Smrt Lernins

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.

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!

Take a moment to watch this brilliant animation “Typography” by Ronnie Bruce of a poem by Taylor Mali.

Are you guilty of the “relentless interrogative?” Are your children?

I know that I am going to make a more concerted effort to have my declarative sentences actually declare and to speak with certainty and confidence in my opinions. I don’t want to be a part of a downward slide into inarticulation. Speak with authority so that your children can learn to speak with authority. Let’s model conviction for the next generation.

Tank is concerned about peepee* oil.

He has it on good authority that peepee oil might be covering Mexico and killing people, the fish, dolphins, and sharks. He seems to be the most concerned about the sharks.

He is worried that the peepee oil means we won’t be able to go to the beach again. He’s probably right.

He wants to know if the peepee oil will get into Lake Acworth. I assured him it wasn’t very likely to.

He would like to know how we plan to clean up the peepee oil and how long it will take. I don’t have any answers for him.

Tank is very sad about the peepee oil.

I haven’t shown my children any pictures of the beaches of my childhood, like Gulf Shores, covered with tar balls and pools of BP’s oil. I haven’t shown them the pelicans, the state bird of my birth state, foundering with oil-covered wings. I haven’t shown them dead dolphins being fished out of the Gulf. I have tried to explain that many people will lose their jobs, that many animals will die, and that the Gulf coast may not ever be the same — certainly not in my lifetime, probably not in theirs, and possibly not even in their children’s.

They’re children. To them, time means nothing. They are confident that someone smart will find a way to stop the oil and clean up the mess. With the boundless faith that well-cared-for children have in adults, they believe that they will grow up in a world that is safe, clean, and full of dolphins. That’s what grownups are here for, right?

Right?

*BP

I’m still on our county’s school district mailing list. Just a few minutes ago, I received an email letting me know what will be cut from the budget for the 2010-2011 school year in order to make up the $126.7 million budget shortfall. Please let it be noted that property taxes have not only NOT been increased (our schools here are funded through property tax and SPLOST), but were decreased by approximately 10%.

Instead of additional (or maintained) property tax, our county’s school district budget cuts will include, among other things, increasing classroom size, decreasing the instructional supply allotment, “restructuring” the alternative education program, and cutting the number of teachers (by over 600) and guidance counselors/graduation coaches (by 55).

The email had this to say about classroom size:

Increasing class sizes creates the greatest budget cost-savings – as class sizes increase the district needs fewer teachers. Earlier this month, the Georgia Department of Education waived all restrictions on class size to help school districts across the state contend with the economic crisis. In [our county], where class sizes already were well below the state maximum at every grade level, schools can expect to see classes increase on average by approximately three students. That number is averaged, so some classes may be higher and others lower.

Yup. Our state no longer has ANY class size restrictions. While our county’s schools were under the maximum classroom size, many schools in less economically affluent counties are already at the maximum. Can you imagine what this will do to classroom size in rural schools? Is schools that have mostly low income and/or renting (non property tax paying) families? Schools with high seasonal migrant worker populations (such as in Vidalia onion-growing country)? How large will classrooms become in this “economic crisis?”

As for reducing instructional supply allotment, well, that means the teachers are either going to have to greatly increase the amount of money they spend on classroom supplies (everything from printing paper to crayons to maps and other supplemental materials to Kleenex and hand sanitizer) OR that will be passed along to the parents, whose list of required supplies for each new school year gets longer and longer. The last year Captain Science was in public school, we provided two packs of computer paper, crayons, glue sticks, scissors, tape, folders, tissues, hand sanitizer, soap, and quite a few other sundry items I don’t recall right off the top of my head. These items were all for general, not personal use.

Guidance counselors are often portrayed as being superfluous or even goofy (even if they’re adorably goofy, like Emma on Glee), but for some students, the help of a guidance counselor in high school is how they get into a college or get the scholarship to pay for a college. Some students don’t have access to therapists/counselors outside of school, due to parental unwillingness, lack of insurance, or other reasons. Remove guidance counselors from schools and students may lose that one small place where they can seek help.

