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Welcome to these regular musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings by Wendy Priesnitz. Archives - October, 2004 Compulsory Childcare? – October
27, 2004 Now, I am the first to agree that we need stable, well-funded daycare (and other kinds of babysitting) for those who want and need it. And we shouldn’t tolerate the shabby centers, poorly trained and underpaid workers, and lack of outdoor play space that the OECD researchers apparently found on their cross-country tour. Canada has among the highest percentage of working mothers of young children, yet it invests less than half of what other developed nations in Europe devote on average, according to the report. It recommended that federal and provincial governments each pay 40 percent of daycare costs, with parents making up the remaining 20 percent. However, I’m very worried about where this is going. In a Toronto Star article yesterday about the report, social worker and former Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick Margaret Norrie McCain was quoted as using the term “evidence-based early childhood development”. She said, “In the past, people thought of [daycare] as a babysitting service for moms to go to work.” Uh, yes, isn’t that what we’re talking about (with the possible inclusion of dads)? Nope, what we’re really talking about, according to Norrie McCain, is “falling behind in the ability of our people to compete on the world stage, in the global marketplace. It’s serious business.” Ah yes, that report was authored by an economic development organization, wasn’t it? Nervous yet? Well, how about this? OECD project manager John Bennett believes that neglecting child development is a pity because children are “very competent learners”. They can, he says, “do a great deal and if they’re given the right situation and the right support and the right professionals looking after them, children will learn to read and write quite quickly, they’ll be curious about nature, about their environment, it means they can communicate well together.” His report notes the importance of young children taking part in “an active, exploratory curriculum”. Such professional arrogance, such a lack of understanding about how kids learn! Why not put some public money into supporting parents so they can stay at home with their young children? Why not put some money into creating and supporting community institutions to help families learn together? But that’s clearly not where we are headed. In response to the report, Minister for Social Development Ken Dryden, who has responsibility for drafting a $5 billion national childcare plan, told reporters, “What the OECD report said, and very clearly and effectively, is we’ve approached child care in the past as a service... Now what we need to do is move from that to something that is a system.” He favorably compared the development of a childcare system to the way the public education system developed a century ago. And in doing so, he has inadvertently described one of the main problems with the public education “system” – it has never been a service! So...“evidence-based”, “curriculum”,
“professionals”, “system”. How long until attendance at
childcare becomes compulsory? Like Parent, Like Child – October
25, 2004 It was found that children aged two to three years who were living in punitive environments in 1994 scored 39 percent higher on a scale of aggressive behaviors, such as bullying or being mean to others, than did those in less punitive environments. The difference was even more pronounced six years later in 2000, when the children were eight to nine years old. Those who lived in punitive homes scored 83 percent higher on the aggressive behavior scale than those in less punitive homes. Both at age two to three and also at age eight to nine, children raised in a non-punitive parenting environment were much less likely than others to exhibit aggressive behavior, according to their parents. The level of aggression was not affected by household income or gender of the children. However – and here is what I find really interesting – the study found that
as parents adjusted their parenting styles, their children were able to
change as well. When parenting styles that had been punitive when
children were two to three years old became less punitive six years
later, children’s aggressive behavior scores also tended to be lower,
regardless of how aggressively they had behaved while very young. In
other words, children whose parenting environment changed from punitive
at age two to three to non-punitive at age eight to nine scored just as
