Dangerous things

The last TedTalk to make a big impression on the home education blogs and groups was Ken Robinson's, on how schools educate children to become good workers rather than creative thinkers.

The next TedTalk to start making the rounds and already making a splash is Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do by Gever Tulley of The Tinkering School, a summer program to help kids ages seven to 17 learn to build things. The talk comes from Tulley's book in progress, Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do; click the book link and you'll find some of Tulley's labels which should be familiar to Make fans; we here at Farm School are always keen on subversive labels and stickers. As I once quoted Charles Darwin,

"Doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life as one can, in any likelihood, pursue."

Gever Tulley and Matt Hern, author of Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn't Always Better (and whom I wrote about here) certainly seem to be on the same wavelength.

Oh -- those five (really six) things? Not including playing with power tools at age two, which Tulley mentions at the beginning of his talk (and one of these days I'll have to write about my daycare program for Laura when I was pregnant with Daniel; it consisted of sending Laura to work with Tom, her father the builder, six days a week to build a house for a client. Power tools, scaffolding, ladders, and openings to the basement without stairs, were a given. Needless to say, they're all whizzes with power tools by now.)

1. Play with fire

2. Own a pocket knife (better yet, two or three or four, one for each pair of pants)

3. Throw a spear (or a paper airplane, or a baseball)

4. Deconstruct appliances (Tulley suggests a dishwasher, but radios and toasters are great good fun, and if you don't have a dead one of your own, you can find them cheap and ailing at your local Goodwill or Salvation Army store)

5. Break the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (which we apparently do routinely)

6. Drive a car (or truck or tractor if you have no cars about)

Some helpful related links

Interview with Jean Liedloff, author of The Continuum Concept

Kitbashing in the homeschool with Willa at Every Waking Hour and Mama Squirrel at Dewey's Tree House

GeekDad, where I first read last week about Gever Tulley's TedTalk

Boing Boing

Make Magazine and Maker Faire (where the motto is "Build, Craft, Hack, Play, Make")

Make Blog

Craft Magazine

Craft Blog

And, of course, the usual Farm School ramblings about childhood fun, danger, acceptable risk, responsibility, and independence.

A manual for childhood

This came across my Google Alerts, and strikes me as worth reprinting. From David Phillips, the publisher of The Spring Grove Herald in Minnesota (additional links are mine, not Mr. Phillips'):

PUBLISHER'S NOTEBOOK: Do children need a manual for childhood?
by David Phillips

As the Christmas shopping season kicked off a few weeks ago, I recommended buying a book as a gift. That's because, according to a recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts, reading provides some amazing lifelong benefits for individuals and may just preserve our civilization.

If you are a parent, two books you may have considered are "The Dangerous Book for Boys" and "The Daring Book for Girls." That these two books are on the best seller lists raises some interesting questions, perhaps more intriguing ones than the study showing how little people read for pleasure today.

The books are manuals for youth on how to be, well, kids. The book for girls shows them how to do such activities as press flowers, jump rope, use a pencil to put up their hair, play slumber party games, set up a lemonade stand, do hand clap games, tell ghost stories, play jacks, pitch tents and have endless adventures. The book for boys explains things such as how to make paper airplanes, skip stones across water, play in the backyard, tie knots, go fishing and build a treehouse.

Has childhood changed so much in our modern world that we need a manual to explain how to enjoy childhood?

Perhaps so.

It isn't just that the cell phone, computer screen and television set have replaced good, old fashioned romping around, parents are so protective today that it seems every single moment of youth has to be scripted. Even the authors of one of the books add a disclaimer that "all of these activities should be carried out under adult supervision only."

Although no study has been done on this subject, the lack of unstructured play in youth today may lead to negative consequences on our economic, social and civic life, similar to what the recent study found was happening due to our lack of reading.

Of course, in this ultra-serious age, advocating seemingly mindless play is a tough sell. We all know reading is serious stuff and many people became worked up over the study on the consequences of not reading. Mention play, though, and people will shrug it off as a cute byproduct of being young, not something that could lead to the downfall of civilization.

After all, we have, as a society, made it difficult to play. Even preschool children are plopped in front of a computer or television screen in hopes of giving them an edge in soaking up knowledge. Academic learning, and testing, is starting earlier than ever. Parents insist on scheduling their children's lives so they become as booked as adults. Fear prevents adults from encouraging children to freely roam the parks and dwindling public green spaces.

As surprising as the best selling manuals on how to be children is the need for new occupations and organizations that advocate play.

For example, in England, a new professional, called a "playworker," is trained to facilitate play with children in adventure playgrounds and other settings. These professionals don't lead the children in play, but encourage it. And in the United States there is an Alliance for Childhood, which states that the benefits of play are so impressive that every day of childhood should be a day for play.

This harkening back to a time when children played from morning to night, running, jumping, playing dress-up and creating endless stories out of their active imaginations may appear as mere nostalgia. However, fun time really does have many serious benefits.

Play is the way children learn about themselves and the world. Through play, children learn to get along with others and sort out conflicts, develop motor skills, practice their language skills, boost their independence, self-esteem and creativity, relieve stress and improve their psychological well-being.

In a 2004 project of the Alliance for Childhood, researchers interviewed experienced kindergarten teachers in Atlanta. These teachers described how play had disappeared from their curriculum over the preceding 10 years, and reported that when they gave children time to play, the children "didn't know what to do" and had "no ideas of their own."

The alliance concludes that for those of us used to the fertile, creative minds of 5-year-olds, this is a shocking statement that bodes ill for the development of creative thinking. It points to a sad future for our society if citizens have no ideas of their own.

I'm not saying to throw away those books and move on to the next great cause. But, we should all realize that meaning is not always transparent to us, that purpose doesn't have to end in a pre-determined goal.

Allowing your children to explore the world through playfulness may be the most lasting gift you can give this holiday season. So, turn off the television, refrain from directing their activities and give the kids some space to be silly and childish.

