writer of all sorts of things
I bit my tongue a lot during the two weeks I stayed with Grandma.
I didn’t, for example, tell her that my dad got bit by a dog while he was in Ecuador. She would have worried, and worried even more to know that he was undergoing rabies treatment. Continue reading ‘The Grandma Saga Ends in Victory’
Well, I hope California gets itself out of the mess its created…Requiring that homeschoolers meet a certain standard is one thing (a standard public schools themselves all too often fail to meet), but demanding that all kids be taught by a person who is certified to teach is another. The absurd part is that it’s obvious that certification–or should be obvious to everyone–doesn’t necessarily make someone a better teacher and doesn’t necessarily make standards in a classroom any higher. There are many good-hearted and excellent teachers out there and they are treading water, propping up a fast-sinking ship. The public school system is failing in all sorts of ways all over the country, with some clear exceptions in pockets around the country. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve felt so much anger in a long time. The public school system is f***ed in all sorts of ways. Granted, homeschooling is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and certainly won’t solve the ills of the public school system, and there are certainly homeschoolers who should be jailed for what they do. But why should the state make it criminal for parents to  provide the best possible educational option they can for their children? Hell, yeah, I’d go get certified if that’s what it required for me to homeschool my kids–and then I’d do my best to forget everything I was taught. Learning how to teach a classroom full of 30 kids is not the same thing as tutoring a kid one-on-one.
 Will this also affect Catholic schools and other private schools that don’t require their teachers to be certified….?
It was, I admit, a gratifying moment to step up to the counter at the local bookstore and make my husband buy his feminist wife a copy of Bitch Magazine: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. The reason I bought the Winter 2008 issue, however, was not to enjoy the irony but to read the article on Unschooling and Radical Moms. The article is about women who choose to homeschool their kids not because they’re Christians who want to keep them away from “the world,” not because they believe it’s necessarily a superior education, and not because they’re hippies who desire to keep away from government control over their lives and see the education system as a powerful arm of the government to reach into their lives and homes–rather, they’re homeschooling because they’re feminists and they realize that the school inculcates sexist lessons into their kids at every turn. But some of these women do worry whether they’re teaching their kids the wrong lessons, since it is by and large the women who are staying home to homeschool their kids. Does this mean they’re not feminists anymore? I worry about this issue myself, especially since I plan to homeschool my kids yet also will continue working as a writer and historian and publisher. AND I’m a die-hard feminist. So even while I’m not going to make the same choice to give up my income-generating activities to stay at home, I liked what this woman had to say about that whole issue: ”If the two parties to the relationship agree that this is an okay distribution of labor and that this is how they want to raise their family, then surely being a stay-at-home mom or a homeschool educator is a goal as worthy of a feminist as a professional. You provide a necessary service; you have chosen a field; you have worked out the arrangement with your partner. I know a number of you are going to come back to me and say that other people don’t regard these two areas of endeavor as worthy of respect. You know what I say to the people who don’t feel that way? Fuck them. Fuck the people who look at a woman handling kids and doing housework and say she isn’t doing anything, or that she isn’t doing anything worthy of the title “feminist.” Fuck anyone who says a woman homeschooling kids isn’t doing work that makes her worthy of the title feminist.” You tell ‘em!
There’s been some activity (and rightly so!)Â in the blogosphere over this issue: here, and here, and here, for example.
Damian Frye gives the parents of his 9th-grade students homework. They have to read some of the literature his students read and comment on a blog. The students’ grade is partially dependent on whether their parents participate or not….
I’m not sure if this is brilliant and innovative (kudos to him for getting parents involved in their kids’ education) or just plain unjust. Remember how horrible and unfair it felt for the entire class to be punished because one person misbehaved? And remember how the only way that person who got everybody in trouble would get beat up on the playground afterwards was if they were already the class scapegoat? And how it wouldn’t work to regulate behavior anyway? And if the person who got everybody punished was the class clown and cool, somehow the teacher wouldn’t use that system of punishment anyway and if by some odd chance the teacher did, that person would never get beat up on the playground afterwards even though the expectation was that somehow the kids would regulate behavior of the other students if they were all punished? Continue reading ‘Giving Parents Homework’
