36 Weeks of Home Education/100 American Stories/44 Presidents/One American Boy/One Foreign Born Mom

Note:

2010-07-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded all of Simon's pictures. Aren't they great?

I intend to write one more essay about this endeavor, something about what this year was about for Simon, for me. But I'm not happy with what I've written thus far, so I will not press PUBLISH. I'm off on vacation tomorrow--a road trip all the way up the East Coast to visit family and friends--and Gettysburg. When I return, I will hopefully have an essay.

My best to you all,

Claudia

About the FPEA Convention

2010-06-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

I talked my husband into going. We would make a weekend out of it, I said. We wouldn't go for the whole two-day thing, just for the last day, I said. It would be good for Simon to see how many families homeschool. The hall of exhibits had in years past contained various vendors of Usborne books and fabulous educational toys--I had saved a little money and would love to spend it there. The hotel was cheap enough and had three pools. Moreover, there is a Vietnamese restaurant in Orlando that George has raved about--he would finally be able to take me.

So we went. The FPEA (Florida Parent Educators Association) Homeschool Convention is one of the largest in the country: a hall of exhibits the size of a football field, over 200 vendors, 120 lectures delivered in groups of nine, six times a day, in lecture halls the size of ballrooms. I attended the convention with a friend two years ago and was flabbergasted by the enormity of it all. So many people. Sometimes, turning a corner, I would find myself looking down a hall and up an escalator and be confronted with an ocean of humanity that extended as far as the eye could see. Airports are usually less congested. I thought of all the times I have been told that nobody homeschools.

We arrived midday on Saturday. George would spend the afternoon with Simon. I would attend a lecture and spend money. I had three bags with me and was intending to fill them.

Before I speak of my impressions, I should relate that Simon had a great time. He bought a Jim Weiss audio book about Heroes in Mythology and then sat down at a table at the chess booth and played against various kids and won--he wants to go back next year and play in the FPEA sponsored tournament. In Simon's book--a fabulous afternoon.

Later, Simon and George found a table in the hotel lobby and played some more chess on a travel set. Seeing me walk towards them with empty bags, George lifted his eyebrows.

"You didn't buy anything," he said.

"There was nothing to buy."

Here are my impressions of the conference:

--Most of the great vendors of two years ago were gone, the ones that sold critically acclaimed readers for all ages and reading levels, readers about history, science and literature. Usborne readers had been ubiquitous two years ago, as were vendors of the Who Was...? series, or the Landmark series of historical readers. I remember huge booths with swiveling displays--and me furiously writing down titles once I'd run out of money. Where were those vendors? I couldn't find them. Instead, what book racks and display cases I could find were full of workbooks of every flavor, and readers that had primarily an evangelical bent. Similarly, I couldn't find the educational toys that I regretted not buying two years ago. Many of the purveyors of great children's literature and toys had decided not to attend. Homeschoolers in Florida were not buying enough of their products.

--The flavor of most of the materials sold was evangelical. You could buy CD-roms, DVDs, CDs, workbooks, and books on subjects your children could study: history, geography, creationist science, Latin, the Bible, grammar, spelling, writing. You could also buy how to materials for parents with titles such as How to Teach the Classics.

--Many of the educational products sold were not written by experts. They were written by homeschooling parents. Homeschooling your child for a number of years was enough know-how to write a book on history or Latin and sell it at homeschooling convention. As the sell was hard at many booths, I kept my irritation is check by asking: "Where did the author get his/her degree?" The lack of a clear cut reply to this question left me with the impression that a significant number of homeschooling products sold at the FPEA convention are produced by people who do not have a college degree.

--At a homeschooling conference in Florida, the vendor is the expert. Of the 120 lectures, more than 95% are given by vendors. They call them lectures, but they are actually nothing but a sale's pitch. I found myself thinking that going to the FPEA Homeschooling Convention to hone your skills as the educator of your children is a lot like going to a pharmaceutical company rep. for medical care.

--At the conference the air was thick with anxiety. Vendors kept talking of SATs, of getting your children into college. If you buy my product, your child will do well. Implied was that if you didn't, all your hard work would be in vain, the long educational journey of your child would lead to a door, and beyond that door there would be a dark abyss. Many of the moms at the conference seemed to have been bitten by fear. They bustled frenetically between the booths, dragging a cart full of educational materials behind them, busily taking notes, spending money.

--The absence of great teaching materials was a palpable presence. Where were the classics? Where were the books that add up to a great education? Where were the books that have to be mastered to pass Advanced Placement tests?

What I will remember most about this weekend in Orlando--other than the Vietnamese food--is the audiobook we listened to in the car driving there and back: A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich. I had heard of this book years ago from a homeschooling parent who it was rumored had a detailed home-made historical timeline running along all the hallways of her large Coral Gables home.

We drove back to Miami along the Florida Turnpike through reams of rain listening to Gombrich speak of the Greeks, of Alexander the Great, of Hannibal, of the library in Alexandria. Simon knows the history from having read Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World, but Gombrich veers away intermittently from simply chronicling events to give his opinion, to make comparisons, to get carried away by his own delight in and admiration for particular characters and historical periods, and his abhorrence of others. He seemed to be saying history matters, learning matters, the classics matter, the Greeks matter.

It seemed appropriate to return from the FPEA listening to the words of one of the best known art historians of the last century, a Jew from Vienna who survived the Holocaust and spoke of history with a certain urgency.

In this country, A Little History of the World is put out by Yale University Press. It was not available at the conference.

Socialization

2010-05-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

Whenever the subject of socialization comes up--and the pesky issue always comes up whenever you talk to someone who does not homeschool, homeschooling parents tie their underwear in knots, or whatever the American expression is. Gruffly they argue: Our children socialize all the time in park groups and field trips. They say: Unlike schooled children with their endless hours of homework, our children have time for play dates with their friends. They point out: Socialization does not only take place with peers, but within the family. The more ambitious suggest: You cannot have it both ways--you cannot commit to giving your children a comprehensive education and squander precious hours socializing. If you want to learn Latin and advanced chemistry, it takes time. Others say: Not everything that children learn from each other is worth learning.

All valid points. Our Simon, for example, sees other kids four days a week. He has handful of friends in Miami who rotate through for play dates on the weekend. Between field trips, park groups, science fairs, Historically Speaking events, and enrichment classes offered by my local inclusive homeschooling groups, there are so many social activities that many weeks Saturday comes and we still have schoolwork to finish. And yet, after years of running enrichment classes for homeschoolers, I have to take a heretical position: Many homeschoolers are poorly socialized.

My son is a good example. He and his friends can play for hours on end through a Sunday without conflict or boredom. Simon is a very imaginative kid with a room full of Legos which he's shaped into castles, dungeons, and space stations. There are stories that go with each of these scenarios, as well as little Lego figures: a good king called King Pie Five, a bad guy called Six Man Six, a princess called Heia. Simon always bamboozles kids into pretend play involving his Legos. Hours pass. If his friend Heather is over, all the female characters from Simon's Lego pantheon are foregrounded. With Adam the play turns invariably around King Pie Five and the castles. Simon knows his friends, knows their interests, and knows how to fashion a fun afternoon for himself and whoever is visiting. If there are disputes, he usually suggests that they get resolved by some kind of deal. Simon seems better than most at handling himself socially among peers in unstructured play situations. He brings his imagination and delight in others to the table, and a grand time is had by all.

The problems arise when Simon is in a classroom setting, or any other social milieu that is highly structured, a milieu that has tight behavioral expectations that demand that he control his impulses and his emotions, while he engages in an activity and with people he might not really want to at that moment. Most grown-ups will acknowledge that a lot of our day is passed in these type of settings and situations--yes? Every day, we find ourselves in places and with people we don't necessarily delight in, doing something which we don't necessarily want to at that moment. And yet, we do what we have to do, as they say. We give it our best. Platitudes, I know--but we need to give it our best--yes? This is a skill Simon has only recently began to develop.

As I write this I'm preparing a class on the American Revolution which I will teach to Simon and to a group of homeschoolers and their moms. It's a review session of Chapter 22 and 23 on The Story of the World, Vol. III. I find myself trying hard to make the class as hands-on and focused on the details of the story as possible: we will make a time-line and then play a game. I cannot let the class drift for too long into the realm of ideas, such as a discussion of how the American Revolution inspired other countries, changing the history of the world. I must stick to the facts.

I have to do this because the last time I taught a class, I utterly lost Simon. He sat in a corner, not listening but drawing. The class was about Daedalus and Icarus. As all the kids would come to class having done the reading, I chose to focus on why this story had inspired paintings and poems. We looked at a Bruegel and read some W. H. Auden. I felt I had all the other kids with me--but not Simon. He told me later he was "super bored." Somewhat agitated, he said he thought we would talk about Perseus and King Minos, and how Daedalus had built the maze for the minotaur. He wanted me to position the story of Daedalus within the larger context of the Greek myths--all much loved by him. "Why didn't you do that, Mom? The Breugel picture you showed is just a happy sunny landscape with Icarus drowning--who cares?"

Simon felt that I had sacrificed the great story of Daedalus to a dull discussion of its implications. I made sure I told him I was proud that he could tell me all of that; however, his behavior during the class left a lot to be desired. Bored, he chose to turn away from the class and draw. And his response--drawing--was head and shoulders above what he did when younger.

Back then he would have just declared: "This is boring. I'm going home now." If he could walk away, he walked. If there was anything in the area he could give his attention to, he was off reading books, playing with sticks, toys, bugs, etc. If there was a table, he put his head on it. Moreover, he continually challenged authority. If an art teacher asked the kids to paint the background beige, Simon insisted it should be black and could not be dissuaded. If the teacher wanted them to draw a scene from the Bayeux tapestry, Simon placed the scene on a screen at a movie and then gave all his attention to drawing the "space people" and "aliens" who were watching the movie. If the teacher asked the students to pay attention while she spoke about the Battle of Hastings, Simon sat there drawing. When she asked him to stop drawing and listen, he said without ever looking up: "But I know already about the Battle of Hastings, and I have to finish drawing the weapons of this alien." This sort of thing happened every class.

Oh, you will say, but he's so smart. Give the kid a break. He's a kid. Moreover, he processes language with difficulty--obviously, a discussion about the implications of this or that will not come easily to him. And it's all the fault of the teacher. She must be rigid. What's wrong with making the background black?

There are two kinds of socialization: primary and secondary. Primary socialization refers to when a child learns the values, attitudes, and appropriate actions of the culture at large. Secondary socialization refers to the process of learning what is appropriate behavior for members of a small group. It is secondary socialization that Simon lacks.

Why does it matter? First and foremost, a child who is poorly socialized in a classroom setting, who hasn't internalized that it is his or her duty to sit and attend and cooperate, emerges from the classroom not having learned what everyone else learned. When the class is over, that child is behind. The child might be learning lots in other settings, but he just missed out on an opportunity. I was able to take Simon home and get him to look closely at the Bruegel painting, getting him to see what Bruegel was trying to say about human suffering, but I will not always be around to do that. Second, most of our grown-up life is spent in these small groups. Our children need to master handling themselves in those settings. Period.

I speak of Simon, but in my estimation over 50% of the boys--it's mostly boys--that are homeschooled by parents who are not evangelical were pulled out of school because they were neither handling themselves well in a classroom, nor learning what they needed to learn, and I applaud every parent for doing so from the bottom of my heart. Their kids might have developmental, sensory, or learning issues, which they might or might not grow out of, but which will definitely be poorly addressed by a public school. Their kids will learn so much more at home--hands down. However, most of these kids exhibit poor secondary socialization which shoudn't be denied, or go unaddressed and remediated. The poorly socialized child misses out and is left behind.

Personally, I think the problem is so rampant that I'm no longer willing to teach enrichment classes to homeschooled kids whom I've not hand-picked. When I tell friends that I intend to move into a classroom when I'm done teaching Simon, they say: "But why would you want to do that?--managing behavioral issues, trying to teach kids that cannot, or will not, learn."

I always answer: "I've taught homeschooled kids. Simon is my son. A classroom full of public school kids--no problem."

What can we do in our homes and within our homeschooling communities to help our poorly socialized kids? We can offer and attend enrichment classes. We can enroll our children in classes that they might enjoy so they get to practice and master secondary socialization. The fact that they might not do well in such settings is not a reason to pull them out. Once or twice a week, for an hour or two--they need to make it work, and we need to let them fail and try again.

Talk to them about what is expected as often as you have to, as well as five minutes before they set foot in the class. Explain why they need to learn how to be good students. The most effective thing I've said to Simon has been: "If you are not listening to the teacher, you don't become smarter. All the other kids become smarter--but you don't." None of this gets fixed in a day, or a year. Give it five, six, seven.

Finally, sit down for meals with your family every night, every day, every meal, if possible. I think of this as a balm for all wounds. Structure up the meals. Have your children set the table. Have them make the salad. Have them serve the water. Let one of them call everyone to the table. Let meals in your home have the feel of a small group that is focused on a task--like a classroom. Once you sit down, have a set of basic expectations as to table manners. Expect compliance. Foster conversation. Ask questions. Tell stories. Listen. Praise. Socialize.

___________________________

Here is a link to the Bruegel painting: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

Here is the poem by W.H. Auden. He wrote it after seeing the painting above. In case you missed him, Icarus can be seen flailing in the water south of the boat.

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Public Service

2010-05-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

This year, the subject of Simon's future has come up repeatedly. Simon is the one bringing it up, not us. My husband George, who's a pretty smart fellow, has this unshakable certainty: any kid who can beat him at chess will be all right. This last year, Simon checkmates George, or corners him into a draw, almost every time they play.

On the other hand, Simon, at eleven, thinks about his future a lot.

"What kind of jobs can you do in a bank?" he asks after finding out that President McKinley fell in love with a woman who was a teller in her father's bank. "Mom, if I worked in a bank, I would have money, right?" Simon wants to know.

It's been a year of explaining basic economic principles, the relentless traffic of goods and services that drives history: how we all participate by buying and selling labor as well as mountains of stuff, how having a job means you do a service for a company, or the government, or a school, and they then pay you for it.

All of this had been explained before, but it has only begun to sink in now, now that he finds himself exploring (and worrying about) how he will keep himself in Legos, fettucine, and audio books when he grows up.

When I explained all the jobs available in a bank, his eyes glazed over and his face looked disappointed, so I said: "Simon, when you think about what kind of job you might want to do when you grow up, think about all the things you like to do, all the things you are good at."

"Building Legos."

"Building. Correct. You are great at building things. Maybe you want to build stuff: houses, hospitals, bridges, roads, airports. Think about it. What else are you good at?"

"Chess."

"You are terrific at chess. When playing chess, what do you have to know how to do?"

After a minute he said: "Figure out consequences. Strategy."

"Maybe you could get a job with the army, helping with military strategy."

"I don't want to be a soldier, Mom," he said after a minute. My son--definitely my son.

"Simon, if not the military, then a company, or the government, or a school. You are good at thinking through the consequences of any given action. Most people have a very hard time doing that. It seems like an easy thing for you, but for others it is not. Many people do a lot of stupid things, things they should know are stupid, things that will have bad consequences. They do them anyway because they believe in magic, or luck, or that God watches out for them and will help them. Someone like you will always find work."

"Mom, maybe I can do something with history."

"History! Of course! You can write books, or you can teach. I bet your students would think you are the coolest history teacher ever. You would bring Lego structures and figures to class and show them the Siege of Jerusalem or the Battle of Hastings, right?"

Simon looked up and smiled from ear to ear: "I'm never giving away my Legos!"

These last weeks, I've found myself again and again returning to the subject of public service. I'm not completely sure why this has become a compulsion I cannot stop. I punctuate the day, the week, lunch, with little stories that are always about the same thing: I point out people who gave not only generously but recklessly of themselves, people who helped this country through difficult times, people who taught us all how to be a better people, a better nation, a more perfect union: Rosa Parks, Dr. Jonas Salk, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Kennedy, Martin Luther King. I find myself pointing out all the volunteering done by people we know right here in Miami, people who have careers and professions I forget to mention. And I point out everyone who gives above and beyond, working with the poor in Bolivia or Africa, going to Haiti to help out.

I should be pushing dentistry, or medicine, or law, or engineering; instead, I've told Simon all about the volunteering my mother did in the slums of South America during the years we lived there. Simon knows about open sewers, cardboard houses, and feeding slum children with sandwiches spread with a paste of peanut butter, ground up sardines, and powdered milk. He knows almost nothing about how my father traded metals, and because he was successful, Mother could volunteer in the slums, and I had endless opportunities.

So why am I doing this?

I worry a lot about the future, more than my mostly sunny disposition gives away. Picking up Simon from his sailing lesson yesterday, I gazed down at all the trash snagged in the bushes growing at the edge of Biscayne Bay. The oil slick in the Gulf is coming our way. So much has been coming at us for years now: environmental problems that are irreversible and apocalyptic, socio-economic-educational problems that are so hard to understand, never mind fix. I find myself hoping Simon will be part of solving some of these problems. I find myself wanting to offer him to the world.

Here's another reason: I'm getting older. Some days I'm restless and wish I could do more than hang up my laundry to dry, turn off the air-conditioner, eat less meat, and make sure I recycle. Recently I met an unforgettable twenty-one year old who just graduated from Bard and is flying off to Haiti within a few weeks to help them build a coral reef out of all the rubble they are dumping into the ocean. I wanted to pack up my bags and go with her. I asked her if she'd had a hard time finding work since graduating. Because of her studies and internships in all things "green," she'd had more offers than she could handle. The banks aren't hiring, but coral reef projects in Haiti are. I went home and told Simon all about Haiti, the earthquake, and coral reefs made of concrete debris, and how this young woman was going to live in a tent.

Finally, I feel very grateful these last many months. Gratitude is a scary wild feeling when you're not a religious person. Believers and practitioners have gestures and prayers that can tame what is in their hearts. They hold their hands together, they kneel, they bow their heads, they have words, lots and lots of words they can direct at someone, something. Agnostics like me--I just struggle through my day with a chest full of jagged emotions, feeling like an ax broke through the ice within.

Simon is doing well. He's reading, writing, doing long division, asking bigger questions every day. George and I still like each other. We have a handful of much loved friends. I spend many hours of my days reading history with my son in this country that allows me to do that. Life is good.

Over lunch today, this boy of ours who we were once told would always need "assistance," looked up from his burrito and said: "You know Mom, FDR was much better at ending the depression than Hitler. You know why?"

"Why?"

"Both FDR and Hitler ended the depression in their countries, but FDR created jobs with the New Deal--Hitler just invaded countries and killed Jews."

I was going to say something about keeping his lips shut while chewing. But I didn't. I couldn't. I knew that if I opened my mouth I would lose it.

He's going to be fine.

The Kindness of Strangers

2010-05-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

Jim Weiss' audio books can be bought from his website, Greathall Productions, among other vendors. The library also tends to have copies.

The audio books of Bible stories referred to in this piece are called Living Adventures from the Bible. They can be purchased from eyeintheear.com, among other vendors.

Some months ago, Simon and I started to drive to Miami Beach for his weekly piano lesson. It's a long drive, so I plug in an audio book and off we go. For the last few weeks, we've been working our way through stories from the Bible. Simon had noticed an advertisement for this particular series of Cd's and had asked for them.

Few audio books have given him as much pleasure. The mix of history and grand story-telling, the looming catastrophes, the booming voice of God, the focus on obedience and its opposite, the faithful loyalty of the converted--Simon loves it all. He loves it so much that recently, while driving by a evangelical church promoting its Summer Bible Camp, Simon asked it he could go--we're secular Jews. Not since he was eight and discovered Greek mythology have I seen him so hooked on a particular cycle of stories. Every time we have to take a long car ride, he dashes back into the house to get his Cd's.

"I'm torturing you with Bible stories, Mom," he says, giving me a sly smile as he shoves the story of Queen Esther, or Jonas and the Whale into the player.

He's torturing me with these stories not because I object to them, but because he makes me listen to them over and over and over. I've allowed him to move into the front passenger seat--he's grown four inches this last year--and from that position he controls the sound. Once a story has played all the way through, he says: "It's a really good story, Mom. We have to listen to it again," and quickly presses the necessary button before I object.