Your children will thank you when they become creative, well-adjusted adults. And, they may remind you that play isn't reserved just for young children. Playfulness is a worthy trait in adults as well, but that is another chapter in this never ending story.

Have a merry, and perhaps at times, even silly, celebration this holiday season. Best wishes from the staff of Bluff Country Newspaper Group.

By the way, for any adults interested in the subject of children's play, you can't do better than the classic work by Iona and Peter Opie.

It just occurs to me to wonder if anyone has thought to ask Mrs. Opie (Mr. Opie died in 1982) her thoughts on The Dangerous Book for Boys, or on the present need for Dangerous Books for Boys and Daring Books for Girls.

The latest news from deepest darkest Peru

I thought it was bad enough when I heard the other day that my beloved Paddington Bear was going to get the live action treatment (just thinking of poor Stuart Little makes me shake). I went to the, erm, "official website" and not only was the movie business confirmed but there for all to see was the gloating about Paddington shilling for Marmite of all things. Of course, what do you expect of a beloved children's literature figure who has become a licensing opportunity? In fact, the home page of the "official website" has four main buttons -- "Paddington's activity area", "Mrs. Brown's bear facts", "Mr. Gruber's collector's corner", and, in bright red lest you fail to notice it, "Mr. Brown's company info". That Paddington has become a company with important info to share ("For companies or individuals interested in acquiring a licence to make or sell Paddington products then you should choose Licensing Information.") is just, sadly, a fact of modern commercial life.

But here's the latest "Company Info", from The Times:

The creator of Paddington Bear has criticised those responsible for putting the world’s best known duffel-coat-wearing immigrant from Darkest Peru in an advertisement for Marmite.

Michael Bond was not consulted about the advert – in which Paddington breaks a lifetime’s reliance on marmalade sandwiches and decides he “ought to try something different” – and feels that it was a mistake.

Fans have been outraged by what they see as a betrayal of the character’s integrity, many telephoning Bond to harangue him. Like them, the author feels that the advert was a mistake because Paddington’s characteristics are “set in stone and you shouldn’t change them”. The bear’s preference for marmalade sandwiches, often stored under his hat is “fundamental”, he said yesterday.

During the 1980s, when Paddington’s popularity was at a peak thanks to the television series narrated by the late Sir Michael Hordern, Bond retreated from the growing commercial operation to concentrate on writing books.

Karen Jankel, his daughter and managing director of Paddington and Company, now has final approval on all merchandising decisions. Despite strong reservations she agreed to the proposal from the Copyrights Group, Paddington’s licensing agents, because she believed the advert would lift Paddington’s profile and bring him back to British TV. But Bond would rather the whole thing had never happened.

“Now there’s no going back,” he said. “Paddington likes his food and tries anything but he would certainly never be weaned off marmalade.”

In a letter published in The Times today, Bond, 81, defends himself against allegations that he sold-out his best-loved creation. He writes of an “ill-founded rumour that I was responsible for the script of a commercial featuring Paddington Bear testing a Marmite sandwich” and “that one of the reasons may have been that Marmite paid me a truly vast sum of money.

“I should be so lucky – particularly since I didn’t write it,” he says. “Although Paddington found the sandwich interesting, bears are creatures of habit. It would require a good deal more than the combined current withdrawals from Northern Rock to wean him off marmalade, if then.”

The advert, by DBB London, features the animation format in which Paddington made his TV debut in 1975. He finds Marmite “really rather good”, before stumbling into a chain of unfortunate events. Unilever, the makers of Marmite, hope the campaign will appeal to the nostalgia of older viewers while encouraging younger ones to try the spread.

Nicholas Durbridge, of the Copyrights Group said: “Paddington has always been inquisitive. Now he has tried Marmite. It’s unfortunate if Michael’s not completely happy but Paddington will always be associated with marmalade and our client supported our recommendation to make the advert fully.”

Ms Jankel said last night: “From my father’s point of view, he’s the creator and wrote the books. The Copyrights Group are doing their job, looking to do what they think is best from the commercial point of view. I think Paddington is so strong that he will rise above all of this.”

Someone certainly needs to rise above all of this, but I don't think it's Paddington. And I think I need something stronger than either marmalade or Marmite to recover from all the news.

All roads lead to home and hard work

"Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them."
German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), quoted in "The Case Against Adolescence" by Robert Epstein

I started Farm School two years ago in part because I blathered on for much too long on the subject of children and independence at L's blog Schola. Independence, self-reliance, and responsibility are among the values Tom and I talked about teaching children when we thought about getting married. And these values are a good part of the reason I decided that it would probably be better to raise children on the Canadian prairie than Manhattan's Upper West Side; I'm not saying it's impossible (I think my parents did a fabulous job), but 40 years on it seems rather easier in this neck of the woods.

While we didn't start homeschooling with the idea that it would be a good way of further inculcating those values, it didn't take Tom and me long to realize that this educational experiment is as ideal for our child-rearing purposes as it is for our academic ones. And I'm always keen to read anything that supports our rather old-fashioned notions when it comes to raising kids.

So I was more than interested to learn a couple of months ago, at Susan's blog Corn & Oil, about the new book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen (Quill Driver Books, 2007) by Robert Epstein, a psychologist and former editor-in-chief of Pyschology Today magazine. The idea behind the book is that (from the front flap)

teen turmoil is caused by outmoded systems put in place a century ago which destroyed the continuum between childhood and adulthood.

Where this continuum still exists in other countries, there is no adolescence. Isolated from adults, American teens learn everything they know from their media-dominated peers -- "the last people on earth they should be learning from," says Epstein.

Which, in my case at least, means the good doctor is preaching to the converted. While I tend to think that part of the problem with the way kids are being raised is that they are being raised by advice from books rather than from parents' hearts or instincts or the way they themselves were raised by their own parents (somehow that all seems too easy...), at least there seem to be some better parenting books to choose from nowadays, including Dr. Epstein's. And as you can see from the bit above, The Case Against Adolescence contains echoes of Hold On to Your Kids by Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate, another book I like, though I don't find mention of the title or authors in the index.