Sure, these cuts might make fiscal sense in the short term, but what are the long term ramifications? How well will students learn in classrooms of 25, 30, 35+ students? Who will help these students with college applications or crises? What will classrooms be like when teachers have had their classroom budgets stripped to nothing?

While I think our county has a good public education system (in comparison to other public education), I am increasingly grateful that we removed our children from it. Thank goodness for the option to homeschool in these tough economic times!

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” — Voltaire

* * *

Who am I?

Who am I, to tell you what you can and can’t teach your child?

Who am I, to tell you that you must teach things that I believe in or be forbidden to teach?

Who am I, to tell you that because I am a secular homeschooler, that you must educate your children secularly or be forbidden to teach?

Who am I, to tell you that because I am a classical homeschooler, that you must educate your children classically or be forbidden to teach?

Who am I, to tell you not to impart your religious, moral, ethical, ideological, etc. beliefs to your child?

Who am I, to tell you to lie to your child and tell them that what you believe to be true isn’t true (whether or not I think it’s true)?

Who am I, to tell you that you must teach all values and all beliefs to be equal, whether you believe them to be or not?

Who am I, to tell you that what you teach must be regulated carefully, because you might teach the “wrong” thing?

Who am I, to tell you that what you teach must be regulated carefully, because someone else might teach the “wrong” thing?

Who am I, to legislate for everyone what is the “wrong” and what is the “right” thing?

Who am I, to legislate morality?

Who am I, to legislate belief?

Who am I?

Here’s a hint, I’m not Jean Valjean.

PhD in Parenting has been writing about homeschooling lately. She currently lives in Germany, where homeschooling is illegal and children are under legal compulsion to attend public school. Today, she wrote a post about different schooling methods and how she views them through the lens of the “right and duty to learn.”

On the whole, I found her opinions on homeschooling to be quite positive, but I take issue with some of the concerns she mentions in her post:

At the same time, there are things that concern me about home education:

• I worry that parents who homeschool for ideological reasons may be shielding their children from the realities of the world (other belief systems, other cultures) and their selves (sexuality, gender issues, personal expression), which I believe is dangerous for the individual and for society.
• I worry that a small minority of parents who homeschool for ideological reasons may be doing so specifically to pass on discriminatory and hateful viewpoints to their children.
• I worry that parents who take their children out of school out of frustration with the school system (generally or for their specific child) may feel forced into home educating their children when really the school system should be changing and adapting to address those concerns.
• I worry that children who grow up under the guidance of the most gentle, patient, loving and inspiring parents without being exposed to teachers who are strict, ineffective, jerks, play favourites, or use coercive methods may not learn how to deal with those types of people before entering the workforce and may be at a disadvantage (although to be fair, a lot of today’s schooled youth aren’t dealing with them themselves anyway – they are getting mommy and daddy to do it for them).

You all know how I feel about the “school as a place to learn to toughen up for the ‘real world’” stance, so I’ll just link to my comment I left on the PhD in Parenting blog and leave it at that.

What about her other concerns, like the idea that parents who homeschool may be doing so to instill hateful or dangerous ideologies in their children? How harmful is “immersing [our] children in [our] beliefs and shielding them from others?” Are parents really more or less likely to attempt to instill their ideologies in their children based on where their child schools? Are homeschooled children more likely to be racist, bigoted, etc. than their institutionally-schooled counterparts? To what extent should the State or the collective get to choose the ideologies to which your child should be exposed?

And what about her assertion that “in most cases [parents choose to homeschool because] there are perfectly reasonable and factual things taught as part of the school curriculum that the parents do not want their children to learn (evolution, birth control, homosexuality, other religious beliefs)?” Was this a motivating factor for you? For the homeschoolers you know? To what extent? Was it because the curricula covered topics you felt were inaccurate or inappropriate? Was it because the curricula were too religious or not religious enough?

