My reaction to Bill Nye’s recent bit of controversy.
“And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”
It might surprise some who know me to learn this, but I’m not a sold-out homeschool type. As much as wifey and I are enjoying homeschooling our kids, our preference would be for them to be in school. But that would only be under certain more ideal conditions, which we are not yet operating under, so we continue happily homeschooling away.
I mention this to let you know that this is not some sort of homeschool-or-die apologia.
I have a homeschooling pedigree, having been educated at home myself from the seventh grade on. I am part of the first generation of homeschoolers large enough to be noticed when they went to college, got married, had kids, and started educating them. I was only the second homeschooler to be accepted into the University of Florida. At the time, very few schools had any policies or standards for accepting us. UF decided that Robert (the first homeschooler accepted) and I should take a bunch of subject-specific SAT IIs, a very stop-gap policy that I’m sure has been changed by now. Within a few years I knew several other students who had been homeschooled, many of whom I had known when I was still in high school (my dad was a professor at UF, so I went to high school in the university’s home town).
So I’m part of the first mainstreamed generation. I’m also part of the last generation whose parents wondered and stressed about legalities, when homeschooling was very marginalized. Sure, today social workers still occasionally and usually illegally get in someone’s face, or homeschoolers deal with overregulation there or intrusive policies here. But there were still few enough of us out there back then that when a school board or social worker got offended that homeschoolers even existed, those people might think they could persecute and harass us without anybody important caring. The whole thing felt much more…guerrilla.
We moved from back alley to back alley, always pursued by the robots.
I don’t know what books my mom was reading in 1991, but they must have been pretty weird, since the year we started homeschooling was the same year we stopped eating wheat and moved to Berkeley. Strange times.
Like a lot of parents then, my parents were reacting. It’s a very positive thing that more and more parents are choosing to homeschool proactively. Although opting out is still a very large part of the culture today, opting in to homeschooling instead of opting out of state school is becoming the paradigm. And that’s helpful; it is always better to be formulating philosophies and making practical decisions based on positive frameworks.
My parents were Christians, but they did not believe I need a “Christian education”. They reacted to a dismaying experience, and since they had recently been exposed to the idea, the possibility, of homeschooling, they decided to give it a try.
I had attended school in Brazil from kindergarten to sixth grade. Most of those years I went to private schools, which would have been the norm for people in my class, with one year (I suspect my father was having a hard time financially) in state school. In 1989/90 we moved from Brazil to Edmonton, Alberta, a large city in western Canada. My parents were absolutely scandalized by the way the kids in our church treated their parents; it was common for Canadian parents to be held hostage by teenagers threatening to call social services, since their version of DSS would remove children at their own request with no questions asked. And they couldn’t believe the stories I told them of my first year in a North American junior high. I was as shocked as they, but even so, I liked the school. I learned to play football, joined chess club, and was on a basketball team for the first time in my life. I was very disoriented, but even then I could see that I had never been surrounded by as much depravity as I was in that seventh grade. Drugs, bullying, sex, suicides.
My parents reacted. When we moved the next year to Berkeley, California, they decided to homeschool us. They made the decision because they wanted to keep us away from bad stuff, from sin and sinful patterns. They knew we were vulnerable to be influenced, and they decided to put us in a safer place.
All of which was good and laudable. And those are reason enough for me not to let my kids into a state school, if the state schools I were around were like that. But here in the Bible belt they’re often not.
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I think that many of the homeschoolers who are homeschool-only-do-or-die are reacting. Yes, I’m generalizing. Don’t get your prairie petticoats in a twist, just keep reading.
Reactions can’t endure; they are at best short-term solutions. Positive otherness is what is needed when considering how most Americans view education and its problems.
Have you opted out of state school until it’s fixed? Until there’s less violence, or they permit the teaching of Creationism? Or have you opted out of state school because it’s wrong? Because there’s a better other?
Our decision to homeschool, even if homeschooling is not our top choice, is a proactive one. It’s a positive choice based on our resources and recourses.
Much of it is about legitimate authority. And on a deeper level, it’s about what it means to be human. Yes, it’s that fundamental, because raising and educating your child are the same thing. There’s no separating them. And when you raise a human, you’re making a human.
Education is teleological. It’s in the word, boys and girls. Educare. To lead out. To lead toward. To lead forth. If you’re educating a kid, you’re taking him somewhere, you’re making him something. If you’re the state you’re making him a citizen. A productive member of society. A worker. That is the state’s highest aspiration for your child. Surely that is not yours.
