Home Schooling in the Era of Covid-19: Part 1--paradigms

     Can I say that I have really enjoyed being stuck at home, especially when I have the kids? Quarantine and social distancing have their advantages. One news report I read suggests that 3 out of 5 people are using this opportunity for self-improvement, which is great! I mean, I've started a blog and am writing more, which I consider self-improvement.

     One of the things I have been most excited about, and that I have enjoyed the most during the last month, is getting to homeschool my kids again. I posted a few days about how I grew into a better stay-at-home parent through embracing my strength as an educator. Now, staying at home is a new reality, and I am embracing being an educator once again.

     Over the past several years, I intentionally made it my goal to learn more about education and grow in this field. When I was doing graduate studies in philosophy, I did cross departmental studies in Philosophy of Education and Ethics of Education (even though the university refused to accept some of these credits towards a degree). I got a job at Emma Willard School helping students with basic study skills. I read multiple books on the topics of education and learning how to learn. I've studied it from a practical standpoint, a neuroscience standpoint, a philosophical standpoint, a political standpoint, etc. I truly love approaching this topic from all angles. And I enjoy putting my knowledge into practice.

     During these past couple of weekends that I have had the kids, we read Charlie and and Chocolate Factory. What a wonderful book! The book is so wonderful that I am even contemplating not letting the kids watch the movie! Wesleigh's favorite part of the book was the short story about the Indian Prince who had Willy Wonka make him an entire castle out of chocolate, and it melted and got all sticky. Byron really thought is was clever when the square candies looked round. Of course, neither of these parts is in the Gene Wilder movie. (And I have avoided watching the Johnny Depp version.)

     The main topic I want to discuss today is the need parents like myself have for family centered activities (like family story time) being the primary ingredient in homeschooling. Let's get real here. If I or any other parent out there attempts to educate four children, who are all different ages and in different grades, solely by giving them individual attention with individualized content, the amount and quality of education are going to greatly suffer. As Bailey and I have both attempted to keep up with the children's work sent to them from their school, it is nearly impossible to keep track of everything. There's too much to divide our attention between. Family activities, however, serve to pull everyone's attention and focus together.

     Just so you have an idea, allow me to detail how my childrens' school has set up their homeschooling program during this pandemic. Colburn, Byron, and Ezra have all been given their individual google classroom accounts, which also comes with individual google mail accounts. Each of them has to be on a computer for online classes with their teachers at specific times, and teachers expect parents to scan and email in their homework. The teachers also give book assignments, so parents need to monitor their children to make sure they are doing the right lesson in the right book. (This resulted in a meltdown one day when Colburn had accidentally read the wrong book.) In addition, they all have specific websites they are expected to go to, and we need to keep track of their log in information, which is different for each child. Ugh!

     What is the result of all this? Is it a good continuing education? Can I say no? What tends to happen is the parent (I speak primarily for me) ends up running around just making sure the kids follow the program, and there is very little room to check in with your child to actually be a parent or to contribute to your child's education. For myself, I have to take care of Wesleigh as the other three are doing their things. The administrative cost to my budgeted attention is high.

     E.D. Hirsch noted in his book The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them that the attempt to provide individual attention to students very often results in general neglect. (I can't find exact quote, but a similar quote is on pg. 255 of that book.) I believe this is true in many circumstances. At home, a parent has only so much attention to give. The whole purpose of having a classroom is to group together students who are generally all around the same age and stage of intellectual development. (I'm not saying this is ideal, by the way. I do not believe this is how classrooms need to be, but this is how they are.) But in a home, in a house, parents often work with children who are all of different ages and stages of development.

     So when teachers attempt to force a classroom paradigm created for the homogeneous classroom into a household what does not fit that paradigm, all this does is create chaos and confusion. It's the wrong paradigm, and it doesn't work for homeschooling. It results in parents' trying to provide individual attention to the needs of their individual children for material that is actually designed for a whole classroom and isn't created for any particular individual. Parents then must split their individualized attention between their individual children to have them study their non-individualized work. Can we see a problem with this?