Watching him do this, I'm reminded again of the degree to which our Simon is teaching himself, is healing himself, is his own best therapist. I've never hesitated to buy audio books because since we put a CD player in his room four years ago, there's been an audio book playing in the background most of the time. He plays them over and over, decoding every nuance of meaning, of plot, of intention, even of intonation. I've noticed that when he reads to me from Vol. III of Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World, a book he has heard many times as an audio book, he aims to recreate Jim Weiss' (the reader) intonations and exaggerations.

Moreover, Simon knows the content of his audio book library so well, he can find something in it in no time. If we watch a movie about the crusades or Cromwell, I invariably find him in his room the next day listening to those sections of The Story of the World. Our Simon, this child with auditory processing issues, doggedly spends most of his free time decoding auditory stimuli, making the effort to overcome his deficits. And his overall increased listening, comprehension, vocabulary and expressive skills, are in part the result of the delight he takes in the dramatic fireworks that Jim Weiss imparts to pretty ordinary historical exposition.

* * *

I've been thinking this week about how lucky we've been, how strangers--people who were marginal in our lives or not in them at all, have provided the most important advice-- the keys to comprehending our son, the therapeutic tools, the hopeful long-term perspective.

Many years ago, while we lived in Washington, D.C., I cold-called most of the speech therapists in the city. We'd been very unhappy with Simon's individual speech therapy sessions, so I left messages on endless machines stating that I was looking for group sessions that focused on play, games, and craft activities.

A week or two passed and one morning the phone rang. It was someone who had received my message. She wasn't offering a group sessions, nor was she taking any new patients; however, she was curious as to why I was looking for such a group—she just had to call and find out.

I explained that the therapist we had been working with had focused on teaching Simon new words. My sense was that Simon knew lots of words, he just didn't use them when interacting with others. Maybe a group of kids and a therapeutic game would be a more powerful modality than one-on-one therapy.

She kept me on the phone. She asked me endless questions about Simon. She wanted to know what I and my husband thought was amiss with Simon.

I told her we didn't think all the disorders that fall under the autism spectrum explained Simon—he was too smart, too attached, too connected, too funny a kid. Very high-functioning Asperger's maybe, but even for that he was too attached, too empathic, too charming. To us, he just seemed like a child who heard much too much and couldn't function in loud environments, couldn't decode sentences coming at him because he couldn't filter out all the other sounds in the room. And we could see him having trouble smoothly mastering basic social and academic skills because he wasn't picking up on all of the instructions or social cues.

“I want you to get a pen and paper and write down the following: semantic pragmatic disorder and auditory processing disorder. Those terms might help you. Take good care of your little boy. Whatever you do, make sure you soak him in language. Bye, bye.”

Click.

I often think about this woman who so generously gave of her time and know-how.

The other stranger in our lives who gave us invaluable advice was the mother of a friend of ours. Because his mom had a PhD in Speech Pathology and had orchestrated special services for children in all of southern Illinois, our friend offered her to us. She would be visiting him in Miami and could come over and spend a day with Simon and me and watch me homeschool. Maybe she would have some advice to give.

I didn't want her to come, but I couldn't say no—the offer was so generous, and this friend of ours is much loved by everyone in our family.

I remember that when she walked through the door I had a small panic attack. She was wearing a pink pant suit, not the kind Hillary wears but one made of something synthetic with stretchy pants and a loose fitting top with buttons down the middle. How was someone from a parallel universe going to understand our choices?

Simon was eight at the time. He read out loud for her and did some math. I came up with a treasure hunt that involved written clues. I made lunch. She looked over my curriculum and made warm, supportive noises. And then she said something that was invaluable.

“They used to say that if your child wasn't functioning smoothly at age level by seven, you were probably looking at a child with significant disabilities. But the research shows that boys can take until age twelve to master all the basic skills.”

It was a throw away sentence, an off the cuff comment that made all the difference. We had a few years more years. Overcome by emotion, I kissed her.

* * *

Simon is turning twelve this summer. A few weeks ago he won a chess tournament in his division. In math this year, he's gone from limping behind to being ahead. I've a new problem—I often have the feeling that he's not listening to my comments or observations because I bore him. I know, Mom. I know that all already, he says. His handwriting continues to be atrocious but the sentences are beginning to have some meat to them. At dinner, he turns to George and says: Dad, how was your day? His social skills have been hard won, but he's beginning to not only know about them, but also use them.

* * *

This feels like a draft of something longer. But it's all I've time for this week.

* * *

As for Simon's interest in the Bible, I've explained to him that next year he will read his way through the Torah, and then he'll read the Bible, even the New Testament.

“You know, Mom," Simon said, "I'm a lot like Abraham Lincoln. I also like the Bible. You know that was one of the only books he owned? He read it over and over.”

“The things you remember.”

Intellectual Passions

2010-04-26T17:24:00.000-07:00

We're coming to the end of the school year and there is still so much to do. I'd hoped that we'd be way ahead, but we aren't, so a few weeks ago we began to double up here and there to get it all done.

To my surprise, Simon hasn't complained. As a matter of fact, he's welcomed it. The presidential biographies are now devoured in one or two sittings. He has taken over reading the tales in The American Story, even though they are at an 8.1 reading level and full of figurative speech. What was impossible in the fall is now doable. I still have to stop him to make sure he understands what it means to "view life in black and white," or that Elvis moved as if "he'd swallowed a jackhammer." But mostly Simon just reads and I listen, interrupting here and there simply to posit a question or make an observation.

Simon is older, of course. Almost a year has passed. He and his skills have matured. But he's also happily galloping through the readings because as he puts it, he's “really into” American history, the presidents in particular.

Yesterday he insisted that we go through the Netflix catalog, hunting for documentaries. And can I find him more audiobooks about American history? Furthermore, we're planning a trip to Washington, D.C. in the fall, and he's disappointed we can't go to New York as well, and Campobello Island in Maine, to track down all things FDR and Eleanor.

I sense in Simon the fetishism of the impassioned lover. He wants to see the presidential portraits, wander through the presidents' homes, and get as close as possible to the documents Dolly Madison saved when Washington was attacked in the War of 1812. He wants to gaze upon and caress (and hopefully one day read) everything that has anything to do with the objects of his affections

And nothing makes me happier. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing, committing to tight reading schedules and ambitious curricula. “Are we reading our way through this mountain of texts for him--or for me?” I ask myself. A friend of mine once said, laughing, that my curricula for Simon bordered "child abuse."

So often it's breezy and sunny down here in Miami, especially during the school year months—we could be at the beach or traipsing through the Everglades. Instead we are indoors, on the couch, talking about the Great Depression late into the afternoon, how the opossum was imported into this country to serve as food, how people ate dogs and cats and lived under cardboard in the cesspool that became Central Park.

And then it happens. Somewhere along the year, he's hooked. So hooked I feel him drifting away from me, off in his own world, sensing what it will be like to live with him in the years to come as he slowly becomes a man full of interests, affections, and obsessions of his very own. Around this time last year it happened with world history. Every spare minute of every day was devoted to listening to the audiobook of The Story of the World. This year it's the story of this country.

“Maybe at the library they have audiobooks about the presidents for grown-ups, Mom, and I might like them?”

"Let's find out."

As I said, nothing makes me happier. My most passionate and uncomplicated love affairs have been with books, and with some of their authors, whom I've never met, many of them female, or gay, or long dead. I count Virginia Woolf, Michel Montaigne and Roland Barthes among my dearest friends. They're always nothing but a source of pleasure, comfort, and companionship. I can come to them again and again and they never disappoint or break my heart.

I grew up in Peru with a pop-up TV the size of my hand which carried very little worthwhile programming. My parents were and are omnivorous readers, consuming 2-3 books a week. I began reading books on my own when I was eleven. I can't claim my reading was erudite—at thirteen I had read every Agatha Christie available in revolutionary Peru. Books took me away from school, from home, from my changing body, from the uncertainty that the revolution unleashed in our home, from parents who were loving but mercurial. Books provided a welcoming world that was all mine just by reading.

One of my greatest wishes for Simon is that he have intellectual passions, especially now, here, today, every day. We live in a culture governed by stuff, surrounded by people who work day and night so they can afford more stuff, who then spend their free time buying stuff, and once they have it, tending to it, perpetually tethered to it. This problem is not unique to this country. It's the complicated pleasure and the exorbitant price of affluence. It's a kind of slavery with no obvious chains, a slavery where no blood is spilled, but a slavery nonetheless.

I'm not a therapist, but I'm certain that the struggles of so many with depression, weight, and addictions have a lot to do with an abundance of stuff and an emptiness at the core of their beings. I'm always most content--and I'm not always content--when my mind is eagerly chasing down this or that idea, this or that author, recipe, painter, poet, film-maker. I feel most alive, most grateful to be here, when I'm teaching myself something new, and I don't need any stuff for that, or people for that matter. A library card will do.

Now it turns out Simon has been bitten by the same bug. I don't know exactly what I did right, other than choosing great books and making certain they were read. We have maxims in this home, one more trite than the next, but they seem to have worked their magic: Franklins don't give up; Franklins do what they say they are going to do; Franklins give their best. Simon stepped into those books, sometimes reluctantly, and doggedly week-in-week-out he read, and before he knew it fell in love, consumed by curiosity and an unrequited passion for men and women he will never meet, men and women he can only hope to bring alive, bring closer to his lips and fingertips, by reading, by learning.

That War

2010-04-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

Cologne, 1945

These past weeks my son has been reading me stories about that war. The book we are using, Jennifer Armstrong's The American Story, only has two: one on the Manhattan Project, and a second story on the Navajo code talkers.

"Only two stories on World War II?" said Simon, browsing through the index. "But, Mom, it lasted a long time." He knows a lot about that war from Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World, Vol. IV.

And he knows about it from me. Every so often, I walk by his room and hear him telling a friend of his: "My mom doesn't like war." Sometimes he adds: "My grandma and grandpa were in a war--a real war." These words are meant to explain his foreign mom's odd behavior: why she doesn't allow violent video games, why she asks that all play involving war sounds--the tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck of submachine gunfire, the whistling of bombs dropping, the kah-boom of them hitting the ground, the barking commands of officers--be kept to a minimum, or be relegated to the garden or rooms with doors.

Like Simon, I was for a moment surprised by how tangentially Armstrong treats that war. But then I remembered that she is writing for middle schoolers--kids. Furthermore, the war was not fought here, on this continent, in American cities. It was fought across at least one ocean. Too many American soldiers gave their lives, and too many families suffered the loss of fathers, sons, brothers, even sisters and daughters. But civilians, the rest of the American population, the vast majority that was not fighting, they were here, safely on the American continent. Events other than World War II are more central to the story of this country than its brief but defining engagement in stopping Hitler, and Armstrong is right in devoting the bulk of her book to them.

* * *

My first sustained contact with Americans happened when I came to college in this country. It was a good school into which I was accepted because I spoke a handful of foreign languages and had the AP scores to prove it--neither my grades nor my SATs were anything but average.

I arrived at college feeling a bit like an impostor. The other students were not eccentric but deeply accomplished; furthermore, so many seemed to come from happy-go-lucky American families that skied and played tennis. The fathers wore golf jackets or polo shirts and shook your hand with vigor, flashing teeth: "And where are you from, young lady?" The mothers were athletic and friendly and seemingly uncomplicated: "Must be hard to be so far from home." For most of them home had been one place for decades, centuries. Everything about them said that all was well with the world, that they knew deep in their hearts that all would always be just fine.

For football games in the blustery New England fall, many of the parents returned to campus with the trunks of their cars full of wine and food, which they consumed on expensive fold-out chairs in the parking lot of the football field. These were alien rituals for me. Why would you want to picnic in a parking lot in the cold? But these strange creatures, full of joy and self-assurance, wrapped in L.L. Bean, pearls and baseball caps, sat in the chairs on the gravel of the parking lot, swirled wine in plastic cups and talked about their sail-boats.

I envied them. I envied the students, the parents, the whole lot of them. It wasn't their privilege and their fancy fold-out chairs--my parents had done well for themselves, and I never lacked anything money could buy. What I envied was their happiness, their innocence, their self-satisfaction, their fearlessness--the predictability of their lives.

* * *

I'm almost fifty now and from this vantage point it seems like that war has always been with me. It was there when I was a child because it was hardly mentioned, although from time to time, especially when my grandmother came to visit, suddenly nightmarish stories would emerge en masse: air attacks, waiting in the cellar in the dark, people praying, buildings crumbling, blindness, injuries, death of fathers, hunger, more hunger, stealing food and eating rotten potatoes, more bombs, displacement to Bavaria, abuse by other kids, by teachers, by inconsolable mothers, walking to school for three hours through the rubble, soldiers doing terrible things to women, more hunger, playing in the rubble and finding hand-grenades, or the bodies of the dead, burned, or bloated, etc, etc, etc.

My parents were eleven when the war ended. Both of their fathers had died. Two stories always stood out. At eleven my father walked mostly alone from the south of Bavaria back to Berlin through occupied Germany. My mother was trapped in a collapsed building in Cologne at age nine for three days. Afterwards, she was blind for six months..

The tone when these stories were told was always utterly and completely wrong. My mother would insist when pressed as to how she had felt about any of it that it hadn't been a big deal. Nicht so schlimm. Not so bad. Lackadaisical. Tough as nails. She said that because it had been a "communal experience" she hadn't suffered much--my mother who is flooded by her own feelings almost every minute of every day, and the only thing predictable about her is that she lives trapped like a squirrel in a snare, unpredictable from constant pain. As for my father, he was always the hero in the adventures of his own making. That war was just another backdrop for the tale of his life, a grand mixture of luck and cunning. Of course, that was when he was happy. When he was not, he lay in bed and smoked cigarettes by the pack and roamed the house in the middle of the night. When he was neither very happy nor very sad, he worried his children and his wife were stealing his scissors, his ruler, his paper clips, his socks, his money, and that nothing worth while would ever be achieved by any of us. I loved them both fiercely and spent my childhood trying to anticipate their every mood and need.

* * *

I don't like living in Florida, but for Simon this house--not far from where OJ came to live when he ran out of money and moved to Miami--is the center of his universe. I might daydream of moving back to Boston and having a fireplace and neighbors who own books instead of motorcycles and boats, but there are days when I wonder if that will ever happen. I wish for Simon that mythical happy American childhood: an address that does not change, a life that is reliable, full of pleasurable rituals and a family of friends, a life he perceives as safe, a minimum of fear.

For all our reading of history, replete with mass murders and vicious iniquities, the day to day of our lives is peaceful, joyous. It is, I think, my crowning achievement: how hard I work at making every day a day so happy, a day in which we entertain the realities of war but do not live them.

On a more mundane note: we're thinking of building a sailboat. And a folding chair is a brilliant invention.

Articles on Education

2010-04-14T02:43:00.000-07:00

I'm having a crazy week. For now, here are some very interesting articles on education that have appeared in various publications recently. Many promising changes are happening in the American public school system. That does not mean I want Simon attending, but I do often find myself thinking that some day soon I should take what I've learned teaching Simon and move it into a classroom, or a think tank, or a textbook publishing house. I encourage you to do the same. We all have a lot to offer.

--The The Atlantic Monthly published an article earlier this year that focuses on the research done by Teach America ("What Makes a Great Teacher? by Amanda Ripley"). The research points to specific strategies that good teachers use. Many of those strategies are discussed.

--The New York Times Magazine published an article a few weeks ago on the research done by Doug Lemov ("Building Better Teachers" by Elizabeth Green), who has studied teachers whose students perform well . Lemov came out with a book on 4/5/10 based on that research called Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College (see above). I've bought the book and am slowly working my way through it. It's focused on teaching classrooms full of kids and it's written in a very dumbed down mannner--obviously Lemov does not think much of teachers; however, I'm finding the book very useful. Every chapter yields a new strategy, a new insight.

--This is the New York Times page on Michelle Rhee, the chancellor in charge of the DC schools. She's been shaking up that endlessly flawed and poorly performing system.

--Last month, the New Yorker published a piece on Arne Dunkin ("Class Warrior" by Carlo Rotella), the new secretary of education. I can only give you an abstact.

Interpreter of Violence

2010-04-05T04:10:00.000-07:00

A friend keeps telling me about the varied and creative book reports her eleven-year-old son is assigned at a Jewish private school here in Miami. Their enrollment has been low these last couple of years, so she's always trying to pitch me the school. Simon would love it--small classrooms and all this creativity. She's told me that every three weeks her son has to put together a book report, usually on a Caldcott or Newberry winner at a fifth grade reading level. And yet, the reality is her son rarely has to write a book report--most of the assignments involve making a mobile about the characters, or a diorama, or a lap-book, or decorating a paper bag and then filling it with cardboard pictures of all the characters with descriptions written on the back. Her son rarely completes these creative assignment on his own. My friend helps him every step of the way after she goes out and purchases whatever art supplies are needed to put them together. Sometimes these reports eat up most of her weekend.

"You should see these projects, Claudia. They are so incredibly cute," she says to me.

We haven't done any cute and creative book reports this year. Every week Simon writes a composition on an American president. At this point in the year, they've been running 3-5 paragraphs, a full page. Last summer, when the evaluator came to review Simon's portfolio and I told her my plans for this year--lots of history and weekly reports on the presidents--she said to me: "Think about varying the writing assignments a lot. Make them fun. Don't have him doing the same thing over and over." Then she walked down the driveway toward her car, turned and waved: "Remember: variation. See you next year."

The academic year is almost up, and the paper production in this home, although extensive, has been anything but varied, or creative, or child-centered . I've asked of Simon that he do a drawing of each president--that's about as creative as it's gotten. Furthermore, we haven't been reading any grade-level Caldecott and Newberry winners because in years past, Simon either read them to me, or I read them to him, and in this manner we've read many, if not most. Fact is, the substance of the learning in this home hasn't leaned toward the innocent for quite a while.

Instead, Simon has been reading history: American history, world history, and presidential biographies. For every couple of historical achievements there seem to be a handful of bloody disasters, some of which topple forests of people, whole cities, oceans of life. For fiction and non-fiction, Simon has read books like War Horse by Micheal Morpurgo, a popular children's novel in Britain, which tells the story of the million horses that died during World War I from the perspective of a horse--that book made quite an impression on both of us. He also read a book about Pompei, another about Vietnam, and The Story of Slavery, and books like The Mozart Question, also by Morpurgo, which is set in Venice and deals with Holocaust survivors. Moreover, Simon has made his way through a handful of abridged Dickens novels, all of which provide a disturbing mix of villainy, generosity, poverty, monstrosity, murder, betrayal, utter indifference to the suffering of others.

I don't think I would get a job teaching at that Jewish private school.

These literary choices are only partially my doing. Many years ago, when my younger sister was living in London, she turned me on to the British Usborne Young Reading Series. Whenever she came to visit, she would bring a couple of Usborne readers for Simon. By the time Simon progressed to level three, the subjects had turned deadly serious: the Crusades, pirates, slavery, gladiators, Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, the Samurai, Vietnam, the abridged Bleak House. Still, they're always an interesting read. Simon can plow through them in two days, and they provide a week's worth of conversation and research.

The literary choices are very much Simon's. They reflect his interests. Last week, he asked me if I could help him find a book on the Crimean War because from an audio book he'd learned about Florence Nightingale. We're reading about Woodrow Wilson this week. Simon wants pictures of World War I, a whole book's worth. He wants to learn more about poison gas.

"Those soldiers went blind, Mom. That stuff was horrible."

I say: "You know Simon, after that war people decided that war was truly a terrible thing. It's hard to believe, but countries don't go to war as easily as they did before World War I."

As the words leave my mouth, I'm not sure any of this is true, or that I actually believe it. But they seem the right words to say to my young son. These last months I've realized I'm not the purveyor of cute projects--of which I've done my share when Simon was younger--but something I never expected to become when I began homeschooling Simon: I am an interpreter of violence. My job day in day out is to make sure all that loss of life has meaning.