But I've already found, just partway through chapter three, mention of the two home education gurus, former New York public school teacher John Taylor Gatto and the late John Holt; a peek at the index shows three mentions of "Home Schooling" toward the end of the book. Dr. Epstein notes that Gatto addresses "quite explicitly, ... the artificial extension of childhood" in his latest book, The Underground History of American Education (an excerpt of which was published in Harper's Magazine in September 2003, and which I saw the very week I hit upon the alternative of home schooling for Laura. Yes, I took it as a good omen).

The Case Against Adolescence owes a considerable debt to Jean Liedloff's 1977 classic, The Continuum Concept: In Search of Lost Happiness, which I read while pregnant with Laura, after coming across a secondhand copy at a library book sale. Indeed, the CC website's main page features glowing quotes about the book from both Dr. Epstein ("This book is the work of a genius" in Psychology Today) and John Holt ("I don't know whether the world can be saved by a book, but if it could be, this might just be the book.")

Just last night, I read Dr. Epstein's handy summary of Liedloff's two years with the Yequana Indians of Venezuela:

There is no distinct separation between childhood and adulthood in the tribe; instead, there is a continuum of activities, behaviors, and expectations. Expectations are modest when children are young and increase gradually and smoothly over the years, but the goals are always clear: the development of self-reliance and the full integration of the child into the world of responsible adulthood. Responsibility and authority are never forced on anyone, but they're given freely as soon as a child shows an interest in taking them on. Independent decision making is encouraged, because "leaving the choice to the child from the earliest age keeps his judgment at peak efficiency," and the child's "self protecting ability" is trusted to keep him or her from serious harm.

In contrast, she says, we weaken and damage our children by overprotecting them; we even impair their ability to make reasonable decisions and to protect themselves.

And then, still mulling over the development of this "self-protecting ability" this morning, I happened upon today's New York Times article on claims of possible child abuse in connection with Kid Nation, a new show to air in September:

The ads promoting “Kid Nation,” a new reality show coming to CBS next month, extol the incredible experience of a group of 40 children, ages 8 to 15, who built a sort of idealistic society in a New Mexico ghost town, free of adults. For 40 days the children cooked their own meals, cleaned their own outhouses, formed a government and ran their own businesses, all without adult intervention or participation.

To at least one parent of a participant, who wrote a letter of complaint to New Mexico state officials after the show had completed production, the experience bordered on abuse and neglect. Several children required medical attention after drinking bleach that had been left in an unmarked soda bottle, according to both the parent and CBS. One 11-year-old girl burned her face with splattered grease while cooking.

The children were made to haul wagons loaded with supplies for more than a mile through the New Mexico countryside, and they worked long hours — “from the crack of dawn when the rooster started crowing” until at least 9:30 p.m., according to Taylor, a 10-year-old from Sylvester, Ga., who was made available by CBS to respond to questions about conditions on the set.

I also came across a Los Angeles Times article from last week, "Kid Nation" parents: What were they thinking?, where three women were interviewed to "respond to the critics condemning them for allowing their children to participate in the CBS show". Said one mother, about her 10-year-old, an only child,

He does live in what I call a sheltered environment. He goes to a small school. Most of the schoolmates and friends that he knows he's known almost his entire life. I thought that this was a good opportunity for Zachary to experience some independence and learn some self-reliance. And if he was able to do this, I thought that was a very good way for him to build confidence in himself.

I worry that in today's world kids don't realize things they might have to face in life that might be difficult because, I think, as baby boomers we tend to be very protective of them. And I want him to know that he has the capability to be out in the world and be independent and self-reliant.

All this of course after I've spent the past few weeks on and off delightedly wallowing in Mildred Armstrong Kalish's charming memoir, Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. Unvarnished and homespun, these are the stories, words, and advice of a real grandmother eager to share her own part of a disappearing world, and to let later generations know the lasting value of pulling up your socks and putting your nose to the grindstone. As I read through each of the chapters, from her earliest reminiscences to the recipes to her later life as detailed in Epilogue, I realized that Mrs. Kalish has written about a happiness and freedom in childhood, and a contentment in adulthood, that today are sadly rare. From Little Heathens,

The summer after I graduated from eighth grade I ... was delighted to go to work as a hired girl on a large farm south of [the town of] Garrison. The family consisted of Cecil, Anna, and their two girls and four boys, ranging in age from one and a half to eleven. Cecil hired one or two extra men in the summer. That meant that Ann and I cooked, set the table, and did the dishes for at least ten people, three times a day.

Anna paid me four dollars a week for my work on the farm, and I was especially proud of that for my closest girlfriends and all of my other friends were being paid only three and a half dollars. Of course, we all received room and board, too.

Here I should report that we were also accepted as full-fledged members of the family, for hired girls were not treated as maids. In fact, I was the only one in this family who had a private room. Located at the top of the crooked stairs, it was about five feet wide by ten feet long, and it had a window overlooking the huge vegetable garden. To me it was a palace.

During those summer months we rose at five-thirty A.M., unless it was haying or threshing time on the farm; then we got up at four-thirty. Anna and I timed it so that we got up just after the men, who immediately disappeared to the barns to do the morning chores. Anna built a fire in the iron kitchen range, while I put the copper teakettle on along with the gray, graniteware coffee boiler and got the bacon started. As the kitchen filled with the delicious fragrance of the bacon crisping and browning, I carried jam, a whole pound of butter, sliced bread, a large pitcher of milk, and a smaller pitcher of heavy cream to the table, which was already set for ten people. Then I carefully broke twenty eggs into a mixing bowl and waited for one of the boys to report that the men were ready for breakfast. At that point I poured the blow of eggs into the gigantic iron skillet and fried them to perfection in bacon fat, sunny-side up.

If there was a delay, or if the men had an especially busy day before them, I might make an applesauce cake -- the very one I described in an earlier chapter. Here again, the family training in thinking ahead and always doing more than was required stood me in good stead. I could whip up that cake in just a few minutes since I kept a ready supply of homemade applesauce in the pantry; it would bake while we were eating breakfast and would be ready to eat with our second cups of coffee.