And finally, what about her statement that she “believe[s] more strongly in the child’s right to an education than [she] do[es] in the parent’s right to raise their children any way they want?”  Is a child’s right to a specific set of academic knowledge greater than your rights as a parent to pass on your morality, ethics, culture, or ideology? If you’re an unschooler or (I am warming to this term) “life learner,” do you think the child’s right to an education is more or less important than his freedom to make his own decisions, even if those choices are towards the less academic?

I know my answers to these questions. I’ve read some of the exceptionally thoughtful comments to her blog (like Kelly and Kim @ Beautiful Wreck’s). Now, I’d like to hear yours.

I’m pretty lucky.

I’m a white, heterosexual, middle class woman. My gender identity is the same as my biological sex. I hold a postgraduate degree. In short, with the exception of sexism and the occasional prejudice against Southern accents, I go through my life free of discrimination. It’s pretty easy to be white, straight, and middle class in the U.S. Patchfire likes to call me “Apple Pi,” because my life (while quirky, hence “pi” rather than “pie”) appears to be the all-American ideal of suburban normalcy.

I don’t make assumptions about my children’s gender or sexual identification, however. I don’t know who they will grow up to be. I don’t know who they’ll love. I can, however, do my best to create a world where they will be treated as equals no matter who they are. I can fight for their right to marry whomever they love, to raise children, to get a job wherever they are qualified to work, regardless of whether a church thinks that’s “right” with God. Even if my kids all grow up straight and cisgendered, I would still fight for the rights of your kids, because no mother’s child should be denied the right to love, to have a family, and to just live his/her life, simply because someone else believes in a literal and bigoted version of a book written 2000+ years ago. ETA: I was linked to this lovely video made by a young man who has suffered through and overcome some of the very bigotry I’m talking about.

This morning, I woke up to a post on the WTM forums about whether or not the ENDA, a law that would prohibit workplace/hiring discrimination against gay/transgendered people, threatens “religious freedom”. Really, you guys? I’m flabbergasted that the very notion of gays being treated equally under the law, at least where employment is concerned, is that threatening to you. Apart from the fact that the law specifically exempts religious employers, do people really believe that gays are conspiring to take over the churches*? Are people really still buying into the ludicrous notion of a Gay Agenda?

I don’t understand how you can think of yourself as a good person while campaigning for another human being to have fewer rights than you. It’s so inhuman to treat someone else as less human. It’s unpatriotic to want to steal the rights from another citizen, rights that you so carelessly enjoy, because you don’t like the cut of their jib or who they love. The absolute gall of thinking your religious beliefs trump someone else’s basic human rights, let alone actively working to deny those rights, is one huge reason why I’ve drifted further and further from identifying w/ any of the primary religious groups in this country. Is this what Christ would have wanted? I seriously doubt it.

To that end, I’m a member/sponsor of the Human Rights Campaign, which fights for equality for all people — straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, cisgendered, transgendered. These issues include, among many others, the right to marry, to have biological children without legal threat, to adopt, to be employed without fear of termination based on sexual/gender idendification, to serve in the military without fear of discharge based on sexual/gender identification, and to be free from hate crimes. I will also soon (I pick a new organization for donation each quarter) be sponsoring the Southern Poverty Law Center, which works against hate groups of all ilks.

Bigotry and discrimination is just plain stupid. I’d like my kids to grow up in a world that isn’t stupid, thanks.

*Perhaps they think that because anti-choice pharmacists could infiltrate pro-choice dispensaries and then stand in their “religious freedom” to refuse to dispense the very medications they were hired to dispense. Funny how bigots think everyone as small-minded as they.

We’re talking about dictionaries today. Dictionaries: Handy tools, not sources of controversy, right? We can discuss dictionary options without someone being horribly offended, right? Right?

Now, behave y’all’s selves, ok? Dictionaries.

I assume most of you own a dictionary. We own several actual* dictionaries, but I usually use Dictionary.com and long for the days when I was enrolled in college and could access the Oxford English Dictionary online for free ($295 a year is too expensive for a subscription to a “book” I can’t fondle, no matter how sexy etymology might be…and etymology is exceptionally sexy, if you were wondering). One of my fondest literary fantasies is to have an actual copy of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. I thought I was something of a freak for wanting this, until the day Captain Science said to me, with longing in his voice, “I wish we had that giant dictionary with all the words in it.” Oh, my son! You really are my son, aren’t you?

