The great outdoors, and a carnival

I had a very nice note this morning from teacher Terrell Shaw, to let me know that he has put some original poetry to my photograph of a robin's egg. As I replied to him, the kids got quite a kick out of seeing my photo accompanied by his poem; and in the midst of a Canadian winter, the idea of robins and their eggs gives me a little thrill, not to mention hope for Spring.

In addition to his Virtual Classroom website, which has storytelling podcasts to which you can subscribe and a science notebook, Mr. Shaw also mentioned that he is going to be hosting the Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival, at his blog Alone on a Limb. Deadline for submissions is tomorrow, so I gather that it should be up early next week. Consider sending in a recent post, especially if you and your family have been enjoying winter fun.

Film Club interview

from The Canadian Press. Here's an excerpt (emphases mine):

What [the book] details is a father's struggle to connect with a beloved son who is totally disinterested in homework and who, at six-foot-four, is a man-sized adolescent frequently skipping out of high school to wander about the big city at will.

"All we ever talked about was his poor performance at school," the Toronto author and winner of a Governor General's award for A Perfect Night to Go to China explains in an interview.

"And it really was turning him into a liar. And it was creating antagonism between the two of us. And finally I just said 'I can't do this, I've already done Grade 10. I can't do your homework for you. I can't do this. You're going to have to make a choice.' And to my horror, he said 'I don't want to go to school anymore."'

Gilmour makes a deal with Jesse, telling him he can quit school as long as he watches three movies a week with his dad and absolutely stays away from drugs.

"I was trying to salvage my relationship with him because I thought not only am I going to lose the school battle but I'm going to lose him over it."

Jesse Gilmour, now 21, is doing a few interviews alongside his well-known father as the book about his sometimes tumultuous adolescence is launched, and he concurs that dropping out was the correct -- and probably the only -- course of action for him.

"I hated high school, I hated it. I was completely happy to get out of there. And even now, I'm going to university now, which I like, but even if I could go back, I probably would do the same thing again," he says emphatically.

"For some people high school just doesn't work for them. It's just terribly straining and boring in a way that it becomes unhealthy to you."

But if high school was a strain for Jesse, the decision to let him opt out was nothing short of terrifying for his dad.

"I spent about a year waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning with my heart thumping thinking, my God, he's going to end up in a cardboard box in Los Angeles ... where can you go in this world with a Grade 9 education?" Gilmour says.

People of his own generation went to school out of fear because they were terrified of what would happen if they didn't have an education, he notes.

"Most of us got a B.A. because we were frightened of the consequences," Gilmour says. "His generation isn't frightened of that stuff at all. I don't know why they're not. But they're really not."

Gilmour, who has worked as a film critic and cautiously served up erudite observations about plot, direction and acting techniques to his son, doesn't even attempt to describe the three films per week as a substitute for an education.

"He really didn't get anything out of it except he got to spend time with his father, and what teenage boys really need is to spend time with their fathers," he says.

"We could've gone skydiving, or we could've gone scuba-diving. It wouldn't have made a difference. It wasn't really the films. It was an opportunity for the two of us to spend time together before he was gone for good."

As it turns out, the films worked as a kind of conversation-starter, and father and son would go outside on the porch, smoke cigarettes and "talk about everything under the sun" - including Jesse's attempts to sort out matters of the heart when he falls hard for one girl, and later, for another. There are troubled times, too, when Jesse breaks his vow to stay away from drugs.

But Jesse's opinion diverges somewhat from that of his father when he talks about the "nourishment" he got from seeing a range of movies, including some he describes as "great art."

"On The Waterfront," "Notorious" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" were among the many films the pair watched together.

"The more you learn about it the more you can appreciate it. So it's true the movies were more just kind of a jumping off point that me and my dad could spend time together, and have a real relationship during that time. But yeah, I think I got a lot out of the movies."

A few years after the film club began, Jesse decided to go back to school and signed up for a crash course in the required subjects, with tutoring by his mother. Last month, he began studying Italian cinema, classical mythology and world religions at the University of Toronto. ...

Gilmour, 57, says that during those "film club" years, his professional life was "a catastrophe." Now, he calls it an unbelievable stroke of luck because it gave him time at home with his son at a time when teens are "gradually shutting the door on their parents and they're keeping their private lives to themselves."

"It was like winning the lottery, and not recognizing it until about halfway through that this was actually a victory, not a life catastrophe."

You can read the rest here.

An alternative education

First up on this morning's CBC Radio "Sunday Edition" show, my favorite weekend listening, was host Michael Enright's interview with film critic and writer David Gilmour, author of the just-published The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and a Son. Film Club is Mr. Gilmour's account of his decision, several years ago, to let his son drop out of high school. What he kept coming back to during the radio interview was his son's need for time.

I found a very good review by Ian McGillis in yesterday's Montreal Gazette, entitled "Learning from film: A father, a son and an unusual education". From which,

It's the kind of thing a movie producer would label "high concept." A father, at his wits' end over his teenage son's extreme aversion to anything classroom-related, suggests that the son drop out of high school on the condition that the two of them watch three films per week, together, for two years. [The other condition was no drugs.]