I could handle almost every task in Anna's household; I could even make gravy without lumps, for heaven's sake. There was always something to do on that farm: cakes, cookies, and pies to bake; potatoes, radishes, beets, carrots, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, and beans to pick, wash, clean, and peel; chickens to kill, scald, pluck, singe, draw, and disjoint; dishes to wash and dry; clothing to wash; laundry to be hung on the line, then taken down from the line, folded, and ironed. And every day, we made beds for ten people. Everything I had learned in my early years [up until eighth grade] I put to use as a hired girl for this family.

The children all helped in as many ways as they could. They would make their own beds, wash vegetables, carry wood and water, set the table, dry dishes, and gather eggs and apples. Like the children I grew up with, they understood that hey played a part in making the family work.

We had fun with one another. There was a lot of joking, laughing, and good-natured teasing. And often in the evening, on those occasions when we had somehow managed to finish our chores as well as our supper before dark, the kids would hep me with the dishes if I would agree to come outside afterward and play with them. We played hide-and-go-seek, touched-you-last, and may-I. Some evenings we would have water fights, tossing pails of water on one another. Or we might just sit out on the front porch and sing.

Or, as The New York Times article on alleged child abuse concluded,

“Everyone usually had a job,” said Mike, an 11-year-old from Bellevue, Wash., who participated in the show. Among them were cooking, cleaning, hauling water and running the stores, where, he said: “It was hard work, but it was really good. It taught us all that life is not all play and no work.”

Taylor, from Georgia, agreed. “I learned I have to work for what I want,” she said.

I'm sure both Mrs. Kalish and Dr. Epstein would approve. Pass the applesauce cake, please.



(Very likely more thoughts to come on The Case Against Adolescence, and Little Heathens, in upcoming posts.)

Poetry Friday: Go and play till the light fades away

We are all of us, especially the kids, aware of the shortening days (dark comes around nine now, instead of eleven), and that the first day of school is just about one month away. I'm trying to make the most of what's left of the summer, which is why I haven't been online much, except to order some school supplies and things for Laura's birthday later this month.

The country fair is always a natural marker for folks around here. It means the end of summer and also, usually, the warm weather. But this year, though autumn is fast approaching, the heat remains. We've had an unusual four weeks now in the high eighties/low nineties and no rain, and the gardens and especially crops are beginning to burn and shrivel. The barley is turning white, and many farmers are considering swathing and baling it for cattle feed instead of combining it, since the grain heads won't amount to much. Though I have to admit that all the extra watering I have to do in the garden gives me that much more time to spend in it. The peas are ready and the beans are coming, and I'm about to pull up all the spinach, which has bolted, and seed some Swiss chard in its place.

And though we all roasted at the fair, it was a wonderful three days, a mini holiday for the five of us, as well as a chance for the kids to shine -- all three did exceptionally well in the exhibit hall, with lots of prizes (including firsts for Lego [a fire engine and fire, Monet's garden, and army fort], art work, handwriting, handmade greeting cards, wooden bird houses and tool boxes, grain and sheaves; and also at the chicken show (what's a country fair without chickens?); and, for Laura, in the show ring again with her heifer. On the midway, the boys were excited to discover they had grown tall enough for some of the previously off-limits rides with dangerous-sounding names -- the Zipper and the Scrambler. Friends -- other mothers -- and I camped out in the shade, with folding chairs and iced coffee, while our kids raced from the Tilt-a-Whirl to the bumper cars with ride-all-day bracelets on each slim wrist. And of course, the once-a-year binge of cotton candy, candy apples, homemade pie from the church booth,

The hot weather had an unexpected bonus; tidying up around the beef barn, the kids started gathering up recyclable cans and bottles. And there were lots of cans and bottles, especially water bottles. By the time the kids were done, after three days of the fair and the two clean-up days following, they had collected 12 garbage bags full -- worth much too much, it turns out, at the recycling station. It's all gone into our empty glass Mr. Peanut jar, pooled with the exhibit hall winnings, as part of the new collective horse fund. And the kids have been busy with living math, sharpening pencils and totting up the numbers to see just how much of a horse they might be able to afford at the moment. A surprisingly large percentage, it turns out.

And so, for Laura, Daniel, and David, in the waning days of summer -- leap and shout and laugh in the warm sunshine while you can:

Nurse's Song
by William Blake (1757-1827)

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.

"Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of the night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies."

"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep."

"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed."
The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed;
And all the hills echoéd.

* * *

More William Blake, from the Tate Online.

And more Poetry Friday, with lovely lupines and the round-up at The Miss Rumphius Effect today. Thank you, Tricia!

New for dangerous girls and daring boys

New since the beginning of the month ig The Dangerous and Daring Blog for Boys and Girls -- "inspired by The Dangerous Book for Boys and the upcoming The Daring Book for Girls" but "not connected in any way to the authors or publishers of those books". Rather, the new blog is brought to you by The Llama Butchers, who I believe came to my attention through our mutual pal Melissa Wiley.

Labels/categories so far with corresponding posts include

Battles (1)
Build It (1)
Dangerous (10)
Daring (8)
History (4)
Hobby (1)
Outdoors (2)
Rocketry (2)
Science (1)
Stories (1)

Wowie! I believe I know a few children out on the open prairie who might have fun with those two rocketry posts.

Grand fun to bookmark and to add to the Bloglines subscription. Great good thanks to the LBs for the new blog, especially while there's still plenty of summer left for unfettered, dangerous, and daring summer fun.

(I hope to post a fair report toward the end of the week, and do some general bloggy catching up. But tomorrow morning we're off to the fairgrounds again for the day for the big volunteer clean-up.)

Gosh all hemlock!

I'm enough of a Luddite that I found it more than a bit disconcerting earlier today, when bringing up the Amazon website to look at a book, to find the main page welcoming me with "Science Picks for Becky". But disconcertedness turned to intrigue when the first cover's illustration, and then its title, caught my eye: Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, just out in May and just thirteen dollars and twenty cents. And the cover is adorable. A glowing five star review from someone who didn't seem to be related to Mrs. Kalish. Hmmm...