There are many problems with the modern paradigm of education, and those problems become even more pronounced when parents have to cater to a paradigm meant for a wildly different setting. I will get into some of these issues in future posts. I do want to be clear that this is not necessarily anyone's fault, and certainly not the fault of teachers. If the school paradigm is a square peg, home is a round hole. There's nothing wrong with the paradigm so long as there's a square hole it fits into. The paradigm needs to fit the situation. A paradigm focused on family activity is much more suitable to the homeschooling parent.

     Future thoughts are to follow. For now, I will state as my thesis that I am more confident in the education my children received by my reading them Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than I am in the education they have received from their online education since lockdown began. I will be supporting this with my own research going forward.

     Postscript: After originally writing and posting this post, I came across this article. It speaks to the frustration parents feel when they are forced to bring a school paradigm into their homes where it doesn't fit.

Celebrating Easter

     I know it's late. Easter has already passed. But better late than never, right?

     Easter to me has long been my favorite holiday. It comes during the springtime, when the earth is starting to come back to life again. Easter is about resurrection, and I have always loved how it coincides with the season. It is newness. It is a breath of life. It is the smell of the last remnants of winter fading away into grass, leaves, flowers, and sunshine.

     On a religious level, Easter is not a lone holiday. First you have Good Friday, a day of fasting and prayer. Its ceremonies are bare and stark. It commemorates Jesus' crucifixion, and it is liturgically set up to help the faithful feel that crucifixion not just in heart and mind, but in body as well. It is hunger and thirst. It is the pain and lethargy of an empty stomach. But then comes Easter, a day of plenty, a day where we eat chocolate and egg salad? It is resurrection. It celebrates Jesus' return to life, and it is liturgically set up for celebration, in decorated churches with joyous music.

     I happen to believe that candy on Easter is not the same as toys on Christmas. Christmas toys are commercial, distracting, and self-centered. But candy on Easter is not a mere indulgent pleasure. It is a way of feeling the sweetness of the holiday bodily and physically. The fasting of Good Friday gives way to the feasting of Easter.

     This is why I love Easter. The entire holiday, with its setting in the newness of Spring, with its tradition of feasting after the fast, with its stark changes and contrasts with Good Friday--all this is a way to experience the celebration not just in our hearts but in our very physique. It's a journey, and the entire journey is felt in your bones.

     This year was hard, of course. I didn't get outside to experience Spring. I didn't get to go to Church. I didn't have candy on Easter. I didn't have friends or family around to celebrate. But you know what, writing this has been its own celebration and has helped me to feel a bit of that spirit of Easter. And if you missed your Easter traditions too, I hope this message has brought a little of that to you.

     Happy Easter Season!

The Story of Why I Stopped Watching Steven Crowder.

     I want to tell you a little story. This is a story about me watching television. To be more specific, it was some time in August 2017. I was watching an episode of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver." To be most specific, it was season 4, episode 22 entitled "Nuclear Waste." You can watch that episode here. This episode was dedicated to the topic of how America has failed to establish a permanent solution for storing nuclear waste and the accidents that have happened with nuclear waste and still could happen.

     Now, much of this episode was informative; a little scare-mongering maybe, but informative. John Oliver does not get very political for most of the episode, but after thoroughly scaring the audience about nuclear waste and our lack of permanent storage thereof, he does take a moment to blame politicians for this problem. Now this is important, so pay attention. There is only one politician that John Oliver blames by name. That politician is former Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid. If you go to 13:50 in the video I linked, you can see where he does so. He also throws a jab at Rick Perry, but doesn't directly blame him for the problem. At no point does he blame either political party for this problem. (This is bolded for emphasis. Yes, this is important too.)