Which brings me back to writing the same-old-same-old report on a president every week. I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't worry at times that I'm doing the wrong thing. Maybe a mobile or two should be hanging from Simon's ceiling. Facetiously, I think, he could make one of the many heads chopped off during the French Revolution, which we studied a few weeks ago. Red tissue paper could trail from their necks. Silliness aside, I think I'm doing the right thing.

The writing goal for this year was to learn how to put a report together, how you organize your information and then say what you have to say in a coherent narration. It has taken eight month of doing the same thing over and over. The presidents change every week. The facts change. But the format remains the same. "Please write me a report about William McKinley," I said to Simon last week, and three days later he handed me such a thing. Last fall, stumped by how hard this was for Simon, I made a detailed worksheet for each one of these reports, breaking the assignment down sentence by sentence. Repetition leads to mastery. I'm not so sure cute projects are as effective.

A final word about repetition. So much of what is discussed in our home is carnage. For years, we couldn't get Simon to converse with us at dinner--he'd just sit there and shovel in his food. And then one evening he looked up and said: "Who was worse, Dad? Hitler or Genghis Khan?" Last week the conversation was about the story of Passover, how the Egyptians wanted to destroy the Jewish race. That conversation led to talk of Easter, which my mother and siblings celebrate (I was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism when I married George.) We talked of how Jesus wasn't the only one crucified. I reminded Simon that the Romans managed the outer edges of their empire with brutality, lining roads with crucifixions and leaving them there to rot as a warning. That same week we talked of the Crimean War and what army hospitals were like before Florence Nightingale came along. This led to taking a book about the Civil War off the shelf and looking at the pictures of field hospitals. I told him that they are so much better now, that soldiers survive the most devastating wounds.

"Mom, I don't want to be a soldier," Simon said.

Reminded constantly by my son of the fragility of life, all I know to do is to practice repetition, reassuring repetitive rituals. Meals, schooling, library, chores, play-dates, chess, piano, sailing, movie night, a big lunch on Sunday, come Monday ditto all over. The days and weeks are predictable, stable, peaceful, same-old-same-old. Somehow all that repetition adds up to safety, or so I tell myself.

Patriotism and Kitsch

2010-03-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

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.

I Had Other Plans--Notes for a Future Resume

2010-03-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

"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.

An Unrelenting Push Forward

2010-03-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

unrelenting

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.

not easing or slackening in severity: an unrelenting rain.

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.

More Thoughts About What Was Wrought in Texas

2010-03-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

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.

Some Thoughts After Reading About the Scopes Monkey Trial

2010-03-08T22:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Some Observations After Crossing the Atlantic

2010-02-28T11:50:00.000-08:00

I returned a few days ago from visiting family in Switzerland. (From my nephews, I picked up a nasty Swiss cold, so this will be brief.) Why is so much of my family in Switzerland? My brother moved there first, over fifteen years ago, the result of a job offer. My sister and her husband joined them two years ago; they were living in London and were unhappy with the school options for their small children. Smitten with the Swiss public education system, they resettled in Switzerland. As for my mother, with two of her three children in a small village a few miles out of Lucerne, she sold her place in Connecticut and joined them. All this to explain why German-Peruvians with American college degrees end up in Switzerland.

Nursing my cold, I've been ruminating about the following:

The public school in that village is at the center of why both of my siblings and their mates live there. My brother and brother-in-law have had lucrative job offers in other cities, other countries, the US. Nothing thus far has tempted them to leave.

With this in mind, I found myself reading to my six-year-old nephew. He's an imaginative builder of Legos and Brio trains who is about to enter first grade in August. The book he had brought home from the school library seemed to me at at a fifth-grade reading level--eons above The Cat in the Hat. The story was simple enough, how a friendship began between a lonely old farmer and Findus, a cat, but the sentences were long, full of $10.00 words. I stumbled reading--my German is a bit rusty. I thought to myself, these Swiss throw a lot of complexity at a Kindergarten kid.

Remembering what I used to do with Simon when he was little, I tried to get my nephew involved in the reading.

Pointing at the F in Findus I said: "What sound does this letter make?"

"I don't know," he said. "Lese weiter bitte, Tante Claudia." Continue reading please, aunt Claudia.

I was struck by his politeness--at that age, Simon was mostly given to one word commands. But I was also worried. If a kid in the States does not know that F makes the sound "ffff" by the end of Kindergarten, he will be held back.

I said to my sister, ever so gently: "You know, I had a feeling he doesn't know his ABCs."

She laughed: "I don't think he does. They don't teach them any reading or writing in Kindergarten here. Can you believe it? We attended a meeting at the school last year where we were told not to teach them at home, not to force it in any way. If, and only if, our child was craving learning to read, only then could we work with him a little bit. The truth is that at this age the school discourages reading or writing."

"So, what do they learn in Kindergarten?"

"They play and learn to get long with others. They're big into social skills; they learn to shake hands like diplomats." She chuckled, imitating a handshake, palm outstretched, firm grip, vigorous shake, bowing her head slightly. "I'm not kidding. I know--the kids are so little. And they do it with each other, before and after play-dates--looks really funny. Besides that, they draw; they get stories read out loud; they make stuff; they go for walks in the hills," she pointed to the Alps rising up steeply behind her house, "in any frigging weather. Snow, steady rain. Every week they march up, up, up into the hills for half a day. Crazy Swiss." She laughed. "But the kids love it. Sometimes they come back soaked."

I looked into those hills. I've been on that trail. I'm always grateful that I stopped smoking decades ago.

From my many visits to Switzerland I know that elementary school kids, at least in this village, must walk to school every day and back. Through Kindergarten, they can be accompanied; after Kindergarten, they must walk on their own. From my brother's, it's a 20 minute hike. The children have to huff it on a sidewalk that boarders a road that has a stunning view of the Alps and Lake Lucerne; however, cars steadily whiz by at 50 miles per hour. By second grade, kids are encouraged to peddle their bike on that same road, carrying on their backs their heavy school-packs. The parking lot in front of the school fits four cars. There is no pick-up lane. If you drop off your kid by car, you get called in for a conference.

And here are some other interesting details: They barely get homework. 10 minutes in first grade. 20 in second. And yet, whatever they do in the classroom works. By the end of first grade, they all know how to read and write. By third grade they introduce English as a foreign language; in fourth grade they add French. High-school students are encouraged to pick up yet another language, if they are planning to go to university.

Back home, I'm finding myself demanding more independence from Simon. I say to him: Do it yourself. Cut your own nails. Fold your own laundry. Make your own breakfast. Stack the dishwasher. Cut the cucumbers. Vacuum your room. Toss the salad. And remember, shake hands. Sometimes I make my requests in German: Setz den Tisch, bitte. Set the table, please. Gotta push the languages.

There're no steep mountains in Miami, but I'll come up with a suitable challenge. And then maybe we'll do it in the rain.

2010-02-20T13:38:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

I am out of town visiting family and will post again on 2/28.

Last weekend, the New York Times Magazine carried an article that might interest you all: "How Christian Were the Founders? History Wars: Inside America's Textbook Battles" by Russell Shorto. Many of the players in these textbook wars are homeschooling evangelicals.

If after you've read that article, you want more information on providential history and its symbiotic relationship with the (Christian) homeschooling movement, you might want to also read an article that appeared in Harper's in 2006: "Through the Glass Darkly--How the Christian Right is Re-Imagening U.S. History" by Jeff Sharlet .

As ever,

Claudia

Hijacking Norman Rockwell

2010-02-07T11:11:00.000-08:00

Some weeks ago a friend passed around an e-mail titled: Norman Rockwell. She was organizing a field trip to Fort Lauderdale to see his work. Who would like to join her and her kids?

Although I don't care much for Rockwell's work (surprised by his success, Rockwell used to describe himself as only an "illustrator hack"), I immediately wrote back that yes, we would join them; Simon and I would be there. This is is South Florida; Vermeer and Rembrandt exhibits don't come down here; we are lucky to get Rockwell. Moreover, it occurred to me that it would be a great opportunity to point out the distinction between fine art and illustration, to talk about the great age of newspapers and The Saturday Evening Post, for which Rockwell did the covers for many decades. Furthermore, it seemed to me that his pictures were thoroughly accessible and uncomplicated, full of images that alluded to the Great Depression and the World War II in ways breezy and light--Simon might like them.

A week before the field trip, my friend sent out some links to videos about Rockwell on Youtube, as well this tidbit of information: one of the main pictures featured in the exhibit was the painting he did of Ruby Bridges. We might want to see the movie by the same name, she wrote. It was made by Walt Disney but quite good, great to watch with kids.

From one minute to the next, our visit to the exhibition had very little to do with teaching Simon about illustration and newspapers, or about Norman Rockwell, for that matter. It suddenly was singularly an opportunity to discuss segregation.

It happened that the past two weeks we have been talking about the beginning of systematic segregation in the South. After the Civil War, federal troops were sent to the South to oversee the fair and equal treatment of former slaves. The South hated having Union troops hanging around, checking every move. At the beginning of the administration of Rutherford Hayes, in 1876, twelve years after the end of the Civil War, the troops were removed. Hayes thought the South had been occupied long enough and that the war and reconstruction had altered the South in foundational ways.

Not so. Immediately after the troops started marching north, the South began to strip blacks of their rights. Black elected leaders were voted out of office while schools, restaurants, hospitals, bathrooms, stores, beaches, etc. were segregated. Black citizens found themselves not much better off than they had been before the war.

"All those people died for nothing," said Simon.

"Six hundred thousand," I said. "But Simon, it wasn't for nothing. Slavery did end."

"Yes, but it was a long time until Martin Luther King."

The mail brought the movie about Ruby Bridges in its crisp red Netflix envelope, and we spent one afternoon last week on the couch watching it, or trying to watch it. The scenes in which Ruby, all of six years old, walks toward her white school through a throng of crazed white protesters are hard to watch. Maybe because I had a cold, and maybe because I wasn't ready for so much hate and viciousness, my voice kept faltering when I paused the movie to explain what was going on. To protect me, and maybe to protect himself, Simon took over the remote and pressed the mute button whenever scenes were washed in hate.

"Mom, we know that they are saying--just mean stuff. We don't have to listen."

Wise as Moses, Simon refused to give the remote back and said calmly over the muted image of yelling white folks: "I'll tell you what they are saying, Mom. Just bad stuff: hang, die, kill--words like that."

This son of mine, who loves watching sci-fi movies in which people, building, cities, whole planets and galaxies blow up, couldn't handle those words shouted in New Orleans in 1960.

At the exhibit, Simon found most of the work "boring," however hard I tried to ask him questions, to help him find the soldiers, the cheerful children, the happy families. We spent some time in front of the Ruby Bridges painting, noticing the hurled tomato that missed its target and splattered against the wall behind her. We talked about how tiny she was, how courageous, and why Rockwell painted her in a white dress, white socks, white shoes, with a white ribbon in her hair. However hard I tried, I couldn't get Simon interested in anything else hanging on the walls at the exhibition.

"Can we go home now?"

* * *

I've been persevarating this weekend about whether I had done Simon a disservice. I had hijacked Norman Rockwell to teach Simon about segregation.

If I'm honest, I have to admit that I do this sort of thing all the time, to almost every topic we touch upon--I'm an equal opportunity hijacker. I use stories, novels, biographies, history, art, music to teach Simon all that I know about the world. Who cares about dates and details and that Norman Rockwell was a terrific illustrator who did covers for The Saturday Evening Post during the great age of newspapers? Instead I teach him once more about suffering and injustice, and about dignity, valor, patience, kindness, and respect. I focus on a small area of a large canvas at a spacious exhibition to point out a stinging injustice and the unstinting courage that is its match.

Is this a pedagogical favor, or isn't it? Am I helping Simon shape his responses, or am I preempting them?

So here's my answer, arrived at with some hand-wringing and more than a few late night talks with George: I want Simon to care. I want him to have an opinion about everything. I want him to think critically and then take sides. I want him to learn all the facts and then decide who was right, who was wrong, and what was at stake. I want him to know that is not only his right but his duty. History, like anything else he will encounter, is not just a matter of dates and names and locations and body-counts. It demands a critical response. In the case of history, the body count alone obliges an opinion, not just any opinion, but a well-thought out strong opinion, a resounding response. Responding is a sign of respect. It means you care.

So, am I shaping and preempting Simon's responses to the material we cover? You bet. I'm doing both. But I hope that in the process he's learning that everything that his mind encounters--including everything that comes out of my mouth--gives him not only the opportunity but also the right to sharpen his critical skills. Obviously, he needs to use his judgment as to what opinions he keeps to himself, and which ones he voices out loud. But he must take the time to shape them--out of respect for the world around him, but also out of respect for himself. I've come to realize over the last couple of days that cogito ergo sum is, in part, an ethical statement.

Schlock, or How Not to Manage a Visit to a Sister Who Is Having Twins

2010-01-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

Definition of schlock: Something, such as merchandise or literature, that is inferior or shoddy.

All families have their challenges; homeschooling families have some that are unique, such as how to manage the absence of the parent that does the schooling. In my case, it is implied in the fine print of my job description as Primary Homeschooling Parent that I'm responsible for our son 24/7--I cover weekday school hours and non-school hours. Barring the presence of grandparents, or an extended family, or intimate friends who you could leave your kid with, what to do? George, my husband, is ever so helpful and supportive, but he can't take time off. Somebody has to make some money around here.

In two weeks, I'm going on a trip on my own. I'll be gone for seven days. There is no way around this trip. My baby sister is having twins at a time when she already has two boys under six; she could use some help; I must go; I really want to go. But what to do with Simon? I could take him with me, but Simon bolts any premises if just one newborn begins to wail, never mind two. He's made it abundantly clear he doesn't want to go. "I'm sorry but I hate babies, Mom! Crying hurts my ears! I will run away." So back to the same questions: Who will take care of Simon? Teach him? Tear him away from screens and Legos and bamboozle him into reducing fractions, reading something--anything?

Home-educators are good at fixing problems: my absence would be an opportunity. Simon would go to the office with George and work independently. He is in fifth grade after all. I would assemble a folder of assignments for everyday, trying to stuff them with an abundance of subjects and books he likes: Latin translation and world history, Time Warp Trio and a presidential biography, some drawing, some math, not too much, just enough. I would specify doable daily reading assignments and write up questions which he would have to answer. I would try to reproduce in writing the substance of our daily conversations about texts, asking who, what, where, how and lots of why questions. It would take lots of work on my part, but I would find the time.

But then I had what I thought was an inspired thought: I would order a reading comprehension workbook. Then I wouldn't have to work so hard preparing for my absence. One of the better brands out there seems to be Spectrum; I would spend the extra bucks on Spectrum--Simon is worth it. Simon could do a bit of regular schoolwork, the stuff everyone else does in public school, like reading comp. worksheets. It wouldn't hurt, right? And it would easily keep him busy. He could probably read three to four or more of these little narratives everyday. Surely, he would learn something. A few clicks on Amazon and the Spectrum Reading Comprehension, Updated and Revised, Aligned to State and National Standards--an Excellent Tool for Standardized Test Preparation was on its way to our home.

****

You know where this is going. It arrived last week at our doorstep, in our lives.

That same week we had various interesting conversations with Simon based primarily on his readings. We talked of President Rutherford B. Hayes, who was a great president simply by being honest, responsible, and hard-working--a relief after Ulysses S. Grant, who gave away government jobs to all his corrupt and mendacious cronies. We talked about World War I: how the American Seventy-Seventh Division, stuck in trenches, under attack not only by the Germans but also by the Allies who did not know they were shooting at Americans, was saved by a pigeon who got a message to the Allies, even though the pigeon was shot through the chest and one leg had been blown off. We talked about God. Simon wanted to know if George and I believe, and if, in what and how much. The suffering of Ruby Bridges, the suffering of the people of Haiti, why people are upset with president Obama, and when can we get a cat were some of the other issues discussed. Into the middle of this week, the middle of those conversations, arrived the Spectrum workbook.

It's not that the workbook is so terrible, but it's so much less than it could be. Of the seventy-five narratives, only a third seem interesting at first glance, covering history, the arts, music, science. The rest are narratives about soccer--four of them--and stories about kids who do something, or go somewhere, that leads to learning of some kind: hiking, France, the farmers' market, the library, amusement parks, puppy foster care, etc. Every story in the workbook has an information dump quality. At no point is anything at stake. No lives need to be rescued. Nothing is about to blow up. No guillotine is about to smash down on the neck of a just man. Nothing is at risk. Everything is safe, bland, utterly uncontroversial, utterly forgettable.

I understand that Simon will eventually need to master getting through this type of informational dump, however boring. But he is eleven. Education is about lighting a fire, it's about turning kids on: to reading, to history, to science, to great literature. You cannot do that with a text about going to a farmers' market, or the pleasures of hiking.

From a friend who used to work in educational publishing I learned this weekend that the industry cannot sell anything that is not safe and bland. Controversies of any kind lead to low sales, angry parents, even lawsuits.

The workbook has had me thinking these last few days about my favorite class as a child in Peru: social studies. After we stood and sang the Peruvian anthem with our hands over our hearts, the teacher unlocked a book cabinet next to the chalkboard and then passed out books. Hardcover. Published in Spain. Imported. Expensive.

Every time we met we read one story. Every kid had to read half a page. Then we talked about it. Who? What? Where? How? Why? Then the teacher, Mister Villegas, dictated one question and we had to answer it in writing. When we were done, we had to put our books, one by one, back in the cabinet. By the end of class, Mister Villegas counted the books, then locked them up and slipped the key back into his pocket. He knew those books were worth having. I often thought of stealing one.

Almost forty years later, I still remember so many of those stories. My favorite was one about a potter in China who made beautiful red porcelain by dripping a bit of his own blood in the glaze. He was always a little weak and pale. But the porcelain was glorious--so glorious the emperor put in an order for vases, hundreds of them, to be delivered quickly.

The potter made the vases. Then he slashed his wrists and let his blood drip into the glaze. His apprentice finished the job. The emperor was delighted. The vases took his breath away. They looked almost alive. As for the potter, the potter had died.

I still think about that story. Nothing like that in the Spectrum workbook.

****

So I'm back to plan A: writing my own questions to the texts of my choice--and Simon's.

Teddy Bears

2010-01-25T18:04:00.000-08:00

Week by week, we continue to read in The American Story: stories about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge; the rebuilding of Chicago; the Johnstown flood; Ellis Island; Lizzie Borden; Mark Twain and Helen Keller; the exploding of the U.S.S. Maine; Thomas Edison; William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer; Teddy Roosevelt and the bear cub; the brothers Wright; Prohibition; Texas' oil; the San Francisco earthquake and the ensuing fire of 1906. Of all those stories, the ones that interest Simon most are the ones that involve floods, explosions, fires and murder.

“I want to learn everything about Lizzie Borden. She was wicked,” he says. The library has one children's book about the trial. It seems to be out on permanent loan. Someone out there shares Simon's obsessions.

I, in turn, am smitten by a little story about Teddy Roosevelt. It's a light tangential story, slipped in between weightier, history altering events--a breezy respite of sorts.

Story goes that Teddy Roosevelt was invited to go on a bear hunt by the governor of Mississippi. After two days, Roosevelt hadn't shot a thing, so his hosts, afraid that the president would emerge from the hunt without a kill and without his dignity, presented him with a bear cub tied to a tree.

They said to him something to the effect of: “Here, Mister President. You can shoot this one pretty easily.”

Roosevelt, horrified, refused. We know that he answered: “If I shot that little fellow, I couldn't be able to look my boys in the face again.”

This story made good copy. The papers went wild. Roosevelt and the bear became symbols of compassion.

A savvy Russian immigrant by the name Michtom suggested to his wife she make a stuffed bear and maybe they could sell it in their candy shop. Within days, she couldn't keep up with the demand. Within a year, the Michtoms had founded at toy company. Everybody had to have a teddy bear.

* * *

Simon loves stuffed animals. He has dozens of them, all over his bed, in his closet, in a trunk. These days, he sleeps with his head on a polar bear and his arms around a huge fat kangaroo he recently bought for himself at IKEA. Near his head sits Sidney, the lion, who used to belong to his sister, keeping watch.