Then I went Google hunting and found Elizabeth Gilbert's glowing review in yesterday's New York Times Book Review. On the front page. From which:

Some of what follows is unsurprising. You’ll never guess it, but these kids were taught to work. They planted potatoes, tended livestock, hayed fields and were beaten for any lapses in judgment. They did without luxuries (electricity, leisure, heat) and were never coddled on account of their tender youth. (“Childhood was generally considered to be a disease,” Kalish recalls, “or, at the very least, a disability, to be ignored for the most part, and remedied as quickly as possible.”)

For anyone from an old-school farming background, this is familiar territory. “We were taught that if you bought something it should last forever — or as close to forever as we could contrive,” Kalish reports predictably. Or: “When one of us kids received a scratch, cut or puncture, we didn’t run to the house to be taken care of.” If all that “Little Heathens” offered, then, were more such hard-times homilies, this would not be much of a book. But this memoir is richer than that, filled with fervency, urgency and one amazing twist, which surprised me to the point of a delighted, audible gasp: Mildred Armstrong Kalish absolutely loved her childhood.

It’s not merely that she appreciated the values instilled by the Great Depression, or that now, in her older years, she wants to preserve memories of a lost time (though all this is true). No — beyond that, she reports quite convincingly that she had a flat-out ball growing up (“It was quite a romp”) and her terrifically soaring love for those childhood memories saturates this book with pure charm, while coaxing the reader into the most unexpected series of sensations: joy, affection, wonder and even envy. ...

Later in life, Kalish became a professor, and while the foundation of her writing is still English-teacher English (orderly, with perfect posture) her old pagan rhythms seep through every disciplined paragraph. “This was our world,” she writes, but one gets the feeling that Garrison, Iowa, was really her world, which she experienced with the awe of a mystic. In the violet dusk of a cornfield, in the cool mornings on her way to chores, on the long, unsupervised walks to school, in the decadence of eating bacon drippings, heavy cream and ground-cherries, Kalish’s simple life routinely aroused her to an almost erotic extreme. (Then again, this was the only kind of eroticism available; the poor girl was never taught even the starkest fundamentals of human sexuality, regretting that “in those days, we were supposed to get such information from the gutter. Alas! I was deprived of the gutter, too!”) ...

Kalish is wise enough to know that the last link to the past is usually language, and rather than lament what’s been lost, she stays connected to her youthful world by using its gleeful, if outdated, lingo. (Tell me the last time you heard someone exclaim, “Not on your tintype!” or “Gosh all hemlock!”) She admits self-deprecatingly that there were certain expressions she heard spoken so often as a child that she grew up mistakenly thinking they were each a single word: “agoodwoman, hardearnedmoney, agoodhardworker, alittleheathen, adrunkenbum, demonrum and agoodwoolskirt.”

Memories too can run together like this, becoming mishmashed over time. Not with Mildred Armstrong Kalish, though. As a natural-born memoirist (by which I mean not only “one who writes an autobiography” but also “one who remembers everything”), Kalish has kept her memories tidily ordered for decades. Now she has unpacked and worked them into a story that is not only trustworthy and useful (have I mentioned the recipe for homemade marshmallows?) but is also polished by real, rare happiness.

It is a very good book, indeed.

In fact, it is averyveryverygoodbook.

Sounds delightful, and perfect for Summer. Sold. And great good luck to Mrs. Kalish.

Pssssst:
The book's website is here. Complete with farm recipes. Oh, and you can wet your whistle with a preview of Chapter One.

Also, this charming article, "Her stories of farm life could fill a bestseller: Hopes are high for debut by local grandmother", from The San Jose Mercury News.

You pick

the lesser of two weevils:

Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play, as reported by The New York Times yesterday (free registration or use Bug Me Not)

or

The Daring Book for Girls, the not very daring but very manufactured response to The Dangerous Book for Boys, pandering to those who say they are offended by a "boys only" tome and hoping, no doubt, to strike the same nerves and chords as has The Dangerous Book. Coming in time for Christmas 2007.

As I sit here tapping away, wearing my father's old blue dress shirt over my husband's t-shirt (it's a bit cool here this morning), while Laura slurps her cereal and reads her brother's copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys breezily ignoring the last two words in the title and thoroughly unaware of the Cartoon Doll Emporium, Club Penguin, Cyworld, Habbo Hotel, Webkinz, WeeWorld and Stardoll, I wish you a summer of uncomputerized, unmanufactured, unfettered fun.

Hot to trot tots and their pole-dancing mamas

A couple of months ago, after seeing the Macleans magazine cover story about "dressing our daughters like skanks", I wrote,

What continues to surprise me is how many mothers around here, and remember, I'm far away from liberal east coast urban types, so your experience may be wide of my mark, are the ones who choose to pimp put their daughters in (often matching) stripper chic not because it's the path of least resistance but because it's the path to popularity, to approval, and -- hey, a bonus -- makes the mothers themselves look or at least seem hip and trendy and young. Well, younger at least. When Laura was in kindergarten and first grade at the local public school, one of her classmates was often dressed by her mother (who in the past few years decided to return to the classroom and now teaches first grade) in fashion-conscious "mini me" style -- feather boa trim on sweaters and matching short skirts and dressy suede boots. Not good for the playground at recess or those messy arts and crafts projects, but certainly eye-catching. And this classmate was in good company.

So I was interested to discover, lurking behind today's Times Select firewall (email me at farmschool at telus dot net if you'd like to see the article), the latest blog installment from Judith Warner,"Hot Tots, and Moms Hot to Trot"; here's a Select selection:

Bling-Bling Barbies and pouty-lipped Bratz. Thongs for tweens, and makeover parties for 5-year-olds. The past couple of shopping seasons have brought a constant stream of media stories — and books and school lectures and anguished mom conversations — all decrying the increasingly tarted-up world of young girls and preteens. Now the American Psychological Association has weighed in as well, with a 67-page report on the dangers of the “sexualization” of girls.

