Peter's Cross Station

Books

This is what I've been reading for the past couple of weeks:

What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and Bias in Higher Education by Michael Berube

A Christmas gift from Cole. Two thumbs up! Berube (who is not as liberal as I am, given that he calls himself "liberal" and I tend to avoid that term) takes on the rhetoric from the Fox news set that somehow, higher education has been wrongly hijacked by "liberals" who are brainwashing students (you know, unlike Fox news). Anyway, I will stack my piles of student feedback forms insisting that I, a self-described socialist pinko, give my students free reign to draw their own conclusions through free and open discussions in my classroom against any "brainwashing" claims. Berube says this, sort of, but much more cleverly and convincingly and, for the record, in beautiful prose that is a pleasure to read (contrary to another academic stereotype). If you're a teacher, this will get you all fired up to be a better one. Anyway, it has that effect on me.

The Case against Homework: How Homework is Hurting our Children and What we can do about It. by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish

More below.

The Homeschooling Option: How to Decide When it's Right for your Family by Lisa Rivero

More below.

The Gift of Good Manners: A Parents' Guide to Raising Respectful, Kind, Considerate Children by Peggy Post and Cindy Post Senning

So far, my response to this has been "well, duh!" But I'm only up to the preschool section. Looking forward to reading about school-aged kids, preteens, teens, etc.

I had requests to talk more about both the homework book and the homeschooling book.

The homework book is a sort of watered down version of more scientific homework books (or so I gather, not having read any others). I think they are pretty much following an Alfie Kohn logic. They also give specific guidelines and suggestions for reducing your child's homework, and/or getting your school or school board to set more reasonable homework policies.

I was interested to hear that research pretty much shows almost any homework prior to high school to be almost useless as far as learning goes, and quite often very counter-productive. The rule of thumb they cite is that kids should probably not get any homework before high school, but if they do, they should get no more than 10 minutes per grade-level.

This book, along with every homeschooling book I've ever read, really got me musing on my childhood and my schooling. I never felt terrible about my schooling. I think I had a pretty good education from K-8 grade and I know I got an excellent one from 9-12 grade.

But.

I still have recurring nightmares about having to go back to high school (plaid skirt and all) and repeat Algebra. I have to remind myself when I wake up that now I have a terminal degree and truly never have to take Algebra again.

I had a great algebra teacher, I truly did. She even appreciated me for all my non-Math skills and gifts. I even think she liked me as a person. But she just couldn't teach the likes of me in a normal classroom setting. I was simply never going to get it without serious personal help. And so, when I was failing Algebra II, I asked her for extra help and she refused. She told me I was not turning in complete homework assignments, and given my failure to do my own work, she wasn't going to do extra on her end.

Her logic seemed fair at the time and I still think that according to her lights, it was fair. She was right about me in her assessment that I was more than bright enough to do well in algebra but needed to work harder than I was used to working in any other class. But she was wrong that I could pull myself up by my bootstraps or simply buckle down and get to work if I stopped my laziness.

I needed a coach.

So I took advantage of the "Math Resource Center" at school and the grad student tutor who staffed it. (Her name was Shannon and she was Hawaiian. I saw this as a Sign. I was right!) For weeks I spent hours in the resource center getting that tutor to coach me one-on-one through my homework and studying for quizzes and tests and I made straight A's on everything for the rest of the term, pulling my F up to a C+ (and the highest grade I ever got in HS math).

What does this have to do with homework?

The homework book says that 5 math problems is better than 40. If a student can get five right, she has shown adequate mastery to move on. If a student can't get five right, 35 more is going to be a miserable, overwhelming, demoralizing experience and only give the student exercise in doing it wrong.

When I read that, boy did it strike a chord. That's why I wasn't turning in my homework. I couldn't figure out the first two or three problems and continuing on for 30, 35, 40 or 50 more was just unthinkable. Impossible. I really, honestly couldn't do it after mere classroom instruction.

I have hated Math with an unrelenting passion ever since 3rd grade when the impossible homework started and it makes me so sad--especially now that I see what simple joy Nat is taking in numbers. I want not just to encourage her, but somehow identify even slightly with her joy.

But I digress. When I wasn't doing my Math homework, guess what I was doing? I was reading my way through the Penguin Classics section of my father's bookstore. And I was, often enough, getting in trouble for practicing this leisure activity when I was supposed to be doing homework.

