which would convert the institution into a true synthetic community for children, better than the original one for many poor kids, it is said…

Yep, I’ve heard that one too. But that would only cause weaker families, not fix them!

…they blame the family for its failure to be a family. It’s like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, and then pronouncing the photographer incompetent.

Hmm, it is indeed.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist

Oooh, yes. I like that! I love non-conformists And, again, what is our goal here?

The heart of a defense for the cherished American ideals of privacy, variety, and individuality lies in the way we bring up our young. Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important; force them to plead for the natural right to the toilet, and they will become liars and toadies; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.

Ouch. True. Although it sounds like an exagerration, but I think we’ve all lived at least one of those examples.

Yet he points out that families, individuality, and community are never about “one-right-way” thinking on a grand scale. Private time is essential for a private identity to develop. We don’t want everyone to think the same and feel so black-and-white about life. Sure, there are things that are non-negotiable, but much of life is lived in the gray areas.

Mass education cannot work to produce a fair society because its daily practice is practice in rigged competition, suppression, and intimidation. The schools… can’t work to teach nonmaterial values… because the structure of schooling is held together by a Byzantine tapestry of reward and threat, of carrots and sticks. Official favor, grades, or other trinkets of subordination have no connection with education; they are the paraphernalia of servitude, not of freedom.

Yes. I was required to volunteer in order to graduate both high school and to advance in college, and it did not teach me those nonmaterial values. I learned them at home. The forced volunteerism was not from the heart nor a true lesson.

Sixty-five years ago Bertrand Russell… saw that mass schooling in the United States had a profoundly anti-democratic intent, that it was a scheme to artifically deliver national unity by eliminating human variation and by eliminating the forge that produces variation: the family. According to Lord Russell, mass schooling produced a recognizably American student: anti-intellectual, superstitious, lacking self-confidence, and having less of what Russell called “inner freedom” than his or her counterpart in any other nation he knew of, past or present… These children became citizens… with a thin “mass character,” holding excellence and aesthetics equally in contempt, being inadequate to the personal crisis of their lives.

Mr. Russell, who was a close relation to the King of England, pointed out something that was said to me when I was overseas. I was often told that Americans walked different, stood different, and could be identified before we even opened our mouths. They felt that Americans looked more confident, but Mr. Russell recognized that this is just a fascade.

So how do we solve this problem? Mr. Gatto’s solution is not to do away with schools, but to change the system. I hope you enjoy my future discussion of the last chapter. I hope to finish it today or tomorrow

posted by amanda on Jun 5

I just finished Dumbing Us Down, and I am hoping to get the rest of my commentary up today so that I can return the book to the library and allow someone else to learn from it

Chapter 4 addresses the current trend towards solving school problems with more school. Good stuff.

Much of the chapter compares and contrasts networks and communities. He says that Aristotle spoke of the differences by saying:

…that fully participating in a complex range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human… What is gained from consulting a specialist and surrendering all judgment is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss of one’s own volition

Therefore, a true community is when there is a collection of real families who perform acts of participation. They are participating, but not functioning in narrow parts. They are fully human.

By contrast

Networks, however, don’t require the whole person, but only a narrow piece. If… you function in a network, it asks you to supress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest part… In exchange, the network will deliver efficiency in the purpose of some limited aim. This is, in fact, a devil’s bargain, since on the promise of some future gain one must surrender the wholeness of one’s present humanity

So then, by definition, schools, corporations, colleges, armies, hospitals, etc. are not real communities. They are networks. He proves part of this by the fact that we don’t forget people who are our familiy, and yet how many have experienced

Even with college dorm “communities,” those most engaging and intimate simulations of community imaginable, who among us has not experienced the awful realization after graduation that we cannot remember our friends’ names or faces very well? Or who, if we can remember, feels much desire to renew those associations?

So he goes on to say that even though it is not fully understood yet, the “caring” in networks is somehow feigned. Its not due to malicious intent, but it happens. Another common place for it to happen is in sports teams, where you can experience a high and a closeness together, and then never be close again.

Since we’ve now established the differences between community and networks, we can see why more of a network will not fill our needs. Children (and all of us) need more real connections, we need to be used and appreciated for our whole, not just a part. Although networks will efficiently meet their end goals, they will not meet our needs for connection and meaning. They will leave us feeling empty.