The report takes aim at the music lyrics, Internet content, video games and clothing that are now being marketed to younger and younger kids, and correlates their smutty content with a number of risks to girls’ well-being. It finds that sexualization — turning someone into “eye candy” — is linked to eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression in girls and women. Adopting an early identity as a “Hot Tot” also has, the researchers wrote, “negative consequences on girls’ ability to develop healthy sexuality.”

This isn’t surprising, or even new. But what did surprise me, reading through the A.P.A.’s many pages of recommendations for fighting back (like beefed-up athletics, extracurriculars, religion, spirituality, “media literacy” and meditation), was the degree to which the experts — who in an earlier section of the report acknowledge the toxicity of mother-daughter “fat talk” — let moms themselves off the hook as agents of destruction requiring change.

I know that sounds pretty nasty. We’re not supposed to be judgmental these days. We’re not supposed to blame parents — especially mothers. I also know that what mothers do or don’t do (short of out-and-out abuse) doesn’t, single-handedly, “cause” much of anything. But I think it’s fair, even necessary, to wonder: how can we expect our daughters to navigate the cultural rapids of becoming sexual beings when we ourselves are flying blind? How can we teach them to inhabit their bodies with grace and pleasure if we spend our own lives locked in hateful battles of control, mastery and self-improvement?

We all tend to talk a good game now on things like body image and sexual empowerment. We buy the American Girl body book, “The Care and Keeping of You,” promote a “healthy” diet and exercise, and wax rhapsodic about team sports. But do we practice what we preach?

Not when we walk around the house sucking in our stomachs in front of the mirrors. Not when we obsessively regulate the contents of our refrigerators in the name of “purity.” (Did you know that there’s a clinical word for the “fixation on righteous eating”? It’s called “orthorexia.”) Our girls see right through all our righteousness. And they hear the hypocrisy, too, when we dish out all kinds of pabulum about a “positive body image,” then go on to trash our own thighs. ...

Maybe it’s time to take a break from bashing the media and start to take a long, hard look instead at the issue of mothers’ sexuality, which is, apparently, after a long and well-documented dormancy, enjoying a kind of rebirth — thanks, it is said, to things like pole dancing classes and sports club stripteases. These new evening antics of the erstwhile book club set are supposed to be fabulous because they give sexless moms a new kind of erotic identity. But what a disaster they really are: an admission that we’ve failed utterly, as adult women, to figure out what it means to look and feel sexy with dignity. We’ve created an aesthetic void. Should we be surprised that stores like Limited Too are rushing in to fill it? (Now on sale: a T-shirt with two luscious cherries and the slogan “Double trouble.”)...

"Smart Is Sexy" likely wouldn't sell as many t-shirts, though I suppose you could try a "Double trouble" version with Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson, or Plato and Aristotle, especially if you decide to trade in that pole dancing class for a Great Books discussion group. I don't always agree with Warner, or with Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabees, whom Warner quotes at length in her post, but there are some good thoughts in Warner's post today.

As an aside, last summer I read both Queen Bees and Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher and much preferred the latter. I read them on the recommendation of a good friend, who happens to be the mother of three daughters, ages six to almost 15; as she put it succinctly in a letter about a year ago,

it's Mary Pipher's "Fence at the Top of the Hill" metaphor that differentiates the aim of the books. QB&W is the ambulance at the bottom of the precipice. RO is the fence on the hilltop. QB&W's focus on cliques is just one manifestation of a much larger problem, instructing parents how to deal with the situation at hand, not how to avoid it.

Good fences make good families as well as good neighbors. And you can start building that fence with the pole that used to be in the living room.

Made you look

Stocking up on reading material for the weekend at the library, I was rather startled to find the January 1st edition of Maclean's Magazine (at left) looking out from the shelves at me with the cover headline "Why do we dress our daughters like skanks?" over a girl about Laura's age dressed like a hooker. In case you can't read the sparkly writing, it says Made You Look.

I was startled not because of the question or the girl's attire but because Tom and I had just been discussing the very subject, after yet another extended family holiday gathering with a gaggle of underdressed young relations. The conversation regularly pops up here during holiday get-togethers, children's clothing shopping expeditions, and the obligatory cousins' dance recital, where students and teachers writhe around in suggestive clothes to suggestive music performing suggestive choreography; all that's missing, Tom has said more than once, is a pole. This time the conversation took place with the school photo variation, as in, why on earth were some of the girls allowed to pose for their school photos, invariably included in the Christmas cards, wearing tops that drew such startling attention to cleavage? Or what is supposed to be cleavage.

The Maclean's cover story was inspired, I learned, by the publication this fall of Southern humorist and syndicated columnist's Celia Rivenbark's book, Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank, and indeed the same issue of Maclean's features an interview with Ms. Rivenbark along with the cover story, "Why are we dressing our daughters like this?". But on this particular subject, and in this interview, Ms. Rivenbark leaves the humor behind: "I don't think it's harmless to wear a glittery shirt hanging off the shoulder when you're seven years old. I think that's just ridiculous, and borders on obscene. I'm a humour columnist by trade and this is probably the most strident thing I've ever written. I don't normally get so agitated over things, but this one, I'm just shocked about it." The newspaper column was inspired by a trip to the mall:

Well, I went shopping with my daughter, and I saw all these tween skank clothes, and one thing led to another. I just went off on the notion that these clothes are inappropriate, these hoochie-mama Las Vegas showgirl clothes marketed to kids who are as young as seven. There were all these sequined, sparkling midriff tops, lots of fishnet, shirts saying things like Jailbait, Made Ya Look or Juicy on the bottoms of the pants. Pretty disgusting. ...

Obviously the stuff sells because the stores are full of it. Parents buy it. They feel a lot of pressure -- particularly parents who work all the time -- to appease the kids by giving them what they want, so I think that's why so many parents just finally give in. They feel like this is a battle they don't want to fight. ...