But this is no movie. The father is David Gilmour, award-winning novelist and former CBC film critic, the son is [16]-year-old Jesse. And their experiment, for which the term "hare-brained" might seemingly have been coined, has turned out against all reasonable expectations to make for a book that's insightful, surprising and, yes, moving.

It's a handy hook, of course, that the mere idea of what Gilmour has his son do is sure to cause the taking of mass umbrage by good parents everywhere. It's not as though Gilmour isn't aware of this. Even at an advanced stage in the program, when it's too late to undo, he's attacked by doubts: "What if I'd allowed him to f--k up his entire life under some misinformed theory that might just be laziness with a smart-ass spin on it?" What if, indeed.

On the surface, Jesse does provide plenty of cause for concern. He has very little sense of geography. ("The United States are right across the lake?" asks the lifelong Torontonian.) He takes his loves and his lost loves extremely seriously and -- surprise, surprise -- he wants to be a rapper.

But this young man, we come to see, has hidden reserves. The child may never quite become father to the man, but at many times, the dynamic is much more big brother-little brother than Pop and Junior.

The films they watch, handpicked by the father, range from undisputed classics (Citizen Kane) to French New Wave standbys (The 400 Blows) to outright kitsch (Showgirls). It's a commendably catholic list, though Gilmour père proves utterly unable to predict which films might set his enigmatic son alight. Jesse's blank response to A Hard Day's Night, starring Dad's beloved Beatles, is priceless. But then, the author surprises himself no less on revisiting some old touchstones. "Some films let you down; you must have been in love or heartbroken, you must have been wound up about something when you saw them because now, viewed from a different trajectory, there's no magic left."

An index at the end lists nearly 150 films mentioned, but the book somehow never feels weighted down with the references. In fact, in what may or may not be a coincidence, at about the time the reader begins to tire of the device, so do the participants. But that's fine, because by then, it's the relationship we really care about. ...

In fact, after three years, Jesse rose off the couch and decided that he was indeed interested in further education. He is now 21 and attending university in Toronto.

And an excerpt from yesterday's Globe & Mail review by Charles Wilkins:

...Gilmour's intimate and free-wheeling book is, in large part, the story of the role he played in his son Jesse's life (and vice-versa) when the teenager crashed out of high school at 16 and seemed headed for what Gilmour refers to as "a bad life."

In a stroke of strategic educational genius (and of optimal deployment of his own fascinations and resources), the writer offered his son freedom from school and employment on the condition that the boy join him in watching and discussing a minimum of three feature films a week.

The deal was made, and over a period of three years, the films became a curriculum unto themselves, a varied and fascinating syllabus rich in ideas, social values, character study, history, geography, family, ethics, music -- and, of course, in the import of filmmaking and art, of dramatic writing and acting and directing.

As Jesse learns, we learn -- about Hitchcock and Kubrick and Truffaut; and Brando and Bogart and Hepburn; Annie Hall, On the Waterfront, The Godfather. Gilmour was once a film commentator for CBC Television, and his knowledge of the art and industry is both rangy and deep -- and is happily charged with anecdotal vigour and gossip.

"I knew I wasn't giving Jesse a systematic education," he writes. "We could as easily have gone skin diving or collected stamps. The films simply served as an occasion to spend time together, hundreds of hours, as well as a door-opener for all manner of conversational topics -- Rebecca, Zoloft, dental floss, Vietnam, impotence, cigarettes."

The book is also the story of the travails of a middle-aged writer who, at the time the action takes place, was, by his own admission, down on his luck, and is painfully honest about it. At one point, when other options have been exhausted, he seeks work as a bicycle courier, and is turned down - too old. (It bears mentioning that Gilmour's luck changed dramatically in 2005 when he won the Governor-General's Award for Fiction for his novel A Perfect Night to Go to China.)

And a helpful caution from The Globe & Mail,

...there were points at which I felt as if I were reading through a keyhole and that, given the context, there was simply too much grovelling over "relationships," over "the game," over "chicks," which unfortunately detracts from the book's erstwhile innocence and integrity. ...

In the end, a majority of the pages in the book might more appropriately have appeared under the title The Dating Club or The Mating Club than The Film Club.

And yet the book is meaningful, is insightful, is valuable. On a social level alone, it challenges our notions of education, of productivity, of high schools that have fallen catastrophically behind in their capability to inspire young men. It is, what's more, a compelling, often tender account of a parent's deep concern for his child.

Further thoughts on self-esteem and self-confidence

In one of my own comments to my post the other week on children, responsibility, and hard work, I mentioned "the whole self-esteem vs. self-confidence business (I consider the former nonsense, the latter vital)", and my good friend hornblower at HMS Indefatigable replied,

One other thing though - in your comments Becky, where you talk about self confidence coming from doing things well. Yes, I agree with that. But I'm actually a big fan of self-esteem & quite like the term. IMO, it comes from something so basic, so simple, and yet something many parents fail at: kids need to be loved, cherished, accepted for being themselves. Not because they did something well, know something, contribute something, look good or make the family look good. But just because they are. That is the primary gift of a great parent & from there comes an unshakeable core of self.

