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Archives
- January, 2007
Where is Education? – January 26, 2007
“Where is the wisdom lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge lost in information?”
T. S. Eliot
Posted: 2007/01/26 11:15 AM
Breastfeeding in Public – January 24, 2007
After a number of recent incidents where breastfeeding mothers have been
asked to leave restaurants, theaters and various public places like parks,
the City of Toronto is planning to set things right. The Public Health
department is hoping to broaden a policy already in place that covers city
employees breastfeeding at work to assert a woman’s right to breastfeed
anywhere in the city.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission already has a
policy that states, in part, “You have the right to breastfeed a child
in a public area. No one should prevent you from nursing your child simply
because you are in a public area…They should not ask you to cover up, disturb you, or ask you to move to another area that is more
discreet.”
Maybe I was naïve 30-some years ago. Or maybe times
have changed for the worse. But I breastfed my two daughters wherever I was
in the early 1970s. It never occurred to me that anyone would object. And
nobody did, that I recall. After all, feeding children is the purpose of
breasts…and it’s a very sad commentary on our messed up culture that we
connect feeding a child with sex and relegate it the bedroom, or with other
bodily functions and banish it to the bathroom. Indeed, in most places in
the world, breastfeeding holds no sexual connotation. At any rate, most
breastfeeding mothers bare less skin than many entertainers – just have a
look at the upcoming Academy Award presentations!
Anyway, the La Leche League has info on its
website about breastfeeding laws in various places. I recall in the early
days of homeschooling, I used to carry a copy of the education law around
with me in public…maybe breastfeeding mothers will have to start doing
that.
Posted: 2007/01/24 12:49 PM
Neat-freak Education – January 18, 2007
Self-directed learning is messy. That’s one reason why it’s disliked by
public school supporters. Actually, I should probably amend that to read,
“Learning is messy…and that’s why schools aren’t great places for
it to happen.”
In the upcoming March/April issue of
Life Learning, which I’m just finishing up, Karen Whitescarver explores
the meaning of chaos, which she concludes is essential for growth and
change. Rote memorization of facts and the orderly regurgitation of them
tend to be neat – not to mention easily assessed – processes, but
they’re not learning.
When my office gets particularly messy, I just quote
the cliché that a messy desk is the sign of a creative mind. Fortunately
for me, there is increasing evidence that disorder is, indeed, “the
detritus of a creative mind”, as Penelope Green wrote in the
New York Times late last year. In their recently released and highly
publicized book
A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, business school professor
Eric Abrahamson and journalist David Freedman show that moderately
disorganized people and institutions are frequently “more efficient, more
resilient, more creative and in general more effective than highly
organized ones.” And probably more successful too. They cite a survey
done by a professional staffing company, which found that the higher the
salary, the messier the person: “Sixty-six percent of Americans making
$35,000 or less are self-described ‘neat freaks,’ whereas only 11
percent of those earning above $75,000 claim the same.”
Abrahamson and Freedman are at the forefront of what
one might call the “anti anti-clutter movement.” They are encouraging
people to invite confusion into their lives in order to be more creative
and productive both personally and at work. In an article in
Inc. magazine, they advise us to “be inconsistent, pile up, blur
categories, make noise, bounce around, get distracted.” Sound like any
kid you know?
In fact, unschooled kids are a good example of how making a
mess gets things done. And usually, the more they’re learning, the bigger
the mess they create. Places that stress neatness, order and quiet might
make good retreat spas, but they don’t function well as learning
environments.
The art of learning to read can be one of the messier
processes, and it’s also one of the processes that academics attempt most
often to standardize. As professor Alan Thomas writes in the same issue of
Life Learning, the fact that children can learn to read on their own is
shocking to professional educators who, in spite of (or perhaps because of)
being highly educated, stick to the “simple ideology” they were taught
was true and refuse to allow for other possibilities. Thomas quotes one
school authority who dismissed the idea that people can read without being
taught as “plain crackers.”
Unlike that dinosaur, unschoolers are at the
leading edge of the chaos theory of learning. But we’re still learning
how to implement it and recovering from our own experience of the neat-freak theory of education.
Just ask reader Junyee Wang, whose personal confessional tale about
overcoming the programming she received in school, which taught her she
isn’t a writer, rounds out the next issue of Life Learning.
Posted: 2007/01/18 7:19 PM
Assaulting the Ivory Tower – January 13, 2007
There was an article today in the
Halifax Chronicle-Herald about a university course normally taught to
students but now being offered to non-students living in the community,
including retired people. It’s being taught by a retired professor who
is also the former president of the University of
Kings College, which is offering the course. According to the article,
“…the best part is there are no exams, essays or marks to worry
about. You enroll because you’re interested in learning about the birth
of civilization, the creation of the city-state, the fall of
Troy or that creepy relationship Oedipus had with his mom.” And the prof
gushes about how wonderful it is to have “as an audience” people who
are interested in learning what he’s teaching. Working with people who
want to learn is “the nectar of the gods,” he says. Imagine that:
people learning
actively and eagerly because they want to know something, and without the
need for a diploma…what a concept! Well, I’m glad that this academic
now understands a bit about interest-based learning, at least for adults.
