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Archives
- April, 2005
Downshifting – April 29, 2005
Whether you call it voluntary simplicity, slow
living or downshifting, the idea of getting out of the retrace and
living more meaningfully is catching on. In the
UK, this is the end of
National Downshifting Week. Conceived and organized by writer and
self-described downshifter Tracey Smith, it has been, by all accounts, a
great success. Smith wrote to say that she has been traveling all over England
this week helping people find ways to live more simply, less stressfully and more sustainably. The website is full of things
individuals and families can do year round to downshift. Smith says she
plans to take Downshifting Week international next year.
Posted: 2005/04/29 10:58 AM
Testing & Cynicism – April 24, 2005
An article in the British newspaper
The Guardian on April 16 reported an increase in the number of teenagers
caught cheating in public exams, fuelled by a 16 percent rise in
offences linked to mobile phones. Apparently, some students are using
their cell phones to receive answers for math and science tests via text
messaging. The paper noted this week that children in England are examined more than in any other country.
Cheating
in school is nothing new. But I clearly recall from my own high school
experience 40 years ago that it was caused by pressure – from parents,
teachers and “the system” – to perform well. That meant, of
course, getting the correct answer on a test, a feat that would lead to
both short-term (a bike if I passed grade 8) and longer-term
(advancement to the next grade along with my friends and eventually a supposedly
well-paying job) rewards. In the minds of us students, it had little or nothing
to do with learning anything.
In this era of high-stakes testing, I am
not surprised that there is even more pressure on students to produce
the right answers on tests. As I’ve written in this column before, many
parents are pushing their kids ever harder to perform well so they can
get a head start in the rat race by getting ahead in the job market. At the same time,
teachers and schools whose students perform well can receive financial
incentives, while those performing below standard on tests are
threatened with reprimands and/or budget cuts.
This
sort of pressure has negative consequences on students’ learning and
on their psychological well-being. Stressed-out teachers who
teach-to-the-test are hardly able to do more than force their students
to memorize facts that will soon be forgotten. There is a growing body
of research showing that students subjected to such a narrowly focused
view of the world lose any motivation, commitment to learning and love
of knowledge they once had. (For instance, see Edward Deci and Richard
Ryan’s work on
Self-Determination Theory at the University of Rochester.) In the workplace, it is well understood that assessment which
provides specific, one-on-one feedback in an atmosphere without pressure
or control will result in employees with increased self-motivation who
become more effective in meeting challenges. Why don’t we extend that experience to kids?
So
it is not surprising that young people are becoming increasingly
disengaged and cynical about tests, resulting in
increased levels of cheating. In order to change that, we must allow
them to feel like competent and autonomous members of a learning
society, rather than like parrots programmed to regurgitate other
people’s words under pressure.
Posted: 2005/04/24 1:19 PM
Happy Earth Day – April 22, 2005
Today is the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. It’s also
nearing the 30th
anniversary of my publishing company, Life Media. Back in the winter of
1975 when my husband Rolf launched The Alternate Press to publish our
first book, Natural Life
magazine was still a tiny seed of an idea. That seed germinated over the
following spring and summer, growing into the first issue of Natural
Life in October of 1976. Those were heady days, as the environmental
movement gathered steam and everyone involved sensed the huge potential
for creating change. We joked then about how we hoped that we’d
put ourselves out of business within a decade because the ideas of
self-reliant thinking and environmental sustainability would be so common there
would be no need for the magazine. Well, the ideas are certainly more
common, but a report out yesterday showing that Antarctica
is melting faster than scientists previously thought has me questioning
how far we have really come. Judging by the glut of press releases
I’ve received this week – both cynical and earnest – touting how
everyone from banks and SUV manufacturers to house cleaners is greening
up, environmentalism is now mainstream. But there is still a need for Natural
Life and its newly sprouting collection of counterparts, because in
spite of green fads and three decades of work by hundreds of
thousands of people, our Earth is still in grave danger.
However, Earth Day is supposed to be one of
celebration. And since this month also marks Rolf’s and my 35th
wedding anniversary, I’m in a positive mood. So let’s see the glass
as half full and use this day to renew our efforts to walk more lightly
on this planet. Happy Earth Day.
