Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Patriotism and Kitsch


kitsch: something of tawdry design, appearance, or content created to appeal to popular or undiscriminating taste.

Driving back from Simon's piano lesson this week, we found ourselves in the car listening to an audio book called Living Adventures from American History, George Washington,
The Hero Who Fathered America-Part I: The American Revolution by Allan and Frances Kelley.

Outside our car, the Palmetto Expressway crawled along in its congested 21st century dysfunction; inside our blue Mazda, George Washington galloped around the woods of Pennsylvania and Virginia, fighting the French, the Indians, the British, accumulating victories, lands, honors. According to the Kelleys, everything the man did led to accolades. Even when he lost a battle, he seemed to win things endlessly more valuable: the approval of other men, bear hugs and promotions.

The girl in me found myself thinking: I wouldn't have liked this dude. Between his size, his athletic abilities, his cocky self-confidence, his dancing skills, his charm with the ladies, his guns, his slaves, his rum distillery, his love of fox hunting--he reminded me of the privileged, often soused preppy jocks I met at an American college decades ago. They loudly made all the right noises in class when talking about economics or politics, but privately had trouble taking no for an answer. They acted impulsively and said and took things they shouldn't, respecting only their own kin and kind. There must be some dark details to Washington's story, I thought.

But none of that was mentioned in this narrative. The man could do no wrong. Moreover, repeatedly the narrator recounted moments in which Washington almost died. Bullets barely missed him, various of his horses were shot and buckled under him. Washington invariably survived, and surviving was able to give birth to this country.

"Mom?" Simon said from the backseat, "What would have happened if Washington had died? Maybe there would be no America? Maybe the British would have killed us all, or taxed us to death?"

I could hear anxiety in his voice. The audio book had made an impression. What would have happened to this country without a father? It is the week of Passover and the easy extinction of a whole people has been a daily topic. The Jews would have disappeared from the face of the earth if the Egyptians had killed all the newborn sons of the Jews. Similarly, if you kill the father of a nation... I could see the wheels of Simon's mind spinning.

"Don't you think," I asked tentatively, "that someone else would have been chosen to lead the militia in the Revolutionary War? Someone who would have done as a good job?"

"But that person would not have been so good, Mom. That person would not be Washington. Maybe that guy would have lost the battle of Yorktown."

"Could be. But how about this? Maybe that person would have been even better. Maybe that person would had a way of getting supplies to Valley Forge sooner. Remember all those soldiers with no food or clothes in winter? Maybe that guy wouldn't have lost New York."

"Yes," Simon said, and then he added after a long pause, "but we're so lucky Washington didn't die, right?"

"Yes, Sweetie. We're lucky."

* * *

I've wondered for weeks what all this reading about America would do for me? Would it change me in some fundamental way? Would I feel more at home here? Would my feelings about the country deepen?

After the Washington episode in the car, I found myself irritated to no end. Irritated by the Kelleys and their cheesy tale of George Washington which we had to play all the way through because Simon insisted. I was irritated by Simon, by his delight in the story and the figure of Washington, by the ease with which he welcomed this sentimental, one-dimensional version. I know--Simon is eleven. He's into historical heroes; I know that, too. I didn't say a thing. But I noted my irritation. Such sentimental drivel.

* * *

Patriotism comes hard to first generation immigrants, or so it seems to me. I am grateful to be here: the man I love and my son are here; I pay taxes and will bear arms to defend this country should it be attacked directly; I give back in many ways. But the deep passion for all things American that my son feels is foreign to me.

I've lived in other places. I know in the flesh how cheaply governments can hold the lives of its people; after Vietnam and the 5,000 already dead from the latest fiasco, this government, like so many, seems deeply flawed. Moreover, I'm full of far away places, stories, people, languages, landscapes, whole cities, a thriving parallel universe now mostly lost, but which once was all I knew, and as such will always be a source of longing. Packed tight within me is what I hold dear, what makes me different: soft boiled eggs for breakfast and grainy bread, a dozen much loved books, fresh cut flowers, meals my mother made. And I'm full of things I cannot abide. If I would have to find just one word for those things, it would be a word in German that has entered all Western languages: kitsch.