     I thought this was a fairly good episode. Now, it is my understanding that some of the details in this episode may have been misleading. That's just based on a little reading I did after watching this episode, and honestly I forget where I read it or what the issues were. But regardless, that's not what I want to talk about here. The accuracy of the episode is not what I particularly care about.

     OK, so I watched some television. And now you know what I watched. What does this have to do with anything? Well, I don't want to talk about nuclear waste. What I want to talk about is watching YouTube. Yes, only a few short days after I watched Last Week Tonight, I got on YouTube and started browsing. One of the people whose channels I was subscribed to at the time (though I rarely watched) was conservative funny man who's open to having his mind changed, Steven Crowder. Yes, I was subscribed to Steven Crowder.

     To be specific, I watched this segment that Crowder posted on his YouTube channel. This is supposedly a "rebuttal" of John Oliver's segment on nuclear waste. In reality, it's not a rebuttal at all. John Oliver's segment is specifically about nuclear waste. At no point does he discuss power plant emissions or compare nuclear power to other sources of power. Crowder spends the majority of his segment comparing nuclear plant emissions with coal emissions. He discusses how nuclear power is clean. He discusses how France, which relies on nuclear power, is fairing better than Germany, which is trying to rely on renewable energy. He shows a graph comparing deaths caused by nuclear power versus coal power.

      The only problem is, John Oliver's segment actually wasn't arguing to end nuclear power. Nor did John Oliver at any point compare power sources. John Oliver's segment was entirely discussing where to put nuclear waste. So make this my point number one: Steven Crowder's "rebuttal" was not a rebuttal at all. He switched the topic. This is called a red herring, and it is something logicians and philosophers, like myself, are taught to watch out for. A red herring is when you substitute the subject of the debate with a different subject in order to debate on your own terms rather than addressing your opponent's arguments. It is a fallacy because it deceives the audience into thinking you have countered your opponent's claims when in fact you have only changed the subject.

     But even more troublesome than the red herring is what Crowder says towards the beginning of his "rebuttal." He's what Crowder says about john Oliver's segment starting in Crowder's video at about 36 seconds in.

     "What he [Oliver] does is he presents a problem, OK. Then he talks about how terrible the problem is, and he ignores the fact the democrats have created the problem and republicans tried to fix it for a long time. Then he ignores any solutions, and then he ends by restating how terrible the problem is without offering any solutions. That's the segment." (Bolded for emphasis by me.)

     This is the quote that made me stop listening to Crowder forever. First of all, John Oliver did talk about at least one solution. Specifically, he talked about the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. Second of all, John Oliver mentioned only one politician in his entire segment that he blamed for the failure of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Facility. That politician was a democrat, senator Harry Reid. That's right, Crowder accuses John Oliver of letting democrats off the hook for creating the problem of nuclear waste, when in fact the only politician John Oliver directly blames is . . . wait for it . . . a DEMOCRAT!

     Call this petty. Call it what you want, but hearing these words out of Crowder's mouth just really irritated me. Here he was, accusing others of partisanship, when he himself was propagating a false narrative. He was creating a narrative that John Oliver was just pandering to a democrat agenda, all the while he himself was pandering to an anti-democrat agenda.

     After watching both of these segments again in order to write this post, Crowder's words do not bother me as much now as they did then. Have I just gotten used to his B.S.? Maybe. And I am aware that when I did a little research, some things in John Oliver's segment were not completely accurate (again, I forget what those were. I'll have to research again). But none of that is the point. Crowder's entire "rebuttal" was based on a glaring logical fallacy and . . . what?. . . a lie at worst and lazy partisanship at best. He did not address any substantive claims from John Oliver's segment, and he created a narrative about John Oliver that anyone who watched John Oliver knows is false. 

     Although I watched Crowder's show little to begin with, and I knew he was more of a comedian than an informed source of knowledge, this was the incident that made me unsubscribe and never watch another complete segment by him again. I sometimes try to; I really do. But I have seen enough not to trust him as a source of much knowledge.