The homework book says parents should write notes to teachers that say something like this:

"Dear Wonderful Teacher Whom our Child Adores, We know you are a professional who knows best, but after 5 math problems, it was clear to us that our child understands the math and rather than making her do 40 more, we wanted to let her get back the book she's been reading on her own this week. We believe reading is very important and hate to discourage her. Signed, supportive, respectful parents."

That blew me away. Mind you, just because I say I got in trouble for reading doesn't mean I was actually discouraged from it. My father did own a bookstore after all. It's just that reading was so taken-for-granted in our family that I came to see it on the same level as t.v. It was a fun leisure activity and anything you enjoyed that much must not be okay to do until you've finished your math homework and your chores, right? So I love the idea of telling a teacher that my kid couldn't do her homework because she was too busy reading!

The more I read about homeschooling the more I think back on how much dumb stuff I did in school and how much time was wasted--even in my good schools in my expensive education. I spent the better part of my 7th grade social studies class memorizing state and national capitals (many of which have changed numerous times since then, of course) and the order of the terms of the U.S. presidents. I got B's instead of A's in that class because I couldn't memorize facts in a void very well and did a mediocre job on the tests over this stuff.

In the homeschooling book above, Rivero gives as an example of a course of study a kid around 7th grade age might do, reading a biography of each U.S. president. And at the end of the year, if the kid can't quite recall the exact order they all came in? Who the heck cares. But she probably will be able to, given all the context she'll have gotten on history and society and politics via those biographies.

When blowing off my homework I also used to sneak off to the local art gallery with sketch materials and sit and draw statues in the corridors for hours. I used to write short stories and poems in my journals. In short, I did stuff that would pretty much qualify as homeschooling in my "spare" time while getting mediocre grades in school because I blew off busy work (and algebra until that tutor). I graduated last of the top half of my class in high school (somewhere around 160th), while my ten best friends were all in the top 15 (including the top two).

Everyone shook their heads and tsk-tsked ("everyone" meaning my hardworking good-grade-getting peers) and went off to fancy colleges while I went an hour north of home to Small Baptist U. But Small Baptist U. sent me to Oxford for a year which I wouldn't trade for an extra decade of life on this planet, so that was all for the best.

And the homeschool book points out that when a kid wants something--say, admission to a certain college--a kid will be able to do what she needs to do--including finding an algebra tutor, for example--to meet the requirements of that goal.

Thinking about all of this gets me so excited to homeschool. It gets me excited about giving my girls a chance to follow their own strongest interests, to work hard with good coaches on stuff that doesn't come as easily, to learn for myself all kinds of wonderful things as they are learning. But these books also have a healing effect on this unshakeable shame that has been sitting in my gut most of my life for not having done better by working harder in school. I feel vindicated and actually glad that I was so "lazy" that I set aside work that didn't interest me for what I can now recognize as self-directed learning in subjects that were not only more fun at the time, but have made a significant contribution to the best parts of who I am today. BAsically, I am learning that it is okay to prioritize learning what is fun to learn. Fun doesn't mean "bad for you."

I know there are great schools, wonderful teachers and kids who thrive with and in them in the world. But for my family and me, nothing seems as exciting as the infinite possibilities of homeschooling. I am planning to start a homeschool journal where I record what we do every day, starting in the fall when Nat is about three and a half. Basically, I want to make sure that we hit certain things weekly. Some will be through classes and some will be at home and some will be via "field trips." There are big changes afoot chez LilySea that make these prospects even more exciting, but I won't tell you the details of those today.

/Insert your own conclusion here. I must get to bed./

ETA: If you're looking to read up on homeschooling, I started a couple of years ago with John Holt's Teach Your Own, as recommended by Dawn and I recommend it too! I also like the Big Classical Homeschooling Book, The Well-Trained Mind.

Ka-plooey

The Internet is being fussy over here these days. I just got well enough to sit up so I can blog again and now this.

Here are some quick bullets before this connection dies:

- My class is going well! Loads of smarty-pants students. I am having tons of fun.

