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Archives
- April, 2006
Turn Off the TV – April 26, 2006
In terms of hours spent, watching TV is North America’s favorite pastime. But as an abundance of evidence makes clear, our
television habit has serious negative consequences. Research shows that
excessive TV-watching cuts into family time, harms our kids’ ability to
read and learn, encourages violence, and promotes sedentary lifestyles and
obesity. In order to promote decreased use of television, a non-profit
organization named TV-Turnoff Network was founded in 1994. Annually, they
sponsor
TV-Turnoff Week, which happens to be this week. In addition to lots of
facts and useful information on their website, here are some TV-Turnoff
Tips for families to consider: Move your television to a less prominent
location; keep the TV off during meals; designate certain days of the week
as TV-free days; do not use television as a reward; listen to music or the
radio for background noise; cancel your cable subscription and use the
money for books; don’t worry if children claim to be bored because
boredom passes and often leads to creativity.
Posted:
2006/04/26 3:31 PM
A Life That Mattered – April 25, 2006
Author, activist
(although she preferred to call herself a citizen who occasionally had to
protest stupidity), critic of authority, self-made economist, intellectual
with little formal schooling, Jane Jacobs was all of those and more. She
died this morning in Toronto at age 89. The world – or at least this part of it – is better for
her life and poorer for her death.
Born in Pennsylvania and later a resident of New York City, Jacobs moved to Toronto
in the late 60s with her family in order to avoid her sons being drafted
into the Viet Nam war. She said later that she’d fallen out of love with her country.
However, while living in New York, she successfully stopped the construction of a neighborhood-damaging
expressway, and she repeated that activism in Toronto
as one of the leaders of the movement to stop the construction of the
Spadina Expressway, which would have destroyed wide swaths of old
neighborhoods in the downtown part of the city, where she lived until
she died. Her first book, The Death and Life of Great American
Cities,
published in 1961, was a bible for urban organizers, favoring the small
scale of low-rise local neighborhoods, which include both commercial and
residential activity. Neither right wing nor left wing in her
“small-p” politics, she favored grassroots action over big
government.
She also, like me, scorned many “isms” and was,
I think, anti-expert, saying more than once that ideologies are
blinders. She was a magnificently successful example of passion and
intellectual curiosity being the road to self-education. Beyond a few
courses at Columbia University, she was self-taught and reportedly turned down many of the honorary
degrees that were offered to her late in life. David Crombie, a former
may or of Toronto and a long-time friend and admirer, has described her as a “Harvard
refusenik.”
A friend of unschooling proponent John Holt, Jane
attended and spoke at a memorial service that some of us organized for
him in Toronto in 1985. Like Holt, she was an authentic thinker who avoided jargon and
questioned received ideas that were presented as fact. She had a great
and creative life, one that mattered in very many ways. And besides her
books and the non-existent freeways, she has left a huge legacy of
ideas. In 1997, the City of Toronto sponsored a conference entitled “Jane Jacobs: Ideas That Matter.”.
One of the results of the conference was The Jane Jacobs Prize. It
includes an annual stipend of $5,000 for three years to be given to
“celebrate Toronto’s original, unsung heroes – by seeking out citizens who are engaged
in activities that contribute to the city’s vitality.” Upon
announcing her death today, her family issued a statement that read in
part: “What’s important is not that she died but that she lived, and
that her life’s work has greatly influenced the way we think. Please
remember her by reading her books and implementing her ideas.” And, I
would add, by replicating her ever-questioning, independent way of
thinking about the world.
Posted:
2006/04/25 8:08 PM
Expert Power – April 24, 2006
I just got off the phone after listening to an obnoxious person detail
for me his academic and training credentials, all of which, he assured
me, make him an expert in his field. And that, he said, is why I need to
publish the article he was trying to pitch. When he finally paused to
take a breath, I asked about the practical experience he had in the
field he wanted to write about. None, he said indignantly, but that is
irrelevant because he is an expert. I told him that we prefer our
writers to have gained their expertise by living whatever they’re
writing about and ended the phone call as quickly as I politely could.
I had to chuckle because the poor guy had no way of
knowing how many of my buttons he was pushing during that brief phone
conversation. And the main one was the “expert” button. I admire
those who have studied something in depth, and those who have a passion
about something. But I get easily irritated when people claim to be
experts, to have all the answers. Inevitably, they are trying to sell
something. I know that because I’ve marketed myself as an expert –
used the media’s description of me as an “award-winning
journalist”, or a “homeschooling guru” in order to sell books or
get speaking gigs.