I don't know what all these stuffed animals mean to Simon. Regression, an unwillingness to grow up—there is some of that. A preference for a more merciful world, one in which the strong do not eviscerate the meek, a fanciful world where loving lions and bears guard the sleep of children —there is a lot of that.

* * *

My father had a teddy bear. At the end of the war, after his father had died, his mother and her sisters arranged for him to be sent to a school in southern Bavaria so that he would be safe from the bombs falling on Berlin. He took that teddy bear with him.

When the war ended, the school was at loose ends. They had run out of money and provisions. The kids were sent out to beg from the farmers nearby. If that didn't yield enough food, the kids stole whatever they could get their hands on. Chickens were barbequed. Dogs were slaughtered. My father was eleven. There was no way to get in touch with his mother. Railroad tracks, telephone lines, roads—everything had been destroyed.

A group of older boys at the school decided to just run away--walk home. My father was going to tag along. On the agreed upon morning, all the older boys wimped out. Father and another eleven-year-old decided to leave anyway.

600 kilometers through bombed out, occupied Germany. Along the way, American soldiers gave them some food, a coat, a place to sleep, sparking my father's great love for all things American. Eventually, the other boy and my father parted ways. Father walked on alone. He crossed a ditch full of shot SS, a pond of blood. He saw pyramids of the dead, stacked, or in flooded subway stations, bloated. He swam across a river and was shot at. Somehow he made it home to his widowed mother. The teddy bear was in his coat pocket.

* * *

I have a bear that belonged to my father. For decades, I thought that bear was the one Father had schlepped across Germany. Some years ago, he told me I had it wrong. This bear was not that bear. That bear was smaller and had been pitched way back when. It had been loved too much. It was too shabby.

The wrong bear sits in my bedroom for the last twenty-five years—see above. On one of my many visits to Berlin, my grandmother said I could have him. It sounds silly and sentimental, but he keeps me safe.

Bear Hunting

2010-01-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

So many early American presidents were functionally illiterate into adulthood. Of the seventeen presidents we've read about thus far, a significant number learned the three Rs minimally, or late, very late: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. The most striking examples are Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson.

Jackson was dirt poor and rarely attended the local schoolhouse. By age thirteen he'd joined the revolutionary army. Polk was terribly ill with bladder stones and didn't go to school until he was seventeen. Zachary Taylor grew up in frontier Kentucky and had to work. He was embarrassed all his life by his lousy spelling and penmanship. Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson worked with their folks and then became apprentices, Fillmore in a cloth factory and Johnson as a tailor. Both Fillmore and Johnson were schooled only as young adults by their wives. And then there is the example of Abraham Lincoln who, growing up in the backwoods of Indiana and Illinois, only had a few months of formal schooling throughout his life. Whatever he learned, from the classics to the law, he taught himself.

Simon's response to learning about yet another president, who as a child did not have to craft paragraphs or slog through long division, learning instead to shoot, farm, ride, hunt, sew, or fish, is always the same.

“Why do I have to do school? Forget writing—let me learn to hunt instead! Who cares about math? I'll learn how to shoot now—write later.”

He's quick to point out that he's always doing something: building Legos, making flip-books (his latest obsession) and listening to audiobooks.

“It's not like I'm super lazy, you know?”

And there is truth to that. If I'm really honest with myself, I would have to say that most of the information that Simon has thoroughly made his own, he has taught himself with a dogged persistence. I can take no credit. He listens to audiobooks of world history, replaying what he does not understand--until he does. If he's hearing about Peter the Great's siege of Azov, he takes his globe to bed and finds Azov.

I think often about these presidents not learning to read as children. We live in a culture where if a child is not mastering certain skills by a certain age, he's pronounced deficient, delayed--damaged goods. To make sure the child masters these skills at the specified time, they are reviewed and drilled year in, year out, ad nauseam. However, every home-educating parent, if brutally honest, will agree that you can teach all the math covered between 1-8 grade to a twelve year old in three months. Think of all the bears your child could have hunted, the horses he could have ridden, the wheat he could have harvested.

I'm being facetious, I know. All I'm trying to point out is that children who are not being prodded to master reading and writing skills on a strict specified schedule are not necessarily being placed in an intellectual deep-freeze. Children pursue their own interests; they yearn to be independent, to be the masters of their own lives; they make an effort to accumulate skills. Zachary Taylor, one of our greatest military leaders, became a great hunter, horseback rider and fisherman long before he reached puberty, or mastered reading. Andrew Johnson was running a business before he could write. And Abraham Lincoln, with only the most limited of formal reading instruction, read everything he could get his hands on, over and over.

We privilege formal schooling. Our (secretly) class conscious society cannot imagine substituting fishing and farming for fractions when educating a ten-year-old. How will he ever get into college? A good college? Still, not a day goes by where I do not find myself questioning the educational choices I've made.

Teaching Simon at home was the right decision--that's not where the anxiety lies. However, every day I wonder if it wouldn't be best if we closed the books and instead hunted a bear, rode a horse, harpooned a shark, dug up all of our suburban backyard and planted rows of vegetables and berries. Maybe instead of dabbling in non-academic activities, we should put them at the heart of the curriculum. Maybe we should aim at proficiency in something useful and concrete, like sailing or ship-building or farming.

Instead, I write myself a note to borrow a book on canoe-building from the library. I am a coward, bucking convention whole hog is not my thing. But I'm no fool, and I rarely fool myself. I know that if Simon backed off writing and spent a year building a canoe from scratch on the back porch while listening to audiobooks, the gains would be immeasurable. For starters, he would have a canoe, instead of a pile of papers that sooner or later will end up in the recycling bin. And if he can build a canoe from cut lumber schlepped to our house from our local Home Depot, he can do anything with his life.

For now I lack the gumption. Tomorrow we will again hit the books. As for a canoe--I'm thinking about it.

Why I Continue Home-Educating Simon

2010-01-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

I can't claim that I continue to home-educate Simon--now in fifth grade--because he couldn't hack a public school. Although he hates writing, and couldn't care less about math, his academic skills are more or less at grade-level. Given the right teacher and a small classroom, he would do well enough. His auditory processing skills still leave a lot to be desired: if the topic is complex and/or I fail to nab his interest, he needs lots of re-focusing and repetition. However, given a little extra attention, he gets through the material. On the up side, if he is reading an exciting novel, or discussing history, I can't shut him up, and I struggle to cajole him onto a new subject. While reading an Usborne abridged edition of a classic this week, he said: “Mom, I'm going to read Great Expectations all the way to the end and skip everything else today. OK, Mom?”

Furthermore, I can't claim that there is absolutely no school out there in this great country that would fit my exacting demands. Somewhere there is the perfect classroom for Simon. Maybe not in Miami. School might require a move. But if Simon woke up tomorrow and said he wanted to go to regular school because schools have girls, or a computer animation class, it would take a lot of work, and maybe lots of money, but George and I would find an appropriate placement. The school might not be academically challenging enough, but the library is a three minute drive away.

Finally, I can't argue that the larger home-schooling environment is throbbing with academic challenges that could never be matched by a school. Home-educators tend to organize themselves into online social networks. Once organized, members arrange for enrichment classes, field trips, and weekly social gatherings. However, with some exceptions, the enrichment classes here in Miami are fun but not demanding enough for us to leave the house; the academically challenging field trips are few and far between and, sadly, poorly attended; and, the social gatherings, usually in the form of a park group, although much enjoyed by all, have a very fluid and unpredictable quality. Families move in and out of home-educating, and they move in and out of park groups. Every time Simon gets attached to a home-educated child, it seems that child moves across town, or matriculates in the public school system, or goes to Europe for half a year.

As I write this, I have already decided on the curriculum we will be using for middle school. Simon thus far has expressed no interest in going to school—from the neighborhood kids, he's learned that schools have nasty teachers and lots of homework. For as long as he does not demand to go, George and I will not send him.

Without elaborating too much on the problems of the public school system in Florida and nationwide, what follows are the reasons why I continue to home-educate.

It boils down to two reasons—content and conversation.

I can choose the content Simon masters in one academic year. I get to do that, and not a public school teacher with 900 SAT scores (average for teachers in the US) and a mandate to teach No Child Left Behind. I can buy a curriculum and add to it, or I can make it up piecemeal. Hours and hours on the internet and at the library, and I can come up with a challenging and compelling reading list that stays as far away from textbooks and mind-numbing worksheets as possible. I can find the best foreign language program, the most enjoyable Latin course, the most appropriate history books, the right math program, art history introduction, and music appreciation teaching tool. Day by day, I try to light a fire--or two-- trying to elicit curiosity and interest in Dickens, or Lincoln, or Louis XIV, or Beethoven, or Velasquez, here and there taking a break to write a paragraph, or practice long division.

Once he has a head full of stories, full of interesting content, I can ask him to think critically about those stories, teaching him how to frame and answer questions imaginatively, always entertaining multiple perspectives. This is what it means to be educated: To have a head full of stories and facts that one can deploy imaginatively and critically.

Being home-educated, Simon has the time and the means (the curriculum I cobble together) to read and poder shelves and shelves and shelves of content. He can do it lying on his bed, at the table, at the beach, at the computer, with a friend, over cookies. It's a pretty grand way to spend the day.

The second reason I home-educate is the conversations I have with Simon. Unlike the mothers of schooled children, I know exactly what my son is reading every minute of the day—often I am the audience for his reading. If he is reading Great Expectations, we can talk about it over lunch, and some more over dinner with George. A little visit to wikipedia, and over dessert I can explain what the word Bildungsroman means. I can ask Simon to think about all the ways in which Pip grows up in the course of the novel. I can mention that Dickens wrote the novel because like Pip, Dickens' heart had been broken by a woman. I can explain the words unrequited love. We can rent the David Lean movie. We can talk about how Great Expectations compares to other Dickens Simon has already read (all abridged). We can talk about the mines, the factories, and the orphanages in England; the very poor, the destitute and the wealthy; the terrible inequities—a word I would need to define. We can get a documentary about Dickens, and then talk about that some more.

Last weekend I found myself in Boston having lunch with old friends. They asked about Simon. Would I continue teaching him through high school? I could hear in their voice their doubts about where all this might lead. My friends are the products of New England private schools and good colleges. Their daughter teaches history at a public middle school in a posh Boston suburb. I took a deep breath and said it all depended on Simon. I told them about the power of girls. I tried to make them laugh. Of late, Simon notices girls. Their hair. Their interests. Who is beautiful and nice, who is not. My best made academic plans may crumble in the face of Simon's prurient interests.

But I hope they will not. I dearly wish I can make his days enjoyable, and keep his mind turned on by ideas and concepts and texts, because I want the conversation to continue. For him. But also for me. For now, I get to read and think about Dickens and Lincoln, and unrequited love, and grave inequities. My mind and my days are hitched to work that matters.

Gentle, Plain, Just and Resolute

2009-12-27T19:58:00.000-08:00

We have finally reached the sixteenth president. When, at the beginning of the week, I take the Mike Venezia biography on Lincoln off the bookshelf, Simon says: “I read that already, Mom--don't you know?”

“On your own?”

“On my own.”

“Wonderful!” And then, because sometimes I have little control over my mouth, I say: “Why?” Simon reading a whole book on his own, cover to cover—that's new.

“Because it's Lincoln, Mom!” Simon says, impatiently.

“Can you read it to me again?”

“Sure.”

It's December in Miami. The windows are wide open. The air is crisp and cool. We lie on the day-bed in the Learning Room. Simon reads. I smell the grass, the trees; I hear birds. The mail-man comes up the walkway and we take a break to check if we got another holiday card. We make hot chocolate and take our mugs back to the Learning Room.

“I have to finish Lincoln all today, Mom. We cannot do Latin or German. After Lincoln, I have to read about Andrew Johnson right away. I have to find out what happened after Lincoln was shot.”

“OK. Why is Lincoln so super interesting to you, Simon?”

“Because he ended slavery. Even though he was very ugly, he was great. The presidents before him all sucked.”

“Sucked” is the new word d'jour. George and I choose our battles when it comes to colorful language. Simon can say “sucked,” but he cannot write it. We've defined formal and informal speech.

Simon finishes Lincoln, and then this child who does not read with pleasure immediately takes Johnson off the shelf and starts reading.

The Venezia biographies all begin with a general assessment. Venezia writes about Johnson that he “wasn't as skilled a leader as Lincoln had been...he was stubborn and racially prejudiced ...very little was accomplished.”

“I don't want to read anymore. Johnson sucked, too, Mom. I'll just look at the pictures. I'll read more tomorrow.”

It's a beautiful day in Miami, I think, looking out onto a Hong Kong Orchid and a Meyer's Lemon drooping with fruit. Simon lies next to me, flipping through the book.

“Look at this,” Simon says. He points to a picture of Richmond, Virginia, all rubble, all bombed out. “Why do people do that?” he asks.

Instead of saying “Why do you think?” and letting him figure it out, I proceed to do an information dump. I've been tired this week, somewhat self-absorbed. I talk of military strategy, of controlling territory, of destroying not only the enemy's cities and forts, but also his spirit.

“Did kids die in Richmond?” Simon asks.

“Some kids died, I'm sure.”

“Moms?”

“Moms, too.”

Simon is quiet. Then he says: “People are mean.” He continues looking through the Johnson biography.

I can hear the neighborhood kids congregating down the street. They are on vacation. They have a basketball. I hear it bouncing off the pavement. Soon they will come and ring the doorbell, asking for Simon.

“Mom, look at this picture,” Simon says. “Look how many people were in the room when Lincoln died.”

He's gazing at the Alonzo Chappel painting--see above. I tell Simon that I know from my readings on Lincoln that the scene is fictional. Lincoln died at a roadside inn with only a few people in attendance, not a mob of all the important political figures of the time.

“Maybe the painter wanted to show how many people would miss him,” Simon says.

“Maybe,” I say, nodding.

The doorbell rings and Simon bolts off the bed and runs out of the room. He ducks his head back in. “Can I go play?”

“Go play.”

Many people would miss him, Simon had said. I miss him.

It's been a week of too much feeling. Layered on top of the exhausting, excessive, and inescapable joyousness of the season, have been my readings about Lincoln. He never went to school; he taught himself everything, even the law. He lost two of his four sons during his life-time, all much loved. He had so many friends, they made up towns, cities, states. He cared little about all the stuff that doesn't matter: clothes, manners, appearances. Acutely aware of weight of his responsibilities, the full impact of his actions, and the full measure of his--and everyone else's losses--he struggled with melancholia.

I've poured over his key speeches. I'd never read them closely. There is something intimate, exposed, unabashedly personal about his voice, as if he's speaking to you with no reservations from the center of his heart's obsessions.

You probably remember Gettysburg and the 2nd Inaugural, but here is his Farewell Address, delivered as he was leaving Springfield, Illinois, to begin his first term. War was looming.

My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

Lincoln has been on my mind this week. I lack his faith that “all will yet be well.” This week the Copenhagen meeting came to an end, and the Health Reform Bill went up for a vote in the Senate. How will we bring about all the radical changes we have to make for the sake of our planet, our economy, our children and grandchildren? Following the wranglings about health reform these last months, I've felt stuck in a Dickens novel—with few exceptions, each character more vain, foppish, thoughtless, reckless, and undignified than the next. I realize that the gains made by the Health Reform Bill are huge, but they seem so much less than what is necessary, a bill brokered in an age of relentless compromise, indomitable special interests, and men, mostly men, who are not Lincoln. And there are so many bills to go.

Dark thoughts in sunny Miami this holiday season.

Some last words by Walt Whitman:

This Dust Was Once the Man

This dust was once the man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
Was saved the Union of these States.

On the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Instruments of Torture

2009-12-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

(Below find Part II and Part III. For Part I go to the blog posted on Sunday 12/13/2009)

Simon

This year, in fifth grade, Simon is supposed to write an essay every week. First he reads a biography about an American president; then he writes an essay. I came up with this plan last spring, when full of hope and hubris I began shaping a curriculum for the coming academic year. I felt so proud of myself. Instead of doing what every other fifth grader does, namely writing a dozen book reports and a research paper or two in the course of the year, Simon would write 44 brief essays. And if he did a portrait of each president, he would have a book by year's end. Fabulous!

By July, as the beginning of the new school year loomed, I began to have doubts this grand plan was going to work. For starters, Simon has hated writing since I first handed him a pencil, and that hadn't changed. But I quickly came up with a fix: he would only have to write one paragraph a day. That seemed doable. Within five days, he would have an essay.

Then there was the problem of the topic sentence. Every one of the paragraphs Simon writes is supposed to have a topic sentence, preferably at the top, or so various writing manuals for this age group suggest.

Here, the problem was all mine. I can't stand paragraphs with a topic sentence at the top, paragraphs that begin with something like: “Abraham Lincoln was an excellent president during the years of the Civil War,” and then go on to elaborate.

This kind of writing is torturous to read, smacking of the worst of textbook prose. A topic sentence at the top of the paragraph robs the reader of the fun of making sense of what he's reading—why bother getting through the rest of the paragraph?

In lieu of the topic sentence at the top, I prefer, a snappy and opinionated sentence at the end of a paragraph, summing up and evaluating the information given in the sentences above. “Although burdened by family tragedies, doubt, and debilitating bouts of depression, Lincoln invariably rose to the demands of defending the Union.” Here is another example: “He was too skinny and quite ugly, but he was big-hearted and brilliant.”

The reader of the paragraph can then compare his conclusions, reached while reading the paragraph, to the views of the author. This makes for a dynamic and interactive reading experience. Maybe the reader agrees. Maybe not. Either way, he keeps reading.

The more I thought about teaching the essay, the more I remembered those topic sentence driven five-paragraph essays I'd had to read years ago, the ones I hadn't enjoyed—at all. The more I thought about teaching Simon, the clearer it became that I was dealing with a ten-year-old who loved narrating stories but hated writing. I wasn't going to be doing him a favor if I insisted that before he put any word on paper he first had to figure out the topic of each paragraph, and then shape a sentence about that topic. Only afterwards could he proceed with the rest of the paragraph. This was going to lead to tears and little else.

As a matter of fact, a few more sleepless nights and I decided: forget the essay. I was going to ask Simon to write reports. I would use language he comprehends. Each week he would have to report on, or tell the story of, one president. Forget five paragraphs--begin with three. Furthermore, drop the topic or thesis or analytical or opinionated sentence for now. I would get him to identify excellent topic sentences in the writing of others by asking: “What's the most important sentence in this paragraph?” But when it came to Simon's writing, I wouldn't mention it. For now.

Instead, we would focus heavily on getting the right information into each paragraph. In science Simon has spent much time learning to separate items by their characteristics, studying categories, taxonomies, animal kingdoms. For starters, Simon would focus on categorizing all the information, thinking of paragraphs merely as organizational categories.

So July ended and the school year began. The first presidential biography he read was George Washington by Mike Venezia.

“Simon, now that you have read about George Washington, you need to write a report about him. You're in fifth grade.”

“But, Mom, you're killing me--I hate writing!”

“Let's begin by writing down all the things you know about Washington. You talk. I'll write.”

He came up with eighteen bits of information.

“How could you organize all this information? How would you organize the story of this president? You can't begin your report with his death; then mention he had wooden teeth; then say he was the first president. That would be so confusing. How could you organize the information to tell Washington's story?”

“From the beginning, Mom. Don't you know? He was born in 1732.”

It took just minutes to get Simon to come up with categories. One category was going to be Washington's life before he became president. A second category was what happened once he was president. These two categories would make up his first and second paragraphs. I then urged Simon to think of a third category, something he'd learned in his reading about Washington that most people might not know. This third category would lead to a third and final paragraph.

“Think of your readers, Simon. Always think of your readers. You want to give them a reward, something extra and unexpected--a surprise--at the end of your report. It's like a treat, a yummy dessert you're offering them for patiently reading through all your words. Mom loves reading good essays because they always have something in them I did not know, or had not thought about. And that makes my mind go: Wow! What's your wow bit of information about Washington. ”

Simon was quiet for a minute.

“Well, Washington was huge, super tall, very funny. He was a good dancer, and people liked him a lot.”

