Smrt Lernins

I obviously have my beef with religion. My experiences with organized religions haven’t been positive. I’m not talking about my experience with faith or belief, but with the structures that surround them, the hard and fast rules these structures try to impose upon that belief and upon people…not just the people who wish to belong to those structured religions, but to all people. I resent having someone else’s interpretation of faith pressed upon me and my children.

That’s awfully common in homeschooling circles. I know you know it. Statements of faith for co-ops. Unreasonable expectations of behavior at activities. Scathing looks when you drive up in you minivan covered in liberal bumper stickers. You know, hypothetically speaking. It’s hard, as a secular homeschooler and a non-religious, particularly non-Christian, person, to not develop an overwhelmingly negative view of Christianity, Christians, and religion in general.

Sometimes, though, they get it right. Lately, I’ve been seeing many examples of that. When we went to Pride, I saw easily a dozen congregations marching in the parade, but only one small group protesting. The other day, someone linked me to a beautiful article in Esquire, written last year by Christian minister Shane Clairborne. Though this article was addressed to non-believers, but his letter was as much to Christians who think they are better than those non-believers. I was moved — this, this surely must be what draws people to Christianity. The God I believe in is love. Not a God who expressed love selectively. Not a God who can love. But capital-L LOVE itself. I couldn’t believe in any other sort of God– not a vindictive God, or a God who makes mistakes and punishes you for them, not a God who wants certain people elevated above others, not a meddling God playing with us like chess players– but one that is, purely, Love. Minister Clairborne seems to get that.

And then I saw this: Pastor Jim Swilley talking openly to his congregation about being gay, honestly addressing concerns, and dispelling myths. He doesn’t have to break from his faith to do it. He doesn’t have to turn his back on a Christian interpretation of God. That gives me a lot of hope for Christianity. Yes, on the fringes, people are moving more and more to the extreme, but I think a compassionate, intelligent middle must be growing. I have to hope so.

On this Secular Thursday, I’m sending out my thanks and my potential-heathen-but-hey-deal-with-it blessings to Pastor Swilley, Minister Clairborne, and all the congregations I saw in the Atlanta Pride parade. You make the world a lot easier for the rest of us to live in.

When Captain Science was little, maybe around four, he once declared, “I have a robot body and a Triforce soul.”

Science, it seems, is on the way to making that a possibility.

Because I am what I am, which is to say, I’m not the most normal rutabaga in the carrot patch, I have not been able to stop obsessing over this video, with its tiny rat cyborg, which still believes it’s a real real rat, even though it’s just a jarred rat brain in a little rat robot. It creeps me out. It beyond creeps me out; it terrifies me!

Officer Daddyman, also being what he is, which is to say, he likes to say weird things to creep me out, has been on a little kick lately of saying that by the time we’re old, they’ll be able to transplant our brains into new bodies (robot or flesh copies) and so I should anticipate both of us living a very long time. He says that the video above proves him right, and that he can have a nice new cyborg body before he dies of old age. I told him I only agree to “’til death do us part,” and that I’m not contractually obligated to remain in a marriage to a cyborg once Officer Daddyman’s actual body has died.

This raised some Very Important Theological Questions, of course, such as:

How will the various church(es)/religious organizations weigh in on the cyborg issue as a whole?

Does the soul transfer along with the brain, does it go Onward when the body dies, and where does either option leave the cyborg in the eyes of the church(es)?

If the particular organization doesn’t allow divorce, will they require adherents to their religion remain married to their cyborg partners? Would they grant a divorce on the grounds of en-cyborgation, would it be an annulment, or would the non-cyborg living spouse of the newly en-cyborged be considered a widow(er) in the eyes of the church(es)?

If the legal status of cyborgs remained consistent with that of regular living human being of the non-cyborg persuasion (thus meaning the living non-cyborg spouse was NOT a widow[er]), would the church(es) grant divorces/annulments under those circumstances, or would the widow(er) still be a widow(er) in the eyes of the church(es), but forced to remain legally entangled w/ their cyborg spouse?

If the legal status of cyborgs is different from that of the living human, in that the living human is first declared dead before their brain is put into the cyborg, who then gains its own “life” and own legal status, how would that affect divorce/annulment/widow(er)hood? Would the living spouse be widow(er)ed from the physically deceased when his/her body died and would have to remarry the cyborg if s/he wished to continue the marriage?

I’ve already made it clear to Officer Daddyman that I’m not staying married to him if he’s a cyborg, because it’s just too creepy, but I do wonder at the wider-reaching legal and theological (not to mention moral/ethical) issues of a human cyborg. The mind reels, I tell you.

