Smrt Lernins

A new study shows that negative stereotypes about learning can impact, not just the students’ performance, but their actual ability to learn.

If you want to know why I don’t find it amusing to perpetuate negative stereotypes about girls and math, this pretty much sums it up:

“(The present study) points to the importance of creating environments that reduce the impact of stereotype threat during mathematical skill acquisition by women,” the authors concluded in their PNAS article. “If creating such an environment is not done, the learning deficits that result could well be cumulative, causing problems that continually worsen as development proceeds.

When you portray girls as being bad at math, you might actually be making them bad at math.

It’s not just math and it’s not just girls, of course, but that girls and math was the chosen example for this article is pretty telling. Do people really think we’re in a post-sexist society, where female-deprecating humor is suddenly, magically, not harmful?

First world problems alert: my internet has been down for almost a week* and, with homeschool starting on Monday, I’m starting to panic a little. Two of Captain Science’s classes (computer programming and science) and one he and Tank are sharing (art) are online. We still have some pieces of curricula to order. We need to sign up for the homeschool soccer league. We might sign up for classes at a local co-op (since we aren’t hosting one this semester, a nice respite). We need more consistent internet for this kind of stuff!

Officer Daddyman made a rather irritable comment to me the other night, being a bit tired of hearing me carry on about how inconvenienced I am, about people having survived just fine before the internet. Of course, the same could be said for, say, refrigeration (did I mention our fridge was also on the fritz?) and telephones (oh yeah, same electrical storm that fried our internet killed our phones) and electric lights (our house gremlin has been blowing those like crazy, too) and air conditioning (thankfully, this still works, though with 100 degree outside temperatures, it’s not making too much of a dent in the heat). Once you’ve become accustomed to and built certain facets of your life around access to those things, however, having them suddenly take flight into the wimbly ether is rather…fraktastic. Can’t put it more eloquently or eruditely (or less geekily) than that.

More than the resources, however, I miss the “s word.” Socialization. We usually worry about our kids getting enough, but as a in-the-home-all-day Mama (because I don’t like that whole “work at home” vs. “stay at home” thing…all mamas work), I often pine for some adult time. Chatting online with Patchfire and The Mama and my other homeschooling (and non-homeschooling) mama friends is an important part of my life. It’s a way of swapping ideas and just generally staying sane. It’s lonely at 11pm when Daddyman is at work and I want the house to stay quiet (so no phone calls), but I can’t talk to someone online, read any news, listen to any new music, etc.

*sigh* Hopefully, we’ll have internet by Monday, because how on earth can I go without blogging about our first day of school? Oh internet! I don’t know how to quit you.

*I’m swiping a little wireless from my grandmother while drinking a glass of wine.

Alas, this isn’t a post about how great I look in my swimsuit, posed on top of a classic convertible.

I’m finishing up our school calendar for the year. Isn’t that exciting? For comparison, here is the 2010-2011 calendar for our public school district. They’re starting on Thursday, Aug. 5th and ending on Wednesday, May 25th. We are starting on Monday, Aug. 2nd and ending on Friday, May 20th (My 32nd birthday present to myself is to give myself a last day of school. Aren’t I considerate?). Cobb is also shortening the year by 5 days for budgetary concerns that I don’t share.

Cobb County has adopted a “balanced” school year, with breaks spread a little more evenly throughout the year. I actually like that model and am using something similar in our calendar, with 5-6 weeks on and then a week off. I am intentionally scheduling our breaks before or after the public school system’s breaks, however, because I don’t want to share our time off w/ the whole county. I’m selfish that way.

Patchfire’s need for symmetry drives to her implement a perfectly symmetrical year, with 90 days before and 90 days after midpoint*. I almost managed that, darn it, but then ended up with 93 days before the midpoint and 90 after. I’m wrestling with whether to leave those days there in case we need them, to schedule three extra 3-day weekends before midpoint, or to schedule one or two extra 3-day weekends before midpoint and the other one or two after.

These are serious issues, guys. My sanity hinges on knowing my school days ahead of time! Quit looking at me like that. Quit snickering!

If you really want to take a look at our quasi-completed school calendar, you can sneak a peek at it here. It formatted weirdly, so just mentally skootch those numbers back over into the squares where they belong, ok?

*Ok, she points out that this is not entirely true. She just needs to hit at least 90 days by midpoint and have the number of days be divisible by five, and counts the extra as being ahead. She is encouraging me to keep those days as emergency backup days. I decided I’ll keep two of them as backup days and add one as a three-day weekend in April (92 before midpoint, 89 after).

Captain Science was an early reader.

