Are Bullies Really Evil? - The Waste of Anti-Bullying Campaigns

Middle school is Hell.

I recall with painful clarity the daily emotional warfare that preteen girls are capable of waging. As a 13 year-old girl, I was blindsided more than once, caught in intricate webs of social ostracization, the kind that would make the producers' of reality television shows heads spin.

To be fair, I often was guilty of doing the blindsiding, too.

Middle school seems to bring out the worst in people. The drama and intimidation and psychological combat that run rampant through so many middle school hallways, fueled by rampaging hormones and an animalistic drive for a decent seat in the social hierarchy, can lead to some deep-seated long-term trauma. Sure therapists and pharmaceutical companies and New Age life coaches are reaping the benefits of adults still dealing with painful middle school memories. They're preying on the survivors. The ones who made it out, however emotionally scarred they may be.

The truth is that everyone doesn't make it out of middle school alive.

Yesterday, Daniel Fitzpatrick's family buried the body of their 13 year-old son. On Thursday, Daniel's older sister found him dead, hanging from a belt in the attic. "I gave up," Daniel wrote in a long letter about his struggles with school bullying.

Only thirteen. It's sad and tragic and horrible in a way that just can't be put into words, but makes me hug my own pretten a little tighter with a huge sense of gratitude tinged with a kind of panicky fear. How could something like this happen?

Source: Facebook

Daniel Fitzpatrick's tragic suicide, so close to the start of the new school year, has brought the subject of bullying back into the national spotlight.

And so we're forced to endure hashtag activism from formerly bullied B-list actors. In the coming months, we might see some cheesy PSAs that are supposed to be designed to plant seeds of hope inside the hearts of suffering kids. New legislation will be introduced in city council meetings. Zero-tolerance policies will be added to student handbooks all across the country (You know, the kind that place guilt on innocent bystanders who witness bullying but do nothing? The policies that directly contradict the zero tolerance policies about violence? Do nothing and you're screwed. Stand up to an asshole by implementing a well-timed throat punch and you're screwed, too.)

Local school systems will be forking out loads of their scant funds on the social program du jour: Anti-bullying campaigns. There are a bunch, many of them making wild claims about their effectiveness at creating "bully-free schools". For only a large investment of funds these companies will help school systems implement their programs. It's a win/win, right? The company makes money, the CEO earns enough to buy a beach house somewhere posh, and the school kids get a drama-free, totally smooth, non-psychologically scarring educational experience.

Except that doesn't happen.

At least not the last part, but that beach house is totally bitchin'.

The bullying doesn't stop. In fact, research shows that students who attend schools with anti-bullying programs are actually more likely to experience bullying than students at schools that lack a program. Statistics make it easy to think maybe all of this anti-bullying hooplah is just a money-making scheme with a social agenda to make us feel good about what we aren't actually doing.

I'm no bullying expert, at least not aside from my own middle school experiences (as well as more than a few parental interventions on behalf of my own children), but maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the focus on what to do with the bullies.

We believe that bullies are evil incarnate and must be stopped, shamed, suspended, embarrassed, and exorcised right out of our school systems. We must search it out and exterminate it. For the children.

But sometimes the definition of bullying is so vague that almost anything that almost kinda sorta makes anyone uncomfortable might fall into the category. It has often been said that the harder you look for something, the more likely you are to find it. Does searching out bullies and bullying, actually create the thing we are trying to prevent? Because we are looking for it so we can stamp it out before it gets out of hand even if it isn't really there in the first place.

Maybe in doing so, we aren't giving kids the chance to learn the skills to manage disappointment and adversity all on their own. Adults and our anti-bullying campaigns will swoop in with our super hero red capes to save them. We wouldn't want little Johnny to feel sad. We can't tolerate anything that might even have the slightest hint of bullying.

I get that suicide is horrible and tragic. I get that Daniel Fitzpatrick's might have been prevented, and that makes it all the more horrible and tragic.

Daniel Fitzpatrick told his teachers. No one swooped in with a red cape to save him.

I can't help but wonder if we are focusing on the wrong things.

Maybe we shouldn't be lurking around corners trying to catch someone being mean or shouting about the evils of bullies. Maybe instead we should be trying to create more resilient people.

A child who knows that they are worth something, not because they've been told this through empty platitudes, but because they have proven it to themselves and others, children who understand respect and empathy aren't just better able to deal with the stress of being bullied... they are also less likely to be the bully.