low in aggressive behavior as those whose parenting environment was not
punitive at either of those ages. Assembling a Life – October
24, 2004 This trend is described in detail by writer Philip Preville in an article in Enroute magazine. (Thanks to a reader for drawing it to my attention!) And Preville does point out that “home meal assembly” is especially a hit with the under-35s who are crunched for time but still feel the need to somehow participate in meal preparation. My first thought on reading the article was that this supposed biggest food trend of the last decade has its opposing trend – the Slow Food Movement, which is dedicated to preserving the taste and general pleasure associated with good food. Of course, slow food may be merely a reaction to fast food. And perhaps its following is made up of contemplative midlife folk like me, rather than the more frenzied under-35s. However, on second thought, I focused on the part about needing to participate in meal preparation. Perhaps people miss those home-cooked meals of their childhood – even if, like me, they didn’t experience many of them. Maybe they yearn for the camaraderie of group food preparation and long to savor the pleasure associated with gastronomy. Maybe the home meal assembly and slow food trends are really two different aspects of the same thing – a return to an understanding that food is much more than something to shovel into our mouths to give us enough energy to keep running the rat race. Unfortunately, scratching this itch in this manner isn’t exactly the best choice in terms of nutrition or the environment, since these made-for-assembly meal components generally use more salt and preservatives, as well as more packaging, than their raw state counterparts. I think of my mother, a 1950s “homemaker” who embraced every new “instant” food as it came on the market, from powdered mashed potatoes to Jello, even though time wasn’t a constraint, with a tiny home to make and just one child. I think, also, of myself, who (in typical overblown reaction to my own upbringing) managed to tend a vegetable garden, bake bread from scratch, dice vegetables and soak beans for long-simmered stews, and more...all the while tending two home-educated children and co-running a publishing business. So the ability to feed ourselves well doesn’t have to depend
on the amount of available time. I suspect that cooking skills and
priorities are more important factors. Oh, and could the corporate world
be, once again, pushing us along the road toward assembling our lives
(and our food) rather than creating them? The Enroute article mentioned
Canadian research that shows that food manufacturers are doing their
part to speed up the decline in people’s cooking skills. Fortunately,
one of the projects of the Slow Food Movement is to protect food
biodiversity – not only food animals and plants that are disappearing,
but also products, dishes and skills. On Stupidity – October
18, 2004 Filmmaker Albert Nerenberg describes stupidity as a chronic resistance to intelligence. And that is the theme of his film of the same name, which premiers on television in Canada later this week. The documentary sets out to determine whether our culture is hooked on deliberate ignorance as a strategy for success. From actor Adam Sandler (of Coneheads and Airheads fame) to U.S. President George W. Bush, from the IQ test to TV programming and the origins of the word “moron”, Nerenberg examines the dumbing down of contemporary culture, which is happening in spite of our unprecedented access to information. The result is a sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying look at the human race and the stupid things it has done over the course of time. One of the theories Stupidity puts forth is that people prefer the act of “resisting intelligence” because it makes them feel more comfortable. That, according to Jacob Weisberg in an article on Slate explains why George W. Bush gets away with so many contradictions and lies. People sympathize with – and actually like him – because he appears like “an amiable dunce”. Weisberg goes on to observe that while Bush may not have been born stupid, he has “achieved stupidity”, and now he “wears it as a badge of honor”. He is proudly anti-intellectual, not wanting to know anything in detail and has actually expressed contempt for knowledge. In his film, Nerenberg
suggests that unless stupidity is dealt with, we may all be doomed. And
Einstein had something to say about that too: “The world is a
dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those
who look on and do nothing....”