Of the three spheres of human authority, a Christian might argue about whether education fall under the purview of the church or of the family. All parents ought to be aware of what they’re doing and where they’re placing authority when they choose how to educate their kids. The family would attempt to lead a child to be a faithful son. The church would want to make citizens of heaven, of the City of God. But the City of Man makes Citizens of Man.
I have counseled against being reactionary instead of positive and constructive. But the state of educational philosophy and application is so debased that any path we take will be limited in the good it can do. Building a wall when you’re holding a spear in one hand and a trowel in the other will slow down work significantly.
I believe in community life. And I won’t punch you if you say “it takes a village”. I’ll only punch you if you say “it takes a village” and you mean “it takes the State”. I’m not giving up any of my joyous responsibility over my children, but just as I share my life with my brothers and sisters in Christ, I can share my children. We are a family. Which is why we would prefer to have our kids in a good Christian school, preferably one run by our church.
Alas, we haven’t the funds. Meanwhile, homeschooling is great. God has given us all the tools, starting with the little humans themselves, to make Big Humans. To make Men With Chests. He asked us to do the job. And by his grace, we will.
The question we must always have before us is: what are we doing? Whatever your choices in education might be, the answer should be, “Making children of God”.
From SMBC.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Robert Anson Heinlein (July 1907 – May 1988)
Via Rooted Man.
It’s spring time, and that means the wasps are coming out. They’re building nests under the porch awning, and under the back stairs, and by the back shed. But most of all they’re building just under the peak of the house, way up on the second story where it’s more difficult to get to them. This makes the prime real estate for wasps in our creaky cranny 1890s house right by windows to the girl’s and boys’ rooms.
Every spring and summer for the past few years knocking down the nests and killing the wasps that crawl in to the house has been a part of keeping the house. Wifey might be willing to go up and kill one if I’m at work, but usually the job waits until I get home. Then dad takes a flip-flop upstairs and takes care of business.
The wasps come in through the weirdest places. One season we had a recurring problem with wasps crawling in to daughter’s room through the in-ceiling light socket in her room, which didn’t have any glass around it.
Last year Joffre and George would come up to the killing ground with me, little men going up with dad to take care of the men’s mission. This obviously falls to dad because it’s dangerous and we’re protecting women and children. So my then six- and four-year-old boys would crawl up the stairs behind me, and watch from the doorway while I did the killing.
Wifey told me the other day, while I was trying to knock nest off the boys’ window, that I probably wouldn’t have to bother with killing wasps inside the house.
Apparently a few weeks ago a wasp intruder was reported while I was away. L’il Joffre felt himself ready to assume a manly responsibility and asked mom if he could be the one to kill it. He picked out a fly-swatter (a one-chance weapon I would have been too frightened to use, I prefer to crush them for several seconds with a flip-flop or a book), took a deep breath, and prepared to ascend the stairs. According to wifey the mission was nearly aborted as Joffre screwed up the courage to mount the stairs. There were agonizing moments while the audience wondered if he was up to the task he’d set for himself. When he did begin to climb, he walked up very slowly and very deliberately, before disappearing into the bedroom door, leaving the rest of the family to wonder what his fate would be.
A buzz was heard. A smack. A cry. “I got it!”
Wasp-killer.
So that’s not my job anymore. Now younger brother George will sometimes creep up the stairs behind L’il Joffre and watch him stalk the wasps. I guess next year we’ll have two wasp-killers trained.
Oooh, how very Victorian of me. And truth be told, 19th century poetry is very suitable for children.
L’il Joffre and I had another bath-time poetry reading session last night, which reminded me I should post about this.
My daughter is eight, my oldest boy is seven. Of course, the bath-time readings are limited to the males (the younger ones will hang out with us occasionally). Except for the occasional book of poems for children from the library, or readings of humorous collections such as T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the kids’ exposure to poetry for a while was L’il Joffre reading me poems I enjoyed, which I didn’t think unsuitable to his age. Billy Collins, T. S. Eliot, G. M. Hopkins, or maybe some selections from an anthology. My personal favorites.
I soon realized, however, that I was missing out on two opportunities. I now take those opportunities, and you might want to as well.
1. Read ballads or epic poetry to your kids. It’ll be a while before we tackle anything truly epic, such as The Poem of the Cid, or Beowulf, or even The Ballad of the White Horse. The kids are reading prose versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey for school, but of course, that doesn’t count as poetry. But I do think their appetite is already whet for such things when they’re ready. Several weeks ago we all sat down in the living room to hear me read Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. They loved it, and are still talking about it. I stopped every few verses so we could talk about what was happening and to make sure everyone was following the story. Even the five-year-old was able to follow the poem that way. We’ve read The Highwayman and The Lady of Shallot, which my daughter especially enjoyed (she has a Loreena McKennitt album in her room with sung versions of both poems).