Above is an elegant dictionary definition of kitsch; however, a famous one was given by Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He was talking of kitsch as an effect of totalitarian regimes. Kitsch was all the ways in which authoritarian regimes gloss over and re-imagine the unacceptable realities of their policies. Here, at the risk of offending some of you, is Kundera's definition:

...kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

Patriotism in all its celebratory and florid rhetorical expressions always smells of kitsch to me. I distrust it. Like that audio book of Washington, it glosses over complexity, and purges details that are unacceptable. At times patriotism can lead to great deeds--but not always.

* * *

Having probably offended you all, I should confess that some things have changed these last few months. I knew so little when Simon and I began reading. Now all these figures and events fill much of our day. And slowly many characters have taken residence in my mind, keeping me company, becoming friends of sorts. I find myself making lists of the books I will read when this is over--about Lincoln and that war, and Jefferson, and Dolly Madison, and that big book on Jackson that came out a few years ago, American Lion, and the journals of Lewis and Clark. And Washington. I must read more about Washington. And I want to do a road trip with Simon. I want to see the South West and Pittsburgh and the Erie Canal and the Colorado River.

* * *

For now, Simon has requested that we get a hold of Part II and Part III of the George Washington audio book biography. I will bite my tongue. I promised him I'll do my best.

Monday, March 22, 2010

I Had Other Plans--Notes for a Future Resume


"It's not the money, or even the time. It is simply that I had other plans."

from "On Spectrum: My Daughter, Her Autism, Our Life" by Sallie Tisdale in the April 2010 issue of Harpers Magazine. The essay deals with parenting a handicapped child well into adulthood at the expense of the mother's professional and personal plans. The essay made me think of the tough choices women make when they decide to home-educate their children and back-burner their professional life. The circumstances of homeschooling mothers are different; however, just like Sally Tisdale, many "had other plans."

In the years since I began home-educating my son, working women in my circle of family and friends have advanced in their professions from associate to partner, from teacher to assistant principal, from untenured to tenured, from unpublished to published, from little nobody to management. I think about that often as I print up math drills, correct Latin translation--Sumus poetae et estis nautae--and learn about the American presidents. And I think about it, sometimes all night long, whenever I've been in the company of someone who does not think much of homeschooling and has let me know exactly just how low their opinion is of homeschooling in general and my doing it in particular.

It always hurts. It hurts for a variety of reasons. I can never help but feel that my mental health and my love of my son are being questioned. I must be homeschooling due to an excess of narcissism and a lack of love for Simon. Better parents would make better choices.

Usually I can let those feelings go. There's nothing like homeschooling to help one learn just how conventional and careful most of the people in your life are. And scared. If they're not doing what everyone else is doing, something terrible will happen, or so they believe.

The other reason that a dismissive comment about homeschooling hurts is that I've become darn good at it, and it's what I do for many hours of every day. It's what I am--a homeschooling mom. I, too, had other plans. But for now they are on hold to teach Simon to read, to write, to add and multiply, and to keep him out of the classrooms meant for atypical children: the ubiquitous behavioral classroom, the learning disabilities classroom, the ADHD classroom, the autism spectrum classroom, the pervasive developmental disorder classroom, etc. One of those classrooms would have Simon's name on it. None of those classrooms has a commitment to preparing the kids in their care for a future that involves a profession or a trade--forget grad school. These classrooms merely exist to allow the other teachers in that school to better teach all the other children--every child but mine.

Like so many homeschooling mothers, I could have spent these last years doing something out there in the world, running something, anything: a classroom, a department, a company, an organization, a school, a small country. Instead, I've spent the time at the end of a cul-de-sac in Miami learning with my son about Perseus, percents, photosynthesis and President Lincoln.

