Enabler.

I have a student signed up for a course.  This course is a study abroad offering.  Thus, there is a lot of paperwork and planning required.  Most of this rests on me.  But, there is a substantial amount of planning and preparation that I have to require of the students.

This year, one of my students has, thus far, failed to complete a single piece of this preparation on their own.  His mother has been the main point person on every piece of paperwork, documentation, and meeting.  His mother has finished the papers, sent the emails, contacted me, and sent apologies. 

What will this child do when he gets his first job?  Will she serve as a go-between for his boss?  Will she wake him up so he can get to work on time? 

Kid.  You are in your 20s.  You are a college student.  You want to live "independently".  With that kind of power comes responsibility.

Kid.  It is time to buck up, grow up, and do the right thing.

Mom.  It is time to back off, let your kid face his own consequences, and force your kid to grow up.

I hope that I am never this mom and that my child is never this child.

New technology.

Z is working on a science project that covers innovations.  While discussing the advent of mobile phones, texting, the internet, and email - he suddenly froze.

"How did people communicate before mobile phones?"

"We waited until we got to our destination."

Wow.  Maybe someday I'll blow his mind and tell him about tv that you can't pause (and came only in black and white - with three channels and a roof antenna), phones that all have cords, and music spinning on a big black vinyl record.

Suddenly it makes more sense that I need reading glasses.

Dear Abby thinks "Worst First"

A "working mom in Kansas" asked Dear Abby this morning how old her child needs to be before she can leave them alone at all.  Abby's response can be found here:
http://www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=20111208&uc_comic=da

Essentially, her answer is never, because something could happen.

Here is my response...

Dear Abby,


On 8 December, you responded to a working mom that wanted to know at what age a child can be left in the house alone. You responded “I don’t think children should be left alone if there is any alternative…” because “Too many things can go wrong…” This is a classic example of what Lenore Skenazy (www.freerangekids.com) refers to as “worst-first” thinking. Because of rare tragic things that could happen, we will handicap our children’s ability to gain from the many positives associated with this kind of independence. Further, we will handicap this parent’s finances and their ability to shop alone for brief periods of time.

Can you really not imagine any age where a child is capable of being left alone in their home? Not at 8? Or 11? Or 14? Or 17? How is it that these children will learn to be capable adults if they don’t get to practice gaining increments of independence under the (sometimes remote) supervision of their parents or guardians? Is this why, as a professor, I see college students today that are incapable of facing the regular bumps and glitches of daily life without calling on their parents to fix their problems for them?

Perhaps instead of “never”, we can look for indicators that a child is capable of short time periods home alone. In that each child develops differently, the right age for gaining responsibility and freedom will be different. Here is one article highlighting the signs of readiness: http://kidshealth.org/parent/firstaid_safe/home/home_alone.html. After experimenting with leaving them home during short errands, children can gain confidence and earn additional freedoms. Practice can help children gain confidence in solving their own problems on the road to becoming capable adults.

Instead of infantilizing our children due to remote risks, we need to empower them. If you will recall, just a few decades ago, we did that very thing. I was a latch-key kid at nine and babysitting at 11. In the 70’s, this was regular practice. Before you argue that the world was safer then, note that the crime statistics show that life is safer today than it has been since 1970 or earlier. In that time on my own, I learned how to feed myself when I was hungry, how to clean up after myself, how to take care of others, who to call when you need help, and I developed the confidence that I could take care of myself. That experience was invaluable.

Best and worst

In our recent tradition, our family reviews worsts and bests every day at the dinner table.  This way, we can all hear about the lows and highs and stay in touch with what our children love and hate about their lives.

Homeschooling my oldest child, Z, has been a long-term exercise in bests and worsts. 

Worsts first:

• My patience is often not what it could be.  I hate what I become sometimes.
• Homeschooling and working full-time is dodgy. 
• How much he learns and completes is more of a reflection on me than on him sometimes.
• We are always together.

Now, to balance us out, Bests:

• Sometimes, he can get completely absorbed in something that fascinates him, and I don't have to make him put it aside.
• He can always work just on the boundary of what he knows - all of his work is "high-gain".
• He loves to learn and read, and homeschool doesn't squelch that.
• We are always together.

But, what about the controversy?