The Internet is Wrong:
I Am Right
First Annual Smrt Lernins Conference on Me-o-centrism

Topics covered will include:

• Me-o-centrism: They Know It’s All About Me, But They’re Denying It
• Introduction to the Mechanics of Me-o-centrism
• Scientific Experiments Showing Homeschooling Parents Are Motionless at Their Laptops
• Scientific Evidence: I Am the Center of the Universe
• Answering Common Objections to it Being All About Me
• Homeschooling: You’re Doing It Wrong/Parenting: You’re Doing It Wrong (a course in two parts)
• Being Wrong on the Internet: You Can Do It, Too!
• Why Can’t You Just Shut Up and Accept My Word As Good Enough Proof!
• Validation for Homeschoolers (limited seating available)
• Evidence For a  Literal Interpretation of My Blog: What Does the Script Say?

The Internet is Wrong: I Am Right is a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Me-o-centrism, the academic belief that I am the center of the universe, and that it does, in fact, revolve around me. Garnering scientific evidence from the Well Trained Mind forums, Facebook, YouTube, and the people who read my blog, The Internet is Wrong shows that the debate between me and the rest of the Internet is much more than a difference of opinion. It’s also that they’re all wrong. So very, very wrong.

Placing myself at the center of the universe is not only scientifically awesome, but is a very stable model that works out pretty darn well for me (and we all know, it is all about me). Me-o-centrism is supported by the vast web pages that show that everything I know is right, that everything you know is wrong, and that if you don’t agree with me, you’re just closed-minded.

The best part about The Internet is Wrong: I Am Right is that I don’t even have to leave my house for this conference. It all comes right to me! Embrace the science of me-o-centrism, and the world will come right to you, too.

The Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA) posted a great article today, “The Teacher as Soldier,” addressing statements by public figures about recruiting an “army of teachers” and questioning what war, exactly, these teachers are fighting. The author presents the troubling paradigm of, “Generals and leaders – Administration and the government; Privates/Soldiers – teachers; Civilians/those to be “aided” – students ([...]the group that needs to be fought for – to have things done for them because we don’t see them fit to achieve for themselves) [...] = The War for Education.”

Teachers as low ranked soldiers in a battle (against whom?) to educate passive, helpless student learners; administrators and politicians as detached leaders of a battle in which they aren’t even getting their hands dirty. Not a pretty picture. Not a picture the author enjoys. Is it really that far from the truth, though?

I think public education has become a combat scenario, to some extent, but it’s not a war for education. I’m not sure it’s a war for anything. It’s a skirmish between players with little vested interest, like politicians with children in private school. It’s a battle between Republican tax cuts and the systems that are now so underfunded that they can’t let staff into the building until the day school starts, leaving schedules unfinished, classrooms not set up, curriculum not set in stone. It’s a conflict between the few teachers who are genuinely invested in the success of their students and the administrative status quo that is focused solely on test scores. In this scenario, students are not the citizens being helped, but the friendly fire casualties of a large system floundering and firing randomly, hoping to hit a target they can’t even agree upon.

This is a pretty bleak picture of public education. It’s not an accurate portrayal of every teacher, school, administration, or system. There’s no denying that there’s a strong element of this in public education as a whole, however. Our own experiences in public education certainly point to that. No one was fighting on Captain Science’s behalf but us, and it was a fight we were well aware we shouldn’t have to fight: a fight for him to not be bullied by a teacher who felt threatened by gifted students, a fight for him to spend his days doing something other than worksheets, a fight to have any expression of creativity not squashed out of hand.

Parents have to fight with teachers and administrators to have their children’s most basic educational needs met, and while we’re doing that fighting, more and more funds are diverted away from the children who need them most. It’s obvious who the administration values — not the gifted students and not the special needs students. For the parents of those children, public education can be a constant battle.

The author of the IDEA piece writes, “Learning is not a war, it is an adventure. While it can be used as a tool to equip oneself with the awareness necessary to achieve justice, learning overall is discovery and an intriguing challenge.”

She’s right. Learning is not a war. Education, however, is most certainly a battlefield.

I received a pingback on the Secular Thursday page this morning from the blogger of Quarks and Quirks. After reading through the article that linked back to the secthurs page, I am strongly recommending it to all of you. Take some time to read through “Why We’re Not Secular Homeschoolers” and give it careful thought. It presents a differing set of opinions and attitudes to those that have lead many of us to write our Secular Thursday posts.

I think she misses the mark on a few points (for instance, I don’t believe it’s anger, but a search for “tribal” camaraderie in an overall non-Secular homeschool world, that drives most of us to participate in Secular Thursday), but she took the time to address this issue with great care and has invited polite discussion on it. I do think she hit the nail rather squarely on the head by pointing out that “secular” seems to translate too often to “atheist” or “anti-religious,” rather than “not overtly or specifically religious” (the definition she uses in her post and the one that I follow), leaving those of us that believe in something, but who don’t make that something the focus of our academic exploration, out in the cold.