Being an expert gives you power. But it’s usually
the “power over others” type, rather than what the writer and
activist
Starhawk calls “power-with-others” to accomplish good things or to
effect change through working together. The expert mentality also
personal power, that ability to be self-reliant, to believe in our
ability to take on new challenges, to learn new things.
Posted:
2006/04/24 5:08 PM
Success by Six – April 23, 2006
Public school boards and teachers’ unions are uniting against
the new Conservative Canadian government’s plan to put child care
dollars directly into parents’ pockets rather than into a public
daycare system that was planned by the former Liberal government. I can
easily see why they feel that way: Research shows that children are
better prepared for school when they’ve attended daycare that looks
like school. And kids who are have been molded in a way that they easily
find their places on the school assembly line are much easier for
teachers and other school staff to manage. But please don’t tell me we
are talking about children’s best interests here.
A recent newspaper article quoted Peel District
School Board Education Director Jim Grieve as saying that up to 30
percent of children in his area aren’t ready to learn to read when
they get to grade one. So he has helped spearhead a community initiative
called
“Success by 6”, which seeks to solve that problem. I guess allowing
all those kids to learn to read at their own speed isn’t an option in
Mr. Grieve’s world.
The daycare funding policy reversal is expected to
cost tens of thousands of promised daycare spaces. And that’s too bad
for those families who want or need to have someone else look after
their kids in a regulated facility. And the $1200 a year the government
is planning to give families is a joke – too little to allow anyone a
real choice about childcare (especially when the spaces aren’t
available). But this over-heated rhetoric about the lack of daycare
damaging kids because without it they won’t be prepared for school is
misguided. It’s also contrary to the fact that many Canadians would,
if it was economically feasible, prefer to have one parent stay home
with small children. In fact, a recent
Ipsos Reid study called “The Pulse of Canada” found that about half
of us feel that way. And, at the same time, only 40 percent believe that
the public school system provides a good education. Hmmm. For a
refreshingly non-partisan take on this subject, visit the Kids First
Parents Association of Canada
website.
Posted:
2006/04/23 1:35 PM
Reconnecting With What’s Important
– April 9, 2006
For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about busyness and how
it’s been a source of anxiety for me recently. Part of the reason
I’ve been stressed is that I’ve forgotten about the Zen approach
called “simultaneous inclusion”. I have been thinking in terms of
“busy” or “not busy” and waiting until I’m not busy in order
to rest. But “not busy” seems illusive these days. Simultaneous
inclusion, on the other hand, would keep me focused on the task at hand
with my whole heart and mind, allowing me to remain calm while in the
midst of a chaotic time...and to enjoy the productive and rewarding life
I’ve created.
This categorizing of work and non-work
is the bane of our society. We work all day until we can go home at five
o’clock (or later, depending on the demands of our jobs) to move into
family mode; we work all week in order to play on the weekend; we work
until we’re 65 in order to enjoy retirement. We divide our time into
various parts, based on the activity that’s undertaken during that
time period. And we learned to divide our time in that manner very early
– when we were in school, studying first one subject for an hour, then
moving on to another, apparently disconnected, subject. So there is no
surprise that, as adults, we find it difficult to integrate all the
parts of our lives and to enjoy them simultaneously while concentrating
on each in its turn.
As for me, I’m taking a one-week
break beginning on Wednesday. I’m off to Nova Scotia
to visit my youngest daughter and her partner. And they’ve arranged a
retreat by the ocean for the three of us over the Easter weekend. I plan
to walk on the sand and watch the tides, play Scrabble with two of my
favourite people by a fireplace, read some books I’ve been staring at
on the shelf for months, and practice the mindfulness that will,
once again, allow me to enjoy and be satisfied with my work.
Posted:
2006/04/09 8:50 PM
Time
Flies – April 1, 2006
Wow, times goes by
quickly when life is busy. For the past month, life and business have
been stubbornly eating away at my writing time. Maybe it is my fault that
I haven’t been strong enough about protecting that time. Maybe I am
using busyness to procrastinate about writing, not only here but on that
new natural learning book I have been working on for too long. Maybe I
have writer’s block. Maybe there are just not enough hours in the day.
Maybe I expect too much of myself. Maybe I am slowing down (just look at
those moms with young kids who find hours to spend writing on Yahoo
lists!). We moved, I was on deadline, my mother is ill, etc., etc. No
more excuses. April is another month, with all the fresh resolve of the
warmer Spring weather...and, where I live, the change to Daylight Saving
Time that happens tonight.
Posted:
2006/04/01 11:04 AM
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