No, no and no April 28, 2008

I know I’m supposed to be sensitive to the reality that teenagers are sexual beings and that attempts to deny their sexuality are about adults’ weird hangups.

Still, to this whole Miley Cyrus thing, I say no way. We had already stayed away from the Hannah Montana clothes, especially the leopard stretch pants that looked more like hooker-wear. Now I’m just turning my back on the whole “girl culture” machine.

Maybe someone with older kids can enlighten me. To me, a topless 15-year-old wrapped in a bedsheet looking sleepy into the camera with smeary lipstick is saying “Hello, pedophiles!” How this pic looks anything other than post-coital is beyond me, but I know some folks have said the sheet covers more than some high school girls’ regular attire — though what’s “covered” is not really the point.

More than that, I just despair for my girls. My daughter already thinks that sex means something about “girls trying to look sexy so that boys will want to kiss them.” [She vehemently resists learning more, so I don't push it.] I can’t take them to Stride Rite at the mall without walking past bigger-than-life pictures of girls removing their clothes. The worst was in Express, where in the front windows, huge pictures showed a boy standing behind a girl with his thumb hooked in her underwear. Put it in the back of the store, and I don’t care. But do my kids and I have to look at it on the way to Gymboree?

It’s true that I don’t like to think about sex and my kids at the same time, even in the context of healthy relationships. But I don’t think that’s the only factor in my discomfort with the mall photos and now the Miley Cyrus/Vanity Fair thing (and where the hell were her parents?). What really bugs me is how the process of commodifying girls (and boys, and everything) seems to be bottomless. (And I’m not referring to recent photos of Emma Watson flashing the cameras to celebrate her birthday. Major bummer.)

I really hate how feminism has been appropriated and repackaged for girls, at least since the Spice Girls, but no doubt earlier than that too. I’m thinking of all the Gene Roddenberry Amazonian women who were never more liberated than when they were wearing hot pants and salivating over Captain Kirk, though at least that was not created specifically for children. A movie like Charlie’s Angels — where hot young women are powerful because of their sexuality along with their cleverness — raises questions for me too, but I’m willing to play along because there seems to be some irony in there, and again, it’s not marketed to 10-year-olds. (For the record, we actually own the first Charlie’s Angels movie — we loved it.)

I really struggle to find a middle ground. Violet tends to find some efforts at a more intellectual form of “girl power” tediously earnest and transparently didactic, and though she is generally attracted to the manga version of teenage girls, she has no interest in looking that way herself and — again — she finds kissing gross and hates the idea of boys as anything but friends. (”Hates” as in “simultaneously intrigued and repelled,” I think.) But in the absence of our family’s efforts to offer some kind of positive girl images that will genuinely appeal to her sense of fun, her irreverence, and her awareness of aesthetics (for lack of a better word), all she’s got is the media and the mall.

. . . And a Footnote to French Theory April 21, 2008

Stanley Fish tries again . . . and I think I take the view of this commentor.

I was interested to read Fish’s follow up, because something has been on my mind since the last time. Fish is going to end up with well over 1000 comments on his 2 essays, and not a small number of them will accuse Fish of being obfuscatory, using too much jargon, being self-indulgently complex. [The use of "jargon" as a perjorative term has really come to perplex me in post-graduate life. Why wouldn't specialists use a specialized discourse?]

It is true, at times I had to stop and think through what Fish was saying. This was nothing, however, to reading David Hume, where after several readings I still wasn’t totally sure what he was saying. It was not a big help to read that modern philosophers are not sure either. In both cases, however, I felt (and feel) sure that it was worth the effort.

I also sympathize with Hume, Fish, Derrida, and anyone who attempts to use language to write about how language — or language-based cognition — works. The impulse is to get outside of language in order to speak about it, but of course there is no way to get outside of it. It’s not surprising to me, then, that their use of the language would look strange and break some rules. I’m willing to meet them halfway as a reader, because of the difficulty of their project.