Schools limit the use of the full human by isolating people based on age and ability. This means that the whole person is not used or valued. They are just stuck in a slot.

If performance within these narrow confines is conceived to be the supreme measure of success, if for instance, an A average is considered the central purpose of adolescent life — the requirements for which to take the most time and attention of the aspirant — and if the worth of thie individual is reckoned by victory or defeat in this abstract pursuit, then a social machine has been constructed which, by attaching purpose and meaning to essentially meaningless and fantastic behavior, will certainly dehumanize students, alienate them from their own human nature, and break the natural connection between them and their parents, to whom they would otherwise look for signification affirmations.

Wow. Yes. How did I get sucked into believing this? When my son was born, I immediately started thinking of how smart he was, how well he’d fit into this “meaningless and fantastic behavior” and how he would not be a “failure” because he could certainly get many A’s! Perhaps more than any of his peers! So what?! What does that teach him about life? Where does the value lie?

Just months before my son was born, I had gone through a real slump upon leaving the workforce and leaving college. My whole life worth had been built upon “successes” like straight-As, skipping a grade, starting college at 14, regular promotions at work, working 3 jobs at a time, and when I no longer had those external measures of my worth, my self-value plummeted. I felt useless. I felt unworthy. I felt like no one noticed I was special anymore, and therefore I wasn’t. If only I had known that the reason I felt this way was because I had been trained to feel that way. Its only natural that I felt that way. Natural, but sad.

Just as we have left behind real community for networks in our education and work, we’re even leaving it behind in our neighborhoods.

…”Community in cities and suburbs is a thin illusion, confined to simulated events like street festivals. If you have moved from one neighborhood to another or from one suburb to another and have quickly forgotten the friends you left behind, then you will have experienced the phenomenon I refer to.

Yes. I have felt that. I am feeling it right now. We are in the process of selling our home and buying a new one, and much of what I want from a future neighborhood is a real community. A community where the whole of the person is used. Not just an artificial community where staged events make us appear close. This is nearly impossible to find.

And so why do schools exist if they are not teaching adequately and are not forming real communities?

Nearly a century ago a French sociologist wrote that every instution’s unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it has normally staked out for itself.

Of course. This was lesson #1 in my Operational Management class last semester.

It was this philistine potential — that teaching the young for pay would inevitable expand into an institution for the protection of teachers, not students — that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in ancient Greece.

We’ve all heard the stories of teachers who can’t be fired… My mom is a teacher, and she’s told me dozens of stories like this. Back when I was in high school, our assistant principal was found engaging in s*xual activities with young men in a public bathroom. He was arrested. Rather than being fired, he was just relocated though, because he was under contract of the union and couldn’t be fired. The children were not protected… he was.

So if schools aren’t looking out for students first, are they at least preparing them for their lives (even secondarily?). We have long been told that…

…Good education = good job, good money, good things. This has become the universal national banner, hoisted by Harvards as well as high schools… Interestingly enough, the American Federation of Teachers identifies one of its main missions as persuading the business community to hire and promote on the basis of school grades so that the grades = money formula will obtain, just as it was made to obtain for medicine and law after years of political lobbying. So far, the common sense of businesspeople has kept them hiring and promoting the old-fashioned way, using performance and private judgment as the preferred measures…

My dh and I were talking about this the other day, because for the past 8-10 years, there has been a huge boom in certifications for tech jobs. Since we both work in the tech industry, this matters to us. The problem with hiring someone who is certified is that you end up getting someone who knows all the right book answers, but can’t figure out the problems in real life. Even though I’m a Mac girl, I was forced in a previous job to go through the MCSE certification classes. I learned tons about the way that Microsoft expects Windows servers to work. The only little problem is that they don’t work that way at all The training was useless.

Now certifications are losing their importance again. The market is correcting itself. How did I realize that certifications were useless and yet I still thought that traditional compulsory schooling was fabulous?

Well, this one is getting super long, so I’m going to go make a PBJ and come back and finish the chapter as a “Part 2″ post Happy reading!

posted by amanda on May 22

I wasn’t sure what I’d think of Dumbing Us Down after the first chapter, but he’s really kicking up now!

