Editor of Life Learning magazine Editor of  Natural Life magazine Author of unschooling books Small/Home Business writer Poet Speaker Interview on Radio Free School

Musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings about unschooling, natural  parenting, sustainable living and more by Wendy Priesnitz.  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 in Orion magazine 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 the Kolsbun family and their 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 Return to current weblog Comments? Suggestions? Email Us copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2007

Topics & Passions: natural learning simplicity environment parenting creativity / writing books ~ What I'm Reading: Wikinomics  - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everying by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (2006, Penguin) Courage for the Earth: Rachel Carson by Peter Matthiessen, ed (2007, Houghton Mifflin) ~ What I'm Listening To:  Uncover Me by Jan Arden (Universal Music, 2006) Bach Violin Concertos by Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman with the English Chamber Orchestra (EMI, 2001) Solo Piano - Ten Performances (Fringe Jazz Toronto, 2004) Half the Perfect World by Madeleine Peyroux (Rounder Records, 2006) ~ Fav Bookmarks: Daughter Blog Moon and Me - Bringing Nature and Nurture Together Parenting Without Punishing The Guardian Organic Consumers Association Free2be Common Dreams Grist Magazine ~ Fav Quotes: Art, Writing, Creativity Life and Living Men and Women Learning Environment and Peace