Contrast this with something I read in my newspaper lately. A young woman was promoted to a prestigious and highly paid position in a major advertising/PR firm. You know, a company that specializes in communication. Here is an excerpt her description of her new position:

In this new agency role, I will utilize my interactive and strategic leadership experience to infuse new-world thinking into the agency culture — strengthening the overall processes of developing great creative ideas that are driven not only by consumer insight but also by the application of new, nontraditional ways to connect and engage with the audience. I will work with key clients as well as in the agency’s new business endeavors.

OK, give me Hume any day. I’m not meeting this one halfway. The first part of this reads like a parody of proactive, incentivizing cubicle culture. In fact, I was going to argue that French theory is a favorite punching bag of former college students (not without reason — I read academic articles every single day, so I know quite well how bad they can be), while this ridiculously puffed-up business-speak gets a pass, but then I remembered Dilbert. And the Simpsons. (“We’re talking about a totally outrageous paradigm!”)

Still, if Fish is moving into his second thousand comments, how many comments do you think this one got?

Also, in the spirit of utilizing interactive experience, I dare you to write your own homeschooling-parent job description as if you were one of these grand poobahs of circumlocution. 50 points to the most convincing!

Why I love/hate Word Problems March 28, 2008

Scene 1:
V: “She spent 1/4 of her money on shoes? Mom, she spent more on shoes than she did on lunch!”

Me: “hmmm”

V, to herself: “1/4 of her money on shoes . . . geez . . . “

Scene 2:

V: “Oh my gosh, mom, he needs 84 chairs! What in the world would anyone need with 84 chairs?”

Me: “Hmmm, maybe he’s going to have a play and he needs the chairs for the audience.”

V: “Yeah, but still, 84 chairs! Where would you keep them?

Me: “I don’t know, move on to the next problem.”

Scene 3:

[prop: workbook with newly drawn comics illustrating the action of the word problems]

Me: “Quit drawing on your workbook! I can’t see the answers in the middle of all those drawings!! No wonder it took you so long to get this done!!”

Favorite Games for New Macs? February 10, 2008

We’ve been phasing out our older computers, which is great for lots of reasons, but many of our old computer games don’t work on the new OS.

Anyone have any games that they love that don’t require the Classic environment? (e.g., that work on versions 10 and up without opening OS 9)

Educational or non-educational, either way.

Scenes from a Publishing Empire January 19, 2008

Finally, my desk, so I can be fair to everyone else who exposed themselves in this way.

Parenting Gifted Kids January 4, 2008

I’ve been reading James Delisle’s book Parenting Gifted Kids lately. I confess I am a touch disappointed. I like his attitude toward giftedness, kids, and life, but so much of the practical information in the book is about school.

Delisle is a school teacher, so perhaps that’s why, but it’s interesting to see how much of the challenge of parenting gifted kids seems to be dealing not with your children but with the school. This is how it seemed to me, about 2 years ago — why, when my 6-year-old is unhappy and uncomfortable, am I giving all my energy to the school? Wouldn’t we all be happier if I gave all my concern directly to Violet instead? (Two years later, answer = “YES!”)

Nonetheless, Delisle seems to get one of the central paradoxes of dealing with gifted kids: we focus so intently on giving them an appropriate education, when academics and intellectual acuity are really only one piece — the easiest piece! — of what giftedness entails.

Thus in the chapter on over excitabilities (OEs) he cites OE researcher Michael Piechowski:

. . . OEs are not a supplement to the gifted child’s personality, but they are the true essence of it. Just as one hand enfolds the other to create a cocoon of warmth, the OEs, when combined with heightened intelligence, create an individual who is capable of both great insights and profound compassion; it becomes hard to distinguish whether the genesis of one’s enriched abilities is in the head or the heart.

I feel a touch nervous about typing that out — the danger is that the idea of “OEs” either pathologizes giftedness or sets gifted people apart as superhuman. This is far from what Delisle is saying, and far from what those who live with highly gifted kids would want to say.