He knew all his letters, upper and lower case, by 18 months and recognized that they went together in a pattern, and that the pattern meant something. He started reading shortly after he turned two. I actually doubted the accuracy of my memory of this, so I looked back through pictures and found one of him and Nana sitting on the sofa shortly after his second birthday, playing their word games on the Magnadoodle. She would write words and he would read them. It started with simple words like cat and hat, but I remember that these particular pictures were taken on the day she wrote–and he could differentiate between–worm, work, and word. It was slightly more than a week after his second birthday. By three, he could recognize or sound out most words. He could pick up nearly any book in the house and read it by four.

Reading is still one of his favorite pastimes. It’s his refuge and escape when he’s stressed. At times, it’s his compulsion — he’s the kid who has to read it if it’s there. Cereal boxes, junk mail, my computer screen if he’s nearby (I have to be careful!), cookbooks. I understand that compulsion well, because it’s one I share with him. I can’t not read, either.

I sometimes wonder why he took so naturally to reading. While there’s no denying that he’s a very gifted child, giftedness doesn’t always manifest as early reading (and early reading doesn’t necessarily indicate giftedness). Sometimes I imagine that a love of reading is like a nutrient, and it passed to him in utero through the umbilical cord or he drank it in when he nursed, like feeding the trained planaria to the untrained ones and having the untrained ones know how to run the mazes. Only not gross like that.

It might be because he saw reading all around him and absorbed it through some strange sort of literary osmosis. I would read while I nursed him, read whenever I had a spare moment. I read to him, Nana read to him, and the Granny Brigade (an assortment of great and great-great grandmothers and great-great aunties) read to him. My room has always been filled with stacks of books. I stick them everywhere, on the off chance that I’ll need something to read while I’m in that particular room. We have kitchen books, office books, a stack of bathroom books underneath the sink, bedroom books, basement books, and even a few car books, which I don’t read while driving, of course.

We’ve had to take his book light away, because he was staying up until the wee hours reading (and was a bear as a result). We have to check his room often for boys awake at 11pm, crouching by the door to have enough light to read. We have to police the number of bathroom trips after 10, because they’re to read, not to tinkle.

That’s a wonderful “problem” to have, isn’t it?

This is Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the poet Lord Byron:

As you can see, she was quite a pretty thing, very elegant and well turned-out:

Ada Lovelace also wrote the world’s first computer program, a series of calculations for a then-hypothetical machine of Charles Babbage’s imagination, the “Analytical Engine.” Her program was never run on this machine and she died in her mid-thirties of uterine cancer, but her brilliant mathematical mind (and the contributions of women to science and mathematics) is celebrated annually on March 24th on Ada Lovelace Day. Her imagine also apparently appears on the Microsoft product authenticity hologram stickers. Being pretty didn’t keep her from doing math. Neither did being bound in corsets and yards of fabric.

Since you all know I don’t think highly of perpetuating that ridiculous cultural myth that girls are (or should be) bad at math, I’d like to invite you to check out this beautiful Heroine: Ada Lovelace tee from ThinkGeek (a company that thinks smart girls rock). Due to the high number of sales of this shirt in its first month available, ThinkGeek is contributing to The Girl Effect, an organization to give girls a chance to pursue the educations they desperately need. Obviously, ThinkGeek and I aren’t the only ones who think Mathy Girls ought to be celebrated.

Don’t make your daughters’ minds into a joke. Don’t slap your daughters with a degrading stereotype and try to pretend it’s funny or “ironic.” Celebrate your mathy girl, your budding scientist, your future Ada Lovelace. Let her know that beauty and brains aren’t mutually exclusive, and that a brilliant mind is beautiful.

We’re back from our week-long vacation with Officer Daddyman’s family. We fell in love with the Asheville area and were sorry to leave it.

Now we’re home, however, and the frenzy of school year prep and buying has begun. Shortly before we left for our trip, we ordered a subscription to the PLATO Life Science and Earth/Space Science courses for Captain Science. I’m glad to have science taken care of, as that is the one area where I worry about finding comprehensive materials that are secular/scientific enough for our needs. I ordered these courses at Patchfire’s recommendations, so Captain Science and Eclectic Girl will still be right about apace with their science, which means we could still get together to do a little work occasionally.

Another area I’ve stressed over is that of extracurricular activities, especially art. Daddyman really wanted to start doing some computer programming with Captain Science this year, too. We really lucked out by making it home just in time to take advantage of the last minute deal on the KidCoder computer programming curriculum through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. We’re also picking up the Meet the Masters series for both boys. We’re probably getting bundle 4, which includes Tracks A, B, and C for ages 5-7. Even though Captain Science is well above that age level, he has had almost no formal art instruction, so I think he’d be best served by starting with something very simple. If he enjoys it and needs a higher level, we’ll pick up the bundle for his age group, too. We’ll have access to the course for three full years, since each track is supposed to take about a school year.