It's weird how that works. By building up kids, creating situations where they can build their own self-esteem, prove to themselves that they are valuable and capable and strong, we can better prevent bullying than we could with any pre-packaged, over-priced, flashy program or zero-tolerance policy. Because bullies bully for many of the same reasons that kids suffer from bullying (low self-esteem for example).

We can't always be the ones with the capes, swooping in to save the weak. We need to give the weak their own capes and let them save the day for themselves. We need kids who can adapt to stress, who have a capacity to overcome and even be strengthened by life's adversities, instead of weak kids who need a safe space because words hurt.

Because adversity doesn't only exist on school playgrounds or within the cold cinder block walls of schools named after dead presidents. There are difficult human beings that we will have to encounter through all stages of our lives. I've dealt with bigger, meaner bullies as an adult than I ever faced as a school kid (and that's saying something considering how my "best friend" treated me in 7th grade). And once out in the real world, dealing with asshole neighbors and co-workers and government employees and waitresses with issues, there won't be any expensive anti-bullying programs to hide behind when people are mean. We can't shelter children from ever hurtful word or mean person and then expect them to magically deal with them once they turn eighteen.

We need to be focusing on raising kids who can suck it up, who can cope with hardship, who have such a confident sense of self that it doesn't make them feel less when someone doesn't like them. And yeah... we probably need kids with a sense of humor, ones who don't get completely butt-hurt when someone says something slightly crude or demeaning or inappropriate (like "butt-hurt" for example).

A kid with strong qualities like that... well, it won't matter what someone throws at them. Unless it's a wild right hook. But you can sign them up for martial arts classes to help them deal with that (Funny thing is: martial arts helps foster all of those other anti-bully qualities like self-respect, confidence, and tenacity, too. But that's a whole other blog topic).

I'm just saying that maybe, just maybe, it isn't about the bullies. Maybe it's never been about the bullies. Maybe we just need to raise better kids.

Maybe we just need to teach our kids to both literally and figuratively take a punch and have them keep on swinging. Maybe there are better things we can spend our money on than ineffective yet sanctimoniously satisfying anti-bullying programs. (Shameless martial arts plug: Karate only costs about $60 a month. That's way cheaper than the thousands the school systems spend on those stupid campaigns... Just sayin'.)

Why I Won't Raise My Children to be Politically Correct

Words are just words. But what if those words are offensive? Are they still just words? Does the responsibility of the offense fall with the speaker? Or with the listener?

This weekend I had a discussion with one of my children over a word he used to describe someone. He used the word "retarded". Anyone who is paying attention knows that word doesn't make the short list of politically correct adjectives. While the word was fairly acceptable just a few decades ago, its use has become basically intolerable.

I asked my son to use a different word. The logical question followed: "Why?"

"Because it's offensive."

"But why?"

"Just don't use that word. Okay?"

Not my best parenting moment. But the truth is, there isn't a good answer. Some words make the socially acceptable list and others don't. I'm not sure when the word my son used jumped from one list to the other. I'm not sure why there is even a list in the first place. Who gets to decide which words belong on which list?

I suppose in the beginning the PC movement had good intentions. Attempting to rid society of derogatory language must have been an attempt to curb racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination. But in its attempts to create bias-free language, things have gotten a little out of hand. Censorship is a dangerous and slippery slope.

Banning words because someone might feel offended opens a can of worms. How many people must find a word offensive before society determines it unacceptable? 1,000? 100? One? Some people may find a word offensive while others don't. Which group gets to decide the morality of the word? All words are potentially offensive. Every word, no matter how seemingly innocuous could be associated with something negative, so any word could at any time come under scrutiny.

The growing snowball of the politically correct movement is out of control. Consider the "ban bossy" campaign. Relatively successful and influential individuals like Condoleeza Rice and Jane Lynch committed to a movement to ban the word "bossy" because it could be potentially harmful to little girls. Whether or not they are right about the negative effects of a simple two-syllable word, the concept of banning a word, any word, is the stuff of which apocalyptic dystopian novels are made.

And its not just youtube videos and pithy hashtags the PC movement is using. The snowball is crashing through our institutions of higher learning, obliterating words and entire ways of thinking as it goes. Universities used to be places where paradigms were shifted and ways of thinking expanded, but rapidly they are becoming indoctrination centers with strict rules of censorship. It is impossible to openly and freely express opinions and concepts when entire ways of thinking are outlawed just because someone's delicate constitution may be offended?