So, here’s my highlights from chapter 2 - The Psychopathic School - and a few of my comments

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civic classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders…. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic — it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

I guess I had never really thought about it, but if you asked me whether or not poets learn their craft through English class… I’d have to say “no”. When I think of my gifts and talents, none of them were made in school. Some were enhanced in school, but school didn’t teach me any of those things.

I guess I’m kind of shocked that I don’t find that fact shocking. Isn’t that what schools are for? Why do I accept that schools are irrelevant in this area?

Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literact rate was ninety-eight percent and that after it the figure never ecxeeded ninety-one percent, where it stands in 1990.

I had to look this up (of course) and it is legitimate. You can read more about it if you wish, but the interesting thing is that I had no idea that this was the case. Earlier in his book, Mr. Gatto mentions that literacy levels for non-slaves during the American Revolution was close to 100%. He also says that Thomas Paine’s Common Sense sold 600,000 copies to a population of 3,000,000 with 20% of them slaves and 50% indentured servants. Pretty impressive. Most adults now couldn’t or wouldn’t read it.

So how can this be? I have long been taught that before there was compulsory schooling, people were highly uneducated. All they knew how to do was farm and clean. They couldn’t read, think, or reason. They did the lowest of jobs and lived the simplest of lives. Actually, more of them read than can read now…

Mr. Gatto then discusses the hours that his students spend in various activities each week. They have 168 total hours, 56 of which they sleep, 55 is spent watching tv, 45 hours at school and getting ready for school, and 3 hours in family meals, which leaves them 9 whole hours to fashion themselves. Very interesting. I just attended a lecture on this same topic of how children spend their time.

So once he’s pointed out that those few hours are left, he says that most of them are probably spent in lessons that the child’s parents select for them.

…these activities are just a more cosmetic way to create dependent human beings, unable to fill their own hours, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existance. It’s a national disease, this dependency and aimlessness, and I think schooling and television, and lessons have a lot to do with it.

Looking back, we watched very little tv and we spent a lot of time entertaining ourselves by creating and inventing. It wasn’t until I started reading and learning about education that I realized that this is a big part of what is missing in children’s lives today. I am so thankful that my parents knew better!

The “Curriculum of Family” is at the heart of any good life. We’ve gotten away from that curriculum - it’s time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during schooltime confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds.

I like where he is going with this. Its not anti-school, but its not pro-the-current-system I’m looking forward to reading more!

posted by amanda on May 17

Upon Crystal’s suggestion, I decided to check out one of John Taylor Gatto’s books from the library. I did no research, and simply picked what was in stock, so I have been reading Dumbing Us Down. I’m only in the second chapter, so I can’t really make a huge statement yet, but I wanted to blog about this quote

This great crisis that we witness in our schools is interlinked with a greater social crisis in the community. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent: nobody talks to them anymore, and without children and old people mixing in daily life, a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present.

This is such an interesting idea to ponder. I have long been annoyed with our country’s obsession with a very narrow age range: usually around 16-25. It sometimes seems like anyone younger than that age is trying to act older, while those that are older try to act younger.

I had never considered the fact that it does give us a “continuous present” though. What does this do to our country? I think the obvious problem that would arise is that we won’t properly equip the future generation and we won’t learn from the mistakes of past ones. That’s a sad thought.

Children are not valued. Children are not listened to. Children are not treated as they should be - as persons. They are penned up, pushed away, and supposed to fade into the background, and suppress their feelings.

At the same time, the elderly are shipped off and ignored. They are not revered in our culture. Few want to be old. Millions (billions?) are spent each year to make people look younger so that they can run away from the fear of feeling “old”.

This attitude will impact my children. It has already impacted me. I do not want my kids to feel that they need to grow up too soon and I don’t want to act like I am younger because the culture values that (even though I am only 25, so I realize that shouldn’t be much of an issue right now).

This has given me much to meditate upon tonight

posted by amanda on May 13

These past few days have been very interesting for me. My mom has really been encouraging me in my decision to home school, and it has been a great time of growth

I am reading through Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s For the Children’s Sake, and this quote described what I’ve been feeling as I’ve researched home schooling and Charlotte Mason in particular.