Soon this time will come to an end. Simon will decide he really wants to go to school, because schools have girls and AP history and science fairs, or he will do high school with us while attending a community college and taking online courses. He's beginning sixth grade in the fall. Within a few years, his schooling will be an independent endeavor, whether he's home-schooled or not. I will be able to go back to work.

What do I put on my resume for this decade--this lost decade?

What follows are some very informal brainstorming notes to revisit when it's time to shape a formal resume:

I haven't killed my son.
I've gotten pretty impatient on various occasions and, when the spirit is weak, will do so again. Some things are not easy for Simon. Sometimes he doesn't get it on the first try, or the second. But over the years, I've learned that every time I raise my voice, every time my words quivers with frustration and anger, I lose him to anxiety and fear. Nothing--absolutely nothing--is accomplished with impatience. I've learned to breathe when the going gets tough. "Silly Mommy has obviously not taught you this well enough. Let's try again tomorrow." Along the way, I've learned to teach.

Note: In a future interview, be prepared to discuss in detail what it is exactly that good teachers do.

I haven't killed friends and family.
My experience has been that outside of friends who are artists, ex-teachers, or university professors, nobody has been supportive of homeschooling, although over time I've worn almost everyone down into polite silence.

Homeschooling is something poor uneducated evangelicals do who've never been to Paris or New York--why would you want to go anywhere near that? So they say.

Last summer, my father said to me: "You haven't done anything with your life."

Tough stuff.

Lonely work.

Note: Remember to weave into interview that college professors love to have homeschooled kids in their classes. Homeschoolers read novels all the way through. They actually do the assigned work. 1 out of 3 homeschooled kids who apply get accepted to first and second tier schools. The numbers for the rest of the population are 1 out of 8.

I haven't killed anyone in the homeschooling community.
Most of us spend our lives in our little cocoons among people more or less like us. Once you homeschool and take your child to a park or enrichment group, your're out there among people with whom you share very little other than a fierce commitment to homeschooling. It is hard work to find common ground if initial greetings expand into a conversation. But it can be done.

Note: For interview be prepared to tell funny stories about meeting homeschoolers. Highlight the many times your own preconceptions were wrong.

I'm still here--with a smile no less.
These have been some of the happiest years of my life. Every week I see progress. Every week my work shows results. I never feel like I'm working just for a (nonexistent) pay-check. Every action has a purpose. I can function in utter unsupported solitude for as long as there is a purpose to my work, and the work makes a difference.

I know who Procrustes is, and so much more, so don't mess with me.
I have learned and re-learned a formidable amount of information: Greek mythology, world and American history, Latin, German, math, the minutia of grammar. I can learn anything. And then I can teach it. And then I can write about it.

I'm the decider.
Most years I haven't chosen a boxed curriculum. I study what the requirements and expectations are. I go to conventions, the library, the internet. I talk to Simon. Then I decide what books we should use. The buck stops here.

If it doesn't work, I pitch it.
If I'm not happy with how much progress Simon is making, I re-evaluate. I've often made mid-course corrections, or halted our journey through a math program for many weeks to drill certain skills.

I'm flexible and willing to concede a decision I made is not working. I can keep my eye on the ball. Results matter. Teaching Simon to write essays and getting him to read 300 page books--that matters. Compliance with a plan does not.

Monday, March 15, 2010

An Unrelenting Push Forward


unrelenting
1.
not relenting; not yielding or swerving in determination or resolution, as of or from opinions, convictions, ambitions, ideals, etc.; inflexible: an unrelenting opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment.
2.
not easing or slackening in severity: an unrelenting rain.
3.
maintaining speed, effort, vigor, intensity, rate of advance, etc.: an unrelenting attack.