Don't believe me? Here are just a few examples of ridiculous campus censorship:

• Bowdoin University has banned jokes and stories that may be "experienced by others as harassing."
• Brown University  has banned speech that "produces feelings of impotence, anger, or disenfranchisement" whether "intentional or unintentional"
• Colby College has banned words that could lead to a loss of self-esteem. 

Feeling offended is subjective. In the same way that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, perhaps feeling offended lies in the ear of the listener. To each his own. In that case, can a speaker really be held accountable for the emotional reactions of those who hear his words?

Most of us are adults, and we should take responsibility for our own reactions. When we blame someone else for our feelings of anger or embarrassment it shows a severe lack of maturity. We can choose to ignore or respond to words, but we should not be blaming others for our reaction. That is abandoning our own responsibility, our own personal power.

But the real danger of the PC movement is in the suppression of free speech. That suppression is far more dangerous than the feelings of unease that certain words seem to incite. Banning words that are often used to express homophobic or racist ideologies does not destroy the ideologies, but it does create a false sense of peace and security. We cannot challenge the bigotry we don't know exists.

Defending personal beliefs in the face of criticism used to be part of the college experience. To never have beliefs challenged or scrutinized stunts intellectual growth. It is a major disservice to our young people to allow them to walk through life wrongly believing that everyone thinks exactly like them, or even to think that everyone should.

By limiting free speech, the PC crowd is also limiting free thought. Thankfully, we don't yet live in a society with a hive mind. But as our vocabularies are rapidly constricted, as we descend into our own version of 1984 Newspeak, variations of thought become more and more difficult. And without freedom of thought there will be no one to challenge corruption and injustice and oppression.

Isn't that what we're fighting anyway?

"Beat the Boys" - How Michelle Obama's Message Harms Our Boys AND Our Girls

The First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, took to the stage Tuesday in rock star fashion. The audience was comprised of screaming school girl fans taking part in an event sponsored by Glamour magazine. Sporting fashionable footwear and shrouded in pink-hued spotlights, Obama shared high fives with famous actress Charlize Theron and spouted plenty of Instagram-worthy life lesson quotables.

Women and young girls have been basing their life choices on Glamour magazine for generations, so we should obviously take an event they sponsor with every ounce of seriousness we can muster.

Michelle (and her stage buddies) gave plenty of valuable advice to the impressionable young girls in the audience on subjects like relationships and sex appeal. However, education was the main highlight of the event which was thrown to publicize Obama's "Let Girls Learn" campaign.

"Compete with the boys. Beat the boys."

While I can easily get behind FLOTUS's initiative to educate girls around the world who are regularly denied an education, this piece of advice given to United States school girls makes me shudder in disgust.

As the mother of two daughters, I cringe. Once again, we've set males at the gold standard level. We've waved an assumption at our daughters that boys are the ones succeeding, the ones who are capable, and that if they can just reach their level, they will have made it.  What if they are capable of more than the boys around them? Allowing our girls to set their own standards of achievement and success validates them as individuals. It puts the power of choice and the success of their education in their own hands... not the hands of their male peers.

I want my daughters to define themselves. I do not want their self-worth based on how they compare to boys.

As a mother of sons, I cringe even more. "Beat the boys" sets a generation of young men up as the enemy, a force to be subdued at all costs. Sure boys can be kind of stinky, but they aren't the bad guys. Boys are already trapped in an education system that all too often fails them. Statistically speaking, boys now lag behind girls on almost every academic measure. They are more likely to be drugged (for hyperactivity "disorders"), more likely to get in trouble, and more likely to drop out of school than their female peers. 70% of students in special education are male, and 25% fewer men than women graduate from college.

Really not very much of a gold standard when you think about it. When the statistics are laid out bare for everyone to see, it doesn't seem like "beating the boys" is all that difficult a task. Maybe it's the boys in this country who need the interventions and the Glamour magazine-sponsored pep talks.

Maybe it's our sons that we are failing, not our daughters. Here in America, it is our boys who are largely being denied an education.

But that doesn't fit the feminist narrative.

It doesn't sound like FLOTUS is all that concerned about girls succeeding in school. It sounds like she wants them to have bragging rights. "Beat the boys" isn't about equal rights. Now we want girls striving to be the ones succeeding and in power, that men by default should be inferior. This is why so many women (and men) can't stomach the feminism label. Our boys of today can't atone for the generations of misogyny of which their forefathers may be guilty. It doesn't work that way.

