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Archives
- May, 2007
A World-Changing Legacy – May 27, 2007
Today, I’ve been thinking about
Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, the bestselling book
credited with launching the modern environment movement – she is
sometimes called “the mother of environmentalism.” Today (three days
before my birthday) would have been her 100th birthday. Silent Spring was the first book I read on environmental issues, somewhere around 1972 or 73. It warned of the dangers to ecosystems from the overuse of pesticides. When
the book was published in 1962, Carson, who was a scientist as well the
writer of lyrical prose, was viciously and personally attacked (as not
knowing what she was talking about and for being a woman and therefore
not a real scientist, among other
things) by pesticide manufacturers, including Monsanto. But her words
were eventually given a great deal of credence and the book is credited
with leading to the ban on DDT. Unfortunately, she is once again being
attacked by the conservatives, who are
arguing that the banning of DDT led to unnecessary deaths due to
malaria. Here’s
an interview posted today with her biographer Linda Lear, which
addresses that backlash. Ironically, Carson was fighting breast cancer while fighting the critics of her book…and
she died on April 14, 1964 at the age of 56 – just one year younger
than I am now. Her other books are perhaps not as well known, but are terrific reads:
My favorite is The Sea Around Us, which
won a National Book Award in 1951. Her science and nature writing
was also serialized in magazines. In her book A Sense of Wonder, she
wrote: “Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties
of the earth are never alone or weary in life…Those who contemplate
the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as
long as life lasts.”
Posted: 2007/05/27
8:04 PM
Not a Movement – May 26, 2007
For over two years now, I have been engaged in a dialogue with Natalie Zur Nedden,
a PhD
student whose dissertation topic is my life
history, focusing on my 30+ years as an advocate for homeschooling
within the perspective of progressive social change. To some people,
that sounds like an oxymoron; to others, it may be the definition of
what has come to be called “radical unschooling.” Many people call
this thing that I publicized and kickstarted in Canada
in the mid 1970s a “movement.” And I think that has been one of the
assumptions of the life history. However, I’ve never been totally
comfortable with that word and its connotation. (Sorry, Natalie, to
quibble about semantics one more time!) Movements, it seems to me, are
headed up by ambitious and outspoken men, rather than by women who
just want to create change. By joining a movement, you
identify with a manifesto or other sort of well-defined rhetoric that
defines the purpose of that movement. I’ve always resisted and rejected
that model of homeschooling (or any other alternative to the mainstream)
and have felt awkward claiming to be part of its hierarchy.
And today, I read an article that brought my discomfort into focus. It was
written by
Paul Hawken, a writer and green entrepreneur whose work I’ve admired
for many years. (Back in 1995, we published an
interview with him in Natural Life magazine.) Writing about what he
estimates are hundreds of thousands of groups and individuals around the
world fighting climate change, war, poverty and other social problems,
Paul describes a phenomenon that is “dispersed, inchoate and fiercely
independent.” And, he says, there is no authority to check with (she
notes, gleefully.)
The organic and collective desire among disparate
people to provide a better educational experience for their children
fits Hawken’s model. And that model feels good to me because it allows
homeschooling (or unschooling, or radical unschooling, or home-based
learning, or life learning, or whatever label we give it to facilitate
conversation) to fit into what is a massive convergence of citizens who
are putting aside constrictive ideologies in the name of creating a
better world.
And what’s more, says Hawken, “This is the
first time in history that a large social movement is not bound together
by an ‘ism’.” Yes! I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve
rejected being labeled with an “ist” or an “ism”…and Natalie and
I have had many a conversation about that as she has tried to understand
where I am coming from and where I am going. I prefer to discuss – and
identify with other people on the basis of – ideas, processes and
goals rather than ideologies. Maybe that sets me apart from some in the
homeschooling “movement.” So be it.
Hawken ends his article (which, by the way, is an
excerpt from a newly published book called
Blessed Unrest) by noting that change is rooted in our willingness
to re-imagine and reconsider. That’s what life learners are doing in
terms of education. And
I’m proud to be part of that, however we label it...or not.
Posted: 2007/05/26
8:15 PM
Little Bits of My Mother…and Daughters – May
19, 2007
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of the lives of
mothers and daughters: My eldest daughter’s 35th birthday
is approaching and my 98-year-old mother is, once again, quite ill. Ever
since our daughters went their own ways, I have often felt the somewhat disconcerting sensation of there being two bits of me floating
around out there somewhere distant. The feeling has intensified now that
they both live half a continent away. Occasionally, these days, I feel a
twinge of regret at not staying in better contact with my mother when we
lived in far-flung places as a young family (OK, and sometimes not so
far away.)
Recently, I stumbled upon some
research that seems to put some facts behind the floating bits sensation
– and reinforces the bond between mother and child. Apparently, cells
can migrate from mother to fetus and remain there long after the child
becomes an adult, a phenomenon that is called “microchimerism.”