I am concerned about the education that my children are getting in public school.

For example, the children are taught unequivocally that the earth is round. 

There are a lot of people that believe, instead, that the earth is flat.  Isn't it unfair that their viewpoint is being treated with such disdain?  Why is it that we have this value judgment in place where we will teach one set of beliefs and not the other? It is culturocentric for us to presume to teach only one side of this controversial topic. 

Where are the discussions about the cultures that dissent on this issue?  Where are the alternative map views?

It is all about giving fair time to different perspectives.  Isn't it?

The most exciting day of school.

The most exciting school day... has no school in it.  Following, please find a list of some of the most exciting moments our kids have had learning.

• Our eight-year-old taking on college kids in chess.
• Our six-year-old playing with sea creatures under a microscope.
• All three boys fishing on a boat, learning to identify fish, types of bait, how boats and waves move, how wind interacts with waves, tides, and how to work together toward a common goal.
• Hiking in the forest and trying to catch bugs.
• Doing long, hard, challenging workouts for months on end until you can earn the privilege of testing for the your next belt in your martial arts.
• Disassembling furniture, and trying to put it back together again.
• Finding a book in the library that makes them want to tuck in and read all afternoon.
• Determining whether or not you want an item based on how many weeks allowance it would cost.
• Negotiating deals and calculating costs in monopoly.
• Building Lego robots, and programming them.
• Talking about different ways of viewing the world and our culture.
• Reading Richard Dawkins new book, and asking Professor Dawkins a question about it.
• Holding a live hummingbird at the hummingbird festival.
• Going to a Rennaissance Fair.
• Practicing piano for weekly lessons - this week... "Hedwig's Theme"!
• Learning about their uncle's sculpture.
• Picking out a recipe and cooking dinner.
• Going to an art gallery.
• Playing with dry ice.
• Building and lighting a fire.

What do these days have in common? 

Self motivation - they were learning because they were personally invested in learning something. 
Determination - they were teaching themselves to stick with something, even when it is hard. 
Pushing the bounds of their knowledge and know-how - they were stretching themselves in new and different ways. 
Responsibility - they were empowered to try something out, even at the risk of minor injury, to learn to take care of themselves and make good choices.

These are the features that we should be looking for in quality, high gain schoolwork.  Not more, just more interesting.  While all schoolwork can't do all of this, all school work should do some of this.

Experience

Interestingly, there is an ongoing movement among schools to reduce all kinds of experiential learning.  The movement doesn't really go by that name, it goes by - "anything could happen, we need to keep our children safe", "we can't do that in these litigious times", and "it costs too much".

Schools protect children from scary things like poison ivy and insects, and thus cancel most outdoor learning opportunities. Schools forbid teaching from having plants, animals (of all kinds) and soil in the classroom. Schools reinforce cultural fears of the natural world by forbidding any food that was not processed and wrapped in an industrial setting.   Let's send the little tykes off to school wrapped in bubble wrap and, for Pete's sake, don't let them run at recess - they could skin a knee!

Dissections are being replaced with virtual frogs... because, of course, all frogs are two-dimensional, color-coded, there is no individual variation in organs, and textures/structures are not relevant.   People are worried about frog rights (there are some relevant points here, but the experience cannot be satisfactorily simulated).  People think that kids with dissecting scissors are dangerous (how old does a kid need to be to handle a knife?  When did you get one?).

My son learned about how seeds grow into plants by... coloring then cutting out pictures of seeds, sprouts, plants, flowers, fruits, and harvest - then pasting them in order.  That, because, I guess planting a seed and watching is too hard?


There are lots of experiences that schools are skipping that go beyond using exploration.  And, these reductions take many guises.  But, ultimately, like you did - kids learn by getting dirty, getting into something, and sometimes breaking stuff, needing a band-aid, or getting poison ivy.  Our kids may be safer... but, they are bored and getting dumber.  Fun is not the opposite of learning.  Self-directed exploration is more useful than a month of worksheets.
 
In a few years, perhaps we can expect medical schools to abandon using cadavers in lieu of virtual people.   Forestry agents can look at leaves online.   Teachers can practice in virtual classrooms.  Nurses can practice on robotic patients.  Funny?  Guess which ones of these are already happening.