We still have to place our order for Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra and Fred’s Home Companion, as well as Captain Science’s Michael Clay Thompson materials for the year and Tank’s Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading materials. We’re also starting a new organization system to help us stay on top of our materials, using a folder system similar to the one Daddyman uses for organizing his own paperwork.

I’m starting to get so excited about the next school year! How’s your planning/prep going?

So, the manufacturer of the sexist “I’m too pretty for math!” shirt I posted about seven months ago has apparently stumbled on my blog and decided to spam it. Isn’t that professional of her!

Spam comments will not be approved. I was more than willing to approve this woman’s comment (and did, in fact) for response, but I won’t tolerate spam. I regularly approve dissenting opinions, but I’m not willing to be harassed. Flooding my blog with comments will accomplish nothing other than a quick click on the “spam” button. I’m also not so naive as to believe that a large volume of random people would suddenly discover a 7 month old post and all leap to defense of this woman, so spare me the “I enjoy your blog…” nonsense. I know who my readers are.

Toughen up or get out of the business, honey, but you’re wasting your time spamming me. I only have conversations with grown-ups here.

ETA: Received another comment from someone saying that the “too pretty for math” lady didn’t ask them to spam; they’re just doing it out of the kindness of their heart. If that’s the case, ladies, you’re doing your friend a disservice. Bad reviews are part of business. Perhaps this will be a lesson about thinking about the greater implications of your products, because reinforcing sexist and negative stereotypes is usually not taken as “fun.”

However, I have received my favorite comment so far! It might even be my favorite comment of all time: “I am not one to throw stones.. but the name of the blog has grammer and spellying typos ALL OVER IT.. Smrt lernins? seriously?…”

I hate when I have those “grammer” and “spellying” typos, don’t you? *snort* Please, please tell me these mistakes were made intentionally!

Perhaps it’s proof that God loves the secular homeschoolers, too–or at the very least, humors us–that a friend of mine should pass this link along to me just in time for a Secular Thursday. Pharyngula, a blogger at ScienceBlogs write about his dismay over the way a “science” textbook published by Bob Jones University presents the topic of electricity. I am equally dismayed.

You can view the scanned page here or at ScienceBlogs, but here’s the text:

Electricity is a mystery. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it. We can see and feel and hear only what electricity does. We know that it makes light bulbs shine and irons heat up and telephones ring. But we cannot say what electricity itself is like.

We cannot even say where electricity comes from. Some scientists say that the sun may be the source of most electricity. Other think that the movement of the Earth produces some of it. All anyone knows is that electricity seems to be everywhere and that there are many ways to bring it forth.

How would you have to change the way you get ready for school if you did not use electricity?

“The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.” Psalm 77:18

Ok, what in the happy crap is that? I’ll tell you what it’s not: Science.

Did the person who wrote that book ever read an actual science text? Do they actually know anything about electricity? Have they ever even bothered to look up electricity on Wikipedia? We do, in fact, know what electricity is and where it comes from. It’s generated by a myriad sources. It isn’t, as Pharyngula points out, “something like oil, a substance lying in large deposits that must be harvested and poured into your hairdryer to make it work,” as the BJU text’s author seems to think.

Obviously, BJU’s presentation of things like the origin of life and changes in species is going to be significantly different from that of secular science. While I think their presentation is based on an entirely non-scientific premise, I acknowledge that said premise is going to lead to a certain way of presenting certain topics. Fine. I won’t teach that to my kids, but if you think people lived with dinosaurs and the earth is only 6000 years old, you feel free to teach that to your kids.

There is NO excuse, however, for completely misrepresenting topics like electricity. Really, how is explaining about particles and currents not compatible with creationism? Can someone explain that to me? Does electricity have to be dumbed down and falsified and just…just…stupid-ized purely for the sake of making it different from secular science? What is the purpose here?

I’m absolutely baffled, is what I am. Can’t you teach your children a creationist viewpoint without screwing up the rest of science? DO you have to distill it down to something, as Pharyngula points out, worthy of the Insane Clown Posse [if you aren't familiar with ICP, please be warned, anything related to this band contains EXPLICIT LANGUAGE]?

I just find it hard to believe that Christian homeschoolers really want their children to be dumber than a Juggalo. Why would they tolerate this insulting level of pseudoscience?