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Musings,
meanderings, wonderings and wanderings about unschooling, natural parenting, green living, social justice and more by writer,
author and Natural Life magazine editor Wendy Priesnitz.
Archives -
November,
2009
A Thuggish Petroleum State –
November 23, 2009
I have been struggling for a couple of weeks to write an article or blog posting
about how ashamed I am – and how worried I am – about the current Canadian government’s
behavior on the world stage, especially regarding climate change. Today, I read
this column by British writer George Monbiot. He has said it for me and I
hate to admit that he is right. Please read
it and do what you can to influence this very dangerous and arrogant government.
Posted: 2009/12/01 8:08PM
Taking Back the Night – November 23, 2009
There’s not much I can say –
nor is any comment really necessary I suppose – on
this story. A woman
was sexually assaulted while she was walking in a Take Back the Night March in London, England. Disgusting, upsetting, sad,
frustrating…we’ve got a long way to go.
Posted: 2009/11/23 12:12PM
The War on Kids –
November 23, 2009
As I was researching films to review for my “Media Beat”
column in the January/February issue of
Natural Life Magazine, I learned that
Cevin Soling’s documentary film called
The War on Kids has just been released. It is
well-researched, provocative and sure to be controversial because it attacks
what is perhaps our most accepted institution – public schooling of middle class
kids – using actual news reports of the attacks on kids’ rights that are an
accepted part of the instituion. Now, I and others have been attacking this
attack on children and young people for decades, but there is something
in-your-face about a film that attracts attention. And The War on Kids is
getting noticed. It’s being reviewed in mainstream places like
the venerable entertainment publication Variety,
and so on. In the style of
Michael Moore’s films, The War on Kids doesn’t mince words, likening the U.S. public
school system to prison and its disciplinary methods to fascism. Schools, it
says, are regulated by fear and motivated by the
desire to control. And that control comes in many forms, including from police
in schools, capital punishment and zero-tolerance policies on everything from
homework to violence and drugs. (That zero-tolerance for drugs, of course,
doesn’t work both ways, as kids are regularly dosed with Ritalin so they’ll
behave in class.) Interviews with impassioned critics are at the core of the
film – people like John Taylor Gatto and Life Learning writer Laurie
A. Couture,
among many others. Gatto says that the compulsory school system is designed to
infantilize the mass mind and condition it to take orders in a docile fashion.
And I imagine even those who haven’t thought much about the subject before will
be left agreeing that nobody in their right mind would go to school like this
voluntarily.
Then, the film is clear about the need for change if kids
and democracy are to flourish. And wonderfully, the change that is proposed is
home-based learning. And that, according to Variety reviewer Ronnie Scheib, is a
“leap into left field” that will “excite heated controversy” – more controversy,
says Scheib, than its depiction of the actual problem! (We can at least be
grateful he didn’t say “right field.”) Scheib suggests such a radical solution
is not a viable alternative. However, if not the only alternative, it may be the
best one – one that I’ve been working toward for three decades. At least, we
need to thank director Soling for being so apparently audacious as to have
suggested it.
Will this hard-hitting documentary be the wake-up call that
it could be? Very possibly not. The website lists a few screenings this fall in
venues like universities, but not much other activity, even on a discussion
board. But it does provide a mechanism for screening the film in your community.
Maybe it’s a tool you could use to create change, to make it that wake-up call.
Posted: 2009/11/23 10:25AM
Have Sorted Myself Out
– November 12, 2009
Okay, you wonderful readers, I must apologize for any confusion I have created. I have
now sorted out my blogging life. This blog will continue as my personal writing
platform and will cover all the subjects in which I am interested. Over the past
33 years, I have concentrated very narrowly on writing about education and green
living. Recently, I have become restless and, with the help of my patient and
wise business and life partner Rolf, as well as some good friends, I have
realized that I want to widen my intellectual boundaries. While sorting oneself
out is, I think, a lifelong pursuit, I have jumped a few hurdles recently and am
developing a clearer view of the next decade of my life.
So, if you are
more interested in unschooling / homeschooling / self-education material, my blog at
Life Learning Magazine will be of interest. If you are interested in green
living and natural parenting, then my blog at
Natural Life Magazine is for you.
Both of those blogs have direct commenting capabilities (although moderated).