     I will admit, he did provide us with a really good meme. It's his politics that are the problem. Well, there you have it. Steven Crowder is logically fallacious and a liar. Change my mind.

My Stay-at-Home/Home Schooling Experience

     When I was a stay-at-home dad, I really struggled with it. I was not—perhaps still am not—stay-at-home material. I’m not particularly good at taking care of myself let along little human beings who depend on me for their sustenance. I’m not a particularly good housekeeper. I’m absent minded. I’m anxiety prone. I have a terrible habit of tensing up every muscle in my body and freezing in place, and this is when I don’t have any responsibilities. I've dealt with undiagnosed depression for who knows how long. I was just not particularly cut out for home life.

     I struggled through a lot of parenting. I constantly felt like I was doing the bare minimum, which made me feel crappy, which compromised my parenting, which made me feel like I was doing the bear minimum, which made me feel crappy; and in the vicious circle I roamed. Bailey would come home, the house would be a wreck, the sink would be full of dishes, dinner wasn’t made. I’d joke that at least the kids were still alive. In short, I struggled, and this was challenging for me, because I didn’t feel good about myself, and it was challenging for Bailey, because she felt that she was always picking up the slack.

     At a certain point, I don’t remember exactly when, I came around to realizing that at least part of my problem was that I felt responsible for everything, and since I could never do everything, I felt doomed to failure. The way to fix this was not through doing everything, but by giving up on trying to do everything. I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were, and I knew that I had one solid stay-at-home strength, the ability to educate my children. 

     Having been home schooled myself, I never questioned that I was capable of teaching my kids at home. I knew how it worked. I knew it was a way of interacting with my children, getting quality parenting time and teaching them something at the same time. 

     We had amassed a large quantity of children’s flash cards, and I started using these with the kids every day. It started out with just colors, holding up the red flash card and saying “red.” Easy-peasy! Next, you start asking them what color it is. There’s nothing to it. Pro-tip: flashcards work the same way from pre-K to college and beyond. Use them as a game or a quiz. Develop questions based on them. Don’t just say the answer. Take time to have the child say the answer first. 

     I would take the kids, one at a time, into my arms and move around the house. I would start quizzing them on what things were and how they worked. (Keep in mind, my kids at this time are 3 and below.) I’d point to a lamp and ask them what it was. We'd take turns turning it on and off. We’d play with cars and watch them role. I remember one time making a tunnel for toy cars with a carpet tube. I would do anything just to be with the kids, point things out, and let them observe how things worked. And I could help them name things.

     Children really don’t need a whole lot to learn. They don’t need elaborate lesson plans. They don’t need an hour of preparation for a 10 minute lesson. So much of education is just being with your child and just asking them what they’re doing. As they learn, you can move on to newer things. Don’t beat dead horses, but also don’t think you need to win Kentucky Derby. When they had learned the items on the flash cards, I started showing them the words on the back of the flashcard for them to start associating the words with the items. Don’t worry that they’re not ready for reading. If they can recognize the word, they’re learning to read.

     After Ezra was born, I got a night job, but I was still the stay-at-home parent for the mornings and early afternoons. I bought a Melissa and Doug school set and started doing little activities from that. I was never very organized, but that didn’t matter much. It was a play school set, and we just played school. We continued doing flashcard, reading books together, playing games, etc.

     Eventually, the kids started going to Holy Spirit School, and I worked my way back into the working world. I never did feel like a great stay-at-home parent, but when I focused on just that one thing, on educating the kids, I at least felt that at the end of the day I had done a good job and I could be satisfied knowing that I had done something right. I still take time to educate the kids, like when Colburn was going through his phase of asking long addition problems. I just went along with it, tried to answer all his questions, and quizzed him with my own long addition questions. Bailey could hardly take this. I'm pretty sure we caused her some temporary insanity after we started getting into the quadruple digits. As for me, I was in my element.

     No lesson plan. Little preparation. Just a commitment to work with my children. 

     To be continued.