Not implying you disagree (though feel free to!) but I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by the emphasis on doing, as opposed to being.....

Since I threw out my comments very briefly and parenthetically, I think I owe it especially to hornblower to expand on my thoughts.

I see self-esteem and self-confidence as two sides of the same coin. Or rather, self-esteem as self-confidence's evil twin, especially as self-esteem has been co-opted by North American school systems to consist of a great deal of the curriculum.

Esteem I understand as (blame my high school Latin teacher...) as value, regard, worth, standing, and rank, and I think that inner core of a person, especially a child, should be more virtue (in the classical sense) than value, if that makes any sense, especially the virtue of belief in oneself regardless, as hornblower says, of looks or abilities. Self-esteem, particularly as it's promoted in North American schools, I understand as a little more than an obsession with feeling good about oneself, and it tends to be a concept imposed from without, rarely a successful method of effecting change.

My main experience with self-esteem and its promotion as an educational tool has come from the local school system, especially Laura's early years, first with play school, then kindergarten (part of the year here and the remainder in the West Indies, with two very different results, in part because the former promoted self-esteem and the latter self-confidence), and then several months of first grade, before we began home schooling. And yes, there was a shameful big-deal graduation from play school and one from kindergarten -- the latter of which, darn it all, we missed by leaving partway through the year. All of her Canadian schools, but interestingly not the West Indian one, saw, in the words of Charles J. Sykes in his Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add, their "ultimate product as the well-adjusted teamworker with a healthy sense of self-esteem". Sykes goes on to say that such schools are "unlikely to adopt the same means as a school whose goal is individualists", which is part of the reason we abandoned public school for home school when we discovered Laura to be a year ahead of her classmates and the school interested only in "age appropriate" curriculum, most of it centered around boosting self-esteem and patting little backs for no good reason. But that's another story and another post...

Because self-esteem tends to be a top-down affair, it's hard to pass along just the right dose. It either doesn't stick, because it gets stuck in the trickling down, from adult to child; and kids in general are smart enough to know when something is hollow or has been trowelled on thickly. Or, kids get an overdose, veering dangerously from self-esteem into self-absorption and self-gratification. This is one of the reasons I like The Well-Trained Mind's approach to teaching and learning history. When I first read the chapter on teaching history to young children, Laura was in first grade at the local public school, where the social studies curriculum that year was the ungrammatical and self-centered "Me, My Family, and Other Families". The provincial education ministry in all its certificated wisdom sees fit to arrange the the world around first graders, whereas the authors of WTM see things rather differently:

A common assumption found in history curricula seems to be that children can't comprehend (or be interested in) people and events distant from their own experience. So the first-grade history is renamed Social Studies and begins with what the child knows: first, himself and his family, followed by his community, his state, his country, and only then the rest of the world.

This intensely self-focused pattern of study encourages the student of history to relate everything he studies to himself, to measure the cultures and customs of other peoples against his own experience. And that's exactly what the classical education fights against -- a self-absorbed, self-referential approach to knowledge. History learned this way makes our needs and wants the center of the human endeavor. This attitude is destructive at any time, but it is especially destructive in the present global civilization.

The goal of the classical curriculum is multicultural in the best sense of the word: the student learns the proper place of his community, his state [or province], and his country by seeing the broad sweep of history from its beginning and then fitting his own time and place into that great landscape.

Or as Miss Manners says in her Guide to Rearing Perfect Children,

Schools first started doing parental tasks because they thought parents were neglecting them; and now there are parents desperately trying to make up for the neglect of academic subjects on the part of teachers. The neglect, on both parts, is rarely mere callousness. On the contrary, it is often connected with the idealistic belief that the object of anyone entrusted with a child is to make that child happy, and that the happiest child is one free of constraint. Miss Manners loathes that theory, and doesn't notice that it has much of a record of success. It is her belief that happiness is a by-product, and that the happy child is one who has been carefully trained to use his abilities to take on challenges and overcome them.

The happiness theory is full of self-defeating characteristics. It directs the child's attention back into himself, instead of taking the natural self-absorption with which we were all born, and which we are in no danger of losing, and turning it outward, so that the ability to take delight in a varied and curious world may be developed. It also coddles our natural laziness, so that energies that could be put into growth are put into finding excuses and examining reasons for the lack of it.

I'd hazard a guess that an overdeveloped sense of self-esteem, not to mention "a self-absorbed, self-referential approach to knowledge" may well play a part in the infantilization of young adults.

Self-confidence, on the other hand, develops from within a child and as it takes root within becomes increasingly difficult to dislodge. It's the result of good, thoughtful parenting as well as of a child's efforts and achievements, though these needn't amount to much at all in the early years. Self-confidence can easily apply to the idea that, as hornblower wrote, "kids need to be loved, cherished, accepted for being themselves. Not because they did something well, know something, contribute something, look good or make the family look good. But just because they are. That is the primary gift of a great parent & from there comes an unshakeable core of self." But I don't know how much time a great, or even good, parent really needs to devote to establishing, or later maintaining, a confident core of self in a child, as long as you let your children know, well and often -- and that doesn't mean with workbooks, activities, programs, and curricula -- that you love them as they are.