I think sometimes, as parents, we get so conditioned to what we see in the stores it's almost like you get numb to it, and so this was for some parents, they said, a bit of a wake-up call, you know? If you're used to seeing ripped jeans and some questionable phrases on kid clothes, you roll with it. Especially when you see it in really nice department stores. You think, this is what they're selling and you almost get used to it and conditioned to accept it. I'm not a prude, by any means, but I just don't think there's any way you could possibly say that these kinds of clothes are suitable for anybody under, I'd say, 24. ...

Amen. Other things not meeting Ms. Rivenbark's parental approval for her nine-year-old daughter include the latest sex-sound stylings of Justin Timberlake and the loose and promiscuous not to mention Canadian Nelly Furtado. And once again I'm reminded that one of the things I appreciate so much about home education is that the conditioning about society's values and expectations just isn't a factor for our family, for the children or the adults.

More of Ms. Rivenbark's thoughts from the interview on modern, ahem, parenting:

... generally speaking, for whatever reason, kids tend to run over their parents a lot more than they used to. The whole child-centered thing is really big now. I see it over and over again just among the friends I have: the child makes the decisions on, for example, what kind of entertainment they watch, what they do on Friday night. Sometimes they need to realize that. But I think that when the kids are running the show it's not really a good thing. These are little kids, and if you give them that much power they're not ready for it. ...

We've lost the notion, as parents, that it's really okay to be the grown-up and say no. My daughter hears no all the time -- occasionally she hears yes, but a lot of no. There was a dress she wanted a couple of months ago, and she had a real meltdown wanting it, and I thought the dress was inappropriate, and we all survived it. Parents almost think that it's in their contract that they have to negotiate. Well, no, they really don't. Some things, maybe, but not everything. If your kid is trying to go out of the house looking like a mattress-back, then you just send the kid right back in there and try again.

But we're not talking about a "whole child-centered thing". The correct term is "wholesale absence of parental responsibility". Yes, it's easier to give in and say yes most of the time, and not to hang around the house long enough to monitor your child's attire and even, heaven forfend, send him or her back to changed into something appropriate when you could be picking up your daily coffee at Starbucks or slouching about the water cooler exchanging the latest adult conversation with your colleagues. But don't sugarcoat terms for "slacker parents" -- and I understand that Ms. Rivenbark has referred to herself as such at times -- who want to take the easy way out, to the detriment of their children and their futures.

Asked by the interviewer, "Do you think the kids are conscious of the meanings of what they're wearing? Does the fashion come with attitudes and behaviours?", Ms. Rivenbark replies,

That's a real good question. I haven't seen a correlation there. I think they just think it all looks cute. I don't see that it particularly changes their personalities. They think, "This is hip, I saw it on TV, this is kind of cool." It doesn't turn them into monsters. I'm more concerned about the perv who sees them at the mall. A little girl, if her parent is idiot enough to buy something that says Jailbait on it, goes to the mall -- it's the perv who sees that that bothers me.

I do see a correlation, and it's been there at least since I was in fifth grade about 30 years ago. Kids are indeed conscious of the meanings of what they're wearing, and they're conscious -- and more cavalier -- at ever younger ages. And while the threat from child molesters is not to be discounted, what of the threat of the warped attitudes and paucity of the imagination with which so many boys and girls are growing up? What sort of lives will they have, with friends (or, I suppose, "hook ups"), colleagues, spouses, and their own children? Do I really want my daughter, her cousins, and their friends to think that their bodies for a few drinks and some airtime on Girls Gone Wild is a fair trade? Sex even far from its best isn't a toy, a tool, or a joke, but the greatest expression of love between two people.

The Maclean's interview and article both mention Bob Herbert's October New York Times column (reprinted here since the original is behind the Times Select firewall), "Why Aren't We Shocked?", written after the Amish school shooting and inspired in part by an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt reading Who needs a brain when I have these?:

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, “When was the last time you got screwed?” ...

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We’ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it’s never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

What continues to surprise me is how many mothers around here, and remember, I'm far away from liberal east coast urban types, so your experience may be wide of my mark, are the ones who choose to pimp put their daughters in (often matching) stripper chic not because it's the path of least resistance but because it's the path to popularity, to approval, and -- hey, a bonus -- makes the mothers themselves look or at least seem hip and trendy and young. Well, younger at least. When Laura was in kindergarten and first grade at the local public school, one of her classmates was often dressed by her mother (who in the past few years decided to return to the classroom and now teaches first grade) in fashion-conscious "mini me" style -- feather boa trim on sweaters and matching short skirts and dressy suede boots. Not good for the playground at recess or those messy arts and crafts projects, but certainly eye-catching. And this classmate was in good company. As the Maclean's article notes,

We tell girls that, in wearing these things, they are somehow expressing themselves in an essential way. "If [T-shirts] expressed who a girl is," write [Lyn Mikel] Brown and Sharon Lamb [authors of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes], "you'd think she'd be wearing the T she got at the summer camp she went to, the music festival she attended or the Humane Society where she volunteers to walk the dogs. But instead they express 'attitude' rather than interests, skills, concerns, and hobbies." Worse still, in their very construction, these clothes prescribe behaviours that are hard to describe as empowering. A micro-mini, for instance, is a great disincentive to playing on the monkey bars. A halter top and tight, low-rise jeans make it rather more challenging to run and jump. "Every message to a preteen girl," write Brown and Lamb, "says that it's preferable to pose on the beach rather than surf, to shop rather than play, to decorate rather than invent."

Now there's a challenge for the daughters of North America and their parents for the new year: step away from the fishnets and those size 2 stilleto heels and run, jump, play, and invent. Who needs a brain, indeed.

Wait a minute, Mr. Postman...

Particularly in light of this past week's tragic event in Canada, I was quite interested to read this letter sent to The Daily Telegraph, from children's author Philip Pullman, UK children's laureate Jacqueline Wilson, and more than 100 other concerned citizens [all emphases mine, all mine]:

As professionals and academics from a range of backgrounds, we are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children’s behavioural and developmental conditions. We believe this is largely due to a lack of understanding, on the part of both politicians and the general public, of the realities and subtleties of child development.