Reading the stories these last weeks, I'm astounded by the unrelenting speed and intensity with which all things modern transformed this country: within the span of a few decades, homes and cities were illuminated by light bulbs; roads, train tracks and a variety of wires crisscrossed the landscape; women got the vote; the White House got a telephone; New York City got the Statue of Liberty and millions of immigrants who came with new ideas, old world know-how, and the will to work hard; Texas found oil and with it fueled airplanes that went up in the air and stayed there, and cars and trucks that could get from here to there lickety split.

These last weeks Simon has found a new word: technological. All things great and wonderful are technological: youtube, computers, TVs, Legos, cellphones, anything made by Nintedo. He welcomes and celebrates every new invention and innovation we read about, understanding intuitively that electricity, oil wells, telephone wires and light bulbs have everything to do with the joy he takes in all things technological and, preferably, vaguely inappropriate. In his mind, technological and fun are linked, as are old-fashioned and lame.

I, in turn, find myself thinking of the word unrelenting. All that change came at the expense of unrelenting industriousness. The innovators changed paradigms, and then the muscle, sweat and blood of millions made those paradigms real, pushing and prodding the nation into the modern age. Nameless somebodies laid train tracks, planted telephone poles, dug ditches and road beds--a nameless multitude.

Something to think about. All that hard work. No slackers there.

I've been trying to get Simon to understand that. I've told him about my grandmother. Although of limited means and education, she had a snappy aphorism for every situation. "Von garnichts kommt garnichts," she would say in a thick Berlin accent--from nothing comes nothing. Modernity doesn't just happen. Youtube and TVs and cars and electricity don't just happen. They are the result of work--unrelenting work.

We're in that place in the school year where you assess your child's progress and begin to make plans for the next academic year. Have your child's skills improved enough? Will he be prepared for next year's demands? It hit me hard a few weeks ago: Simon is not reading well enough--for me. He gets through grade level reading comprehension assignments, as well as stories and chapter books, if I demand it or sit by his side; however, he does not do any sustained reading on his own. And it shows.

He spends hours looking at illustrated history encyclopedias and listening to audiobooks, but he's not independently picking up Harry Potter, or something much easier like The Time Warp Trio. There have been a few exceptions, a fifth-grade biography of Lincoln for example, but no matter what we bring home from the library, he will not repeat the accomplishment. He carefully looks at the chapter headings, illustrations, photograph captions, and learns a lot just from doing that, but he does not read the books all the way through.

So I did what only a homeschooling parent can do: I revamped the curriculum--from now on he has to read to me at least three hours a day, whole chapters at a time. From now until further notice no more spelling, grammar, paragraph editing, reading comprehension, science and geography. From now until further notice this child will primarily read . He will read and then, with the exception of a few subjects, he will read some more. Besides all the history assignments, he will read all five volumes of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians out loud to me. It will take a few months, but it will fix the problem.

When presented with the change of plans, Simon wasn't happy.

"That's not fair! You know I don't like reading. Reading is hard for me. I love audiobooks. Audiobooks are technological. Audiobooks are modern. Books are old-fashioned and lame."

We talked for a long time. I told him that I know he learns very easily listening to audiobooks and that reading does not come that easy to him. I told him that like Percy Jackson, Simon has a touch of dyslexia. Here and there he switches letters, or suddenly reads from right to left, or transposes b and d. Welcome to the club--Mom and Dad also transpose and switch to this day. But the only way reading will get easier is practice--unrelenting hard work. From nothing comes nothing. And by choosing not to read except when he has to, he isn't getting enough practice. He's going into sixth grade next year.

He complained for a few days. It wasn't fair. It was too hard. Anxious and angry, his reading deteriorated. I wondered if I had made the wrong decision, if I was being unreasonable, unrelenting. But then Percy kills the minotaur and suddenly Simon was having fun, reading with much greater ease--he's listened to the series repeatedly on CD.

"I love this chapter, Mom. Isn't it great?"