Lee Nelson, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, is
studying the effect of these cells and whether it’s good or bad. The
research results are mixed so far, with some experiments suggesting that
maternal cells can produce insulin when a child develops diabetes. But
other research suggests that these same maternal cells can trigger
autoimmune diseases. That’s of particular interest to me, since my
mother and I both have lupus.
The reverse is true too. In addition to having some
of our mother’s cells in our bodies, we apparently left some of our
own behind in her bloodstream when we were born. Fetal cells appear in
mothers’ organs long after birth and have even been found in the bone
marrow of grandmothers. These fetal cells, say some researchers, have a
role in healing disease. In one
experiment, fetal cells migrated from the mothers’ blood to the
disease sites (including thyroid, liver and cervix) and seemed to form
healthy tissue.
To complicate matters, some women may have three
generations of cells in their bodies – their own and some from their
mother and their children. So there’s an explanation for my floating
bits feeling. And there’s also plenty of support for my current task
of trying not to complain when somebody tells me that I’m just like my
mother.
Posted: 2007/05/19
4:49 PM
Throw Away the Rules – May 14, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, during a visit with my mother at the nursing
home, I was told she was unhappy with the nurses. She’s always
unhappy about something, but this time it was about bed time. Apparently, she wanted to go to bed at 6pm
because her minimally healed broken hip understandably hurts after a
day of sitting in a wheelchair. The nurses shared with me their
frustration about unsuccessfully trying to get her into bed for
a nap during the day to take the load off her leg. Oh, no, I told the
nurse. In my mother’s world, the rule is that only ill or lazy people
go to bed during the day. That got me thinking about all the rules that
populated my life as a child…and some that linger with me as an
adult. (I still can’t nap during the day!) They’re mostly dumb
rules, based on mindless myths and miserable misconceptions and miserly
competitiveness. Oh, and on children and other lesser beings knowing
their place.
My daughters, however, taught me long ago to throw away
the rules. Their childhood play was mostly spirited but not
blood-thirsty, even when we played traditional board games like
Scrabble or Monopoly. And they made up the rules to suit themselves,
much to my horror. Actually, those games were often shoved aside by
cooperatives games like The Farm Game, produced by Animal Town Game
Company. We picked it up at one of the
first eco-fairs, held in the late 70s in Los Angeles, about the same
time we learned about Family Pastimes, another cooperative game
manufacturer.
Learning to throw away the rules has not been an easy lesson for me...and I sheepishly recall many times when I gloated about buying up all the hotels and gouging the competition into poverty. But now, when Melanie and I play Scrabble, like we did last month when I
spent a week at her new home by the Nova Scotia
ocean, we throw away the rules and revel in the joy of forming unusual
words rather than in the competition of winning or losing. Yes, life is
better without so many rules.
Posted: 2007/05/14
7:43 PM
The Examples We Set – May 3, 2007
There has been a lot about bullying in the news recently, from children
being bullied in and outside elementary schools – and even committing
suicide as a result – to teens dissing their teachers on Facebook
(and, yes folks, that is bullying.). In
Boston, this week, lawmakers decried school bullying as
they considered legislation to prevent it, but others warned against
unintentionally curbing free speech in the process. An interesting
conundrum, that. The problem is, just consider the role models young
people have these days.
In the U.S., they have a bully government that is well-known for beating up on
other countries and a bully president who, smirking all the way, led their soldiers to beat up
on innocent civilians in Iraq. (Who, admittedly, used to be led by
another world class bully.)
In Canada, they have the spectacle of a bully government led by a bully Prime
Minister and his bully cabinet cohorts who are copying their American
role model in their bullying treatment of anybody and everybody who
disagrees with them. Government critics are daily accused of being against
Canadian troops or supporters of the Taliban in order to deflect
attention from a pathetically cynical and unpopular set of policies. Awhile back,
bully Prime Minister Stephen Harper accused former Liberal cabinet
minister Lucienne Robillard and MP Marlene Jennings of appointing their
husbands to the Immigration and Refugee Board. However, both men – in
Robillard's case, an ex-husband – were on the IRB before the women
entered federal politics – a fact that was somewhat lost in the
rhetoric. And just this week, both the Team Canada hockey captain and
Green Party leader have been made bullying targets over remarks they say
they didn’t make, as our esteemed leaders are again questioning the
values of people in order to make themselves more popular. What makes
this particular bullying even worse is that the House of Commons
doesn’t have a way to correct mistruths, and things said there are not
subject to libel or slander laws. So much for the freedom of speech argument.
When kids observe this sort of
bullying by adults in high places, is it any wonder they think it’s
cool to bully their peers or slander their teachers? I think we should
scoot these bullies out of office quickly, then put in place legislation
that prevents bullying in and by governments.
Posted: 2007/05/03
5:05 PM
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