Since children’s brains are still developing, they cannot adjust – as full-grown adults can – to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change. They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed “junk”), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.

They also need time. In a fast-moving hyper-competitive culture, today’s children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum. They are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.

The signatories conclude,

This is a complex socio-cultural problem to which there is no simple solution, but a sensible first step would be to encourage parents and policy-makers to start talking about ways of improving children’s well-being. We therefore propose as a matter of urgency that public debate be initiated on child-rearing in the 21st century this issue should be central to public policy-making in coming decades.

And here is the Telegraph's follow-up article on the letter it received, where, among other things, you can read the following:

The letter was circulated by Sue Palmer, a former head teacher and author of Toxic Childhood, and Dr Richard House, senior lecturer at the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University.

Mrs Palmer said: "I have been thinking about this for a long time and I just decided something had to be done.

"It is like this giant elephant in all our living rooms, the fact that children's development is being drastically affected by the kind of world they are brought up in."

She cited research by Prof Michael Shayer at King's College, London, which showed that 11-year-olds measured in cognitive tests were "on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago".

"I think that is shocking. We must make a public statement – a child's physical and psychological growth cannot be accelerated.

"It changes in biological time, not at electrical speed. Childhood is not a race."

Among the saddest comments came from laureate Wilson, who notes,

"We are not valuing childhood. I speak to children at book signings and they ask me how I go through the process of writing and I say, 'Oh you know, it's just like when you play imaginary games and you simply write it all down'.

"All I get is blank faces. I don't think children use their imaginations any more."

High time for a similar debate on the other side of the pond, too.

More thoughts on independence and freedom

L. at Schola asked the other day,

Is it possible to live an old fashioned family-centered lifestyle and still encourage independence? Is our idea of independence different from what it was one hundred years ago when families generally stuck together? Does independence only mean being able to choose your own path from limitless possibilities or is there room for independence within a controlled situation? Would we be clipping their wings? To some extent, intentional communities do this. The Amish and Mennonites seem to be able to keep most everyone close, but their options are limited. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does it even matter in the grand scheme of things?

Here's a tidied up, but still too long, version of the comments I sent to her:

If anything, I think one of the best ways to encourage independence in our kids is to live an old-fashioned family-centered lifestyle, especially if you think parents rather than peers are the best teachers. Maybe it's because we live on a farm (though in my case that's been so only for the last 11 years; before that it was apartment living in on the East coast) and there are more than enough jobs around here that the help of even the youngest kids is appreciated, but I've often thought that one of the reasons that so many North American kids seem to be at loose ends is that they no longer feel as if they're part of a family because they don't feel needed by their families. Most kids today don't make much of a contribution to the daily goings-on; I don't know how many times I've heard another parent say, "Oh, Brittany has so much to do between school, homework, and extracurricular activities that I couldn't possibly have her do chores around the house." One hundred years ago, not only did a lot of kids get their chores done before walking or riding great distances to school, but their help was invaluable to the family's well-being. I'm not talking about using kids as hired help -- and certainly I've heard some, um, redneck adults in the prairie provinces accuse home educating farm families for keeping the kids home specifically to help with the chores (though as I tell any critics, our kids do chores after they've done their Latin!) -- but participating in the daily rhythms and activities of a family's day-to-day life.

That closeness as a family, with everyone working together for the common good (sort of a microcosm, really, for when we send them off, as fully-fledged citizens), is powerful stuff. It gives even the youngest kids a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of accomplishment and the knowledge that way before attaining adulthood they are invested with important responsibilities affecting their parents' and siblings' well-being -- that externally-imposed "self-esteem" (ugh) can't hold a candle to any of that. My four-and-a-half year-old son's favorite job (though tellingly at his age he thinks of it more as fun than work) is washing eggs and putting them in cartons. Yes, he broke a few at the beginning, but he does a dandy job now, and even likes to stack all the cartons into what he calls the Great Wall of China. Some chores and some history!

Nowadays the idea of independence means being able to send your two-year-old off to daycare or preschool without too many tears, shipping the older ones off for seven weeks to sleepaway camp when they've finally reached the minimum age, or having the various family members heat up a bite to eat in the microwave before taking off in four different directions every evening. For my husband and me, independence is knowing that when the time comes for them to leave our house (and yes, they will be leaving), my kids will be able to think and do for themselves.

I know this argument seems counterintuitive, but then I think of all those who kept asking if we didn't think that the kids would grow up spoiled or "too attached" when I continued to breastfeed beyond the first month, didn't dump the kids in daycare after six weeks, and carried each of them around in a Baby Bjorn (oh how I loved that contraption) for the first year. Lo and behold, I didn't have kids who cried whenever they momentarily lost sight of Mommy or continued to demand too much attention when they hit the toddler stage, and beyond. Rather, they were secure and confident in their exploring, knowing that Mom and Dad were always around somewhere to love them and keep them safe.

As I started writing this, I remembered that John Taylor Gatto has quite a bit to say on the subject of independence in Dumbing Us Down and also in his September 2003 Against School essay in Harper's; I still have the magazine copy, which miraculously appeared at the supermarket checkout counter the week we started considering home education.

In Dumbing Us Down, Gatto even mentions at one point the "Curriculum of Family" which to our family at least makes so much sense but would probably throw most of our friends and relatives into a tizzy. Gatto writes in Against School that the start of compulsory mass education in 1905 brought about "this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions." This schooling, he goes on, in Dumbing Us Down, "takes our children away from the any possibility of an active role in community life -- in fact it destroys communities by relegating the training of children to the hands of certified experts -- and by doing so it ensures our children cannot grow up to be fully human." He ties in the idea of independence with the fact that mass schooling perpetuates mass childishness -- "Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?" he asks in Against School. And again, "School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts [as consumers], but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children." Gatto concludes, "School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored....Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues....The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves."

Happy Independence Day, everyone. Even when it's not July 4th.