The children’s own ability to read poetry has begun to improve as they hear me read. Joffre, for example, is now getting over his annoying habit of ending lines in an overly-dramatic whisper. The children have always imitated my rhetorical style when reading prose stories to each other, and the example of poetry emphasizes all the more the importance of reading well for effect.
Their sense of rhythm in particular is improving. And the potential to mix this with music, particularly in our family, which seriously lacks any musical gifting, is enormous. I’ve mentioned the McKennitt ballads. You can work in the other direction as well. I’m a big fan of folk ballads, so reading versions of songs like John Henry, Barbara Allen, or The Dreadful Wind and Rain is a great way to expose them to good music.
And of course, as with fairy tales or any other folklore, ballads and epic poetry are an excellent way to place the kids in the story-context of their own lives…it helps them to understand that they are part of a people, and a part of humanity.
2. This one is kind of new on me. I use poetry as a tool of moral instruction. I don’t necessarily mean that poetry can teach you what is right and what is wrong, although that is certainly true, as it is with any kind of story-telling. And it’s true of any good poetry. I’m not speaking strictly of story-formats of poetry, as I was in the section above.
The other day, when Joffre offered to read me some poetry (he values the dad time, poetry or no), I decided to take an opportunity. I wanted him to read some poems that were particularly English, because we’d been talking a bit about the English context of our cultural background. I love the English story, and I am of the opinion that a sense of Americanness without a sense of Englishness can lead to some unfortunate historical and philosophical myopia. With that in mind I had him read some martial English poetry. L’il Joffre read me Rupert Brooke’s The Dead (“blow out, you bugles”) and The Soldier (” there’s some corner of a foreign field/ that is for ever England”). We read Alan Seeger’s I Have A Rendezvous With Death (“I to my pledged word am true/ I shall not fail that rendezvous”). We read Kipling’s Recessional (“God of our fathers, known of old”).
The session ended up not really being about Englishness. Which I suppose I should have foreseen. The conversation ended up revolving around the ethical and moral elements of the poetry.
Okay, so Alan Seeger was actually an American who served in the French Foreign Legion.
None of the poems we read were stories, really. But they painted vivid pictures of certain kinds of men, and a certain ethos. Do I want a British imperialist for a son? Of course not. But I would like a son who has a sense of duty, of honor, of courage. I loved the things we got to talk about through the reading of the poems. And this is beside the basic educational comprehension stuff (“Who was taking the writer’s hand?” “Death.” “That’s right.”). We talked about everything from burial rites to keeping promises to what happens when a nation forgets God.
Poetry as a tool of moral instruction. I just love saying that. So Victorian of me. But also very fun of me, no? They already love reading poetry, so this actually ends up being an enjoyable way for them to learn about what is meet and proper so to do. Like basketball.
I just gave two didactic reasons for the reading of poetry with your children. But of course, there are many other reasons, not least that which is common to every art: the glimpse of beauty.
Which is why we might have to read High Flight this evening.
Advisory: rather “frank” words are used in this post. And let me be clear: I’m talking principles here. I’m not making any rules.
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to have floppy long hair. And yes, I’m about to mock half of America’s white teenagers. I was talking to a 24-year-old friend this week, and he made the comment that his generation “don’t know how to fight, don’t ever want to fight…they’re pussies.” And so it is. Floppy long hair, with those flips that get in your eyes, are a symptom of that. Justin Bieber is referred to as a “cutie”, not as a stud.
The contemporary teenager’s impulse to cover his eyes with long hair is not the first time this has happened. Emo kids did it. Gothic kids did it. These groups are defined by their effeminacy and weakness. Some pseudo-punk and skateboard kids did it. Those kids were the bitches of their groups, not the fighters and leaders. Now the hair-in-your-eyes thing is widely accepted. Your chess team captain won’t sport it, and most of the football players won’t, but all the white kids who fall between that range will.
Masculinity has become a widely reviled thing (not least in the overwhelmingly feminized state school system) over the past few generations, and each new generation of boys allows effeminacy to take a more mainstream place. It is no longer the temptation of social outliers to signal surrender with outward signs of effeminacy, it’s the mainstream thing to do.