- Selina and I are in love. She is going to be 8 months old next week and is in that completely adorable, pleasant, content baby stage. Mostly over the spitting, between major teething projects, getting really vocal and active, sleeping easily through the night, and recently moved into her very own room! (My old office/Nat's old nursery/Cole's old office/Selina's new nursery. It's a sun room. It's versatile!) She smiles and/or giggles all day long.

- Nat loves to count things. She spontaneously (and accurately) counts every countable thing she encounters, after first announcing merrily, "Okay! Let's count them!" I am haunted by Mama Rose's blase' comment (in the telling of her own biography) "well, English was my favorite subject in high school, but Math just came so easily to me that I decided to do my Associate's degree in computers..." Now I am on the prowl for new and creative ways to feed Nat's interest in numbers.

- I have been reading lots of books on higher education, homeschooling, the badness of homework, and the importance of teaching children etiquette. They are all really interesting and have me thinking ultra blog-worthy thoughts that I either don't have the time or the health or--lately--the Internet access to tell you about. More later.

- My SIL was pregnant briefly. Cross your fingers it will happen again soon and last longer--say, nine months?

- Kucinich is out. Edwards is out. I am completely torn. Completely. First I was all Obama, all the time, but yesterday, my BFF and I had a politics chat in which she got me reconsidering Clinton and I got her reconsidering Obama. Now we're both unsure again. I guess I shouldn't worry about it since I'll be voting in Illinois, where Obama will undoubtedly take it regardless of my vote, eh?

- Who do you think is the most unelectable Republican? I ask because my mother is a registered Republican specifically in order to get unelectable ones on the general election ballots and she is not sure who to caucus for. What do you all think?

- Stupid "stimulus" bill. Queers or no queers it sucks. Just wanted to reiterate that.

- Mama Fern visiting this weekend. As in, here, in our home. We are very excited.

Stimulating: More on the Relative Value of my Family

The stimulus bill hits the Senate today.

First, let me say that this is not my idea of economic fairness. They took extending unemployment benefits and expanding food stamp eligibility off the table right out of the gate, and pretty much lost my moral support right there.

That said, let's just suspend my outright lack of support for a minute and pretend I agreed with their premise that giving middle and upper-middle-class people money via tax rebates was a great idea.

We are the exact family the present plan is aimed at. We aren't out-of-work (against our will), we aren't anywhere near eligible for food stamps and we aren't fabulously wealthy.

We make well under the upper limit for a couple.

Cole makes just a hair above the upper limit for a single person.

I don't have enough tax liability to get anything back anyway.

If our marriage was recognized by the U.S. federal government, we'd be eligible for the couple rebate plus two kid bonuses.

As it is, Cole isn't eligible and the kids are her tax dependents.

I'm not making enough to get it, so I'm not eligible.

$0 money for us.

Now, if our "share" were going to extend someone's unemployment benefits or to get someone food stamps, I'd be 150% on board with that. But our share is presumably going, rather, to underwrite some straight family's share.

(No need to send a hand-written note, you can just email your thanks.)

"But that's crazy!" I said, when Cole told me about it. "We're a stay-at-home-mom family! We're the exact kind of family they want to help!"

"No we're not" said Cole.

Touche.

News from Utah

Will post more of substance soon, but for now, thought you'd enjoy this piece on the movement to lift the ban on same-sex parent adoptions in Utah.

Downgraded

No more flu. Just residual coughs and ear aches for the kids (both of them had ear infections, as it turns out. But Nat's doesn't require antibiotics). "Just" my usual nasty sinus infection for me.

Yesterday, all four of us had a fifteen-minute appointment with our family practice doctor. That meant we all tumbled into the same examining room for an hour. This is why I like family practice doctors. She sees us as the organic unit that we are, and the back-to-back appointments mean she isn't rushing out the door without hearing what we have to tell her about our situation.

Cole and I got antibiotics and codeine cough syrup. The kids were pronounced cute, smart and growing at a shocking rate by all the admiring nurses.

Hopefully thus ends boring posts about our health. Thank you for your patience.

Help Debbie Leave no Mom Behind

I'm a day late due to illness, but if you haven't already, please go visit Debbie at A Charmed Life.

Debbie's mom died too young (53) of lung cancer. My ex-husband's mother, Dotty, died too young (67) of lung cancer. My best femme, Nancy's mother, Jo, died too young (59) of lung cancer. My most-admired teacher in graduate school, Claudia Tate, died too young (55) of lung cancer.