And then technology came to our rescue. I'd done some editing work last year for a friend who surprised me over the holidays with an e-reader, a Kindle. I was delighted and bought some Alice Munro but then found I wasn't using it that much. A week ago, I paid $4.40 for a Kindle copy of Book I of Percy Jackson's adventures. I blew the text up to the max, forty words to the page, and handed it to Simon. 300% improvement. No kidding. And every day I notice it gets easier. There's greater fluency, fewer mistakes. Feeling more relaxed he tries to entertain me, doing voices, imitating the talented readers he's heard on CD. Yesterday he asked me if we can get all the books for sixth grade on the Kindle.

"This thing is very technological, Mom."

We're having fun, working hard, moving forward.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

More Thoughts About What Was Wrought in Texas

Many thanks to those of you who dropped me a line or posted comments on the blog in response to last week's post. I'm glad I'm not alone wringing my hands about all the ways in which Christian-Right politicians are dictating the educational content presented in textbooks nationwide. Last week, the Texas Board of Education voted along predictable lines. The press responded with outrage. By week's end, there was a piece in The New York Times, and an even more comprehensive one in The Huffington Post.

I do have great trust in this country and in the self-correcting powers of a market-driven economy. These textbooks have now gotten so much front page attention and such a bad rap, it is hard to imagine that the best public school systems in the country will continue to buy these products. The same applies to the top private schools. They will take their business somewhere else.

It seems sometimes that with every minute that passes this country moves toward greater and greater class divisions. The dirty little secret about the U.S. is that for all its talk of equality and equal opportunity, it is sharply divided into socio-educational classes. The largest corporations and financial institutions, as well as the best graduate and professional schools in the country, recruit primarily at first tier colleges. Except for legacy admissions, the only way to get into those colleges is by being able to demonstrate that one has the potential to perform rigorous analytic thinking. Textbooks that focus on belief and not on facts, and that have been thoroughly discredited by experts, only limit the opportunities of those unlucky enough to learn from them, hardening these divisions even further.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Some Thoughts After Reading About the Scopes Monkey Trial

This week we read about evolution, specifically the Scopes Trial. We learned that John Scopes, a high school teacher in Tennessee, dared to teach evolution to his students even though it was a crime in that state. Scopes felt it was important to push against that law; he was prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan and defended by Clarence Darrow. At least one play and one movie have been made about the trial.

I expected Simon to be interested in the story--as a teenager, I was riveted by the play based on the trial, "Inherit the Wind." Besides, Simon's dad is a lawyer, and Simon tends to be acutely interested in any show-down between right and wrong, truth and its opposite. I thought the story would get some kind of rise out of him.

"This story is totally boring, Mom. Let's read the next one. I already looked--it's about Charles Lindbergh. He was a pilot. I think he flew to Paris."

"Simon, why is the story about the Scopes Monkey Trial boring?"

"Well, some people don't know that the Bible is just stories, just a bunch of myths. It's like Greek mythology, but instead it's about Moses and Jesus. They're just great stories. About that Scopes trial with a lot of super ancient lawyers--that's so lame. Who cares? The world is very old and we all descend from dinosaurs and apes. Everybody knows that. Don't waste time. The pilot--he's called Lindbergh--let's read about him."

I sat there flabbergasted. Where to begin? For starters, I wanted to say to Simon: Those great lawyers weren't THAT old! I wanted to say: This trial is crucial as a way to understand some central concerns of the 19th and 20th century--how can you be so dismissive? I wanted to say:How can you have figured out already how you feel about the God/no God question? You're only eleven.

But for Simon these are all easy questions. He's growing up in a secular home; he's homeschooled in a mostly secular milieu; he's an equal opportunity consumer of stories and myths: the story of Joseph one day, of Athena the next, of Robin Hood the day after that. He has no intimate knowledge of a world governed and defined by belief. In our home, we talk of Jewish and Christian traditions and celebrate with vim and vigor and lots of home-made food--but belief and prayer have no part in these events. Simon does not understand all that came undone, and all that was liberated, with the theory of evolution. For him the rub, the tug of war between belief and secularism, is endlessly dull, a waste of time. No match for Lindbergh.