Posted: 2005/04/22 10:15 AM
Women Do Politics Differently – April
16, 2005
Political life in Canada
these days is in a mess. A scandal about sponsorship money gone wrong
has the less-than-one-year-old minority government in a free-fall and
the opposition parties gearing up for a quick election. Daily
revelations at a government-called inquiry are vying with unseasonably
warm weather for people’s attention. However, I’ve been noticing
something odd about this particular problem: there is a lack of women
involved. The politicians, the bureaucrats, the ad agency people are
pretty much all male.
I suspect there are a few reasons for that. First
of all, there are fewer women in such powerful jobs. Canada ranks 36th in the world among democracies in terms of women’s
representation in the national legislature, after Monaco and Nicaragua. And we’re not getting any better. According to a multi-partisan
group called
Equal Voice – An Action Group for the Election of Women, the number of
women candidates running for election in Canada has actually been
decreasing – falling from a high of 476 women candidates in 1993 to
just 373 in the last federal election. And in the ruling Liberal party,
which is at the heart of the current scandal, women candidates dropped
from a high of 84 in 1997 to just 66 in 2000.
Secondly, women do politics differently than men,
something I discovered during a brief stint as leader of the Green Party
of Canada in the mid 1990s. (I resigned largely because of those differences.) But don’t take my word for it.
The World Bank – not exactly a bastion of feminism or progressivism
– reported just that in a 1999 paper
entitled
“Are Women Really the ‘Fairer’ Sex?”. The study matched up a
so-called “corruption index” used in economic research against a
survey of women’s representation in elected office. The results were
clear: “The greater the representation of women in parliament, the
lower the level of corruption” and that “women should be
particularly effective in promoting honest government.” Earlier this
year, Equal Voice wrote to the leaders of Canadian political parties
asking them to ensure the nomination and election of more women for the
next election. I hope the guys listened and that the next election
won’t be too soon, so that they can use lack of time as an excuse not to
include more women in the political process...and thus clean up the
mess. Otherwise, citizen cynicism will continue to grow.
Posted: 2005/04/16 2:52 PM
We’re All Gifted – April 10, 2005
I’ve recently been approached to write about
enrichment programs in school settings, and about whether home-based
learning works for so-called “gifted” students. I’m having trouble
deciding whether or not I want to take on this assignment. First of all,
I believe that everyone is gifted – especially if they are allowed to
develop their talents in a richly stimulating environment like some
schools offer only to certain elite students.
A decade ago, the principal of our local public
elementary school invited me to help a multi-grade group of “gifted”
students learn about journalism and newspaper publishing. I agreed,
preparing a couple of sessions to demonstrate reporting, interviewing
and news writing, to which the young people responded well. Of course,
not all of them were interested in the topic, but most of them seemed to
enjoy the experience anyway. Then they became reporters. They each
covered an event at their school and wrote about it, using the
techniques they had supposedly learned. The next time I met with them, I
provided editorial feedback, in the same way I would to adult
journalists, true to the principal’s instructions. Although most of
them were indignant that I would ask for a re-write, the pieces
eventually were published in a special section of the weekly community
newspaper I was publishing at the time. In an attempt to provide these
students with an ongoing, real-world learning experience, I agreed to
make the column a monthly feature. Unfortunately, neither the teacher
nor the students were willing or able to meet my deadlines. And the
quality of work was dreadful and spiraling downward, with none of the
writers adhering in any way to the most basic principles we had
discussed – and that they had used when writing their initial articles. In
a few cases, when students had apparently tried to write in a
journalistic style, their articles had been badly re-written or
incorrectly edited by a teacher not involved with the program. I
eventually called the whole thing to a halt, and branded it as a
lose-lose situation.
I should have known better. I should have
remembered that creativity and initiative do not flourish in an
atmosphere of coercion. While specific talents and interests deserve
special training, the best way to help children develop their creative
abilities is to surround them with creativity and allow them to pursue
their own ideas and projects in the real world. If adults model creative
thinking, children will follow their lead. If adults try to look at the
world in new ways and to find new ways to do conventional things,
children will do the same thing.