If I had a second childhood, I should like to be educated her [Charlotte Mason's] way in school. To be respected as a person, to be provided for richly with ideas from outside, and yet to be left to develop myself, according to my own inner resources. All of this within the firm framework of reality. Skills mastered, and yet a feast of interesting ideas to which one could react in one’s own way.

I agree. My parents did a beautiful job in raising me and giving me so many of these things, and I look forward, and pray for the opportunity and ability to continue to give my children the same and much more!

posted by amanda on Mar 15

Sorry for the delay in entries! Last Monday night I prayed that God would help me balance my time. When I woke up Tuesday, my computer was dead Lucky me, eh? I’m blogging this from my dh’s computer…

Today, during my massive amounts of time thanks to my lack of computer, I read some more in Home Education. It was pretty chilly this morning (in the 30s when we were out there), but with a jacket and if we stayed in the sun, it was really quite comfortable. I found a nice spot on the grass and started reading. This is my quote for the day

Mental Training of a Child Naturalist.–Consider, too, what an unequalled mental training the child-naturalist is getting for any study or calling under the sun–the powers of attention, of discrimination, of patient pursuit, growing with his growth, what will they not fit him for? Besides, life is so interesting to him, that he has no time for the faults of temper which generally have their source in ennui; there is no reason why he should be peevish or sulky or obstinate when he is always kept well amused.

(Ennui = A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom.)

I really loved this quote. It is so true that my kids only get “peevish… sulky… obstinate” when they are stuck inside or doing things that are not meant for children (without any time in the day for childish things). When children are left to explore, learn, and interact with the world in their own way, they do amazingly. As Charlotte says elsewhere

Overpressure.–A great deal has been said lately about the danger of overpressure, of requiring too much mental work from a child of tender years. The danger exists; but lies, not in giving the child too much, but in giving him the wrong thing to do, the sort of work for which the present state of his mental development does not fit him. Who expects a boy in petticoats to lift half a hundredweight? But give the child work that Nature intended for him, and the quantity he can get through with ease is practically unlimited. Whoever saw a child tired of seeing, of examining in his own way, unfamiliar things? This sort of mental nourishment for which he has an unbounded appetite, because it is that food of the mind on which, for the present, he is meant to grow.

So true. So true. I was just telling my mom the same thing the other day. It is amazing to me that this has been written for so long, and yet the “modern” educational system seems to miss this. As I look to my left and right and see parents who are so concerned if their 3-year-olds are not yet in formal preschool, it makes me roll my eyes. How much more are my children learning just from playing in the grass, investigating nature, playing with water, painting the things they see, and being normal kids? Why take that away? Will your children really be better off because they had a few extra years of workbooks? I doubt it.

posted by amanda on Feb 16

I’d love to hear what some of you think about this quote. It is from Charlotte Mason and is included in Volume 1 “Home Education”

As for this superior morality of some non-believers, supposing we grant it, what does it amount to? Just to this, that the universe of mind, as the universe of matter, is governed by unwritten laws of God; that the child cannot blow soap bubbles or think his flitting thoughts otherwise than in obedience to divine laws; that all safety, progress, and success in life come out of obedience to law, to the laws of mental, moral or physical science, or of that spiritual science which the Bible unfolds; that it is possible to ascertain laws and keep laws without recognising the Lawgiver, and that those who do ascertain and keep any divine law inherit the blessing due to obedience, whatever be their attitude towards the Lawgiver; just as the man who goes out into blazing sunshine is warmed, though he may shut his eyes and decline to see the sun. Conversely, that they who take no pains to study the principles which govern human action and human thought miss the blessings of obedience to certain laws, though they may inherit the better blessings which come of acknowledged relationship with the Lawgiver.

This paragraph has made me think. I have several that I wanted to discuss, but this seemed like a good place to start.