Ultimately, I'm upset that someone with such an audible platform chose to reduce education to a competition. Learning isn't all achievement. It isn't just staying in school, earning A's and being better than the kid in the desk next to you. Learning is an ongoing process of life-experiences and exposure to new ideas and concepts. It is interacting with one's environment and expanding consciousness. It's not excelling at standardized tests so you can bust through the mythical glass ceiling.

Perhaps Michelle's heart is in the right place. She doesn't want girls to be afraid of academic success. I get that. I certainly don't want my girls to hold themselves back from doing their personal best just because of what others might think of them. But there are so many other better messages she could have chosen, messages of hope, love, and positive encouragement.

"Follow your dreams."

"Do your best."

"You can be whatever you want to be if you work hard enough."

Instead she chose a negative message to promote a positive cause. Interestingly, I learned in school that a negative times a positive is still a negative... and I'm just a girl.

Michelle Obama is just another politician who chooses to divide the masses instead of uniting them in a worthy cause.

But at least she got a nifty hashtag out of it.

Rewarding Mediocrity - Why Preschool Graduation Ceremonies are Stupid

The season of graduation ceremonies is almost upon us. The invitations and announcements are already starting to roll in. My Facebook friends are already posting pictures of their children in mortar boards and academic gowns with captions like, "Look how much Little Johnny has grown!" and "I'm so proud!" and "I can't believe this day is finally here. Little Johnny has worked so hard!"

Great. So you're proud of your kid. That's fabulous.

Only Little Johnny is forty inches tall and four years old.

Which is really just ridiculous. Unless your kid is graduating from high school or walking across a stage to receive a college degree, just stop it.

By the looks of my social media feeds there are "graduation" ceremonies for everything: preschool. kindergarten, elementary school, middle school (and probably charm school and obedience school, too). While a group of clumsy preschoolers tripping over brightly colored "graduation" robes, marching down the aisle to "The Alphabet Song" while their parents maniacally snap pictures might seem adorable in theory, it's really excessively premature and possibly damaging.

Because what has really been accomplished to earn that march across the preschool stage? A mastery of fingerpainting? Superb story time skills? What future employer wouldn't check for where their new hires graduated preschool... or kindergarten... or elementary school? "Good thing your kid graduated from a good preschool or he might not have gotten into kindergarten," said no person ever.

No. The only thing the nose-picking graduates gripping those preschool diplomas managed to accomplish was missing the age cut-off for kindergarten enrollment. All they've done is take up space as they progress through the system.

U.S. schools are currently struggling to keep up with global standards. The 2013 Programme For International Student Assessment (PISA) evaluation of students in 65 different countries found American students performing below average in math at every socioeconomic level. They barely make average in language and science. The low level of academic standards in U.S. schools is fairly well known, and yet parents and principals and local school boards continue to devalue the learning process. By the time a child has reached 18 and the completion of high school, he is liable to "commenced" almost half a dozen times. Graduation no longer represents the culmination of years of hard work and study. The ceremony has become empty and boring and blasé, the diploma something that is expected just for showing up.

I realize that the intentions of the school staff that put on these "graduation" shows are well-meaning. They want to celebrate the children and give moms and dads fodder for brimming scrapbooks. They want to make children feel good about themselves. But the key word here is "make". Adults can't "make" kids feel good about themselves. Attempts to force a sense of self-worth from without, with no real sacrifice or effort on the part of the individual, will come up empty every time. Self-worth has to come from the self... from the internal experience of hard work and struggle and the attainment of a goal set and reached.

Preschool and other lower grade "graduation" ceremonies are eerily similar to sports awards banquets where every little soccer player is presented with a trophy, whether they rolled around in the grass singing silly songs through every game or if they played hard, worked together, and actually scored goals. Trophies for just showing up, regardless of any real display of athletic achievement, don't build healthy self-esteem. It only devalues the athletic experience and the thrill of competition. Presenting every small child with academic honors, with no real academic achievement, doesn't build healthy self-esteem either. It only devalues education.

Children aren't stupid (in spite of the failings of our education system). It's not difficult for them to figure out that trophies and graduation certificates for everyone means no one has to try very hard... at anything. Giving accolades for nothing special only ensures that nothing special is ever created or thought or worked for. There is no motivation to strive for great things. Because why try if you don't have to do anything or be anything or think anything? You'll just get handed the reward at the end anyway.