I do think that even more important than just "being", or being a wonderful you, is the vital necessity to a child of belonging to a family (however it is comprised) and being needed. I'm no psychologist, and maybe Robert Epstein would disagree, but it seems that some of the general footlooseness I see in the teenagers I know is the result of their realization, however unconscious, that they aren't particularly needed in the family, that they can go about their daily activities with friends or alone and not be missed outside of school hours, even under the same roof, with everyone microwaving his or her separate meal at different hours, sitting in front of the computer or television in private bedrooms, everyone in the backyard but plugged into an individual iPod, or taking separate vacations (sometimes even at the same destination or resort). The very youngest children can help the family with needed tasks such as folding towels, feeding the cat, making a card for a sibling's birthday, holding the map in the car, and they soon learn the importance not just of being loved just because, but of being trusted, being able, and being needed.

I'll leave the last words to Charles Sykes, from Dumbing Down Our Kids [links and aside added by me]:

Whether the programs of self-esteem are motivated by a romantic view of childhood, by adult guilt, or simply by a desire to spare children pain, it is increasingly obvious that these eminently well-intentioned efforts often have unintended consequences. Members of the generation that braved the Depression and World War II were so anxious to spare their own children the deprivations of their youth that they created the pampered generation of the baby boomers. The boomers (and Generation X), in turn, seem determined to spare their children the emotional and psychological privations they imagined that they might have suffered in their own youth. While the Depression generation hastened to make sure the boomers would never lack material possessions, today's parents seem anxious to spare their children the stress, anxiety, and pressures of their youth. Neither of the elder generations seem to have foreseen what such indulgence might mean for the younger generations which not only have been deprived of the adversity of the previous generation, but also of the opportunities to test themselves against those challenges. [My own theory is that Mildred Armstrong Kalish's very contrary opinion, in Little Heathens, is what has made the book sparkle so and touch such a nerve in so many readers.]

Trying to understand the courage and character of the English miners of the 1930s, whose lives he had been observing, George Orwell speculated about the source of their strength and dignity in the face of adversity. "The truth is," he wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier, "that many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain or difficulty; but the tendency of mechanical progress is to eliminate disaster, pain and difficulty." While no one would argue that every effort should not be made to reduce disasters and pain, Orwell's point about the moral consequences of dealing with difficulties is a crucial insight into the way the human soul develops and grows.

Just as I was finishing this post, I came across Poppins' recent post, Shine On,

"Born to Shine" by Joshua Kadison. It has an uplifting message that boils down to: you were born to shine; everything is fine. Baldly stated it loses all of its poetry. Do yourself a favour and listen to the song or I'll get hate mail from Kadison for misrepresenting his artistry. ...

..."Aha!" came the thought, "I should play this for [daughter] Sandra." And then the visceral realization slammed into me: she doesn't need it. No one is squashing her. No one is making her feel wrong. She is shining. It's her own light that I see in her eyes and hear in her laugh and marvel at in her conversation. She isn't wounded.

It occurs to me that another reason that much of the self-esteem business in schools doesn't stick is because rather than fostering high self-esteem in children, it can introduce instead a nasty, niggling kernel of self-doubt. Which is probably as good a way as any of undermining any self-esteem or self-confidence a child already has.

Teacher meme

Another day, another meme, but this time I was tagged and some time ago, too. Literacy Teacher at Mentor Texts & More tagged me for a teacher's meme, and I very much appreciate the fact that a NYC public school teacher thought of me for this one, which I find both nifty and generous. (Do I mention here that I grew up down the street from P.S. 75 in Manhattan?)

And since I've spent the past couple of days ordering books and curriculum -- more books and other fun stuff (list to come in a future post) than curriculum (a few Explode the Code workbooks for the boys and the next level of Singapore Math for everyone) -- I am getting more in a teaching mode if not mood.

1. I am a good teacher because... I try to incorporate each of the kids' interests and passions in our studies. Because I try not to answer Davy's questions -- "How fast do clouds move?" [variation: "How fast do the blades in the blender turn?"], "What weighs more, the bull or the truck?" -- with "Ask your father." And because learning and reading are among my own greatest passions, which makes it easier than not to pass both along to my children.

2. If I weren't a teacher, I would... still buy as many books and other goodies for the kids. But it's nice to have an official excuse, er, reason. As for a different profession, after the kids are up and out, the weekly newspaper always seems to need reporters, not to mention editors with a good supply of sharp red pencils.

3. My teaching style is... more guiding than teaching. And following the Yeats quote beloved by so many, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Oh, and an offshoot from my mothering: the ever-trusty method of reverse psychology. "Do you really think you could possibly read a Nancy Drew book in one short day?" said with a very worried, doubting expression on motherly face. (And guess what? Laura is now reading her way through Nancy Drew books -- is there a better way to spend the last few weeks of summer vacation? -- at the rate of one a day.)