I pulled out a $1.00 bill. “Does this guy look like he's funny?”

“He looks boring and mean,” and after another few seconds Simon added, “and P.S., maybe also short.”

“So, do you think your readers would be glad they read your report because they learned something new?”

“I think so.”

“I think so, too.”

That was five months ago. Last week Simon wrote an essay on Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president. Simon wrote about how Franklin Pierce had many family tragedies: all his children died—in case you didn't know.

III

Suggestions

Ask your children to write every day. Do copy-work if writing does not come easy at first. But make sure they write. The only way to master writing is by writing.

Read. Read daily. Read good stuff. Every day, if possible, take a paragraph of something that has been read that day and take it apart. Ask questions. What is this paragraph about? How do you know? What is the most important sentence in this paragraph? Why? Is the author expressing an opinion in this paragraph, and if so, where?

Have your child tell you (narrate) what he has read. Have him tell you the story of his reading. This is an invaluable pre-writing skill. You cannot write a report on a book you read if you cannot report on it verbally.

Forget the five paragraph essay and all that comes with it—thesis statements and topic sentences. Don't introduce them until 9th grade. They will take all the pleasure out of writing.

Once your child can make it through a handful of paragraphs, have her write reports. To order the information, have her come up with categories and then write a paragraph for each category. For example, if your child is writing a book report, she would organize her report around categories such as theme, plot, character, etc. If she's writing about a historical figure or event, the categories would be dictated by chronology. If she's writing about manatees, she would categorize the information by topics: type of animal, habitat, food source, etc. If your child has thought through the categories and has a history of narrating information, she will have little trouble shaping paragraphs that will naturally have a topic sentence buried in them. Children want to tame and master the information they have learned. They demonstrate that mastery with a topic sentence. “Manatees are herbivores.” “Because of Winn-Dixie is a novel set in Florida.”

As for the essay: By 9th grade, once your child has written hundreds of reports, begin writing essays. The main difference between a report and an essay is that a report reports on a particular topic, while an essay asks a question about that topic—it is an instrument of inquiry.

Forget the thesis statement in the opening paragraph—if you give a thesis statement, there is not enough incentive to continue reading. Instead, formulate a question in your head that you want to answer. Once you have the question, begin your essay by explaining the background to your question. “Over half a million people died during the American Civil War, etc., etc.” Then ask your question: “In these pages, I would like to attempt to answer the question: Was the Civil War avoidable?” You can follow up with related questions: “Specifically, was there anything Lincoln could have done differently?” And then you proceed to answer the question. You give the historical context. You report on your research. You evaluate the information. You try to come up with an answer.

Remember that essays are attempts. You do not have to answer all the questions you raise. You can end by stating that many issues in your essay will remain unanswered. Trust me, most good essays do not completely answer the questions they raise. However, they do give their reader at least one interesting insight. This is the type of essay your child will have to write in college.

Read essays written by great essayists. There are various collections. Read essays in The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly—that is where the great essayists of today publish their work.

Last words: Take it slow. If possible, write daily. Remind your kids to have fun and to create writing that is fun to read. Writing should not be torture.

On the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Instruments of Torture

2009-12-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

(This is the first part of what will be at least a two-part essay. Part II will be posted next week.)

I should put my academic background and prejudices on the table from the get-go. Although I now refer to myself in official documents as a “homemaker,” and otherwise I'm homeschooling my eleven-year old son at the end of a cul-de-sac in Miami, I have, in decades past, done my share of hard labor, teaching freshmen composition at colleges in the Boston area. I say “hard labor” for a reason: for the most part, I hated it.

I hated it because every two weeks I went home with a stack of essays I was supposed to read, correct, and grade, praising what had been done well, suggesting ways to make the writing better. Reading them, I would be overwhelmed by a flood of feelings: endless boredom, frustration, rage, utter indifference, utter helplessness. How was I going got get these students to write essays that I, or anyone else, might want to read?

The papers were plagued by grammar, spelling, punctuation, logic, and attribution problems, as well as a predilection for passive verbs (boring) and abstract nouns (even more boring), but those were minor issues compared to the fact that at least half of what came my way--no matter what the instructions were--were five paragraph essays.

Sometimes each paragraph had been bloated to the length of a page; sometimes the structure had been expanded to absorb ten paragraphs; but the rhetorical tool at the core of so many of these essays, whether discussing a story, a poem, or presenting a research topic was almost invariably the same—that dreadful thing taught in American schools: the five-paragraph essay.

This is what the five-paragraph essay written by too many hard-working, well indoctrinated, eager to please college freshmen reads like:

Paragraph I: Abraham Lincoln was a great president for three reasons.
Paragraph II: Reason 1 expanded
Paragraph III: Reason 2 expanded
Paragraph IV: Reason 3 expanded
Paragraph V: In conclusion, Abraham Lincoln was a great president.

The five-paragraph essay is first presented in the fourth grade. After eight years of steady practice and brainwashing, the above is what most freshmen produce: a padded, puffed-up, and self-satisfied tautology. In case you haven't reviewed your terms of logic this week, a tautology is the repetition of meaning, using dissimilar words to say the same thing twice. In brief: A equals A. Lincoln was a great president. Here are three reasons why. Therefore, Lincoln was a great president. The essay unsurprisingly ends exactly where it began.

The best of these essays would get a B-. Invariably, the recipient would make his way to my office and either livid or in tears let me know that he had been at the top of his high school class in Cleveland or Atlanta or Buffalo. He had never gotten a B-. Ever. And, Professor Franklin, Abraham Lincoln was a great president, wasn't he?

Where to begin?

When Galileo was about to be tried for heresy in Rome in 1633, he was first taken down to a dungeon and shown the instruments of torture that he would get to know better if he did not recant. So what did he do? Being a smart fellow, he gave the powers that be what they wanted.

I think of Galileo when I think of kids learning to write in an American school. By fourth grade, every one of them has been shown the instruments of torture; all of them know the price of not doing what they are told—they will be held back. Teachers “teach the test” and the five-paragraph essay, and kids learn the test and master the art of writing tautologies.

Galileo comes to mind not only because, like him, students clearly come to know the price of disobedience, but also because the five-paragraph essay has more in common with a confession induced by torture, than with the essay as it was envisioned by Cicero, Plutarch, Bacon, and Montaigne. In the five-paragraph essay, the student demonstrates (under duress) that she has been a good girl, that she has learned her lessons, that she has done her research and knows three reasons why Lincoln was a good president.

But the essay is not an instrument that is meant to perform and perpetuate indoctrination. It is, first and foremost, an instrument of inquiry. (The word “essay” actually means “attempt.”) Its present day format is very much the product of the Renaissance, a rhetorical tool that attempts to move knowledge forward in ways radical and disobedient, celebrating the individual and all that he or she is capable of. The essay might rely on what is known already, as the Renaissance painters and scholars relied enthusiastically on classical antiquity, but the thrust of the essay is into the unexplored, into new knowledge, into radical new ways of thinking and perceiving.

So what does that mean when it comes to writing and teaching the essay? For starters, forget a five-paragraph format. Forget the cookie-cutter formulations bequeathed by No Child Left Behind. If you're a homeschooling parent reading this, if you're homeschooling because you do not want your child to only “learn the test,” have the courage to also let go of the five-paragraph essay. It's not a writing instrument used by an educated and inquiring mind.

If you think that a liberal arts college might be in your child's future, realize that the first thing that will happen when he takes Comp. 101 is that some younger version of me will beat the five-paragraph essay out of him with a two-by-four, if he's lucky.

Not only will he be hurt and confused, but he will have wasted time. Instead of spending his school-years proving that he was a good boy who had done the reading, his mind could have been in training, questioning, inquiring, writing.

(To be continued.)

What We Talk About When We Walk Around In Venice

2009-12-06T07:41:00.000-08:00

These are the things we talk about about while walking around Venice with Simon:

~Is Venice going to drown? How can we stop global warming? Are they going to rescue the treasures? Is Miami going to dissappear into the sea? Maybe we should buy a boat.

"Our" canal--Rio dei Carmini

~Is Italy a dictatorship? Why are things so expensive? Is Berlusconi a tyrant? Why do the dinosaurs that we can buy in America in a dollar shop for $1.oo cost Euro 8.00? Are we sure Berlusconi is not a tyrant? Italy might have a revolution if toys are so expensive--in America they had a revolutionary war because of taxes.

~Why do people not like Jews? Why did they have to live in a ghetto?

George and Simon talking in the ghetto.

~Why did people come to Venice long ago? Why do Mom and Dad like coming to Venice? Why do we have to look at so many crucifixions and churches? Aren't we Jewish? Why do we have to hunt down every painting by the Bellini brothers--Gentile and Giovanni? Why does Dad like all these Madonnas painted by Giovanni Bellini? Are they really that beautiful?

~How many days until we can go home? Is our dog OK?

~How was Guiseppe Garibaldi like George Washington? In what way were Garibaldi, Washington, and Simon Bolivar similar? If you can answer that question, you get an ice-cream.

~Can I have another ice-cream?

Simon checking a picture he took of Garibaldi's statue.

~Did they ever let people out of the dungeon in the Doge's Palace? What happened to them? Why did they write on the walls? Did anyone give them a blanket?

~Why did they resettle all the glass and metal workers to Murano? It was a smart way to avoid having a great fire, like the London and Chicago fires--don't you think? Look at those cityscapes of Venice done by Carpaccio--do you see all the chimneys? In everyone of those buidings, someone was making a fire--isn't it amazing that Venice didn't go up in flames?

~Venice didn't burn, but I think it's going to drown. Don't you, Mom? Really?

~Why do we have to go to Joseph Brodsky's grave, if he was just a poet? Why is he buried in Venice, if he was Russian and lived in New York after the Russians kicked him out? Why did he love Venice so much?

~Can we have pizza for dinner?

Something we don't talk about:

How hard it is to leave.

"Our" Campo Santa Margherita, a few steps from our rented apartment.

Thanksgiving in Venice

2009-11-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is always hard for us. The holiday does not mean that much to me--I wasn't raised with Thanksgiving, and the menu is too full of things sweet and mashed for my taste. Moreover, we have no extended family to speak of that we could share it with. Most of my family is abroad, George's parents are dead, and his older kids have tended to spend it with their mom. Now that they are all grown-up, they often visit the families of their significant others, American families that have strong Thanksgiving traditions.

So years ago we figured out that the end of November was a perfect time to go abroad. The flights are at their rock-bottom cheapest, and you can bargain if you are renting an apartment. Again and again we plan to go to some new place in the world, and invariably we end up, again, in Venice, taking a place far away from the hoopla of tourists. For a week, or more, we come and on a very tight budget pretend we live here, belong here, are Venezians. We play the game so well that by now, although we speak almost no Italian, tourists stop to ask as for directions.

Above: This is building in which we rent a small two bedroom.

Left: This is the courtyard you enter once you have opened the main portico with a huge key. It's very quiet.

Below: After using another big key on a door off the courtyard, you get to "our" little house. We have a small wintry courtyard of our own. "Our" little place occupies a couple of rooms on the first two floors. Did I mention it's very quiet?

Why Venice? It's the most beautiful place on earth--for me. It's so very old. It has survived fires, plagues, endless wars, rising winter tides. There is so much to see, to think about, to feel. The city is--improbably--built on water. Improbably, it resists destruction. Wandering for days around its alleys and passages, through its churches and museums, I tend to perceive marble seeping into my spine. I feel stong, invincible. If Venice can hang in there, so can I. One's own silly troubles seem just that--silly. It helps that there is fresh and bountiful food of beckoning colors to be bought at open-air markets where the vendors are friendly, and that the wine is cheap, and that the air smells of salt and frozen seaweed and is full of the warm sound of churchbells. Here, I'm always, first and foremost, happy.

For Simon the trip is not all joy thus far. He says he is homesick for all things American: his friends, his home, his toys, the Florida sunshine, Burger King. He's a bit like the American tourist from hell. Back in Florida the supermarkets are bigger, he says, as are the refrigerators, washing-machines, bathrooms, restaurants, roads, etc. And, of course, the TV sucks. If he hears English spoken by anyone, he hits upon them all smiles: "Where do you come from? I'm from Miami. My name is Simon." At a restuarant in Murano, he said to the waiter, "You look just like Millard Fillmore, do you know that?" Simon was right--he did. I found myself struggling to explain in a mix of English and Spanish to the confused and apprehensive waiter, who didn't know if he had been praised or offended, who Fillmore was. "Un presidente Americano. Un buono uomo," I kept repeating, hoping he understood. But by nightfall, Simon will acknowledge he had a good day. It helps that you can get a small gelato for less than 2 Euro.

And it helps that in this town, where so little is recognizable to him, where there is so little he desires--there are no American bookstores, or a Gamestop, or a cinema, or a Video Arcade type place--he found sailboats. Simon has been learning to sail and was delighted to look down from the bellfry of San Giorgio Maggiore--and there they were.

I, in turn, who desire so little in Miami, am full of wishes and appetites: for Pistachio cake, and marzipan, and that apartment at the top of so many buildings. If you look closely, you can see they have a small roof-top garden.

I daydream how in that apartment I would be endlessly happy, eating little peaches shaped of marzipan. One feels so alive when one is full of wants. I, who hardly ever have my feet out of Birkenstocks, today saw a pair of boots, and a flashy purple handbag, and red mittens. I wanted them all. None of these items, except for the pistachio cake, will be bought. But it is lovely to covet them for a day.

Photographs

2009-11-22T16:08:00.001-08:00

A Photograph of Zachary Taylor.

Steadily, Simon continues to read a presidential biography every week: Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce. Simon notices, about each one, that he, too, could not fix the problem of slavery.

“They're not as smart as Abraham Lincoln. They're not as courageous,” Simon declares. This week, reading about Franklin Pierce, he exclaims with genuine excitement: “Oh goody, Pierce is the fourteenth president. Only two to go until Lincoln. Lincoln will fix everything.”

Oh, goody. I'm delighted by Simon's excitement. I didn't know he had been keeping such careful count, or that he had fully comprehended how all pervasive the problem of slavery was, how it was the growling grizzly bear in the Oval Office and in Congress for every administration, somehow kept appeased by a diet of compromises.

But Simon does understand--the south insisted on slavery, the north wanted it abolished, yet year in, year out, decade in, decade out, the Union survived due to the imperfect but devoted work of this group of presidents.

Or, to be honest, that's what I understand. Simon gets that there was a BIG problem, that the BIG problem needed to be fixed, and that “forever” went by without it getting fixed.

Grown-ups value compromises. Eleven-year-old boys who have worked their way through stacks of superhero comics, as well as all things Greek, want someone to walk in with an army of 300 and fight to the death of all, if necessary, and change the course of history

* * *

The series of biographies Simon has been reading, Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents by Mike Venezia, is full of illustrations: painted portraits, etchings, maps, period prints and posters; however, beginning with these presidents, with only the exception of William Henry Harrison, the biographies invariably include a photographic portrait. How does my thoughtful, deep-feeling son respond to these black and white pictures, pictures that are not heroic portraits, pictures that show lined and wise faces in the flesh, in need of a haircut, and in rumpled clothes?

"Mom, he is so very ugly. He is so old. I don't like him. I don't like him at all. Actually, I think I hate him.”

Hate him? Really? When I pursue the question--“Why?”--I get an answer that reiterates what he has already said.

Somewhat irritated, and a little loud he says: “I told you already, Mom--are you deaf, or something?--because he's very old and ugly.”

I point out Zachary Taylor's military accomplishments, or Millard Fillmore's success in getting Japan to open up to trade.

"Yes, Mom, that's true. But they're old and ugly.”

So this is what I've been thinking about this week, working in my yard when I've had a minute--it's planting season in Miami. Why would Simon say that?

Yes, TV is to blame. From the cartoons he watches, he learns that surfaces seem to matter a lot.

And it is his age. Having recently become aware of just how young he is, he wants to have some power over the world, and naming its imperfections gives him a fleeting illusion of control. Again and again, he impulsively takes aggressive language out for a spin, sees what it feels like to flex your mots injuste muscles. So-and-so is old, or dumb, or mean, or fat, or ugly, or has bad judgment. Or worse. A moron. A turd.

And it is the kids his age he hangs with. They're all nice, yet every third word out of their mouths is an adjective describing something or someone with utter contempt: ugly, lame, boring, stupid.

It's a full-time job just to fight this verbal self-assertion, to talk about respect, generosity, kindness; to point out that no adult in our lives talks this way; to speak of the character of heroes—none of them called someone a moron; to remind him what it feels like to be on the receiving end of nastiness; to ask him what kind of world he wants to live in.

But I don't think that all the above adds up to an answer that explains why Simon responds so negatively to these presidents. I think the answer lies in the fact that of these presidents there are photographs.

Zachary Taylor, like William Henry Harrison, was a war hero with an astounding track record. He fought wars against the Indians, the British, and the Mexicans. Often Zachary Taylor was outnumbered. Usually, rifle in hand, he fought right alongside his men.

Of Harrison there are no photographs that Simon has seen. But he has seen one of Taylor--see above. In that picture, he looks like the guy at your local supermarket who sweeps up the broken jar of tomato sauce, should it slip out of your hand. Taylor doesn't resemble a hero. He looks like a man who has had a rough life, and he wears that life on his face.

I find myself pouring over the photographic portraits--can't keep my eyes off them. These men were human beings: tired, spent, dignified, disheveled, strong, full of feeling and breath.

It is their very humanity Simon finds troubling, I think. He hasn't figured out yet that there are no super-heroes with super-human powers, only human beings--like Simon, like the aging presidents in the photographs, like the guy at the supermarket.

Moral Passion

2009-11-15T14:50:00.000-08:00

“I'm a bit sad that you dwell so much on the sad and depressing stuff of history,” my mother wrote me this week. Mother is smart as a whip, and she cares deeply about Simon.

She's right--the readings last week were high on the sadness and horror scale: all consuming fires on two continents, the Plague, doom and destruction. That combination of misery wasn't on purpose—that's where we were in the textbooks that week: the Great Chicago Fire for American history, and the Great London Fire followed by the Plague for world history.

“You probably just don't mention the positive, the creative, the artistic and technical breakthroughs,” Mother went on to write, adding, ”But they are so important. Don't forget them. How about journeys of discovery?"

Good questions--how about all the good stuff in history? The discoveries, the great feats of technology and construction, the grand achievements in the arts?

Many are covered, wonderfully so, in this year's primary textbook for American history, The American Story—100 True Tales from American History by Jennifer Armstrong. We've read stories about the building of canals and railroads; the discovery of a dinosaur in New Jersey; the finding of gold in California; the development of the clipper ship; the reconnaissance balloon corps used during the Civil War; the introduction of the steam-engine into mining; and Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone, among others.

But none of these stories interests Simon as much as the ones that involve a tragedy, a searing injustice, or a unforgivable lapse in judgment. The violent and the shameful moments in history lead to longer conversations, to conversations that get continued over lunch and dinner, to big questions that rise unbidden from the back of the car on the way to the supermarket to buy lettuce and detergent.

“Mom--I have a question."

“What's your question?”

“Why do some people kill good presidents?"

And as we wander through the aisles of our local Publix, he turns and says: “What do you think was worse? World War I or World War II?"

Sometimes his questions leave me breathless because I'm so unprepared. He will have worked his way through an audiobook on his own, and I'll have no idea what historical moment he's been cogitating about.

Why do the dark moments in history take such hold of Simon's imagination? He's only eleven. He still sleeps with a nightlight and his arm around two stuffed polar bears called Erik and Dora, much loved presents from my mother.

A couple of years ago, when we studied Christopher Columbus for the first time, Simon kept going to the globe and tracing the daunting westward route to India that led instead to America. This year, everything has changed—not only has Simon grown almost four inches in the last twelve months, he has grown in ways I'm slow to perceive. This year, when the Columbus story was covered again in world history, all Simon wanted to talk about is smallpox and other diseases the Europeans exported wholesale to the Americas.