But at least mom will get some awesome pictures of her sweetie in that super cute cap and gown, even if it is little more than a Halloween costume. It doesn't mean anything because he hasn't done anything worth rewarding.

It's all just pretend. Kinda like that rolled up diploma... symbolic of nothing other than our feeble attempts to educate the masses... or raise adults that don't have inflated egos or a false sense of self-importance and entitlement.

The only real winners in this "graduation" mania are those who jump on the commercial opportunities the events provide, the photographers and companies selling graduation paraphernalia (like caps and gowns and invitations and tassels and whatever else parents are willing to dish out money to mark their wee ones milestones).

At least someone is benefiting, because the kids certainly aren't.

I'm No Expert

I'm not an idiot.

Even if you count all of those times I couldn't find my keys, and the bad fashion decisions I made in the 80s, and even that time I believed the kids when they told me they didn't know why the cat was in the refrigerator... it's still not enough to grant me idiot status. I'm a pretty astute individual. I pay attention. I know how to use (most) of my brain.

I recently had a couple of articles I wrote featured on The Mind Unleashed, articles criticizing the public school system (5 Things You Didn't Know Your Children Are Learning In School and 5 Ways to Make Children Hate Reading just in case you were curious). While there were some lovely people who messaged me about some of their own (or their children's) school experiences with support and encouragement, there were also a lot of very negative comments (if by negative I mean comments that insult not only my intelligence but my writing ability, my parenting skills, my genealogy, and the air I breathe... which I do. People on the internet can be so MEAN!)

I don't expect everyone to agree with me (that would be boring), especially when criticizing such a fundamental element of our society as public education.  What was most surprising were the flippant dismissals of the information because I'm "just a homeschool mom".

They are right, of course. I'm no "expert".  While I do have more than fourteen years of experience educating my own kids and I've spent countless hours researching pedagogy and educational theory (because these are MY kids and there's no scapegoat should I completely screw them up) and I spent 13 years in the system as a student myself (I'm also married to a teacher with more than twenty years of classroom experience, but like someone so astutely pointed out, "Being married to an astrophysicist doesn't make you an astrophysicist."), I'm not a licensed teacher and I don't hold a degree in education.

As more than one person angrily pointed out, I'm not an expert.

What is an "expert" anyway? In most fields, the experts are the ones who graduate from pre-approved degree programs after writing pre-approved dissertations and passing pre-approved exams and being licensed by pre-approved boards manned by other pre-approved experts. Expert opinions have already been programmed by pre-approved popular belief systems.

There's a reason that any doctor who speaks out against vaccines or chemotherapy or pharmaceutical  therapies or any other standard of practice loses their medical license. Questioning and criticism of the accepted system isn't allowed. Dissent isn't allowed. Experts walk in straight lines and only recite the accepted scripts. Before you jump to conclusions about quackery and dangerous violations of standards of care, let me remind you that hand washing was once scoffed at by the established experts. (Poor Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis offended his peers by suggesting they could save lives by simply washing their hands between patients. He was tossed in an insane asylum where he was beaten to death by guards. It wasn't until years after his tragic death that his hand-washing practice gained widespread acceptance in the medical community. How many more easily preventable deaths occurred in the interim because it wasn't accepted by the "experts"?)

It happens in politics and economics and education as well. The experts are often wrong, but still anyone with a differing viewpoint is labeled a crackpot. Being considered an expert isn't necessarily about skill or competence, and it certainly has nothing to do with reform or innovation. Being an expert is more often about fitting in and getting along, about repeating the standard ways of doing and thinking, about not rocking the boat.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the "experts", the people who are taken seriously, are the ones who tell us what we want to hear (or at least what the people with money and influence want us to hear). The "expert" opinions that make it into news stories and governmental policies and medical standards of practice have been screened and cherry-picked to spoon-feed the general public pre-approved information - information most often stemming from those with financial interests in the outcome.