4. My classroom is... everywhere from the kitchen table, where the kids do their seatwork (math, writing, penmanship, grammar, and so on); to the boys' bedroom, where I sit cross-legged on the floor and read aloud while all three play with Lego or Tinker Toys, or draw; to the stage at the local college theater for drama; to our corrals and fields for nature study and animal husbandry; the little village down the road, where the kids have art lessons; and everywhere in between and beyond.

5. My lesson plans... are minimal, in part because the kids will be in second, third, and fifth grades. Some of our programs and texts -- math (Singapore), spelling (Avko Sequential Spelling), grammar (Growing with Grammar), composition (Write with the Best) -- incorporate lessons, minimizing the planning for me. Other subjects, such as history, where we mostly read books and discuss them; and science, which this year will be more experimenting and observing and (gasp!) less reading and writing, are very light on the lesson plans.

I've also found -- surprise, surprise -- that the more I plan, the more life gets in the way. Such as the all-planned-out October several years ago, when we suddenly and delightedly found ourselves in NYC with my parents for several weeks. No plan, but great fun and tremendous amounts of learning.

6. One of my teaching goals is... for the kids to learn to think for themselves and to work more independently each year.

7. The toughest part of teaching is... not passing on my own biases and prejudices to the kids, especially when it comes to math and science, which were my least favorite, and least successful, subjects from about fifth grade. Mostly, it was the way the subjects were taught, from the philosophy and structure (New Math, anyone? Even my parents didn't understand my homework) to the methods, such as textbooks and dry delivery for the most part.

The revelation of home schooling has been that science and math taught properly can be engaging and exciting, for the kids and for me. I revel in this lucky second chance to learn more about both subjects, in many cases to understand a good number of concepts properly for the first time.

8. The thing I love most about teaching is... watching my kids make connections, and come up with ideas, thoughts, and questions I've never considered (how fast are those blades in the blender turning?).

9. A common misconception about teaching is... that Tom and I aren't teaching when school is officially out for the summer. Instead, it's when we enter one of our unschooling, low tide phases of the year. Again, not so much planning, but an awful lot of learning.

10. The most important thing I've learned since I started teaching... is never to underestimate a child's abilities and interests.

This is a busy time of year for teachers of all stripes, so I'll leave the tag open for anyone who wants to play. Leave me a note in the comments if you do. And thanks again to Literacy Teacher, with all best wishes for the upcoming school year.

* * *

Just a quick reminder that Literacy Teacher hosted the very first Picture Book Carnival earlier this month. If, as I did, you missed it, you have another chance -- the second Picture Book Carnival will be up no later than Saturday, September 1; deadline for submissions is Wednesday, August 29, and the suggested theme is picture books good for readalouds.

Wired world of education

From yesterday's New York Times, "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops", (or get past free registration with Bug Me Not):

The students at Liverpool [NY] High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not.

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

Liverpool’s turnabout comes as more and more school districts nationwide continue to bring laptops into the classroom. Federal education officials do not keep track of how many schools have such programs, but two educational consultants, Hayes Connection and the Greaves Group, conducted a study of the nation’s 2,500 largest school districts last year and found that a quarter of the 1,000 respondents already had one-to-one computing, and fully half expected to by 2011.

Yet school officials here and in several other places said laptops had been abused by students, did not fit into lesson plans, and showed little, if any, measurable effect on grades and test scores at a time of increased pressure to meet state standards. Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.

Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not. ...

In the school library [at Liverpool], an 11th-grade history class was working on research papers. Many carried laptops in their hands or in backpacks even as their teacher, Tom McCarthy, encouraged them not to overlook books, newspapers and academic journals.

“The art of thinking is being lost,” he said. “Because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”

From Ireland, via Reuters, the other week:

The rising popularity of text messaging on mobile phones poses a threat to writing standards among Irish schoolchildren, an education commission says.

The frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation has become a serious concern, the State Examination Commission said in a report after reviewing last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds.

"The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates," the report said, according to Wednesday's Irish Times. "Text messaging, with its use of phonetic spelling and little or no punctuation, seems to pose a threat to traditional conventions in writing."
The report laments that, in many cases, candidates seemed "unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary".

In 2003, Irish 15-year-olds were among the top 10 performers in an international league table of literacy standards compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

And in related news, "Teen pockets $25,000 in texting contest", and plans to spend her winnings on...not books.

Tapping toes and teaching to tests

Go on to sleep now, third grader of mine.
The test is tomorrow but you'll do just fine.
It's reading and math. Forget all the rest.
You don't need to know what is not on the test.

Each box that you mark on each test that you take,
Remember your teachers. Their jobs are at stake.
Your score is their score, but don't get all stressed.
They'd never teach anything not on the test. ...