I hope you’ll take her up on her invitation to participate in a conversation on secular homeschooling. Share why you’re a secular homeschooler (or why you aren’t), why you participate in Secular Thursday (or why you don’t), how you address issues of religion, secularity, etc. (or how you don’t).

ETA: I really wanted this to be the dialogue she requested, but apparently she’s only interested in a conversation with those whose opinions match her own, sadly. I see several great comments from you guys, but no responses.

My friend Heather’s oldest daughter is about to do something absolutely ridiculous: start first grade. I’m pretty sure she’s not allowed to be old enough to do that. In the spirit of preparing for this next stage in academic development, she IM’d me with this cute little message:

So, things homeschoolers never worry about:
1) Will the new teacher like my child?
2) Will my daughter make friends?
3) What if she doesn’t have any of her friends from last year in her new class?
4) Why am I sharpening so many damned pencils?

Oh, sweetie! Have I lead you to believe that the life of a homeschooler is a really so carefree? What a travesty! True, I don’t have to worry about teachers liking my child, but other than that? I have worries! I’m not worry free!

I worry about, on any given day:

1. Will my child be able to maintain his friendships with his public school friends?
2. Will my child have ample opportunities to socialize w/ homeschooling friends?
3. Will we cover all the subjects we need to cover?
4. Will getting in to college be too hard?
5. Does he hate homeschooling?
6. Does he hate me?
7. Would we all be happier if he were still enrolled in public school?
8. How on earth will I cover everything we need to cover?
9. Am I a failure for not having started Latin yet?
10. How about a modern foreign language?
11. Do my kids dress funny?
12. Are my kids well-adjusted?
13. Will my kids manage to actually pass those standardized tests?
14. If they don’t, what does that say about them?
15. If they don’t, what does that say about me?
16. Will I ever get a chance to sleep in again?
17. Do people think I’m doing this because I’m obsessed with Jesus?
18. What would Jesus think about this whole homeshooling business?
19. Am I way more boring than I used to be?
20. Why am I sharpening so many damn pencils?

See, Heather? We worry, too. We probably worry more, because the buck stops here. If our kids are all screwed up, we have no one else to blame but ourselves…and everyone KNOWS it!

Enjoy your babygirl’s first grade year and don’t feel too envious of us homeschoolers. We have it pretty good, but we don’t have it worry-free.

I might owe the young earth creationists an apology.

They just may have had it right this whole time with the “fossils are a) tricks from the devil to confuse you or b)a test from God to see if you believe in the Bible” thing, because apparently, there’s no such thing as triceratops. I’m not putting you on! The triceratops may just be the juvenile form of another dinosaur, the lesser known and decidedly less awesome torosaurus. Why was this not readily apparent to scientists and all dino-obsessed 7-year-olds? Because the tricera-toro-liar-saur-tops had mother-freaking shapeshifting bones, y’all. If dinosaurs with Transformer heads isn’t a prank from a devil or some trickster god (Loki, perhaps? Anansi? Coyote, maybe?), I just may be disappointed a second time, because this is the kind of bullhonky nonsense that just makes me think none of us actually have the slightest idea about…well, much of anything,really.

This has been my biggest betrayal by science since they decided that Pluto wasn’t actually a planet. Wasn’t it bad enough to find out that the brontosaurus was just apatosaurus with the wrong head stuck on it? Now it’s bizarro morphosaurs Science is stealing my planets and my dinosaurs, and this is unacceptable! Next they’re going to tell me that you CAN get pregnant from a swimming pool (if so, I’ll have to give more props to the ultrafundies yet again for their sensible “no mixed swimming” policy) or that we really don’t have a clue how electricity or magnets work!

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?

Patchfire’s post about honest reporting (about your children and yourself) reminded me that one of the requirements for homeschooling in Georgia is that I must write an annual summary or report on what we covered this year and on Captain S’s progress. They can’t require that I give them these reports, but I have to write them and then hang on to them for three years. Record-keeping isn’t my area of supreme excellence, of course, but that’s where the blog will come in handy. All I have to do is refer back to my weeks and weeks of Weekly Reviewins and voila! I shall have all the information I could possible require!

All the information on Captain Science that I could possibly require, that is.

Captain Science isn’t the only one who started homeschooling this year. This year, as my blog subtitle indicates, has also been an educational process for me. No one requires any sort of report on what I’ve learned, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the time to assess it. So, what has Smrt Mama McLernins learned about homeschooling (and herself) this year? What did I learn about being a secular classical homeschooler?