The last few days we read about Alexander Graham Bell and about Custer at Little Big Horn, but the technological wonder of the telephone could not compete with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer's failure to listen to his Indian scouts. They told him not to attack the Cheyenne and Lakota. They told him he was vastly outnumbered. But Custer attacked anyway. He was going to teach the Indians a lesson. Custer--and every single one of his soldiers--was killed.

“What a stupid moron!” says Simon with utter indignation--moron is a favorite word these days thanks to The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. “Why didn't he listen to his scouts? And couldn't Custer count? Didn't he go to school? I can count. I wouldn't have attacked.” Simon is outraged.

The truth is of late is he is outraged a lot. Three days ago, for world history, we read about Louis XIV. Louis XIV was decreed another moron. “Why did he buy so much golden stuff when the peasants were hungry?"

In Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw suggests that the first great passion that we feel as children is not love--but the moral sense. Suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere, children are inflamed with moral passion, and from that passion the adult is born. As one of his characters says:

All the other passions were in me before; but they were idle and aimless...grotesque and ridiculous to the mature intelligence. When they suddenly began to shine like newly lit flames it was by no light of their own, but by the radiance of the dawning moral passion. That passion dignified them, gave them conscience and meaning, found them a mob of appetites and organized them into an army of purposes and principles. My soul was born of that passion.

Late last week, I came upon Simon in bed looking at a book, a hardcover, not a comic book—those were strewn on the floor. His head was lying on his stuffed polar bears. In his hand he was holding a book I had just bought about the Civil War and had left on the coffee table, unsure as to when to introduce it, Photo by Brady—A Picture of the Civil War, also by Jennifer Armstrong. The book, pitched to teenagers, tells the story of the civil war through the pictures taken by Matthew Brady and the photographers he hired to make a record of the Civil War.

“Come here, Mom. Look at this. Look--the rebels stole the soldiers' shoes."

I sit down on the side of his bed and together we look at a picture of the dead at Gettysburg.

“They stole their shoes, Mom. Do you see? That's not fair."

Rust Stains

2009-11-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

This week we read about disasters, and more, and more—disasters. First, there was the Great Chicago Fire, and then the swarms of locusts that swept through the mid-west in the 1870s. That pesky omnivorous scourge didn't just devour everything green, everything planted with such care by pioneering settlers--crops , orchards, gardens--but also sheared the wool right off the backs of sheep.

Our readings this week for world history were also replete with calamity: Oliver Cromwell and his bloody Protectorate, followed by the Restoration of Charles II, a time filled with the silence of the plague, the silence of the dead and dying--all you could hear were the funeral bells tolling, followed by the deafening roar of the 1666 Great Fire of London, which destroyed four-fifths of the city.

I thought Simon would have trouble handling all this suffering, but that aspect of the calamities did not interest him very much. Instead, he focused single-mindedly on rewriting history, on fixing the problem, on making sure such catastrophes do not happen again.

He said: “Well, Mom, if Chicago had been built out of bricks, the fire wouldn't have happened. Mom, what is our house built out of?”

He said: “I think if I had a farm in Kansas, I would put a net over it. That would work against locusts, wouldn't it, Mom?”

He said: “Mom, if the plague came to Miami, I would bring all the cats from all over America to Florida. I think all the pythons in the Everglades could also help. They would kill the rats that are covered in plague fleas, and that way people would not die."

The next time I toss and turn at 3 AM questioning why I'm spending so much time on history, sometimes at the expense of math and science, which are not studied with exactly the same enthusiasm, I hope I remember the net spread over acres and acres of Kansas farmland, or the rat-eating pythons of the Everglades. Simon is, if nothing else, learning from the past.

As I've told him hundreds of times, I'm so grateful he ended up in our family—just think of it, by some act of magic or fate, he could have been born into another nice family, maybe one in Italy, or Korea, or Wyoming. We would have never met. Instead, Simon ended up born to us. And that's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Should shit happen, I've got the kid who thinks of rat-eating pythons on my team.

* * *

Simon's response to these catastrophes led me not only to muse about the delight and privilege of having him in our lives, it made me aware again of the fact that Simon is an American--a 100% American boy.

At the risk of of generalizing too much, let me try to explain. I think of Americans as viewing disasters as opportunities: opportunities for action, and if action is not possible--learning. There is a relentless optimism, a go-get'em, go-do-it certainty that the impossible can be achieved, even against hopeless odds. And if all else fails, if all you're stuck with is lemons, as they say in this country: make lemonade; make the best of it; make sure it doesn't happen again.

I, on the other hand, when faced with disasters--think of other disasters. I think of wars, genocide, fires, military coups. I think of lives lost. I find myself so consumed by the lugubrious meanderings of my mind that I'm incapable of wrapping my head around the disaster, and am, initially, clueless as to how to begin to fix or improve the problem. (If there is a crisis, you should think twice about having me on your team.) I lack that American positivism. I tend to go to some dark place first. But then my parents were Simon's age in 1945. Their fathers had died. They lived in urban centers that had been, for the most part, bombed into utter ruins.

That year, when the Russians marched into Berlin, they pillaged what was left and raped more than 100,000 women in that city alone, many repeatedly, as punishment for what the Germans had done in Stalingrad. When they came to my grandmother's apartment, which they entered by rifle-butting a panel of the front door, she hid inside a pull-out couch, or so she said. Afterwords, she discovered that they had ransacked the place and had shat in the bathtub and the sink.

She told me this story in the 1980s. I was offering to remove the rust stains in her tub. In America, they had a product that could do the job; I was sure I could find something similar in Berlin. She insisted the stains would never come out. Not rust. Excrement. Die Russen. They had ruined the tub forever. There was no way to change her mind.

We have stains in our tub here in Miami. Five years ago, we had to redo the plumbing in the kitchen and for a couple of months we did dishes in the tub. Something metal scraped against the enamel and the stains will not come out without an enamel repair kit from Home Depot. Day in, day out, I shower in that tub. When I notice the stains, I think of my grandmother, who died a few months before Simon was born. She was a nice lady. Marie was her name. She read me all of Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales during her visits to Peru long ago. Year in, year out, I fail to make the repairs.

Cowboys

2009-11-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

This week we learned that cattle drives began right after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, people were very hungry, and longhorns were brisket and pot pies on legs. With some help, they could get themselves to a railroad, which might be a few states away, and then via rail to the nearest meat-packing plant, where Armour & Co. put them into cans.

I must confess that for decades I thought that cattle drives were about exercising the cows, or getting them to greener pastures, or maybe to another owner. I didn't realize cattle drives were the beginning of the cattle's demise--in a drive today, a can tomorrow, in someone's tummy after that. I didn't know that the history of the drives was intricately linked to the devastation wrought by that war.

* * *

It was Halloween this weekend. In the spirit of our studies, I try to convince Simon to go as a cowboy. No way.

"Mom, that's for little kids. I'm going to go as a criminal with my gun-machine.”

“It's machine-gun, Simon, and you're not going to take it out for Halloween.”

“It just shoots soft pellets, Mom, and I'm not going to aim the gun at anyone. Just up into the air.”

We have a long talk. I speak of our neighborhood being our community, I remind him of the spirit of Halloween, I mention the many younger kids up the street. I tell him that due to terrorist attacks—some of which he knows about—people are scared. I suggest that he dress up as a criminal from history—maybe Henry VIII.

"Nobody knows who that is, Mom,” he says impatiently. Sadly, he is probably right. “Remember, Mom, they don't know who the Vikings were.” Six month ago Simon made a Viking ship and showed it to the neighborhood boys who were out on their scooters and bikes—all public-school fourth and fifth graders. They had never heard of the Vikings.

So we agree he can go trick-or-treating as a criminal but without the gun. He dresses all in black: black gloves, black sunglasses, black tights, and slips a plastic dagger into the pocket of his black jacket—a man in black. He looks more adorable than dangerous, but George and I let him know he definitely has become a terrifying crook, a thief maybe: “Do us a favor, Mr. Thief--stay away from our house.”

It is not easy to raise a boy in this seductive, consumerist, violent culture. When it comes to eleven-year-old boys, that culture takes the form--primarily--of aim-and-shoot video-games, weaponry and paramilitary equipment, and a steady barrage of cartoons and movies where the heroes have mastered the art of treating others with utter contempt. Stay out of my way, moron.

Earlier in the week, Simon had attended a homeschooling Halloween event. He had dressed up as a detective, in George's fedora and my raincoat, a costume he'd come up with in a jiffy, after I reminded him that kids would be dressing up. Looking at himself in the mirror, he said: "This is great." And yet, once we got to the party, a kid called him a dork. Simon was not about to get put down again. He, too, has learned what the culture's expectations are. So on the actual eve of Halloween, he went around the neighborhood armed, ready for combat. Make my day, worm-face.

George and I work hard trying to teach Simon that you can have a great life without being like everyone else, without buying the latest whatever--gaming-console, I-pod, I-phone, cellphone, video-game, weapon, Transformer, sneaker, designer cap, skateboard, t-shirt, or back-pack. Sometimes I feel like I'm pushing back a flood with my bare hands.

We're not nut-case radicals—Simon has a small arsenal of play-weapons, a DS, and access to a TV, but his screen time is limited, and, until recently, play-dates could not involve screens of any kind. So far so good, although I should confess he has a roomful of Lego, and if I can't immediately locate an audiobook at the library, I buy it. It's not like Simon is deprived.

For now, Simon and his friends are happy to play with Lego, or draw, or run around in the back-yard with swords, or play Battleship, or cards. For now. For now, Simon comes back from the homes of other kids and notices they have few toys, only video-games. For now, we have managed to keep his desires at bay and shape days and weeks that are fulfilling. For now, Lego and books and paper and colored pencils—and his screen-time at the end of the day—are enough. From time to time he calls me an “evil mother” because he cannot watch more TV. But then he laughs: “Just kidding.”

But this won't last. He will be called a dork again—and again. And he will try to fix it by being like everybody else. And being like everybody else will involve buying something—a gaming-console, an aim-and-shoot video game, angry music, something that oozes contempt.

I'm not exactly ready for what is coming, but I recognize it for what it is. Small consolation. I just hope I have a light touch, and some humor, when it shows up.

* * *

Cowboys. My father loved--and loves--cowboys, Westerns, John Wayne. When I was a child and an old John Ford flick was on, I could always bamboozle him into letting us watch TV.

What my father loves about Hollywood cowboys is what I find so appealing about Buddhism. The cowboys from all those movies owned nothing: a horse, a canteen, a bed-roll, a rifle--the miles of this great country stretched out in front of them. There were no fences. The blue sky was all theirs. Having nothing and wanting nothing, they were free. And as Buddhists (and all Hollywood cowboys) know--if you need nothing, own nothing, desire nothing, you will not suffer. (Or, at least, you won't suffer as much.) How do you teach that to a child at the beginning of the 21st century?

________________________________________

My father's favorite cowboy song is Don't Fence Me In. I always thought this was a song that went back to the 19th century. Researching it this week, I discovered it was written by Cole Porter for a movie. There are various wonderful versions of the song on youtube. The one by David Byrne is a favorite.

Horses and Drums and Stuffed Carnivores

2009-10-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

There are two versions of the Saint-Gaudens Shaw Memorial. One is in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. . The other is in the Boston Commons--after all, Captain Shaw's black regiment was organized in Massachusetts, before going south to fight in the Civil War. Although I lived in Boston for sixteen years and visited the Commons dozens of times, I have no memory of ever actually looking at it. The Civil War is a very distant, long-forgotten rumble, if you live up north. But when we moved to Washington, D.C. in 2002, that war was with us.

On many weekends we took Simon to the National Gallery: it was free, you could bring a stroller, the cafeteria served sushi for us and fries for the stinkernoodle--a perfect outing. The Saint-Gaudens is off to the left near one of the main entrances. Often, we didn't get to see much of anything else. Simon was four. He loved that sculpture. “Horses and Drums,” he named it. Again and again, George and I would point out the soldier's caps, their bed-rolls, weapons, how young they are, how serious their sad faces—even the horse seems worried. They are going off to war. Overhead, a sleepy and not particularly reassuring angel keeps vigil.

“Don't touch!” the guard would invariably yell, not knowing what to do with this little white boy who showed up every couple of weeks and always got too close, wanting to get into the sculpture, maybe even march away with Shaw's Mighty 54th regiment .

“M'am, I cannot tell you this again--you need to get your boy to step back!”

If it was my job to guard the Saint-Gaudens, I, too, would feel protective. Sometimes, I would sit on the bench and just look at it—the scale of it alone knocks your breath out—while Simon scampered around in front of it counting bed-rolls, caps, weapons. Within two months of leaving Boston, more than half of the soldiers, including Shaw, would be dead. We didn't mention this to Simon, but George and I thought about it. Simon, in turn, thought of bed-rolls and canteens. He wanted to try sleeping on one and drinking from the other. He wished for a drum, a gun, and maybe a real horse—a pony would do. At four, war is full of thrilling danger and exciting possibilities.

Now Simon is eleven. The threatening thunder of war has been a part of our readings from the beginning of this school-year. Many of the Founding Fathers were against slavery, even Jefferson who owned many. The South, and all its representatives were for it, and for states that were strong and independent—they feared a central government that would tell them what to do, like forcing them to end slavery. In the meantime, tobacco and cotton made the South rich and reshaped the economy of the world. The pastry shops in England were full of sweet cakes made with Caribbean sugar. And all over England, rooms were so thick with tobacco smoke that many of us in the twenty-first century would have had to step outside to vomit. But back then, with a piece of cake in hand and a pipe between their lips, who was going to promote abolitionism?

Studying slavery and the Civil War is the first time Simon has had to deal with complexity in a sustained manner. No longer can he group historical figures into just “bad” and “good.” Jefferson was a slave-owner, but he wrote a great Declaration of Independence, and he was a terrific president. Andrew Jackson was a war hero, even though he owned over 400 slaves by the end of his life.

* * *

One day last week, a buddy of Simon's came to spend the afternoon with us. His mother and I had made a deal—the buddy could come over if he was willing to do some work with us.

“No biggie,” said the friend, as he stepped into my car at noon when I picked him up.

“Great,” I said. “We'll talk about the Civil War.”

“I know everything about the Civil War,” he said, buckling himself in. He just turned eleven. “You know, Ulysses S. Grant became president after the war.”

“No,” said Simon, my little historical know-it-all. “Johnson became president when Lincoln was shot. After that came that guy—Ulysses S. Grant.” Simon has been looking ahead in the president biographies we have on the shelf, and memorizing a chart of all the presidents that hangs on the wall.

“You're right,” said the friend, “but you know what? I know how Lincoln was shot.”

“How?” I ask. In the back-seat, both boys have taken our their Nintendo's and have buried their faces in the screens.

Simon's friend, not one to lift his face once a screen is in front of him, looks up and our eyes meet in the rear-view mirror: “Well, he was shot right in the ear—right inside it.” He lifts his index to his ear to show me. “First, he lost his hearing, so he couldn't hear anymore. Then the bullet moved into his brain, so he couldn't move his body. Then he couldn't talk or remember anything—not even the Civil War. It took many hours to die. He suffered, but I think he was lucky because he couldn't even feel it--that's how the brain works. That's how he died.”

“I didn't know Lincoln was shot right in the ear,” I say. (I was pretty sure he wasn't—I thought it was a shot to the back of the head—but I keep mum.) “Thank's man, for telling me.”

The blow-by-blow is so imaginative and empathic, I find myself weaving the car through the streets of another beautiful day in Miami thinking of how deeply that dark and deadly war affects children this age. Simon's buddy had moved right into Lincoln's brain, trying to fathom what his last hours were like.

At the house, I attempt to establish how much the kids already know before I decide what I might teach them. Simon's friend has recently done a unit on the Civil War as part of his homeschooling curriculum. Simon, in turn, has spent hours looking at educational videos and listening to historical audiobooks.

To my amazement, these two pip-squeaks know everything that matters: why the war started, who the major players were, the biggest battles, complicated words and concepts like emancipation, abolitionist, the triangle trade. And they know so much more.

The friend explains to us that the war had to happen because the South needed slavery for its “economy to be profitable. They couldn't make a profit without free labor, you know.”

Simon, in turn, explains that when the war began, Abraham Lincoln asked Garibaldi to lead the Union forces. Garibaldi refused because early in the war Lincoln only “wanted to keep the states together; he was sort of a big coward in the beginning and wouldn't make the war a war to end slavery and all that stuff. Lincoln changed his mind later, but by then Garibaldi was busy.” (Simon learned about Garibaldi from George.)

“Well, you guys, ” I say, “I'm having trouble finding something you don't already know. How about the Union's balloon corps? If you were in a war and you had hot air balloons, a new technology back then, how would you use them?” So we sit on the couch and we read a story about Thaddeus Lowe and the Union Balloon Corps.

I could write a few paragraphs about how the boys know so much because they are home-educated. But the truth is both kids have an interest in history and have history geeks for parents—they would be exposed to this material whether they sat in a regular classroom or not.

They know so much about this topic because--on their own-- they've made an effort to master the material, to make sense of it, letting the facts, stories, and details marinate in their minds. They wonder how Lincoln died. They perseverate about poor decisions, and about concepts like coward and war hero. Unlike the many religious and territorial wars in Europe they've read about for world history, something real and comprehensible is at stake here. Slavery had to end.

I suggest they watch the short videos on brainpop about the Civil War. Simon knows how to access the site on his own, so I leave the guys alone for a few minutes with my lap-top. When I return to the living room, they've piled the couch full of stuffed animals. The friend is sprawled on top of them and has a stuffed shark in his arms. Sitting at the far end of the sofa is Simon, hugging his favorite polar bear in one arm and cradling the laptop in the other, turning it so his friend can see. I'm reminded that when Simon was younger, he once explained to me that when he gets sad or scared, he likes to "cuddle" with his "stuffed carnivores."

"They protect me.”

I'd been considering telling them of the 620,000 dead soldiers and the indeterminate number of civilian casulaties, more dead than in all the other wars America has fought put together. I want to tell them about the fields at Antietam, how they were covered ankle-deep in blood. I want to tell them about the Gatling gun and how it mowed down men and horses--I've been spending my evenings reading about the bloodshed. But seeing the boys on the couch, they seem so very young. And they know too much already. Time for a break. I remember I have some cones in the cabinet and ice-cream in the freezer.

I'm not much of a believer, but please, dear God, let these boys live their lives all the way through.

Over ice-cream cones, I make some decisions. We'll see the Shaw Memorial again--soon, either in Boston or D.C. We'll try to get to Gettysburg this year. Maybe next summer, when Simon is a little older, we'll open up a folding table and work our way through all the Civil War battles. We'll buy some tin or plastic soldiers, lots of them. We'll talk of military strategy. We'll talk of the dead.

Click on the link to go to the National Gallery website and learn more about the Shaw Memorial .

2009-10-18T18:11:00.001-07:00

Potato Chips

2009-10-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

I've never understood the appeal of those little things, a mouthful of crusty salt and oil. In the midst of the tales we read this week, stories about the gold-rush in California and some of what it wrought—the discovery of the redwood tree (tall and majestic), and the development of the Clipper sailing ship (speedy and crowned by countless cloud-white sails), allowing folks from all over the world to get to California ASAP to pan for gold—there was the story of the potato chip.

It was invented in Saratoga Springs—who knew? I thought it was bequeathed to the world by the English, one more example of their lousy cuisine, on a par with fish'n chips served up in a cone of day-old newspaper, or their mystery-meat pies. But it turns out potato chips are truly American. A cranky customer at a Saratoga eatery in the mid 1800s kept sending back his steak fries, claiming they were still raw inside. The chef, one George Crum, a somewhat touchy fellow, cooked up a dish of very thinly cut potatoes fried to a crisp, as if to say: “You wann'em cooked, you got'em.”

To everyone's amazement, they were a hit. Every joint in Saratoga started serving Saratoga chips—that's what they called them at first.

Simon's good for three or four, if there's absolutely nothing else to eat. I've tried to like them all my life. I've wanted to fit in and embrace various--if not all--things American. I love food, and all things that have to do with food. But Simon echoed how I felt about potato chips when I suggested we make some from scratch: “Why?”