Our actual dictionaries are all of the youth variety, and can I just be the first to say that the people who edit youth dictionaries must think that children are either a) really stupid or b) only reading Captain Underpants, because half the words Captain Science needs aren’t in there and the other half have such simplified or limited definitions that it’s rarely the specific meaning of the word that he needs. I end up looking the word up on Dictionary.com and having him choose the definition that seems to fit the context. Yes, I know we should just buy a grown-up dictionary, but refer to the above “I want the unabridged OED” and you’ll understand why nothing else will do.

On the Well-Trained Mind forums, a discussion arose over whether or not there is a method** to finding a word in the dictionary when you don’t know how to spell it. In that same thread, one homeschooling parent says she solved this problem by purchasing an Allographs dictionary, which, according to the product description is:

is a unique sound-based dictionary in which words containing a particular sound are listed under each of the spelling alternatives for that sound. It contains over 3,000 words. Words are set out in alphabetical order down and across the page. Students can see at a glance which sound is easy or difficult to spell. [...] With practice, students can easily “look up sounds to spell.” This is in contrast to a conventional dictionary where you have to know the spelling before you can look up a word. This means the Dictionary not only links to a useful set of exercises, but allows students to be able to check their own spelling during creative writing.

Captain Science is a fairly natural speller. With the notable exception of continuing to spell “because” as “beacuse” in his writing (if you ask him to spell it aloud, he spells it correctly), he can spell just about any word that he’s heard used in context and most that he hasn’t. He doesn’t have a difficult time figuring out the spelling of a word (using the method I describe below) to find the definition. I can’t imagine buying the Allographs Dictionary as an alternative to a standard dictionary, but I imagine it could be an exceptionally helpful tool for a child for whom spelling doesn’t come as easily and I also think it could help a child without spelling difficulties find different ways to look at language and how others perceive it. As someone who absolutely loves language, I’m inclined to say that whatever it takes to guide a child towards the correct and passionate usage of language is a positive thing, so I think that the Allographs Dictionary might find a home on my shelf at some point.

What are your thoughts on this? Does it make the dictionary more accessible for children who have spelling difficulty? Is it a shortcut (and if so, a helpful or hurtful one?) or just an alternative way of looking at language?

*I’m using this word to mean “as opposed to virtual.”
**My answer was that I think there is a method and that “both phonics and an understanding of vocabulary roots play a role in that method. When my son doesn’t know how to spell a word he’s looking up, he identifies possibly spellings and then likely spellings. For instance, “f” sound could be spelled “f” or “ph,” but if he knows the word he’s looking up was in a conversation about sound/music, the likely spelling is “ph” (root “phon”) so he’ll start there. He knows a word starting with an “s” sound is most likely to start with an actual s, but if he doesn’t find it there, he nows c is the next likely place.”

Homeschoolers vary pretty widely on opinions over the topic of whether or not homeschoolers should receive a tax exemption (since their children don’t go to public schools) or tax deduction (for materials costs). Some fear a tax exemption could lead to tighter regulation of what constitutes legal and acceptable homeschooling. Some feel it’s necessary to offset the additional incurred costs of homeschooling. I can see the concerns on both sides of the aisle.

What if, instead of homeschooling affording you an exemption or deduction, you could set up a flexible education spending account at the beginning of each year, just like you can currently do with medical expenses? The money you put in would be pre-tax, anyone with a school-aged child could set one up (homeschooling or not), and certain items would be considered “educational,” just like they currently are for Georgia’s tax-exempt weekends. You’d either make your purchases through pre-approved vendors/publishers of educational materials (those vendors or publishers could apply to be on your FESA’s approved vendors list just like pharmacies/med. supply vendors do now) or you would send in your receipts afterwards.

Books/curricula, educational software, and basic school supplies could be included. It could be a good way to help offset the cost without creating a lot of additional regulation for homeschoolers.

Thoughts?