The entire system of expertise- from the news media to research institutes to professional boards to institutions of higher education - largely serve the corporations that fund them. There's a reason that education reform largely revolves around more testing, but most people aren't aware just how deep the influence of companies like Pearson and McGraw Hill runs (companies which control everything from textbooks to teacher certification. It's probably in their best interest to control what the "experts" in education say about the system, and they do... the "experts" have to pass their test in order to actually be considered "experts")

It should be expected that experts sell us on coal as a clean energy source, or vaccines being safe and effective, or bankers being innocent in financial crises, or the safety of GMOs, or the need for more testing to determine teacher effectiveness. It's up to us to be skeptical, not just of the "truths" the experts spew, but of the experts themselves... the whole expert-making process is questionable when there's control and money and power bubbling under the surface of the whole shaky structure.

And likewise, just because a message isn't flowing from the mouths of the accepted authorities, doesn't mean the message is one we should so flippantly and readily dismiss.

No, I'm not an expert. My opinions and conclusions come from my own research, observations, and rational assessment of inadequate outcomes (that's a nice way of saying "system failures"), all peppered with a healthy dose of skepticism and critical thinking (neither of which came from my public school education).

Just because I'm not spouting the pre-approved rhetoric of the pre-approved "experts" doesn't mean I'm an idiot. It just means I'm thinking... no approval required.

Fielding Questions On Homeschooling

It's no secret that my kids are homeschooled.  And I'm no stranger to the endless questions about homeschooling from friends and family and almost complete strangers.  I've been fielding these for years now.  But it seems like I've been getting A LOT of questions lately, questions about what homeschooling looks like for us.  So here are some answers to the most asked questions about homeschooling.  (Insert disclaimer here about how homeschooling is different for every family and this is what works best for us, yadda, yadda, yadda...Don't try this at home...Wait. Yes, you absolutely should try this at home.)

1.  What time do you start your school day?  You would think this question would have an easy answer...but like most questions about homeschooling...it doesn't.  First of all, we don't really have a set time for "schooling".  There is no punch-in or punch-out times for us.  Why?  Because opportunities for learning just can't always be scheduled.

You see, life is learning.  And as long as we are awake and breathing, we can (and probably should) be learning something.  I like to think of homeschooling as seizing teachable moments.  A person learns best when they are interested and motivated to learn.  When my children's questions and interests pop up, we try to strike while the iron is hot.  When they ask a question, we seek an answer.  Which often leads to more questions and more complicated answers.  It's a beautiful thing.

Learning can happen early in the morning or late at night.  It doesn't matter.  A lot of our best learning moments happen over dinner, when we might discuss topics like Revolutionary War military tactics, the nature of consciousness, gay rights, the political climate in the Ukraine, or how the media creates news rather than just reporting it.  (These are all recent topics discussed at the family dinner table.  Yes, I am aware we are a weird family.)

Of course, if you are asking this question you probably want a specific time or something, not just a commentary on learning opportunities.  The best I can tell you is this: If any real learning happens prior to 9:30 AM, I assure you the kids are doing it on their own.  I am still struggling to gain consciousness with the assistance of copious amounts of caffeine until about that time, and the children know not to bother me with anything short of an emergency.  Really, it's for everyone's safety.  I am NOT a morning person.

2.  What curriculum do you use?  I suspect you are probably expecting a very neat and clean answer to this question, too.  Wrong again.  I guess the real answer would be Google and YouTube since that's where we seem to do a lot of our research.

We don't use a formal curriculum and we never have.  While a lot of homeschooling families find them helpful, we find them very constraining.  We enjoy the freedom to pursue interests on a whim or dig deeper into concepts and time periods or spend extra time practicing multiplication tables  (Well, maybe that last one is really my idea not theirs).  If learning isn't going well one day, we just skip it and make up for it on a day when everyone is more receptive.

As far as materials and resources...we've been known to use perfectly good textbooks that the public schools throw out every couple of years (A sweet perk to having a husband who is a public school teacher. Although we've yet to use a History textbook.  Those things are just full of propaganda.). They know us by a our first names at the local library, and the local veteran's museum has been a wonderful asset when it comes to learning American History.  Plus we've been known to binge on video documentaries.  And we have worked our way through many a math and grammar workbook (Usually when I start to panic about everything that maybe we aren't covering in a more traditional manner.  This happens at least twice a year, and the kids are usually fairly patient with me until it passes.)

And we like to think outside of the box-shaped classroom.  Too many people think that learning only happens at a desk with a pencil and paper and a textbook.  But in actuality very little real learning happens in that way.