* * *

My mother is a wonderful cook. As a child, I wondered if the girls who wanted to come over after school, came to hang out with me, or to eat my mother's goulash and her chocolate pudding.

In my parents' home, we ate at a set table, all together, for every meal. In Peru, and later in Brazil, the local German school started early and was over by one-fifteen. However bored I was while diagramming German sentences, there was always lunch to look forward to; however endless my homework, dinner was only a few hours away. And once at the table, we sat there for maybe an hour, or more, eating and chatting, nibbling on more dessert, while my parents drank coffee.

I started cooking early--I was eleven--making pancakes for girlfriends as an afternoon snack, served with butter and jam. By the time I went to college, I could roast a chicken and a leg of lamb. In my twenties and thirties, I had a weakness for men whose life centered around a kitchen and shared meals. Unemployed, decades older, burdened by a history of suicide attempts, married, or residing two continents way—if he cooked, I was interested. On the other hand, if he had nothing in his fridge, ate off paper plates, and had no dining room, that affair went nowhere, no matter that he was a doctor, drove a Benz, and was a hit with my parents. On our first date, George, all professorial shabby tweed and scuffed loafers, made a three course Chinese meal from scratch and served it with cold Tsingtao.

What I find hardest about living in America is that food so often occupies a trivial place in people's lives. Little effort is put into procuring, preparing, presenting, sharing, enjoying every meal of every day. The press has been full about all the reasons why—no need to repeat.

Still, I don't get it. I think of the dining room table as the center of my marriage and our family life. All special events turn around food. So-and-so is coming—what shall we make? Birthdays, holidays, weekends, anniversaries—salmon? asparagus? Prosecco? Most of my dearest friends have lives that turn around meals. Our affection for each other is expressed with food, the sharing of a few hours over bread and wine. Other ways of living seem sad to me. Something crucial--for me--is lacking. And I find myself pushing that sadness away, not letting people very close who do not share my gastronomic obsessions. Friendships without good food are like love affairs without sex—they end quicker than most, and if they last, they lack the same intensity, generosity, delight, loyalty, joy. All this to say, I feel like a very odd duck in this country, and my life in America has meant I have only a few friends.

But I began with the potato chip. Early in my first marriage, we went to spend Christmas with his parents. They were interesting and talented people, living in Maine in a home that had once been a tavern in the 1800s. From a drafty hallway, I called my parents in sunny Brazil to wish them a happy holiday. I had intended to keep it together and very brief—international calls were pricey back then. But hearing their voices, I began to cry. I complained about the food. No one had baked anything special; we had meat-loaf made with onion soup mix, I think, and English muffins. And in between sobs: “And, and, Mother, guess what they served as an appetizer on Christmas Eve?” I was so upset, I could barely get the words out: “Potato chips!”

To be fair, my first husband was deeply disturbed by my own parents upon first meeting them. “All they talk about is food!” he sputtered. “At the end of breakfast, they talk about lunch—who will buy it, cook it, serve it. At the end of lunch, they go on about dinner. For God's sake, we're people of the 20th century—not cannibals!”

I have so little control over most aspects of my life—jobs, friends, husbands, countries, children, youth, parents, health, wealth, even happiness—everything comes and goes. But meals—those I can control. I can set a table and around it gather the people I love. I can make something ever so simple--a casserole, a salad, a berry crisp. I can invite everyone to sit and eat. Whatever losses I've suffered, I forget. All that truly matters is right in front of me.

Servitude

2009-10-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

(Picture: Claudia's first communion--with her brother Peter, some friends, and Dionisia. Lima, Peru, 1969.)

In our learning about America, we have now reached the mid-1800s. From the emotional workout that were the Indian Wars, we've marched straight into the searing whip-lash of slavery. No happy slaves singing contentedly on the grand plantation—the textbook we use did not include such a story. Instead, this week we read about Henry Brown, a slave whose wife and children had been sold and taken away from him. In 1849, bereft and hopeless, he mailed himself to freedom in a box. Tightly confined in a large package, he went from Richmond, Virginia to Philadelphia, to an address manned by the Anti-Slavery Society.

There are many details to this story: what kind of box was used; how Henry survived inside the box; the length of the trip; the mismanagement of the postal service which ignored signs on the box that read: “Handle With Care. This Side Up.” Henry Brown wasn't “handled” with anything that resembled “care,” but he did make it.

The happy ending is irrelevant to Simon. He cannot be bamboozled by an upbeat twist in the plot. He doesn't care about Henry Brown, the grown-up, celebrating his freedom in Philadelphia.

“What about his children? How many did Henry Brown have? What were their names? How old were they? Who purchased them? Who took care of them? Did the kids miss their mother and father? They must have been so sad. What about the mom? Her heart was broken. Why don't they tell us how many children Henry Brown had? Just saying he had “children” is not fair. How many? Two? Eight? The author is not so smart. We need to know. Who bought the kids? What happened to them?”

In case I didn't hear him in his first barrage of questions, Simon asks again: “Mom, what happened to the kids?”

“Sweetie, I don't know. Let's hope their new owners were kind to them. Let's hope they got food and shelter. Let's hope they did not have to work too hard.”

“Yeah,” says Simon.

We lie there, on the day-bed, for a few minutes completely silent. I wrap my arm around him.

Although he's eleven, Simon has recently taken to bringing a stuffed rabbit to the day-bed, especially to our readings in American history. The word regression has crossed my mind.

Simon lifts the rabbit to my neck and makes kissing sounds. “Do you like my rabbit?” he asks.

“He's a very cute rabbit,” I say.

“You wouldn't really cook him with mustard--would you? Or give him away?”

I have been threatening to cook the pesky bunny rabbit aux moutarde and serve him up for dinner, or give him to my younger sister's small children.

“Of course not.” I say, “We'll take good care of him.”

* * *

After his schooling in America, my father moved back to Germany. Unable to get an immigration visa to America, my parents, who'd met while working in Cologne, decided to emigrate to Lima, Peru. In the early fifties, jobs and housing were still scarce in Germany; if you were lucky enough to have a job, the pay was very low. At twenty-two, Father landed a job working for a tin baron operating out of Peru and Bolivia; father was supposed to oversee the tin ore shipments going out of the port of Callao. In time, my father became a metal trader in Peru, and later in Canada and Brazil, working for an American company.

In Peru, I grew up with maids. The houses and apartments came with at least one maid's room, or a little beehive of tiny rooms the size of closets, sometimes with no windows, only ventilation slits going out to a hallway. The maid's bathroom was often the size of a small shower stall. To shower, you had to sit or kneel on the toilet. There was a drain at the bottom of the bathroom floor. My parents, unused to colonial ways, would give a maid two of the tiny rooms, or later, when they were flush, move walls to make the maid's room livable.

Various women worked for us over the years in South America. Usually just one at a time. They were a constant of my childhood, always in the background. They cleaned, served, cooked, washed, ironed. They tended to my brother Peter and me, and later my little sister Andrea, when my parents went out, or when they traveled abroad.

However, with the exception of one, I cannot remember the names, or the faces, of any of the women who worked for us in Lima. I know Dionisia's name (in the picture above) because she's the only one that appears in the dozens and dozens of annotated photo-albums my father made of our years in Peru.

But there was one maid I think of often. She worked for us in the early seventies, in the years before we left Peru. In 1968 there had been a nationalist revolution. I was eight. After that, foreigners were no longer welcome. It took my parents until 1974 to give up and leave Peru, a country they'd come to call home.

What I remember about this one maid is that her room smelled of starched and ironed laundry, and hair that had not been washed in a few days; she listened to soap-operas on the radio while she ironed; she would knit herself a sweater and then, after a few weeks or months, unravel it onto an empty toilet paper roll, to then begin a new and different sweater; she made great fried egg sandwiches—two pieces of white toast, one egg fried in oil with salt and pepper.

I began going to her room because of my assignments for my home-economics class—ten centimeters worth of knitting. Could she help me? If she could knit for me, I would iron. So I ironed items I couldn't mess up, like underpants, while she did my knitting.

She didn't say much. Neither did I. I never asked her about herself. We never looked at one another. She ironed or knitted. The radio played soap-operas. When I wasn't ironing, I sat cross-legged on her bed. She made me take off my shoes.

And then I started coming to her room all the time, to do my homework, to read, just to hang out. And she let me in every time. Her room was bare. A calendar, I think, hung on the wall. My parents were stressed, fighting. You couldn't buy chicken, or gas, certain days of the week. There were tanks in the streets. Father had a job offer in Teheran; then he had one in Manila. Who wanted to go there? The maid's room was far away from all of that.

I don't know if we got her address when we left for Canada. Maybe. I never wrote. We didn't take a picture of her. I don't remember her name, and her face is a blur.

She was kind to me. I missed her and her room when we first arrived in Montreal.

Decades later, I found myself at a Buddhist retreat in Elmhust, New York, trying to learn how to meditate. I wasn't any good at it. I couldn't count to three without a tsunami of worries rushing in.

When I met with the abbot, an old bony Taiwanese man, he said: “Think of smell, smell that help you settle your very silly worry mind.”

In that cold room—it was a snowy January-- I remembered the maid's room: clean starched laundry and unwashed hair. And how the sunlight hit her bare walls. And the low whisper of the radio.

I've thought of her often since. I know life can't have been good to her. I know that. I do. She was in my life—and then she was not. She was an Indian who had come down from the hills for a life of servitude in the city. My family hired her to do the work we did not want to do. And then we left for a new life in Canada, where we hired an imperious, fat woman called Madame Genarde to clean our house once a week. For a half-day's work, we paid Madame Genarde, whose name I do remember, as much as we paid in a month to our maids in Peru.

The Wounds of the Past

2009-10-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

(The illustration: Andrew Jackson by Simon)
We've been learning about the Indian Wars and the presidents who won them--to Simon's great delight. But all week my mind drifts away from bloody battles and the Trail of Tears; instead, I find myself thinking about the afternoon I saw my first John James Audubon—about whom we also read recently. It was over twenty-five years ago. My college sweetheart and I had a friend who was renting a room near Harvard Square in someone's private home, and one day we went to pick him up to go for kebabs, or a beer. The Audubon hung in the entrance of that home, over the stairwell, luminous and playful and exact.

Peter was the friend's name. Peter had been our pal in college. He had moved to Boston to study law. Peter, a child of missionaries, was, unlike some of us, not only thoughtful but also single-minded and ambitious. At that time, I was working at an arts bookstore and my sweetheart, Mark, was trying to figure out how to paint in his own style, as opposed to all the painters he admired. Mark and I dallied in the arts and the book business. But Peter had bigger plans. Last I checked, he has spent his life prosecuting white collar criminals in Texas.

We were let into the entrance and asked to wait. It was one of those well-appointed homes to which I, at that time, had no access: fleur de lis wallpaper, wainscoting, Queen Anne couches and Persian rugs, portraits and paintings illuminated by their own individual light. Through a double-doorway, I could see a wall of books and a group of older women in dresses drinking tea.

Waiting for Peter to come down the stairs, I found myself drawn to the Audubon. Which Audubon? No idea--birds of some sort. What I do remember is feeling deeply content to be living in Boston, even though the rent-controlled apartment we called home looked nothing like this one, and within a year Mark and I would split, and the gay men I worked with at the bookstore had AIDS, or their lovers and friends had AIDS, and before long most of them would be dead.

There were many moments of my life in Boston that were perfect and uncomplicated, like gazing at that Audubon: Saturday mornings at the Museum of Fine Arts when you could get in for free; listening to the Messiah at the Emmanuel Church; playing hooky just to spend the day perched over books in the vast and stately Reading Rooms of the Boston Public Library on Copley Square; wandering through the haunted hallways of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and coming upon a John Singer Sargent; or better still--a poorly illuminated Vermeer. It was so easy back then--I was twenty-three or four--to love this country.

“That's an original Audubon,” Peter said, when he finally skipped down the stairs. “Beautiful, isn't it?”

* * *

I read Simon about John James Audubon and show him images on my laptop. I point out the elegant compositions, the clean lines.

“They're just birds, Mom. What's the big deal? Birds are soooo lame.”

Audubons don't grab his interest, but Andrew Jackson surely does. Simon carries the biography around the house. To my amazement, he offers to read it to me all over again. Jackson used expletives and fought in the Revolutionary War as a thirteen-year old; he had a scar down his cheek, a gift from a British officer whose boots he refused to polish; he conquered Florida; he won the Battle of New Orleans; he was born in a one-room cabin but he ended up with a big plantation and hundreds of slaves; he was tough, rough and very popular.

“But what about the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears?” I ask. “After Jackson conquered Florida, he relocated the Seminoles to Oklahoma. He made them walk--thousands died.”

“That wasn't so good,” he says after a moment of silence. “I'm glad I'm not a Seminole.”

Simon is eleven. He wants to like what everyone else likes. He wants to fit in. The biography Simon read told him that, unlike John Quincy Adams, Jackson was immensely popular, that he was a war hero. Moreover, Jackson conquered Florida from the Spanish for the United States. In Simon's mind, if Jackson hadn't done that, Florida might never have become part of the United States. If that were the case, how would he access Cartoon Network from our living room in Miami?

“And Simon, remember he also had a huge plantation with hundreds of slaves.”

“Well, I'm glad I'm not a slave.”

This is how a kid's mind works. It takes information that is hard to process, that it cannot accommodate comfortably, and it finds a way to live with that knowledge. It was terrible, but at least it wouldn't have happened to him.

My mind, in turn, wants to wander away from that knowledge altogether and think only about Audubon, walking around in gorgeous Kentucky, drawing birds. For me, the stories of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and William Henry Harrison are fascinating—and repulsive. Land was needed for all the new immigrants coming to America; canals were built to connect rivers and lakes to ease transportation, settlement, and trade; peace was necessary to ensure the well-being and prosperity of immigrants, commerce and transportation. So the land was cleared—cleared of Creek, Choctaw, Blackhawk, Sauk, Seminole, Cherokee, Shawnee, etc. The Indian Removal Act was enacted, and battle after bloody battle after bloody battle was fought and won. From these deadly encounters the likes of Jackson and Harrison emerged as heroes--while whole nations vanished.

Unscrupulous despotism, tyrannical chauvinism—these are words I want to teach Simon. I want to tell him how much I hate this ugly side of the American character. I want to let him know it frightens me that there are Americans to this day, millions of them, who are certain they are better than others--a chosen people. These same folks are full of a zealous and aggressive patriotism, and a blind enthusiasm for military glory. I want to tell him that part of this country's complex heritage is made of stark inequalities and a ground soaked in innocent blood.

But I don't. I've rocked the boat enough as is. I need to let Simon make sense of these stories on his own. There are many ways to view Jackson. He won the Battle of New Orleans, killing two thousand British, suffering only a couple of dozen casualties. They called him “Old Hickory,” because hickory wood is tough.

From Jackson we move onto Van Buren and then William Henry Harrison. Harrison won various battles against Tecumseh and the Shawnee. Eventually, Tecumseh was killed by Harrison's men at the Battle of the Thames River.

Simon gazes at all the battle paintings in the Harrison biography and says: “War is horrible.”

Learning about Tecumseh, how he'd organized a large Indian confederacy that opposed the United States army, I remember that long ago I read a poem by Mary Oliver called “Tecumseh.” I pull my ragged copy off the shelf. I bought that little collection, American Primitive, back in Boston all those years ago. I wonder what Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison would make of a lesbian poet. Would they find a place for her in their America? And I think again of Peter-- has he ever read Oliver? Does he remember the lovely Audubon? We lost touch decades ago. Maybe I should drop him a line.

“Tecumseh”

by Mary Oliver

I went down not long ago
to the Mad River, under the willows
I knelt and drank from the crumpled flow, call it
what madness you will, there's a sickness
worse than the risk of death and that's
forgetting what we should never forget.
Tecumseh lived here.
The wounds of the past
are ignored, but hang on
like the litter that snags among the yellow branches,
newspapers and plastic bags, after the rains.

Where are the Shawnee now?
Do you know? Or would you have to
write to Washington, and even then,
whatever they said,
would you believe it? Sometimes

I would like to paint my body red and go out into
the glittering snow
to die.

His name meant Shooting Star.
From Mad River country north to the border
he gathered the tribes
and armed them one more time. He vowed
to keep Ohio and it took him
over twenty years to fail.

After the bloody and final fighting, at Thames,
it was over, except
his body could not be found,
and you can do whatever you want with that, say

his people came in the black leaves of the night
and hauled him to a secret grave, or that
he turned into a little boy again, and leaped
into a birch canoe and went
rowing home down the rivers. Anyway,
this much I'm sure of: if we ever meet him, we'll know it,
he will still be
so angry.

from American Primitive

Why I Began Home-Educating Simon

2009-09-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

He wouldn't talk. He was two, then three. He pointed and got what he needed using one and two word utterances: ”Simon, juice.” He could repeat The Cat in the Hat word for word--book in hand, he would “read” it to his cousins . But he would rarely shape a sentence or a question, never a paragraph. He turned four.

We didn't worry too much at first. He was deeply connected to us. He wasn't one to make eye-contact with strangers, but if you lay on the floor with him, plastic lion in hand, roaring loudly, he would look at you, laugh wholeheartedly and say: “Mom--silly.”

On that same floor he built wondrous zoos attached to cities and roads, freely mixing all the toys he had, Lincoln Logs, Legos and Mobilos. And then, over and around all of that, he would lay down sophisticated train tracks that connected zoos and cities and roads. He wasn't like everybody else's kid, but he didn't seem lacking in creativity, intelligence, attachment or affection--as a matter of fact, he seemed more creative and attached than most. Sitting on the floor next to him, I knew no one had ever loved me that much. He rarely made eye-contact for all the trivial stuff—hellos, good-byes--but if you handed him the right hippo for his zoo, he looked at you and said: “Good Mom.” If you gave a dramatic rendition of a story he adored, his eyes were on you non-stop, smiling from ear to ear.

But he didn't talk--and talking was crucial. Simon knew the words for every toy, fruit, vegetable, and type of truck, but he did not use them. So we began the process of having him evaluated.

I don't know what I expected exactly . Back in my twenties, when I had lived in Boston, I had been in therapy off and on; I think I expected an older parental type of person, a therapist not unlike the ones I had had, someone bookish and wise and reassuring, someone who would walk into our lives, commend us on our amazing son and our parenting skills, and then make a couple of thoughtful suggestions.

What we got were two twenty-something-year-old speech therapists in training with an indifferent PhD supervising the evaluation. They put Simon in a room full of toys which included an old, washed out, barely pink plastic oven—I was allowed to watch through a two-way mirror.

Simon proceeded to open the oven door and make a house inside it for some of the stuffed animals—he had never seen or played with such a pink plastic oven. Inside the oven, he made a cozy bed for a bear out of a baby blanket. Then he placed other animals in the oven.

The three page typed evaluation included a full page about how Simon had “sociopathic” tendencies because he had attempted to “bake” the animals. Although they diagnosed a speech delay, they were more concerned about his anti-social tendencies. They suggested a psychiatric consult.

Other evaluations followed (speech, occupational therapy) and hours of therapy. The second speech evaluation involved a non-verbal I.Q. Test—Simon was given pieces of a plastic playground and asked to put them together after he looked at a picture. It took him seconds. “We have answered that question,” the speech therapist said, smiling.

But that nice therapist had no idea what to do with Simon. He kept presenting him with pictures of items and prompting him to name the item—all of which Simon knew; he just didn't use the words in day to day interactions. Moreover, that evaluation, like the previous one, was so poorly written and edited, it knocked the air right out of me. Simon's speech delay meant our lives were now ruled by very nice B and C students.

It's easy to be generous and non-judgmental when the nice and kind schlockmeisters of this world live in a parallel universe from your own. When you find yourself in their offices, listening to their directives, you suddenly discover that all your education and reading have made you incapable of doing anything but make judgments.

This is what we were advised to do: we were supposed to place him in a special school (cost: $23,000.00 per year); we were supposed to then sue the town we lived in to get the money back (lawyer's retainer: $8,000.00)--we lived in Washington, D.C. at the time; we would also need to hire an educational consultant (retainer: $5,000.00). The words autism spectrum were bandied about. We were told of a great school one hour from our home. Little Simon could take the bus. Most of the kids there had severe autism and wore helmets and were completely non-verbal, but, not to worry, they had a class for high-functioning kids.