I do not intend to cross-post, although some subjects are bound to cross
whatever borders I create.
And, yes, I am aware of the irony in trying to pull apart the various threads
when one of the main principles of my philosophy is that everything is
connected. I guess the connection part will happen here! Thanks for continuing
to challenge assumptions with me.
Posted: 2009/11/12 11:20AM
It
Hasn’t Shut Me Up – November
7, 2009
When I began working as a writer and a
journalist over 30 years ago, I had a sense of coming home, that I was doing
work that perfectly fit my temperament and personality. In fact, I felt a sense
of relief that I was finally able to ask questions; that I could make money
doing so was a bonus. I’m known in my family as a questioner and a communicator.
I name problems and issues. Analyzing, describing and challenging is how I
understand things. And I believe (stubbornly but incorrectly) that any problem
can be solved given enough opportunity to talk about it. My curiosity meets my
inner chatterbox child quite often as I go about my day mumbling questions that
are, more often than not, rhetorical.
It’s likely that I am this way because
it wasn’t always this way. I grew up being told to keep quiet and not to
question. “Curiosity killed the cat,” snapped my maternal grandmother. Sharing
my feelings and ideas, and commenting on what was happening around me was also
taboo. “Hold your tongue,” my grandmother would say demeaningly when I began to
chatter. Conversation was for adults and learning was a passive, listening sort
of experience. “If God had wanted you to talk more than listen, he’d have given
you two mouths and one ear,” admonished my mother when I would try to involve
myself in dinner table chat. “Little pitchers have big ears,” cautioned my
mother mysteriously when the adults wanted to discuss one of the many
interesting topics that were off-limits to a child. “Children are to be seen and
not heard,” concluded my grandmother.
As a child, I felt resentful. As a
teenager, I began to reject the way I had been brought up and awkwardly tried to
find my voice, which I did, with increasing courage and confidence. As a young
mother, I was determined to encourage my daughters’ questions, to respect their
opinions and to include them in conversations. That became the foundation on
which our unschooling lifestyle was built. Now that I have finally developed
enough courage to ask, but can’t because they’re both dead, I wonder why my
grandmother and mother were so determined to shut me down. Did those two strong
women resent being silenced themselves? Did they long to be heard in their own
lives? Or did they truly believe that what I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me?
My mother was aghast as, just a few
years before she died, I finally began to break the silence in our relationship,
naming things, asking questions and hoping for answers from her that she was not
able or willing to provide. Sadly, that is not the only situation in which my
relentless questions and observations are not welcome. I’m still occasionally
told not to be so nosy or so blunt, to bite my tongue, to suck it up, to know my
place. I’ve learned tact and grace over the years, but I have also learned that
questioning is the most direct route to learning. And so it hasn’t shut me up.
Posted: 2009/11/07 10:09AM
Unschooling
Extends John Dewey’s Legacy – November 2,
2009
October 20 marked the 150th anniversary of John
Dewey’s birth. If he were alive today, the educational reformer would no doubt
be aghast at the fact that the dominant educational philosophy still mimics that
of an assembly line, with memorization and regurgitation of isolated “facts”
organized in a pre-determined curriculum continuing to be important aspects of
school life. As a professor of philosophy at the Universities of Michigan and Chicago in the 1880s
and ’90s, Dewey foresaw that our increasing dependence on technology would
demand creative thinkers able to solve problems and be inventive…and that was
not the sort of person schools were turning out. He pioneered the notion of
informal learning, which was quite radical in its day, even though such learning
was still organized as curriculum and programs. His ideas never really took hold
in education systems because they required small classes and individual
attention, and scorned testing. I think Dewey would, however, be pleased to
observe today’s unschoolers and secular homeschoolers (Dewey wasn’t popular with
the Christian fundamentalists of the day), for whom ideas like interest-led
learning, lateral thinking, connections among academic “subjects,” attention to
individual needs and learning styles, democratic classrooms, and children’s
ownership of the learning process are part of the life learning process. He once
wrote, “Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is not a
preparation for life; education is life itself.” He also wrote, “The path of
least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires
troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs.” And that
describes as well as anything why his ideas haven’t been put to use beyond the
progressive homeschooling community!
Posted: 2009/11/02 11:44PM
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