Instead, we play outside and bake cookies and go grocery shopping and play chess and practice the piano and go to karate and visit museums and eat sushi and color outside the lines.  We've made water filters from scratch and set snares for squirrels in the backyard and built forensic facial sculptures from skull replicas. We've watched meteor showers late at night and identified trees and gone fishing and bird watching.  We've gone metal detecting at the beach and camping in the woods and cooked over an open fire.

Life is our curriculum.  "School" isn't a very good training ground for real life...Life is the best training ground for life.  Go figure.

3. What about standardized testing?  Yeah, what about it?  The state of North Carolina says the kids have to take one every year and that the results must be kept on file.  So we do...but we certainly don't emphasize them.  All those graded tests really measure is a child's ability to take a test.  I choose to look at the whole child and not just what that child can put on a bubble sheet.  There are far more valuable things that standardized testing misses.  Creativity, for example.  As well as verbal communication, individual effort, self-motivation, musical ability, common sense, logic and real-life problem solving.  Also interpersonal skills, empathy, responsibility, physical coordination, critical thinking, strategy, and artistic ability.

I think you get the idea.  Getting students to perform well on standardized tests is only important if you want them to be successful little cogs in the societal machine.  Which I do not.  But if you are really wondering how they measure up to their traditionally schooled peers...The test results say they're doing just fine.

4.  What about college?  They can go if they want to, plenty of homeschooled kids go to college and excell there.  But I hope they choose to only if they need to (Like if, god forbid, they want to be a doctor or a lawyer or some other overpaid cog).  And I hope they do it without accruing crippling amounts of debt, because debt is just a method of relinquishing freedom and pawning your life away.  Financial success does not hinge on a college degree anyway (In fact, one could argue that it might actually hinder success) and neither does happiness. I want my children to define success for themselves and not just take Society's warped and lopsided definition.  Remember what I said about cogs in a machine...yeah...

What homeschooling looks like on a beautiful Fall day.

5. What does your typical school day look like?  Honest answer?  We have no typical days.  Our days are so varied.  Some days we spend entirely outside.  Some days we spend running errands.  Others we spend in our pajamas watching stupid YouTube videos (We are big fans of Epic Rap Battles of History...and Bad Lip Reading.  Now there's some good entertainment).  Other days we read and write and do arithmetic.  And still others we spend on chores and yard work or random board games and jigsaw puzzles.

I sincerely believe that people (not just children) learn best through experiences and daily life.  If we pull those children away from daily life and lock them away in a "place of learning" we are suggesting that the only worthwhile learning happens inside of those walls and during certain times and with someone telling them what to do.  And then, when we thrust tests upon them to measure their "learning" progress, we send the message that the only things worth learning are those things that can be tested with bubble sheets and essays. School is one of the most ineffective places to be truly educated.

Life is learning.  Learning is life.

It's just life, people.  We're just living...

Five Ways To Make A Kid Hate Reading

Illiteracy is a huge problem in the United States.  According to a study released last year by the U.S. Department of Education, 32 million adults (that's 14 percent of the population) in our country cannot read.  21 percent of our adults read below a fifth grade level.  And 19 percent of high school graduates (That's GRADUATES, people.  These people actually hold a diploma, which is generally considered a symbol of the most basic of educations, but cannot read.

And the rates of illiteracy haven't improved in ten years, in spite of all of the standardized testing and incentives for teacher effectiveness and No Child Left Behind and now Common Core.

But even more frightening than the numbers of adults in our country that struggle to read is the numbers of people who can read but choose not to.

This is the real tragedy of our country's educational system.  In the words of Mark Twain, "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."  With all of the modern innovations in teaching and the tight-fisted control the government has on what is taught and how it is taught and when it is taught...and the testing...don't even get me started on the testing, and in spite of the appalling numbers of people the system churns out each year with "below basic" reading levels, the real failure of the system is the number of people who want absolutely nothing to do with reading...the number of people who will never pick up another book after high school graduation.

"Alliteracy" is the label given to the growing epidemic of general disinterest in reading. Unlike illiteracy, alliteracy effects those who possess the ability to read, but are completely and utterly uninterested in doing so

But people aren't born with a disdain for the written word.  Most children are intrigued with books, maybe even fascinated.  But somewhere in the course of growing up these children were pushed away from the pleasure of reading.

How do you make a person hate reading? Here are a few proven ways to drain any joy out of the experience.