* * *

I, on the other hand, live my life in that rub, especially since I became a home-educator. Before I moved to Miami and began teaching Simon and joining homeschooling groups, I had never met an Evangelical--they're pretty uncommon among Boston academics. Mind you, I was forty-five before that first encounter and had lived in this country over twenty-five years--and I was out and about all that time, not hiding under a rock. I'm not kidding: I had never met an Evangelical. Not one.

I have made every mistake possible in my forays into that world these last few years in Miami. I've said the wrong things, asked the wrong questions, made the wrong assumptions and jokes and suggestions, taught the wrong materials, supported the wrong party, espoused the wrong values, read the wrong books, newspapers, magazines.

Somewhere along the line, I gave up attempting to find common ground. Expecting absolutely nothing, I'm always delighted when I can get through an hour or two of socializing among a diverse group of homeschooling parents at a park group (some families are secular, some are not) without giving offense, or driving away fighting tears. I keep the talk to all things small, educational and uncontroversial: asking questions about the best way to teach reading, grammar and writing are always safe bets.

When I began attending these groups, I wished for friendship and community. Now I just hope I can keep my mouth shut and that Simon has fun with the other kids. Slowly, over the course of many years, Simon has made a few friends--so have I.

So the rub is not there. Being a raised-Catholic-Jewish-convert liberal agnostic among Bible-belt conservative believers is not the easiest thing I've ever done, but it's doable. What is difficult to handle is how the educated and informed in this country view the homeschooling community.

Every time one of the main publications in America prints a expose about how the Christian Right--and homeschoolers in particular--are fabricating a Christian take on American history, or taking science back to the 19th century, or questioning global warming, or infiltrating state education boards and thereby making sure these fictions make it into textbooks used in public schools nationwide, I get at least one e-mail from someone I know outside the insular world of homeschooling. They want to make sure I read the piece, that I know about it. They worry. I don't get a single e-mail from anyone that homeschools. The silence from that world is deafening. Oblivious to a gathering storm, they mosey along. (For links to some of the main articles published, please see the links included in my entry for February 20, 2010. This past week, The New York Times ran a story on how the Christian Right is gaining ground in some states, asking that global warming be presented in classrooms as only a theory up for debate.)

Why worry? There will be a backlash. Nothing good will happen for homeschoolers of all flavors, secular and Christian, if the most respected papers and magazines in the country are running articles and cover stories presenting homeschoolers as anti-intellectual, intransigent, ignorant, nutty. Regulations will be expanded and tightened. They will.

What can be done? There is a desperate need for all and everyone who is giving their children a rigorous college preparatory education to speak up, to write, to come forward, to organize. Those same publications need to know how diverse and varied homeschoolers are, that there are thousands and thousands--maybe the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands--among us who want our children to be ready for the 21st century.

Reading List

100 True Tales From American History by Jennifer Armstrong.

Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents by Mike Venezia. This is a series. Also check out all of Mike Venezia's other incredible books at his web-site.

Simon loves The Story of the World, Vol. I- IV, by Susan Wise Bauer. He listens to the audiobooks for many hours every day. They play in the background while he fiddles with Legos or does math.


www.theexaminedlife.org

Together with Toni Deveson, Claudia was one of the founding members of www.theexaminedlife.org , a net-based home-education support group for families teaching a secular curriculum in the Miami area. Claudia remains a very active participant. The group is inclusive, welcoming families of all faiths—or lack thereof, and all life-styles. The Examined Life runs a small enrichment co-op for children in grades 4-6. This year, the co-op is covering biology, art appreciation (nine painters), music appreciation (seven composers), history—the Renaissance and beyond, and Latin. All the portfolio-ready materials that Claudia and Toni have developed themselves are available for free at www.theexaminedlife.org , including a comprehensive 36-week enrichment curriculum for the above named topics, as well as the American history project covered in this blog. The website also has a bookstore that carries all the books necessary to teach the curriculum.