In Charge of Ourselves – October
12, 2004 Our mission has always been to provide readers with information that will encourage them to question the status quo and hence make their own authentic choices about the food they eat, the things they buy, the amount of natural resources they consume, the way they educate themselves and their children, and so on. Or, in a word, to be self-reliant. Our meaning is in tune (aside from the 1840s gender bias) with that of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay entitled “Self-Reliance”, where he wrote, in part, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion....” That sense of the importance of each of us crafting our own authentic view of the world still underlies what we are about almost 30 years after we published that first issue of Natural Life magazine. If you are self-reliant, you realize the dangers inherent in educating children in schools...and aren’t afraid to try the non-institutionalized path. If you are self-reliant, you refuse to believe at face value the spin that politicians put on health care, or protecting our food supply and our energy resources...and you do your own research and work together with your neighbors to build positive community alternatives. If you are self-reliant, you take ownership of your own feelings and emotions...and replace blaming others for your anger with a decision not to be angry. Yes, it takes time and effort to question conventional
assumptions. (And beware: questioning one assumption leads to another,
and so on....) But my own journey toward self-reliance has shown me that
doing so can make life far simpler, much less destructive and very much
happier. Not Yet a Learning Society – October 10, 2004 The contrast between that and the way we treat younger learners is striking...and a bit puzzling. A good example of what I’m talking about is the recent study authored by academics at two Toronto post-secondary institutions that called for less learning autonomy and more “program experience” for young children (see September 2, 2004 blog archive). This is the very sort of academic who, years later, has to put more programs in place to help all those teenagers with “program experience” recover from it and learn once again how to be autonomous learners in order to thrive at the post-secondary level! How much sense does that make? People are hard-wired to be autonomous learners from birth. Developmental psychologist Robert White says we are born with an “urge toward competence” – the need to have an impact on our surroundings, to control the world in which we live. We do not just sit and wait for the world to come to us. We try actively to interpret it, to make sense of it. Of course, this drive to discover means we are constantly learning...and experiencing the pride that comes with having gained that mastery. So then why is so hard for people – academics,
non-academics and even many home-educating parents – to trust children
to learn without interference? It has, I think, to do with what the
British writer Roland Meighan in his article in the upcoming issue of Life
Learning calls
“adult chauvinism”. The way our society looks at education involves
power, control and the arrogance that makes us think we always know what
is best for those younger than ourselves. Until we societally adopt the
principle that childhood is not a rehearsal for personhood and lose our
coercive attitude toward children – especially but not solely in terms
of how they learn – we will not be able to call ourselves a learning
society. Finding
Balance – October 9, 2004 I’ve been on this path for
over 30 years, but still the contents of my closet would outfit two or
three families, the number of books on my shelves would furnish a small
town library, and I love my morning latte. The way I see it, healthy,
sustainable living is all about finding a graceful balance. For
instance, I’ll gratefully eat turkey with friends this Thanksgiving
weekend, because the joy of sharing and caring is more important to me
than sticking rigidly to a vegetarian diet. Finding balance along a
challenging path means living mindfully, – knowing
who we are, where we came from, where we are going and why. That
awareness helps keep us focused on the larger goal of reducing our
negative impact on the planet while living a healthy lifestyle...and
enjoying our lives along the way. Smoke
& Mirrors –
October 3, 2004 The website goes on to say that research shows adult smokers are “tired of feeling powerless and voiceless as they are hit time and again with increasing taxes, more severe restrictions, and social stigmatization”. So this website is apparently going to give them a powerful voice to be sure governments look after their interests. The Tobacco Manufacturers’ Council claims the website is not about encouraging people to smoke. So who or what is the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers’ Council? It is a lobby association founded in 1963, shortly after Canada began its first national anti-smoking campaign. Its members are Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited, Rothmans/Benson & Hedges Inc. and JTI-Macdonald Corporation. These are the companies that have a very long history of manipulation, obfuscation and possibly even outright lying to courts, governments around the world and even the World Health Organization, not to mention the blatant use of seemingly benign “front” groups. (Just spend 15 minutes on the website of the National Clearinghouse on Tobacco and Health and you’ll get a potent taste of their activities.) And we’re supposed to believe that they are spending millions of dollars on a website that is not designed to promote – or at least protect – this disgusting health hazard? By the way, where is the fairness and civility
shown by smokers who breathe their smoke of death into my face while I
try to enjoy summer’s last warm weather on a café patio? Where is the
fairness and civility shown by smokers who drop their nasty cigarette
litter on street corners and in parking lots across the city? And what
is fair about taxpayers having to subsidize health care costs for the
victims – first- or second-hand – of a behavior that kills? The folks
who sign onto this website would be better to stop their self-righteous
huffing and puffing about their so-called rights and get some help
recovering from their addiction. Do they not realize the extent to which
they are being led to their deaths by wealthy corporations? Return
to current weblog copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2004-2007 |
Topics & Passions: natural learning ~ What I'm reading:
A Walk on the Beach - Tales of Wisdom From an Unconventional Woman by
Joan Anderson (2004, Broadway Books/Random House)
~ What I'm Listening To: Slow
by Ann Hampton Callaway (Shanachie Records)
~ Fav Bookmarks:
Deep Fun
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