1.  Dull textbooks and programmed reading instruction.  Read the paragraph and answer the questions.  Rinse and repeat ad nauseum.  It's great practice for test-taking.  It supports the publishers' bottom lines.  And it makes the schools feel like they are serious about improving reading scores...and in turn creating job-ready graduates...which they aren't.  And it makes reading horribly dull.  It limits subject matter and doesn't inspire deeper or creative ways of thinking.

2. Standardized testing.  Feed a kid a steady diet of dull comprehension passages, just as practice for passing "the test"... because that's what's important, right?  Test scores?  In fact let's make sure we are "teaching to the test" at all times, leaving out anything that might randomly interest the student.  No superfluous learning.  No learning just because you are interested in it...or, heaven forbid, enjoy it.  That's not important.  Test scores are important!  The quality of human being the student becomes is irrelevant.  Just so long as they can pad the school's test scores, therefore proving the effectiveness of the "quality" education they are providing.

In fact, let's spend entire class periods devoted to teaching test-taking strategies. Students only need to know how to pass the test.  No real connections to the content of the text  need to be made.  No time for sharing ideas.  No time for reflection.  No time for applying new knowledge.  No time for reflection or absorption.  Just circle A, B, or C, and move along to the next meaningless task.  Once reading becomes a skill to be assessed and quantified and charted and analyzed, it loses it's personal and human qualities...and especially the magical nature that reading has when done just for sheer pleasure.  The system is far more concerned with whether kids can read, than with whether they actually do (Possibly because that is harder to assess and chart and analyze).

3. Assign reading assignments and quizzes and essays designed to bring out the points that YOU think the student should know.  Make sure they view literature through your values and life experience, instead of filtering it through their own thoughts and values and reality.  Make sure there is only one right answer to those questions and essays.  And make sure you never give the reader the opportunity to say what they really think about the book.

4.  Make reading a chore.  One great way is reading logs.  Make them write down how much time they spent reading along with a meaningless synopsis of what they read. Another great way to make reading a chore is vocabulary lists.  Fill their days with busy work involving words that have no meaning outside of their context.  It is a common practice to have a student stop what they are reading if they come across a word they do not understand.  Encourage them to open a dictionary to look it up (Maybe even copy it down and identify the part of speech and language origin and then write an original sentence using the word).  That's just stupid!  As an adult who loves reading and has a fairly impressive vocabulary (because of reading, I might add), I NEVER drop what I'm reading to look up a word...and I'm not sure I ever have outside of being forced to do so in the classroom.  It sucks!  It interrupts the flow of the plot and makes reading a burden and a trial. I developed (and am still developing) my vocabulary by reading.  A lot.   I meet the words over and over again in my reading until they become like friends.  And by meeting them again and again in context...they make sense.  No dictionary needed.

5. Make them read aloud in front of other people.  Nothing can make a child hate reading more than embarrassment, so make reading a constant source of possible failure and public humiliation.  Have kids read aloud in front of one another, even though the reading levels may be vastly different.  And go ahead and make the slow readers or the self-conscious readers or the introverts read publicly while the confident and advanced readers listen.  Go ahead.  Let those children fumble over words or drag on slowly while the other children giggle or lose interest or make faces.  Go ahead and make those tentative readers feel foolish and stupid and ashamed.

To quote Mark Twain again, "If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again.  That cat won't sit on a cold stove either.  That cat just don't like stoves."  Make reading a painful and disturbing experience for someone, and they are going to avoid it for the rest of their lives.

If I really let the conspiracy theorist in me run wild, I would suggest that the system doesn't even want to create readers.  In fact, that inner conspiracy theorist might even postulate that the system wants to DISCOURAGE reading.  Perhaps because avid readers are exposed to a boundless source of differing thoughts and opinions, and they are more empathetic and better critical thinkers.  They ponder and question and dig deeper.  What could be a bigger threat to "the system" than people who actually think...not just regurgitate the thought patterns the system prescribes?

While I stand by the belief that the vast majority of teachers are wonderful people and that they pursued careers in education for all kinds of noble and honorable reasons, the truth is that they are just cogs in a very broken system.  Our system of education has turned into a barrage of stress and test results...a place where real learning (the valuable life-lessons kind of useful and powerful learning) is devalued.

So what is the answer?  It's probably not an easy one, but we could start with just letting them read...whatever they want.  Without a thought to how it affects test scores or graduation rates or anything else that can be measured.

Because the real value of things can't be charted and analyzed and evaluated.  It's that way in life and it's that way in learning, too.

Because...well...life is learning...