Thinking's important. It's good to know how.
And someday you'll learn to, but someday's not now.
Go on to sleep, now. You need your rest.
Don't think about thinking. It's not on the test.
from the new song, Not on the Test, by Tom Chapin & John Forster

Tom Chapin put his latest song, Not on the Test, on his website recently, since it's not out yet on CD, and according to Chapin probably won't be anytime soon. Thanks to Camille at Book Moot for the information and the link to yesterday's School Library Journal interview with Chapin, which calls Not on the Test a "funny, satirical song". From the interview:

John Forster, who is my wonderful collaborator, and my other friend, Michael Mark, and I have written over the years for National Public Radio; so I got together with John Forster one day and said, "Let's come up with some ideas." We bounced around things; and one of them, we felt, was a hot item—both of us being parents and having had kids in public school: how testing has become this huge thing. ...

So what do you think of NCLB and all the attention on testing?

The real thing is how it's changed the experience of school. I know teachers who have stopped teaching because they just are no longer allowed to do what delights them and what delights the kids.

What's your message to the Bush administration?

[Testing] doesn't work. It's the corporatization of education.

The SLJ article also mentions Chapin's audiocassette giveaway: "We have a roomful of cassettes. My assistant [Claudia Libowitz at Sundance Music] came up with the idea that, since we're not selling these anymore, and since a lot of schools still have cassette players, what better thing to do with them than get them to teachers. So, if you're a teacher or librarian and would like some free Tom Chapin cassettes, as long as they last, e-mail us." That would be info at Tom Chapin dot com. The offer is good for the U.S. and Canada, and includes a small shipping free. More info at the website.

Tom Chapin music, especially free Tom Chapin music, is not to be sneezed at. Some of our favorites, for children and for adults, which I'd buy again at twice the price, include Around the World and Back Again, Doing Our Job, Moonboat, Family Tree, and Some Assembly Required.

***

And, by the same SLJ writer, Joan Oleck, these articles, Chronic Reading Problems Linked with Depression (last week) and Study: Kids' Crucial Learning Period Extends beyond Year Three (yesterday). Who knew?

Festival report

We spent most of yesterday at the first day of the town's arts festival. The boys each recited a poem in the morning for Speech Arts, and in the evening Laura performed her musical theater number, "I Have Confidence" from The Sound of Music.

For the past few years, the kids have entered just the Speech Arts part of the program. This year, I gave Laura a pass on that part, since her voice teacher wanted to enter her in the singing portion, and her piano teacher wanted her to enter the piano portion (tomorrow morning, with "Home on the Range", like a good cowgirl); plus she had two speeches to give for 4H. But I feel as if we're letting down the Speech Arts program, which yesterday had only 11 entries (down from a recent high of 26 in 2004, and, in earlier years, as many as eight days of entries compared to today's two hours). Part of the problem is that poetry, and memorization, are no longer included in most provincial school curricula (in part because neither is included on provincial exams, which goes to prove the unfortunate importance of teaching to the test) -- which no doubt explains why six of the 10 entrants yesterday are home educated -- and as we see all around, there's just not much worth nowadays, you know, in like being able to talk good and stuff. Whatever.

But the kids who came out yesterday did an amazing job. In addition to my two boys (whose archy and mehitabel selections by Don Marquis are at the very bottom), the entrants included

a seven-year-old girl reciting Roald Dahl's "Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker",

a 10-year-old boy reciting "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel" by Leigh Hunt,

his eight-year-old sister doing a brilliant job with Charles Dickens's "The Ivy Green",

an 11-year-old boy reciting "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer,

a 14-year-old boy reciting "The Policeman's Song" by Gilbert & Sullivan,

a marvelous rendition of Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman" by a 16-year-old homeschooled girl, who brought the piece to life before our eyes,

a prose recitation of Something from Nothing, one of our favorite picture books, by a 14-year-old friend of ours, who also gave a public speaking solo, her 4H speech from last month about her exchange trip to Japan. I'll try to add links to most of the poems later.

All in all, a wonderful morning, even without Davy winning the prize for the six- and seven-year-old category (from the adjudicator's report: "That is quite the smile! What a wonderful job you did with all of those big words! You have a very clear and easy sound. Great work!"), and Daniel managing exceedingly well with his first stab at free verse. The kids have each had a chance at winning festival awards now, and it was heartening to see Laura and Daniel so pleased for their little brother. Best of all, because the kids didn't have classrooms to run back to as did some of the other competitors, we were free to spend the entire morning at the church hall, listening to (and learning from) all of the other recitations.

We stepped out of the church at lunchtime to unexpected heavy snow (happy spring to you, too), got home as fast as we could under the road conditions, ate lunch, relaxed as much as we dared, and an hour or so later, hopped back into the truck and drove back to town for music lessons, an abbreviated Fiddler rehearsal, and then dinner at a restaurant in town at 5 p.m. so Laura could be back at the church for the Vocal program just after 6. Her voice instructor arrived for a bit of a warm-up, and she changed into her costume. Only to discover that she had left her straw hat on her bed. Thank goodness for some dear friends, homeschoolers too, who live literally across the street from the church and saved the day with the loan of a hat five minutes before show time.