1. Color-coded schedules: what works and what doesn’t. Our color-coded schedule was a great idea in theory, but didn’t work out so well in execution. Too tightly scheduled, not enough time for transitions, and not enough flexibility for Captain Science. He needs more control over his order of activities. Next year’s schedule will still be time-blocked, because that really does help us get through our day in a timely manner, but it will be color coded into “core subjects,” “electives,” etc. and Captain Science will be able to choose the order in which he does his work, and more transitional time will be provided. For example, on Mondays we’d have three one-hour blocks for “school work,” separated by 15 minute breaks, followed by a half-hour lunch, another one hour block of work, then piano. Tank’s schedule would be broken up more and be in shorter blocks, with synced lunches.

2. We had an unacceptable dearth of hands-on stuff. We did so little of this and I really regret that. Projects, crafts, etc. need to be pre-planned and scheduled into our week. Other than writing samples, we have very little to physically show for our school year. No fridge art, no dioramas or whatever to display. This simply will not fly, especially next year, when my artsy little Tank is homeschooling with us. We need specifically blocked-out times for arts and crafts and we need to integrate a physical component into our history lessons. I don’t think we need to make sugar cube pyramids or anything like that, but we do need to find some more hands-on methods of doing lessons.

3. Captain Science owns his work, not me. I am one damn impatient woman. Impatient for Captain Science to get through his work quickly, impatient for him to do it the right way the first time, impatient for him to put in maximum effort rather than half-assing it. On Dawdlin’ Days, it’s all I can do to not just scream “OH MY GOD, just finish your dang WORK already!” at him, whilst running around and tearing at my hair and possibly taking up chain smoking. Ultimately, I’m not the one who controls how quickly he finishes the work. I’m not the one who controls how well he finishes the work. I can set time limits and repercussions for violating those limits. I can set standards for the work and have him redo it when he doesn’t meet those standards. At the end of the day, though, I can’t make him do something in a timely manner or with a high level of quality…or at all. Deep breath. Release. Provide guidance. Provide boundaries. Provide repercussions. Trust him.

4. Broad but shallow or narrow but deep? Did we spend too little time on each of too many subjects at a time? Did we spend too much time on too few subjects? Officer Daddyman and I have discussed this and in looking back over the past year, I see that we had periods of both. We started out with too much focus on history. It dominated our day, our life, our house! While classical homeschooling is typically history-centric, we were sacrificing other subjects just to drag out history. We also had a point where we were trying to cover 6+ subjects in a day, which meant that we couldn’t put any quality time into each subject. One way we dealt with this was by streamlining the subjects. For example, instead of three or four small language arts segments covering different things (grammar, vocabulary, writing), we switched to Michael Clay Thompson’s language arts curriculum, which integrated or coordinated those areas.

5. What’s popular isn’t always right, but it sometimes is. I probably won’t be buying into Sonlight or Math U See any time soon, no matter how many people sing their praises, but I wish I’d listened to the other parents on the advanced learner/gifted forum sooner. I know that I initially scoffed at how everyone was jumping on board the MCT train…oh, aren’t they trendy? Then I saw a video of Mr. Thompson talking about giftedness and why/how it should be nurtured, and I realized that his curriculum wasn’t popular because it was trendy, but because he had really clued in to some essential elements of giftedness. What other curricula have I dismissed due to its popularity that, in retrospect, I might discover could be a great fit for us. I won’t let a curriculum’s popularity/trendiness keep me from checking it out.

6. Friends in unlikely places. I thought that I’d find my home in the secular homeschooling community. As my many posts about feeling alienated or out of place would indicate, this wasn’t the case. I did, to my surprise, find some wonderful friends in the Christian homeschooling community. Despite vast differences in our personal lives, our specific academic materials, and our spiritual/philosophical beliefs, the many things we do share has given me a true sense of community. I also thought that it would be in the academic homeschooling community that I’d make my friends, but I could several unschoolers among the ranks of my Sisters in Homeschooling. I can’t even list all the wonderful (mostly) women (and a few men) I have encountered in the homeschool community…from all walks of life. In the end, it’s hasn’t been about secular or Christian, classical or unschooling, but about commonality of humor, respect for each other and our children, and a belief that we each want to do what is best for our children. If we don’t have humor as parents and homeschoolers, what do we have?

7. It’s ok to quit the stuff that isn’t working (before you hit crisis/loathing stage). A curriculum isn’t a marriage, right? I’ve had to learn and relearn this one. In October, I wrote about how much we loved Writing Strands and by January, I was writing about how much I disliked it. How many months of that time in between did I force us to keep on with an increasingly incompatible curriculum? I don’t know for sure, but next year, I will give myself permission to quite before I have to write a big dramatic post about how much I hate said curriculum. I promise. This time, I really will.

8. I don’t totally suck at this. Captain Science learned a lot this year. I learned a lot this year. We still like each other. Daddyman and I still like each other. The world hasn’t collapsed, the house hasn’t burned down, and I haven’t had a nervous breakdown. We not only can do this, we ARE doing this! We’re really, truly homeschoolers…and we’re doing just fine.

“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.