If he could spread the word among his colleagues, he would provide a
great service to life learners as well as sow a seed of sanity among
school systems. Unfortunately, the task wouldn’t be an easy one because
he is in the minority.
This past week, I have been editing articles for the
March/April issue of
Life Learning magazine. One of the essays we’ll be publishing was
written by Dr. Alan Thomas, a Visiting Fellow, Institute
of Education, University of London and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society – another academic
who has seen the light. He describes how he became interested in and
learned to trust first homeschooling and then unschooling. After relating
how his observations of unschoolers taught him how people can learn from
life and presenting some research that supports the philosophy, he tells
the story of a chief inspector of schools in the UK
education bureaucracy. This supposedly well-educated man was quoted in a
newspaper a few years ago as saying, “The idea that children could
learn to read by osmosis is plain crackers.” How’s that for arrogance
and closed-mindedness? Unfortunately, the man is not alone. Sadly, many
academics heap scorn on the idea that people might want to learn for
learning’s sake, can learn without being taught and, indeed, are quite
capable of conducting even advanced intellectual searches successfully on
their own, for the purpose of solving a problem, pursuing a passion or
purely for the joy of learning.
I often wonder how to integrate these principles
into public education – by preserving the right to unschool, obviously,
but also by changing the way the broader public education system works. A
starting place might be to gain the respect of the academic community for
informal, learner-controlled education. I wonder if the ivory tower would
survive the shock.
Posted: 2007/01/13 11:47 AM
I’m Not Working Hard – January 10, 2007
Over the past few days, a number of people have accompanied their Happy
New Year wishes with an admonishment not to work too hard this year. And
that bothers me.
Now, I came of age in the late 60s, where not
working hard was somewhat of a badge of honor as we rejected everything
our parents’ generation stood for. But now I see it differently. My
goodness, have I become my parents and suddenly embraced what is often
called the “Protestant Work Ethic”? No, but you might call what
I’m talking about a “Passionate Work Ethic.” If you have the
misfortune to be a wage slave, doing a job you dislike, perhaps in an
environment that exploits your need for an income, then working
“hard” might be a problem. If you spend long hours at an
unfulfilling job, counting the hours until you can live your real life
on the weekends, then working “hard” will surely be a problem. But
that’s not what my life is like, fortunately. My work is important and I love it
(even though there are aspects of it – like bookkeeping, for instance
– that I quite dislike.) You might say my work is my passion and often
my play. I spend long hours at it and don’t feel I’m harmed. In
fact, I’m very happy when I do my work. I’d probably do it even if
it didn’t provide an income. OK, I did it when it wasn’t providing
an income.
Anyway, I see that same passion in children who are
concentrating on learning something. Yes, they’re working hard, but
what they’re doing is not “work” in the sense that people mean
when they tell me not to work too hard.
Ultimately, what those New Year well wishers want
for me is to have joy, balance and health in my life. And those are good
things…and they are among the benefits I get from my work, most of the
time.
Posted: 2007/01/10 8:14 PM
Better Than Homework – January 7, 2007
Did you read that story last week about a
14-year-old boy who became the youngest person on record to make a solo
voyage across the Atlantic Ocean
in a sail boat? Michael Perham, who skipped school to make the six-week,
3,500-mile trip, learned a lot. Aside from honing his sailing skills and
undergoing valuable character building experiences, he watched dolphins
swimming alongside his boat and had flying fish land in his lap. In one
media report, he was quoted, rather lamely, as saying he even had a bit
of time to do homework! Good grief, do we have to measure everything
against the supposed danger of missing some school? I wonder how Mike
will manage with interrupting his education by going back to school.
Posted: 2007/01/04 1:54 PM
Happy New Year – January 1, 2007
As I walked along the path by the lake
this oddly Spring-like morning, I thought about the highlights and lowlights
of 2006. It was an eventful year, which was challenging in many ways, but I was able
to find some diamonds among the rubble. Here are just a few:
-
Four of us spent a magical foggy Easter weekend at a
cottage in “Second Paradise” on the south shore of Nova Scotia
(that’s the view I captured in the photo on the top left of this page).
-
My mother slipped deeper into dementia but
ironically seemed to find
a level of contentment that has eluded her most of her life.
-
Natural Life magazine turned 30 and evoked many good
memories as well as some wonderful letters from readers.
-
Life Learning magazine
continued to grow and its
readers continued to say amazing things about how it enriches their lives.
-
I have had the luxury of spending time making sense of my
life so far, thanks to Natalie Zur Nedden who is crafting my life history as
her PhD dissertation.
-
Rolf
and I spent a lovely little Christmas with our youngest daughter
Melanie, who was visiting from Nova Scotia for a week to share her
unique brand of joyfulness.
-
My
writing muse recently returned from wherever busyness and stress had
made it hide away for many months. (So yes, I have begun that
long-promised book about natural learning; it looks like it is
turning into a collection of memoirs, but I will let it take its
course.)
A very Happy New Year to every one of my readers. I wish you a sustainable, healthy, happy
2007. Thank you for all your input and comments over the past year. I
will be building on some of them in postings later this month.
Posted: 2007/01/01
4:15 PM
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