Apart from urging parents to persevere in their ongoing battles with the school system, Delisle main point is to urge compassion and understanding in parents. Don’t burden your child with your expectations. Make it OK to fail. Make it OK to be a regular person — gifted people are no more required to become famous, rich, or powerful than anyone else.

Though I am still left seeking more specific thoughts about parenting with OEs, the more practical discussions of the real meaning of “just let them be kids” — let them be themselves — were good reminders.

Second Anniversary of the Carnival of Homeschooling December 30, 2007

The Cate family has maintained the Carnival of Homeschooling for two years now. I think I’ve had about four entries since I started this blog– here, here, here, and here. It’s a fun way to see a variety of blogs, and the variety of thought out there in homeschool-land. Google Reader has helped me out with this too, but the personal touch is still nice.

You can find the last CoH for 2007 here.

The Cates are also holding a contest to create some graphics for the carnival.

I’ve already mentioned that I will be hosting the carnival next week (the 1/8 edition, not the 1/1 edition). Please consider submitting a recent post that will inspire, inform, or amuse. Barring that, please consider writing a post that outlines some aspect of your homeschool schedule, as I described in an earlier post:

What I am hoping to feature in the Carnival is calendars, schedules, and any other way homeschoolers organize their time. I’d love to have someone write a post with just a typical week and how they fit it all in: Spanish every other day, co-op on Thursday, miss lessons for a doctor appt. Wednesday, field trip Friday morning, etc. I’d love a similar post focused on just one day. Maybe someone else would contribute the time-table of a unit study. Someone with a larger family might have a post showing how they maintain multiple schedules. There are brilliant bloggers who focus on the liturgical year. Could be someone out there has some thoughts on seasonal homeschooling? . . .

I would welcome post of a more general nature on the subject of scheduling, not scheduling, time, and the expansion of the universe, and I of course assume that folks will contribute regular homeschooling posts as they always do, but I am really hoping for some very practical examples of what a homeschooling day, week, month, or year looks like in a specific family, with representatives from all different kinds of families and educational philosophies.

If I am counting correctly, you have a week to write up that schedule post, and my offer to send out a reminder in a few days still stands.

If you are champing at the bit, you have one more day to submit a post to the very first CoH for the new year, hosted by the Cates at Why Homeschool.

Merry Christmas! December 24, 2007

We’re on our way to pick up polish sausages and cheesecake at the Twin Cities’ famous east European deli.

Eggmaster wanted some traditional childhood favorites, so tonight we’re having:

Kielbasa

Pierogies

Lima Beans (that’s more for the girls, who love them)

Danish rice pudding with raspberry sauce

Tomorrow — yay hurray! — we’re going to a friend’s house for dinner, so I am bringing the cheesecake. I had already settled on a purchased dessert after 6 weeks without a dishwasher (yes, I know, none of the rest of you have ever had a dishwasher and you routinely prepare 12-course meals for 20 guests, so no need to comment to me about it . . . ), and I’ve had some kind of flu-like un-flu (I hope it’s un-flu, as I got a flu shot this year!) for the last 2 days. Better today — enough to venture out of the house, at least.

Merry Christmas to all Christmas-celebrators who read my blog, especially my blogger friends who’ve never met me in person but nonetheless (or perhaps, “therefore”) have offered our still-pretty-new-to-homeschooling family so many ideas and so much support this year. Truly, we are indebted to each of you, and we are so grateful. It would have been a very lonely, much less cheerful road without you.

My photos have gone nuts December 4, 2007

I recently changed all my flickr photos to private, which apparently broke the links to most of them.  I will gradually correct some of them, but for now, sorry for the big ugly holes in the middle of my posts.

Does this make me a bitter homeschooler? November 8, 2007

Since my Google Reader widget just refuses to cooperate:

Find out how to bug a homeschooler.

(with thanks to Patience for pointing it out)