It really doesn't pay to keep your mouth shut. It doesn't. If you're a kid of very few words, the schlockmeisters will notice that about you, and only that.

I protested. He's so bright. He's so attached. He loves to pretend. He has a wonderful sense of humor. Autistic kids don't pretend or have a sense of humor. He has a speech delay and some atypical development, but that does not mean he needs to be educated in a remedial setting, and at such huge financial and personal cost. So that Simon could attend that school, we were supposed to sue the District of Columbia--sue.

I got very depressed. When the meds kicked in, I started making calls. I called the best pre-schools in Washington, D.C., and told them about Simon and asked about openings. A private Quaker school was willing to take a look at him that week. “Bring the evaluations and bring your son. We make decisions based on our own observations. Be prepared to stay the day.” They placed him in a classroom and watched. Simon didn't say much but he happily played with others and followed directions. He didn't “bake” anyone.

The pre-school had an immediate opening, and they offered Simon the spot. Six months later, the head teacher pulled me aside. He had wonderful abilities in art, she said. He was so smart, so out of the box, so easy to teach. “A man of few words but such a joy.” (The picture attached is one Simon did at age six. When the drawing didn't fit in the box I had pre-drawn, he busted right out of it.)

I stopped all the therapies and instead invited kids from the pre-school to our home two to three times a week. I picked them up at one and had them stay the afternoon. They helped Simon build zoos and cities. They pummeled him with questions and orders: “What's this? What's that? Can we build this? That? Do this. Do that.” If Simon didn't answer, they persevered: “Why are you ignoring me? I'm asking you a question! Why are you putting the bathtub in the elephant cage?”

“Not a bathtub. It's for food for the elephant,” Simon, eventually, replied.

It was exhausting and exhilarating. The kids played all afternoon while I pulled out more toys to add to the worlds they shaped. By sunset, our little apartment was invariably trashed. But every time a child came over, Simon talked a bit more. The ping pong of play—your turn, my turn—led to the ping pong of conversation—your turn, my turn. At the same time, I learned to get relentlessly in Simon's face. “Hey Buddy, what's it gonna be? Cheerios or a sandwich?”

Although he was talking so much more, I knew that in public school he would be placed in a remedial class. The army of Speech Therapists, Occupational Therapists and other Special Ed. Consultants would see to that. They would come up with an Individual Education Plan. The focus of the IEP would be speech and very basic literacy. He would never learn Latin, or European History, or a foreign language. He would never study art, or engineering, or architecture, so that he could build or paint cities and zoos. He would always be regarded as disabled, and he would be taught only the skills necessary to live out a small and limited life.

The summer Simon turned six we moved to Miami. I didn't bother to look for a school. I ordered $500.00 worth of educational materials. I set a room aside in the house we bought and called it the Learning Room. I got a library card. I joined a homeschooling group. When the summer came to an end, we began.

Lewis and Clark

2009-09-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Lewis and Clark story was all new to me, I'm embarrassed to say. That Lewis and Clark were explorers of some sort, and that they had explored something in America a long time ago—that was the extent of what I knew. I was aware there had been a big anniversary of their endeavors a few years ago, and various books had been published about them around that time—but I had read neither the reviews, nor the books.

The details of the story are astounding. Having purchased the Louisiana Territory, Thomas Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis, who was nothing but an acquaintance and an aide in his administration, to head up the Corps of Discovery--a bit like hiring a talented and promising nephew. Lewis was supposed to explore the territory, search for a waterway to the Pacific, and take lots of notes along the way on everything he saw and did. Although Lewis was prone to drinking and depressions, not usually a winning, or safe, combination, he was put in charge of hiring and training thirty men and then taking them west. Lewis was in his mid-twenties; he was twenty-nine by the time the expedition got under way. My hair is very gray, so I can say this: he was a kid—a troubled kid.

And yet he did it. He engaged an army buddy who was in his mid-thirties to help him out. William Clark was not formally schooled—he spelled Sioux twenty-seven different ways in his journals--but he sure could draw maps. Together they gathered thirty men. Then off they went in a keel boat and two small crafts loaded up with food, weapons, and booze, floating out onto the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Columbia Rivers. Along the way, they met the famous Sacagawea and made her their interpreter, they survived various encounters with Indians and harsh environments, they crossed the Rockies, and all the while they drew. They drew wildlife, but most importantly-- Clark drew maps. His maps opened up the continent for settlement, completely changing the character of the country within fifty years.

There are two elements to this story that Simon comments on. They both center around Sacagawea. She gave birth to a boy during the journey. She schlepped this child along on her back. What about diapers? How could she keep him safe? How did she feed him? How did Sacagawea make sure her baby didn't get the measles or smallpox from all those white men? For Simon, who has studied the Aztecs-- Europeans were ticking time-bombs.

The other aspect of Sacagawea's story that interests him is that when Lewis and Clark met her, she had been separated from her family. She was a Shoshone who had been kidnapped as a child, traded as a captive, and ended up as the wife of a French trapper. In her role as translator for Lewis and Clark, she eventually found herself reunited with her people, sitting in front of the latest Shoshone chieftain. When she looked up into his face, he turned out to be the brother she had not seen since she was a child.

There is an illustration of this scene in the book we are using. Over the course of a few days, Simon looks at it again and again.

“What are you thinking, Stinkernoodle?”

“She must have missed her brother. She must have been so happy,” he says.

Simon sees the Lewis and Clark story through the prism of his own obsessions: adults must take extra good care of children; families are at the center of his universe—they must stay together.

I, of course, read the story through my own obsessions, which turn out not to be that different. If I had to verbalize the one triggered by this story, it would be something like this: we must all take good care of each other. Most people don't. And there's the rub.

But Lewis and Clark did take good care, of each other and the men under their command. The journey took two years, four months and ten days. In that time they lost only one man—historians think he died from acute appendicitis. Everyone else got a chance to live their lives all the way through.

I find myself coming back to this one detail. The fact that almost everyone returned home safely wasn't just the result of luck. Enthralled by this story, I watch Ken Burns' documentary about the expedition—which is thin on documentary footage and thick on grand views of the Colorado River. Still, I learn that Lewis and Clark micro-managed that expedition, from setting tough boundaries, to making thoughtful decisions, to doling out only a bit of liquor at the end of every day. Their men survived because Lewis and Clark made sure they did.

A few years later Lewis killed himself, or so it seems. Maybe, for him, it had been easier to live in extreme circumstances, at the end of the known world, responsible for the lives of so many. Or maybe, he felt that no one cared that deeply about him. He was thirty-five.

The English Language

2009-09-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

We read on, three to four stories a week— the witches of Salem, King George III and his taxes, Ben Franklin and his kite, Paul Revere's midnight ride, among others. We get to know the presidents. George Washington, although he seemed wrapped tight, his mouth clamped shut over ill-fitting teeth, was handsome, charming. John Adams, in turn, was not charming. Impatient and hot-tempered, he was a crusty curmudgeon. People did not like him, or re-elect him, a fact Simon perseverates about. The world is a fair place, after all.

I find myself thinking of all the many men, young and not so young, who devoted their lives to shaping this country. They all had full and comfortable lives before the Revolutionary War. But off they went to fight a fierce uneven fight, to lead a rag-tag army with no training, weapons, or line of supplies, to plead for money in countries an endless and unsafe ocean away so they could fight this righteous fight all the way through. And they fought not only with weapons but with words. The wrote. They wrote. They wrote.

How much of this country, its character and principles, is the product of words—the words of thoughtful men debating, revising, and finally writing down truths that were self-evident. The words came first—Thomas Jefferson's words in particular. The rest followed.

I sit in front of my computer, cup of coffee on a coaster nearby in case I need a pick-me-up, and google the Declaration of Independence. Except for the lovely bells and whistles of the opening

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

and the famous second sentence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I have never read it. And as for those two sentences, they have become such a commonplace of the English language and of any political discourse that they have long lost, for me, or so I suddenly realize, any sense of the unabashedly radical.

What follows those two sentences is a legal brief that sets out the facts of the case for independence. Its clarity of word and thought, its sparse and tight presentation, its utter unaffected modernity, leaves me breathless. Here is a small sample:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

Frank Kafka said that writing should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us. It can also impale a flagpole in the middle of your chest.

* * *

My father loves the English language. I had only a few months of English under my belt as a fourth or fifth-grader, when my father pulled out ragged copies of T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost and began to read out loud. We were sitting at the dinner table in Lima, Peru. His accent was strong, Germanic, even after the years in America. My brother Peter and I understood little back then of what he read during these repeated performances, other than that these words mattered to him, greatly.

He said English was precise and muscular, that it put the verb right after the subject--in German it tends to get bumped to the complete final position in the sentence--and that made all the difference.

To my ear, back then, English was an ugly, rough cacophony of consonants. But not to my father. There he sat at our round dining room table, reading out loud, while my mother dished out dessert and then lit a cigarette. Inevitable, his voice would stumble, falter, and choke.

He had told us stories of the war, of the bombings and the hunger, of his father's death, of how, at age ten, he had walked alone across occupied Germany after D-Day to get home to Berlin, holding a teddy-bear and pushing a cart with his belongings, walking through ditches full of the dead--bloody and bloated. He told these stories and never wept. A few lines of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock or The Road Not Taken and he would have to stop and, holding up his hand, steady the storm within.

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

( from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot)

* * *

I try to share my enthusiasm for the Declaration with Simon. But for all his thoughtfulness and although he just turned eleven, he is young. For him, courage and historical greatness are tied to swords and muskets, to military strategy, to hanging tough in the face of certain death. As it does not involve buckets of blood, writing doesn't count. Besides, written words have not yet touched his heart, defining who he is and will become, or what he might do with his life.

Moreover, being home-educated, he does not have to deal with teachers who restrict his freedom, prescribing what he can or cannot do. George and I do not get any points for being cool, but we are pretty accommodating. For now, Simon has little to rebel against, with either muskets or the English language.

Peter Minuit Buys Manhattan

2009-09-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

He bought the island of Manhattan for sixty guilders--about twenty-four dollars. I try to get Simon to understand that this was the greatest real estate deal ever. I'm a daughter of a businessman, always impressed by a savvy deal.

We go online and I find a map of Manhattan. I set up a this-for-that situation--this large island for that tiny amount of cash, barely enough to buy a Lego.

“Minuit was a smart guy--what do you think, Simon? You know, Grandpa was like Peter Minuit. When he was younger, he could sell anyone anything, and buy whatever he wanted cheap.”

“I think Peter Minuit was a mean guy. That wasn't fair. That wasn't enough money.”

I persevere: “But Minuit was brilliant. By buying the island, he secured some peace with the Canarsee Mohicans, at least for a while.”

“No,” says Simon, his brow furrowed. “It wasn't fair. If it's not fair, it's not smart.”

My Father

2009-09-08T18:14:00.000-07:00

My father came to this country in 1950. He was fifteen. He was the first German boy brought to America on a scholarship after World War II. An American vet had raised the funds. The vet had been touched by the suffering of the German civilian population, the children in particular.

In Boston, my father got off the airplane in a suit painstakingly re-stitched from one that had belonged to his father who had died during the war.

It was immediately decided by the school representatives that the suit and all my father's other clothes would not do--too shabby. Somebody went out and bought him two suits, five shirts, underwear, socks, two pajamas. They were all, to his amazement, new.

In his letters home to his widowed epileptic mother who lived in a one-bedroom with a narrow storage room that held my father's bed--an apartment poorly heated by coal, an apartment in Berlin that still stood among an endless sea of rubble and broken glass--my father wrote about the clothes, the food, the private homes with circular driveways and Ionic columns, his little trips along the East Coast, the skyline of New York, intact and splendid.

Noah's Ark

2009-09-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

Over lunch, Simon says, “Hey, Mom--question.”

There is a pause. He shovels spaghetti into his mouth.

“What's the question?”

“Do you know the story of Noah's Ark?”

“Yes, a little bit. Can you help me remember?”

“Well Noah and all these animals float on the ocean for a long time in a big ship with no windows. Noah's Ark is like those people on that ship.”

“Which ship? The Mayflower?”

A mouth full of spaghetti, some of which I can see as he unsuccessfully tries to keep his lips shut while chewing, he nods his head.

“I think that's an excellent comparison,” I say.

Later, I want to bang my head against the wall--hard. So often, I think of all I could have asked or elucidated hours, even days, later. And although I can always return to the topic—and do, the perfect moment is lost.

Long after lunch is over, I realize that Simon had intuited something I hadn't: the biblical quality to these courageous wanderers, straining and struggling to find their way to these shores; the mythic aspect to the hardships they encountered along the way, and once they set foot on this soil.

The Mayflower

2009-09-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

We begin with readings that are all about arrivals and firsts: the Native Americans who were here first; the first Spanish who came to Florida; the first English--Roanoke, Jamestown, the Mayflower; a book on George Washington.

Laying on the day-bed with The American Story propped up against my bent legs and Simon's head on my shoulder, I find myself coming back to the word “arrogant.” This word is new to Simon. I explain that the English at Roanoke were probably killed by the Croatoans because the English thought the native inhabitants were no better than dogs or rats. They were arrogant. That got them into trouble.

They should have asked the Indians for help planting crops and building shelters, like the English settlers did in Plymouth and Jamestown, befriending Squanto and Pocahontas. Instead, they believed the Croatoans were not worthy of respect. Instead of offering friendship, the English attacked their village.

“They were arrogant—and they were morons,” says Simon. “They were--,” and he lifts his head, smiles broadly, and runs his index-finger across his throat. “EXE-CUTE-TED!” I've explained to Simon that killing makes me nervous. Simon thinks it's his duty to help me overcome my fears.

“Morons, really? Many of us make bad decisions when we're afraid,” I say. “How do you think these first colonist felt after their long journey, arriving in the New World?”

“Well, I know from The Story of the World that Dorothy Bradford of the Mayflower killed herself. She jumped off the Mayflower and drowned. I think she had no hope.”

“Why did she have no hope?”

Simon lies there in silence and then says, “I think the trip was hard. There was a storm. They vomited.”

“That's right,” I say. “They were mostly locked in that little space below deck. The captain did not let them come up in the fresh air often. It was dark and smelly. Stinkernoodle, you hate airplanes. Sometimes you throw up because you say it smells really bad—”

“Don't talk about it!” he turns to me, looking cross. His Olympic vomiting over the Atlantic Ocean is nothing he's proud of.

“--Imagine being on a plane for 66 days and nights.”

“That would be horrible.” He covers his face with the blanket.

“And then you arrive at a new place, all tired and smelly and hungry, and there is nothing--no hotel, no friends, no bathroom, no Burger King. Just a world you have never seen before with not even a road you could walk on.”

From under the blanket I hear, “STOP! I don't want to talk about it anymore!”

We Begin

2009-08-31T19:20:00.000-07:00

The first day of fifth grade, Simon carries the books I've put out on the table onto a day-bed in our spare room, arranges the pillows, and pulls a blanket over his legs. There is a horizontal element to homeschooling, at least in our house, at least for now, before Simon decides he is too old to cuddle with his mother and read.

“One question, Mom.” He holds up his index finger and stares at me, all serious.

“What's the one question?”

“You're gonna read to me, right? You HAVE to! This book is SO FAT.”

For a textbook I've chosen The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History by Jennifer Armstrong. I agree to read it out loud, knowing it has an eight's grade reading level, chock-full of figurative language. I know I will spend the year helping him tease apart the meaning of words, metaphors and similes.

I explain to Simon that if I do him the enormous favor of reading The American Story, then Simon must read to me about all the presidents.

“Stinkernoodle Simon--deal? You know, I'm not your ancilla,” I say—Simon knows ancilla means slave girl in Latin. “We have to share. Fair is fair.” “One president, one book a week—deal?”

I've secured an almost complete set of Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents by Mike Venezia from e-bay, library editions no less. They're all at the fifth grade reading level. They contain plenty of text but also pictures and cartoons.

Simon flips through the one on George Washington, stopping to read all the comics, slapping his cheeks intermittently, all absorbed, smiling wildly—he obviously thinks the comics are terrific. Then he gazes at the set of books on the shelf. Finally, he looks up at me.

“One a week—no problem.”

Introduction--What This Blog Is About

2009-08-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, we found ourselves returning to our home in Miami from a vacation in Venice. Hurricane Wilma had swept through Florida, so our usual apprehension about returning to our lives in America was sharpened by not knowing if the fence was down, or if our house was still up. Too tight to book other tickets out of Italy, we had stayed in Venice the extra day until our return flight--not sleeping. Gray and wan, we dragged ourselves down the sweltering long halls of the arrivals terminal--parts of the airport were still on generator--yelling after our son not to run ahead so fast.

The immigration agent, probably on his second shift, took our passports and asked us where we had been. Then he wanted to know where we were from.

“I'm from Miami,” Simon piped in, lifting his chin onto the counter. “I LOVE Florida and I LOVE palm trees and the ocean and Burger King and lizards and pools and alligators and my house. Do you know what? I'm gonna live in an apartment in South Beach when I grow up.”

“Good for you,” the immigration agent said flatly, not looking up. “Why did you go to Venice?” he asked, staring at George.

“We visit. We like it there,” George said.

“I don't,” said Simon. “They have pictures of Jesus Christ everywhere, with blood coming out of his hands. I like America—Florida.”

“Is that so,” mumbled the agent, handing back our papers without looking up, waving to the next people in line: “You! YOU, there! OVER HERE!”

Both George and I don't feel at home in this country, even though George's family has been here for almost two hundred years, and I know full well that nothing but good fortune has befallen me since arriving in America.

George is primarily disappointed. For all his love of Robert Frost, California wines and Southern barbeque, he thought that by now we would have free health-care and higher education for all.

And me? I'm often, very often, homesick--homesick for the faraway places I lived in decades ago, as well as the places my parents lived in over half a century ago, places that shaped who I am, places that no longer exist. There was a war. There was a move across an ocean. Then there was a revolution. Then we moved to another continent, and another.

For now, I live my life in Florida with George and Simon, putting fresh cut flowers on the table, cooking the same food my mother and grandmother made, shutting out much that is America, pretending often I'm somewhere else.

But for Simon, Florida is home, and America is his country.

* * *

It was some time after that loud declaration of love and patriotism at the airport that I began to toy with the idea of teaching Simon American history--not just the Mayflower, the Revolutionary War, and the handful of presidents that are usually covered in elementary school, but a sweeping, all-consuming journey through the morass and marvel of it all. At a minimum, we would read a textbook; we would master American history from Pocahontas to the Persian Gulf War; we would get to know all forty-four presidents. Simon loves history and is home-schooled--it was simply a matter of making the time and finding the right books.

But it wasn't just that scene at the airport that eventually shaped this year's curriculum. When Simon was in third grade, he read me Meet George Washington, a kid's book. Lying next to him on a day-bed, I broke down in tears. I didn't know about Valley Forge, about the Colonial army starving, freezing, barefoot in the depth of winter, waiting for supplies. I didn't know the soldiers' feet left blood on the snow.

That wasn't the only time I wept. “Mommy, why are you crying?” is a question Simon has asked, I'm ashamed to admit, more than a few time. How to explain to a seven-, eight-, nine-year-old that everything is OK, that you have a lump in your throat simply because of a story, a story you just heard for the very first time after decades and decades in this country? I know the faint outlines of many American stories; I know the details of few. And the details hit me hard.

I, who had not gone to school in this country, who for all my love of the English language and the American writers who can make English sing and soar, had never been interested in American history. Compared to European history and the Inca legends I had learned as a child at a German school in revolutionary Peru, American history seemed prosaic, tangential, even silly: a country begat by a clutch of religious misfits who crossed an ocean crammed and hungry in the hull of a small ship. You get the drift. I didn't--I don't--know the American story.

So on a stormy day in late summer, Simon and I begin to read and live the story of my son's country. Simon is ten and in fifth grade. It is thirty-two years since I, at age seventeen, came to America and began to try to make it my home.