I had a good bit of difficulty understanding how on earth anyone could debate whether or not Adam Lambert was homosexual, except to say that the rest of society has introduced a lot of ambiguity themselves. There is no ambiguity from Adam Lambert; it wasn’t about how long his hair was (among other fashion choices), it was about what he was signaling: receptivity and attractiveness. That, I’m afraid, is the tendency you see among teenagers generally: a softness that signals, if not sexual receptivity, passivity.
I want to be clear that the problem here is not long hair. I don’t really get to grow long hair, it just kind of grows straight out into a white man’s afro, but most of you know that my grooming standards tend toward the bushy. The problem is actually the signal being sent about readiness to fight; the problem is cumbersome hair.
The haircut classically associated with masculinity is the crew cut, or anything else high-and-tight, that masculinity with a ’40s and ’50s edge, like Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life. It’s the military haircut of a military generation.
But you can have long hair and not look soft at all.
This Indian warrior (I don’t know who he is) is an old man, but he still signals his readiness for action by binding his hair back. If he needs to get some violence done, he’s not going to be worrying about whether or not his hair is in his face, or if his clothes are too cumbersome, or if his shoes will allow him to run. These are perceived as feminine things in great part because when women are dressed like that, they signal permission for men to protect them. That’s what butch is, the very conscious and self-aware decision to reject that for oneself, and even very often to offer that protection to another, which is where the lesbian butch and femme relationship comes from.
Boys and men should not be belligerent. When a woman signals pure passivity, reliance, and dependence, both men and woman alike tend not to respect the woman at all (although that certainly does attract a certain sort of man). That’s what a bimbo does. If a man signals pure aggression, he’s either a thug or an asshole. There is certainly room for soft things in a man’s life (I, for example, have extremely soft hands). But men and boys should signal a readiness to protect things worth protecting. And you can’t do that very well with hair in your face.
My boys are sporting their summer haircuts right now, so they’re looking like shorn lambs. But we let their hair get reasonably long; especially the baby’s. I firmly believe, however, that if we allowed our boys’ hair to get cumbersome, difficult to wield, time-consuming to maintain, we would not be training them to be men of action. We’d be training them to be boys forever. Which is a vice of my generation and the ones following it.
With each passing day our little Swaits become more fully Swait! Renata and I faced off across a Scrabble board while Joffre Jr. bounced between teams. Renata acquitted herself well, scoring over a hundred points in a game in which we didn’t use any of the modifiers on the board. It was fun to watch them learn to think with the tiles and the board; Joffre kept wanting to spell words and just plunk them down on the board, regardless of whether they touched other tiles or not.
I think there are going to be some epic battles around here in a few years.
Last Saturday seriousandy treated me to a little M. Ward. We drove up to Asheville, had some delicious noodles at Doc Chey’s, had some Pisgah Vortex II imperial stout at Barley’s (apparently the only place you can buy it), I smoked an Onyx Belicoso, then we hit the show. And man, what a show.
The opening band, Suttie, was a sort of Cowboy Junkies/Neko Case thang that I dug, although they were either too cool for school or really nervous, ’cause they didn’t have a whole lot of enthusiasm (except, as Andy pointed out, when they played a cover).
M. Ward, on the other hand, was wholly invested in his music. Holy cow. His stuff is just so dense. He’s technically gifted, the music is good, his voice and verve are soulful, and his poetry is evocative but simple. I was absolutely blown away. Andy happily insisted on doing the dork thing, and we were all the way up against the stage (at the corner, so that my huge body would obscure the artist!), so that we had an excellent view.
The guy played by himself, a guitar and a piano. And the set was, as a member of Suttie had said it would be, “like one big single.” He did several songs from “The Transfiguration of Vincent,” including the Bowie cover “Let’s Dance,” which is the song that made me love him, and “Poor Boy, Minor Key,” the perfect example of how Ward is poetically so clever and so dense all at once. He seemed to skip over the album “Transistor Radio,” but did several from “Post-War.” I love “Poison Cup,” which is one of his several very deliberate songs, in which he builds pathos by being slow and deliberate, and using the strength of his rich voice to deliver a simple but killer line.
“I hope you know what this means. I’m going to give you everything.”
I mean, I left that show feeling charged up. Great, memorable, beautiful stuff.
I had a chance to see M. Ward when I visited Rich in Minneapolis a few years ago, but I didn’t do it. I’m glad it finally happened. He’s currently touring with Norah Jones, so if you have the opportunity to see him, do it.
Here’s one from “Post-War” he didn’t do, “Requiem.”