Aside from being a non-stimulating environment for
all but a few students who have been ranked as part of an elite group,
much of the school mentality actually undermines innovation. There is
little room for true individuality in a school setting. Nor, for that
matter, is there room for any part of the creative process, which is
uneven, bumpy and non-standardized. Pressure to produce – as well as
evaluation, judgment, criticism and comparison – kills any original
thinking and creativity that manage to survive.
Posted: 2005/04/10 5:27 PM
Dying Not to Eat – April 4, 2005
There was international media coverage of the lead-up to last week’s
death of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who had been in what doctors
call a “persistent vegetative state” for many years until her
husband had her feeding tube removed. The focus on the legal wrangling
instigated by her parents and the protests from the right-to-lifers
obscured reports that the heart attack she suffered at age 26, which
created her brain damage, was caused by bulimia, a severe eating
disorder. Given that history, I have to wonder if she would have wanted
to be kept alive for so many years by being force-fed!
According to the National
Association for Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders (ANAD),
eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia affect eight million people
in the United States alone. Bulimia is considered a serious mental illness, and
the constant purging can lead to a variety of physical ailments,
including a loss of the mineral potassium, which can contribute to heart
problems and even, as in Schiavo’s case, death. Many psychiatrists now
consider eating disorders to be a subset of obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD), with the obsession settling on body image as opposed to
things like hand-washing. With the
increasingly sophisticated advertising industry’s use of psychographic
analysis to motivate people to buy stuff, many of those with eating
disorders have clearly been influenced by marketing messages designed to
create needs that they wouldn’t otherwise have. One only has to look at
the emaciated models in fashion magazines to understand that some people
would want to look that way…and feel badly if they don’t. There is
also speculation that eating disorders are about control; by controlling
their own bodies – albeit in an unhealthy way – young people who
feel out of control, due to adolescent hormones, regimented schools or strict parents, for
instance, are comforted. (And once again, the irony in Schiavo’s
situation surfaces as one thinks about her parents who had such a fierce
desire to control her recent life and death and who seemed to me to have been
in denial about both her bulimia and the extent of her brain damage.)
ANAD has made the link between Terri Schiavo’s
death and eating disorders. Perhaps now that the circus atmosphere that
surrounded her last few years has abated, her death may help those young
women
who are so vulnerable to exploitative advertising messages that they eat
themselves to death.
Posted: 2005/04/04 5:35 PM
Trusting Ourselves and Our Children
Is Not Regressive
– April 1, 2005
Life learning families make choices that differ in some ways from
current societal norms, and therefore sometimes struggle with the
tensions and seeming contradictions inherent in those choices. Giving
our children the honor of learning without schooling is bound to bump up
against many other issues, from how a family makes its living to how the
chores get done.
I have been exploring some of those issues – both
in my own life and in a broader context – as a result of the reader
feedback I’ve been receiving to a recent Life Learning
magazine column (see my
March 21, 2005 blog entry – “Learning Neatness”). As part of that
exploration, I am reading a book entitled The
Paradox of Natural Mothering
(2002, Temple University Press). Academic Chris Bobel has massaged her
dissertation into a book that portrays a group of mothers engaged in
homeschooling, natural health care, voluntary simplicity and various
attachment parenting practices. The paradox in the title arises from
what Bobel sees as a conflict between a lifestyle that is both
progressive and regressive (i.e. anti-feminist). While the women she
interviewed feel they are making choices in their lives, Bobel
denigrates these as non-choices that are biologically determined because
they are emotionally-based rather than intellectually thought-out.
(Presumably, if they’d thought about their choices, they’d have
behaved like more conventional mothers!) What these mothers are, in
fact, doing is trusting their emotions, their intuition, their bodies
and their children.
Perhaps our societal agendas have swung us so far
away from the inherent “knowing” that characterizes primitive
societies that so-called “natural parenting” seems to contradict the
principles of equality for women. My own life – and I would say those
of the women Bobel has portrayed – is an ongoing pursuit of the
balance between trust and intellect. Trust, after all, is one of the
cornerstones of non-coercive parenting and life learning. Taking
ownership of our own education and allowing our children to own theirs
requires trust in what we call “human nature”. In the case of our
children, that means trusting that they will behave sociably and want to
learn things, including both academic knowledge and social skills...with
our help and example, of course.
Posted: 2005/04/01 12:10 PM
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