It is true that the man who goes into the sun receives the sun’s benefits, even if he doesn’t believe. Also, one can believe without knowing the law-giver. I guess I’ve just never thought about the idea of unbelievers being blessed for their law-abiding actions. So many in the world choose to reject God because He sends unbelievers to hell. I’m guessing that Ms. Mason is referring only to earthly blessings, but I wish she could’ve expounded more. I find this a very interesting pattern of thought. I need to find some scripture to back up or refute these things…

posted by amanda on Feb 9

I think my mom was naturally very Charlotte-Mason-minded I’ve started working my way through Home Education, and I am really loving it. I am realizing how much my mom focused on the same things that Charlotte encourages. We spent a lot of time outside, had limited tv time, did lots of reading, and my mom worked hard to instill the proper habits in us.

I know that I am just at the tip of the iceburg, so I am trying to implement one little thing at a time Right now I am focusing on making sure that my kids get a good amount of time outside to play, learn, and just be kids Both of them are naturally drawn to being outside, so this has certainly been an easy thing to do. It is really amazing to watch them play and learn out there.

Our regular outside time was probably for an hour or so every other day. It varies depending on the time of the year, and this time of year is probably a low-point for us, since it is pretty chilly out. I’ve been working on letting them have more time outside, even if they are doing more observing than playing (like by walking to the store instead of driving), and it is so fun to see what they notice in the world around them.

I’ve also been working on Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. My son has been having a blast with it. He just turned 4 last week, and I think that his young age is helping a bit. He calls it the “reading game”, and I’ve worked hard to make sure that it is fun and that there is no pressure. If I see it start to become any kind of a burden, then I’ll back off, but for now he thinks it is great. He has always loved books, and now he’s having fun sounding out the words and running his finger under them Its really cute.

Well, I need to go make a grocery list. I didn’t get to do my regular Grocery Game shopping this week, so now I bet it’ll be way more expensive. Oh well, Sunday was our Superbowl party and then I had class Monday and Tuesday, so it was just too hectic. I guess I’ll get some good practice in making my own list…

posted by amanda on Jan 13

We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less good conduct than good character. We may mold good conduct in our children, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character. - Karen Andreola in A Charlotte Mason Companion

This is my quote to ponder for the week

I have often searched for the words to describe this concept, but Karen Andreola wrote them far better than I could. It seems to me like so many parents work hard on getting good conduct (via punitive methods) and yet they completely miss the goal of creating good character in their children. It doesn’t matter if you have kids who only comply. Grownups who comply and don’t have character certainly aren’t a benefit to society. I want my kids to have enough character to question authority when it is wrong. I do not want them to blindly accept what those above them tell them. I want them to be able to make decisions of good character when I am not there to spoon it to them

One of the things that I respect the most about my parents is that if they said something wrong and we challenged them, they would admit their err and dialogue with us. They were not all-knowing and all-powerful, although they were an authority in the home. Knowing that they were willing to admit their mistakes made it much easier for me to admit mine.

I am so glad that Mrs. Andreola wrote this out so well

posted by amanda on Jan 10

Last night I was reading the above book, and I had a really nice moment of clarity. Although the book was referring to not beating yourself up if something happens in life that makes it so that your school schedule gets thrown off, I realized that I do that in all aspects of my life. It is really easy for me to get stuck in my schedules and then I make myself feel like a failure for things that are beyond my control. Here is the quote that made me think

One priority is to complete most of our academics in the morning hours. Expect interruptions and intrusions - those things that throw us off schedule or prevent us from reaching a goal. This is “real life” education. It could be that Mother has another miscarriage, Brother gets chicken pox, the family car dies, the water heater malfunctions, another appliance catches fire, the house needs major repair, Father loses his job or changes jobs, and it becomes necessary to start packing boxes in preparation to move to a different town or state yet again. All of the above and more have occurred during our homeschooling years - experiences probably shared by many of you, too. Habit and order preserve weary homeschooling parents so they can keep to their original priorities and get back on track again. Getting off track wasn’t a “bad” thing, it was a “real life” thing that God will work out for good if we are truly His children. Old faithful habits make order out of disorder and leave space for both practice and play. We can be content to be God’s children through life’s challenges.

I have been focusing on “habit training” just like Charlotte Mason encourages us to do for our chlidren. This is something that I would like to work on as well. I used to be very flexible in my plans and then I rebounded a bit too far in the opposite direction. I need to work on a happy middle ground.

On an unrelated note: my emails are acting funky, so I’m going to wait on the chore list until I can get it working. Silly servers.