Laura and her accompanist did a terrific job -- simple, appealing, enjoyable -- all the more impressive since, as the youngest as the category, Laura was the first to go on. The adjudicator, the same one from Speech Arts earlier in the day, enjoyed it too, and gave Laura a very good critique. She was followed by a selection of Disney Princesses, which after L's comment on the other day's hot-to-trot-tot post, with this link to Off-Duty Disney Princesses (the play) from Breed 'Em And Weep), seemed more even more disturbing than usual (relevant, L? You betcha). There was Beauty minus Beast, the mermaid complete with shockingly bright wig and homemade tail, and Aladdin's midriff-baring princess pal, all complete with not particularly memorable -- nor easy to sing or suitable for 10- and 11-year-olds -- Alan Menken drivel. Why do mothers and women teachers do this to their girls? Which only made the good stuff -- including the only boy's performance of Chim Chim Cheree (the same lad who had given us Casey at the Bat earlier in the day), an 11-year-old girl performing a number from "Annie" and a 12-year-old's "Just You Wait ('enry 'iggins)" from "My Fair Lady" -- stand out that much more.

There followed some classical vocal solos, including oratoria, and a rousing finale from two local adult choruses. Beautiful stuff. A late night, but the kids were still singing on the way home -- mostly selections from Singin' in the Rain -- and planning their entries for next year.

Today we're recovering with a quiet, unschooly day, with plans to reread Something from Nothing, which ties in nicely with the kids' Fiddler on the Roof production; Casey at the Bat (there are more than a few good picture book editions to choose from), and a few other stories. Tomorrow morning Laura bangs out "Home on the Range" for the piano part of the program. And we stop off at the hospital afterwards to have Daniel's stitch removed.

Daniel's excerpt from "some maxims of archy" by Don Marquis (from archy and mehitabel)

i heard a
couple of fleas
talking the other
day says one come
to lunch with
me i can lead you
to a pedigreed
dog says the
other one
i do not care
what a dog s
pedigree may be
safety first
is my motto what
Ii want to know
is whether he
has got a
muzzle on
millionaires and
bums taste
about a like to me

Davy's prize-winning excerpt from "some natural history" by Don Marquis (from archy and mehitabel)

the patagonian
penguin
is a most
peculiar
bird
he lives on
pussy
willows
and his tongue
is always furred
the porcupine
of chile
sleeps his life away
and that is how
the needles
get into the hay
the argentinian
oyster
is a very
subtle gink
for when he s
being eaten
he pretends he is
a skink
when you see
a sea gull
sitting
on a bald man s dome
she likely thinks
she s nesting
on her rocky
island home
do not tease
the inmates
when strolling
through the zoo
for they have
their finer feelings
the same
as me and you.

(Yes, we talked about that last line and why it was needed for the rhyme. Ha. And about the saying "a needle in a haystack". Both poems got the biggest laughs of the day, so it seems Don Marquis was a big hit on the prairie.)

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007)

From his obituary in yesterday's New York Times:

Young Arthur first attended public schools in Cambridge, but his parents lost faith in public education in his sophomore year after a civics teacher informed Arthur’s class that inhabitants of Albania were called Albinos and had white hair and pink eyes. He was shipped to the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

Good habits and the historical mind

I've just started catching up on my blog reading, and one of the places I turned to first was J.L. Bell's Boston 1775 (and I hope to get caught up at Bell's Oz and Ends sometime soon), where I found the recommendation for this "damn good article": "Teaching the Mind Good Habits" by Sam Wineburg, originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education several years ago.

Wineburg is Professor of Education and History at Stanford University and author of Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past.

From the article:

When I've broached the topic of habits of mind with historians, I've often encountered an uncharacteristic reticence. Those who comment often refer to general critical-thinking skills that could apply just as easily to texts about astrophysics or wire-haired terriers as to historical documents. Yet across the many historians I've interviewed, from the most traditional diplomatic historian to the hippest adherent of the trendiest subfield, I've been able to discern the contours of a shared disciplinary culture. ...

For students, historical habits of mind constitute major intellectual hurdles. Students see their professors' thoughtsas finished products, tidied up and packaged for publicpresentation in books, articles, and lectures. Historians shield from view their raw thinking, the way they try to make sense of their subject.

We need to bring this messier form of expertise into the classroom. Students who believe that knowledge bursts Athena-like from the professor's head may never learn to think like historians, may never be able to reconstruct past worlds
from the most minimal of clues. We need to show students that the self-assured figure lecturing from the podium is not what a historian looks like in his or her office, puzzling through difficult texts.

In fact, the processes by which a scholar makes sense of material -- what I sometimes call the intermediate processes of cognition -- are powerful teaching tools. Historians can model in class how they read by having students bring in unfamiliar texts and demonstrating how to interpret and assess them. With a companion document, they can show the strategies they use to corroborate evidence and piece together a coherent context. Or professors could refer students to the useful Web site History Matters (http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu), whose section on making sense of evidence includes acclaimed historians' discussions of how they evaluate different genres of primary evidence.

letters to the editor

A couple of different responses to The New York Times article on unschooling, Nov. 26 -- one ahem, one amen:

To the Editor:

I am shocked and saddened to read about the growing numbers of parents who are joining the unschooling movement.