Please join Debbie's "Leave No Mom Behind" efforts to defeat lung cancer, by visiting her fundraising page at the Lungevity Foundation.

Report from Hack, Wheeze, Snort

Yesterday, I lay in bed and writhed in misery while Jim, our houseguest, played with Nat and Selina slept uneasily at the foot of my bed.

When Cole got home, she raced Selina in for the afternoon appointment I made with a doctor (not ours) who was free on the last business day before a three-day weekend in a small town where the temperature has been hovering near 0 (fahrenheit) and there is a flu outbreak.

Selina, they say, has an ear infection and must take amoxicillin for ten days.

Bwah, wha, wha!!!

I would have kept her from antibiotics for longer. Nat has yet to have a 'cillin of any description enter her body and has the immune system of a horse.

But Selina had not kept anything--liquid or solid--down for a day and a half so off to the doctor I sent her.

You would think I'd have guessed an ear infection. But the only possible sign was a little ear scratching for a day or two, and given that she's also recently sprung three new teeth, I chalked it up to that. Aren't kids supposed to scream in misery when they have ear infections? Selina has pretty much been her usual Buddha-like smiley self with just a little extra fever-induced sleepiness and some fussing here and there because (I thought) she was hungry seeing as everything we gave her came back in a matter of minutes.

After a night of me in the rocking chair coaxing pedialyte into her, listening to her wheeze and sniffle, I sent her off again this morning to the after-hours clinic with Cole and Nat (who told us her "tongue hurts" poor baby!).

I am too sick to lift myself out of bed for more than ten minutes, let alone get dressed and present myself to a doctor in 0-degree weather, so I am hoping for second-hand, prophylactic antibiotics to fend off the sinus infection just waiting to grab me when the flu starts letting up.

I've decided it's flu. Too much fever for anything else.

Cole is still healthy so far, but knock wood for us, will you?

Hack, Wheez, Snort...

Illness has struck our house with a fury. Fevers, sniffles, diarrhea, coughing, wheezing, reduced appetites, and even vomiting (Selina) abound. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Hope to see you soon when I, at least, am feeling better.

More on Juno with Spoilers Galore: Read at Your Own Risk

Cole saw something which claimed that Juno was a big anti-abortion ad. She disagreed and thought that rather than abortion, it was really all about adoption politics (reactionary ones). I read a review from an online friend on a message board claiming the same. And said "friend" knows women's reproductive politics and history like the back of her hand.

I could see their points. I'd argue that while Juno isn't necessarily directly anti-abortion propaganda, it certainly serves (purposefully or not) an anti-abortion agenda.

And yet, I have to agree with Cole that it is more overtly about adoption politics.

Let's think about what the creators of this fictive piece had to and didn't have to do to make narrative sense. Well, to tell a story about a teenager having a baby and placing it for adoption, they sort of had to address why she didn't get an abortion. Not addressing it would have definitely seemed anti-abortion--as if there were a working-middle-class white community in the Midwest in which the pregnant teenagers don't even vet the possibility of abortion. That would be fairly unrealistic. Nothing about the way Juno, as a character was set up would lead a viewer to assume abortion would be automatically off the table for her. So why doesn't she get one? Needs explanation.

Fingernails? A pretty anti-abortion argument, to be sure (in that sentimentality takes the place of a logical discussion of what is really philosophically meaningful or ethically important or medically, socially or psychologically healthy for Juno). But whatever. It gets the "why" out of the way.

The simplistic dismissal of the question of abortion versus carrying a pregnancy to term was indeed annoying. But of course, what really bugged me the most was the rhetoric around adoption.

A) The Penny Saver? Those prospective adoptive parent profiles are bad enough, if you ask me. "Dear Birthmother we are exactly like every other couple in this pile of profiles because we were told exactly what to write and how to write it in order to persuade you to give us your baby." Yuck. But the Penny Saver represented as the go-to place to find an adoptive family was pretty appalling.

B) Private adoption complete with attorney to represent the adoptive couple and a blind-sided dad to represent Juno? Juno gets no notice of her options or rights, so that, learning for the very first time about open adoption hastily dismisses it out of hand, all but begging for an "old school adoption" like in the "good old days when it was quick and dirty." Hey baby boomer birth moms! You remember those crazy good old days? I know you wish you could get those back again!

C) And it wasn't closed anyway, because she was hanging out at their house all the time.

D) Happy bike-riding, guitar-playing, love-song ending? It seems that in spite of what folks who've been there say, Juno happily returns to life before the baby. At least as far as we know.

Now I have heard it argued around the Internets, and I suppose I can grudgingly agree, that this was not necessarily an unrealistic portrayal of a teenaged birth mother in the midst of and soon after the pregnancy, birth and placement. She might well think that closed adoption is best (she might have even chosen this if she had given it further thought--some folks do and that's their right). She might well feel relieved to have it all over with and hey, maybe she didn't need an episiotemy and got right back up on that bike the week after the birth!

But what online friend and Cole and I all said was "I'd like to see the sequel of Juno in ten years."

And yet, as with the first movie, the second would be a fictional work of someone's imagination and just as subject to wish-fulfillment rather than realism in its storytelling tactics.

Now of course we ask "whose wish is being fulfilled?"

I thought the portrayal of the adoptive mother was both realistic and satisfying. As for the would-be father, I should have seen the foreshadowing like a ton of Hollywood bricks, but missed it because his attitude at the first meeting and in the nursery painting scene were so in sync with what I've read around the blogosphere about women's experiences of their husbands while waiting for adoption. I know not all men are so distant and disinterested, but enough are (and turn out to be enthusiastic dads in the end) that I just took Mark's attitude in stride and was actually surprised when he left Vanessa.

But back to Vanessa (whose wishes--and the wishes of those who might identify with her--are being fulfilled in this film). She is "born to be a mother." She's nervous about coming across as perfect, but in a charming way that is further set aside when we see her playing in the mall with the children of her friends and when she's on her knees, pretty much praying to Juno's uterus. Any danger that her "born to be a mother" status might be sullied by multiple claims to the motherhood of this baby are dismissed easily by Juno's disinterest, refusal to see him after birth and her benediction-like, voiced-over pronouncement that the baby was "really [Vanessa's] all along." ("Born in my heart" anybody?")

Isn't this the sort of thing many adoptive mothers want to hear? Want to believe about their children, about their children's first mothers?

And as charming as Juno, the character, was, and as artfully made as the movie was, and as hip as its soundtrack is (might even buy it), this movie might have quite easily served a more powerful, progressive agenda. In the beginning, I was rooting for Juno to have an abortion. (I wanted to save her the pain and trouble of the pregnancy and placement, even as I knew the premise of the film.) The more pregnant she got and the nicer her family was revealed to be, the more I started rooting for her to keep the baby (I was convinced it could have worked swimmingly, even as I knew the premise of the film), then, when she had the baby and Vanessa came in to pick him up, I rooted for Juno and Vanessa to have a mountaintop moment, a mutual change of heart and arrange for Juno to be the live-in childcare for Vanessa--a new single mom--and parent the baby as a mom-team.

Those were my wishes. As a result, I left the theatre bitterly disappointed and not feeling good at all in spite of the movie's obvious attempt to place itself firmly in the "feel-good" genre niche.

Though one might say the movie was not "unrealistic" (Juno's lack of legal or other representation, her isolation from others who share her experience, her detachment from grief after placement), neither did the film problematize any of this or suggest any alternate versions of the story.

In the end, the film heartily endorsed the agenda of a return to the bad-old "baby-scoop" days and thus yes, a return the days (if they are indeed over) of women's sexuality being shameful and not within women's own control. And thus yes, a return to the days (if they are indeed over) when abortion was not readily or safely available.

If you knew nothing about adoption going into the film, you'd learn that adoption is sweet and birth mothers have no issues. If you had fairly mainstream knowledge of adoption, you'd leave with nothing new. But if you know about adoption from any part of its the insides, you might well judge, like me, that it does a terrible disservice to the field.

P.S. I'll leave it to the Killer Ladybugs to discuss the "In China they load babies into tee-shirt guns and shoot them into crowds of waiting parents" comment, not to mention the racist Asian caricature Su Chin with her anti-abortion sign and bad English grammar.

P.P.S. For more about what Juno didn't tell you about adoption, see this post.

Saw Juno

More about that soon. For now, kudos to Cole and I for having our first date since the one where we rode in the ambulance to the ER after the car accident....