I consider “child-led learning” to be an incredibly foolhardy philosophy. Not even older teenagers, much less the very young, should be put in the position of making unalterable decisions regarding their future welfare.

Achieving a satisfying and rewarding career is tough enough for those with a mainstream education that encompasses the breadth and depth of subject matter.

Many unschooled children may very well become deeply disappointed when, as adults, they find that the doors leading to exciting endeavors in disciplines like science, medicine and technology, among others, are forever closed to them.

Somehow, tossing precious potential to the winds seems a costly and irresponsible way to provide a freedom-filled childhood.

Mary K.

and this:

To the Editor:

We are home-schooling our children. Although we’ve opted to pursue a classical, college preparatory approach to our children’s education, we know many “unschooling” families, including several whose unschooled children have gone on to college and who seem to be well-adjusted adults leading happy, productive lives.

We see no reason to heed the concern and call for regulation expressed by Prof. Luis Huerta of Columbia University. As your article noted, there is little data suggesting that the unschooled population is at risk.

Also, given how many barely literate children graduate from government-run and supervised schools each year, it would be imprudent to divert the attention of our legislators and officials toward unschoolers.

We would rather see our taxes used to address the well-documented and distressing state of our country’s schools and the millions of children who leave them unable to pursue basic college work or to perform skills necessary to support themselves.

Margaret M.
Charles S.

Teaching history with more narrative and fewer "tiny gobbets of chewed-up material"

Found this interesting post from writer (and new home educating father) James Bartholomew, based on this interesting article from The London Times last week.

Worth noting too that The Times article is based on an interview with historian David Starkey before last week's premiere of the film version of the play, The History Boys, which "depicts the clash between two teachers, one who values learning for its own sake and one who sees teaching as a series of artificially selected exam techniques. It is a debate that Dr Starkey believes is worth having, not least because he fears that the current system of exams, targets and league tables is destroying Britain’s education system."

More news from across the pond: Lynne Truss on "Why arnt childrun being tort how 2 rite?"

My father was darling enough to send me this morning Lynne Truss's latest article from The Telegraph.

The actual headline, "Why arnt childrun...", is rather misleading since the article deals not with spelling -- which isn't taught anymore either, at least here in Canada -- but with the mechanics of writing. I would have subtitled my post "Why Araminta and Philip Can't Write," only Dakota, Denver, and Chelsea in North America are no better off. Each year I spend an inordinate amount of time at the local country fair perusing the school displays, mostly gaping at the high school collages (not essays) about popular movies like "The Truman Show" (not books). Very adept with scissors and glue, not so adept with words, sadly, which are apparently optional. Or at least not as decorative.

As Ms. Truss -- "Designated Worrier for the English Language" since the publication of her zero-tolerance Eats, Shoots & Leaves -- writes,

Last year, only 71 per cent of girls and 56 per cent of boys aged 11 reached level four – the standard of writing expected for their age. School inspectors were themselves recently e-mailed some guidelines by Ofsted on the difference between "its" and "it's", and how to spell words such as (useful in the circumstances) "under-achieve".

"But what about all those lovely A-level results?" you object. Well, a few months ago, the Royal Literary Fund published a report, Writing Matters, that put those A-levels into perspective. Since 1999, the fund has been placing professional writers in universities, to work one-to-one with students on their writing skills, and their report was full of plain, staggering shock at the state of students' entry-level abilities.

From every angle, the same message arrived: students who are arriving at university, many with multiple A grades at A-level, simply don't know how to write. Many of them actually resent the idea that suddenly they are expected to be able to....

Why isn't writing – not reading – given more prominence in schools? I really don't understand it.

And,

No one just picks up the mechanics of writing, just as we don't pick up how to play the piano simply by listening to it. Theory, moreover, is no substitute for practice, or for learning through making mistakes.

For decades, there has been an ideological reluctance to point out mistakes in written work. Pointing out "errors" was seen as discouraging to children, as well as unacceptably judgmental. But, when you look at it, what a patronising attitude that is.

Don't kids have the right to know if they are getting something wrong? Then they can either have the pleasure of getting it right next time, or they can make an informed decision that, actually, they absolutely don't care. It is patronising not to correct someone who is supposed to be learning; in fact, it's quite a good idea occasionally to force people to confront the scale of their own ignorance.

It's not just people's self-esteem that's at stake, after all. It's the future of written English.

Is this an elitist point of view? No, it's quite the opposite. To me, it's very simple: being good at English means you've been taught well. The idea that "correct" or standard English belongs only to rich and privileged people is preposterous from every angle.

The English language doesn't belong to anybody: it certainly doesn't trickle down from the top. Mark Twain said it brilliantly 100 years ago: "There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company, and we own the bulk of the shares."

Go on, read the rest. Read it and weep.