Not OK

Sometime in the seventies, most Western school system moved away from the idea that children’s heads simply had to be filled with information to produce a desirable outcome.   

My generation grew up relatively free of pressure and expectations. We did what we were asked and often more.  We played instruments, joined orchestras, theatre groups and sport clubs in our free time.  

On warm summer days we would all meet at the pool or go for bike rides.  We listened to music, hung out together and engaged in heated discussions about nuclear power and the the cold war.  During our holidays we plowed through mountains of books, wrote songs and travelled on InterRail from Athens to Amsterdam.  

Despite all the tough talk of cold war politics and all the acid rain in the world, life was good.  We were okay.  

Why can our children not grow up with that same certainty?  Why is the generation, that enjoyed all the freedoms and opportunities one could wish for, so adamant about testing children, measuring their achievement and suggesting that it is all not good enough and that they are not enough?  

Education is on the agenda in many countries in the EU - but mostly for the wrong reasons.  Everywhere policymakers are bemoaning low standards of education.  South Korea and China now are being hailed as the great paragons of educational achievement, while the considerable wealth of worthwhile educational philosophy and experience that has been generated in Western societies since the Enlightenment is blatantly being tossed over board. 

Be curious! Be industrious! Be independent! Be interested! Be self-motivated! Is what we are telling our children, thereby hoisting our own existential angst on their narrow shoulders.  

However, isn’t the most important role of an educator to create a safe space for exploration, questions and ideas?  

Shouldn’t we demand an education system that respects individual creative forces instead of expecting normed results?

What are we so afraid of?

Collective Blindspots

Every country, every nation has them, collective blindspots.  Those aspects of a given culture that just like with your best friend who holds on to his ponytail although he is going bald, are unflattering but somehow unchangeable.

Gun ownership and the obsession with private property are the top of my list when I think of the US. 

Elitism and classism are the obvious ones in the case of the UK.

In Germany, it is the fascination with efficiency that has  allowed asphalt wielding maniacs to turn landscapes into transit routes.

  

France, uh where shall I begin?  Vive la France!!

But this phenomenon of collective amnesia can be applied to all kinds of groups from families to institutions and from religions to men and women.

Similar to individuals, groups of people like to believe that they have figured it all out when, really, we all are but scattered ants on a forest floor.

No wait.  Not even that.

No Easy Time

It seems that the longer a society experiences peace and stability, the more likely its social cohesion is to weaken.  

In the immediate wake of war, a degree of social leveling can be observed, where the haves and have-nots are brought together by the shared misfortunes of violence and destruction.  A society pulls together by forming solidarity pacts on local and even national levels that transcend differences.  

Carefully crafted identities tied to income, heritage, education and religion are overcome for the common good.  The trauma of suffering is shared by all and acts of compassion by those who are more fortunate than others provide a bridge between the camps.

But this empathic phase usually diminishes within a generation.  As peaceful times provide the basic needs of shelter, food and clothing and welfare systems see to the provision of secondary goods such as healthcare, education, and safety, cohesion erodes.  Social strife supercedes social collaboration.

These dynamics can be traced throughout human history.  The peaceful Beaker Culture was replaced by warmongering societies whose chiefs bolstered their prestige by amassing precious metal works.  

Great civilizations were not immune to it and in fact generally thrived on the exploitation of many by few - that is unless they failed to provide the basic necessities, which then would lead to civil uprisings, revolutions and coup d’Etats.  Examples of this abound and often mark the cornerstone of a new era, such as the beginning of the Roman  Republic, the drafting of the Magna Carta, and the passing of the Code Napoleon.  But none will withstand our competitive nature - the call of the wild.

After the extensive rebuilding of civil society in the aftermath of two horrific wars, many European countries experienced a phase of social stability and shared prosperity which culminated in the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties.  However, a gradual erosion has set in since as we witness income gaps increase and wealth distribution curves move away from the median.  

Primatologist Frans de Waal likes to evoke the image of the empathic ape in making an argument for our human potential to build empathic societies.  However, I tend to keep to a  an old adage when dealing with humans:  trust is good, watchfulness is better.  

Back to the Books guys!!

Whenever I hear about this reheated nonsense from the Republican anti-choice section (including the presidential running mate, Ryan) about ‘illegal’ versus what?...legal rape?.... ‘God wanted pregnancies by means of rape’ as well as claims about a woman’s ability to ‘shut that whole thing down’ (what exactly do you mean by that, Toddy??) to prevent impregnation in the event of a sexual assault, I am - to say the least - confused. Why are the befuddled thoughts of these old farts (the quotes stem from speeches by Ryan, Mourdock and Akin respectively) given any consideration other than as a proof of their insanity? In fact, why are these men in the limelight at all? And, frankly, how could it possibly be that they are running for office? What a sad nation that not only continues to listen to this low caliber Republican babble!! Or, differently put, why isn’t there a much more needed debate going on about extending welfare for single parent (mostly female) headed households, maternity leave, child support as well as quality child care, while at the same time improving the prosecution of sexual offenders, enforcing tougher sentences and introducing hormonal sterilization as a measure to better protect society from hormonally challenged aggressive males? Why are they and, sadly, even we more up-to-date Old Worlders paying more attention to this pathetic male ramble than proposing palatable solutions to the underlying issue of trying to reduce abortion rates by improving the lives of mothers? Someone needs to do their homework!!

Bucket please!!

There is this guy, Kucklick is his name, who recently had the great idea (or maybe he was just out of ideas) to turn our human experience on its head and make it the topic of his doctorate. In a long winded, tiresome and utterly pointless babble he put forth the thesis that much of what ails our modern civilisation can be explained by a wave of male-bashing that set in sometime during the early nineteenth century. He quotes a number of philosophers who at the time (and for the first time ever in human history) ventured to say that men have a latent tendency towards violent and asocial behaviour. How that could either turn into a doctorate or be published by a reputable publisher in Germany is puzzling indeed. But then, it's not easy to work in publishing these days. Lowering one's standards is one way of staying afloat, I suppose.

Families to the Front

It is interesting to see how the gap between our expectations of what childhood should be like and what childhood actually looks like is widening once again. In the 19th century governments across industrial nations were persuaded by their voters to provide affordable education for all children regardless of their socio-economic background. It was found that education was a public good that would benefit not just the individual but also society as a whole. Since then, tax payers have been asked to contribute to state funded education to create the first co-educational compulsory state education system ever. In the wake of that development new attention was given to teaching methods and child development. Alternative approaches were formulated namely by Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner, to emphasize the importance of the formative years on the later development. So-called reform schools shot up especially around industrial areas and in less privileged neighborhoods. Enabling all children to achieve their full potential was deemed worthy of public support. However, today, we once again live in societies were a child’s lot in life depends on that of her or his parents’ pocketbook. As families have to fork over a good chunk of their income and savings to ensure their child receives quality education and care, children with less affluent backgrounds are left behind. Their education will derive mostly from a jumble of mass media, pop culture and the internet. Even though one educational report chases the next stating that children spend too much time in front of screens and not enough time on challenging subjects, engaging hobbies and sports, we now look mostly towards parents to provide them. And those who can manage, will do their best to oblige. They shuttle their offspring across suburban landscapes, they coach afternoon sports, arrange for trips to the museum and supervise homework. They get involved in parent teacher networks, they organize school fundraisers and they lobby for healthy school meals. After all, we do know what’s good for children. Why then have we stopped caring for them? All of them.

Life Camp

In many ways it seems that we are doing well. The house, the career, the kids, health and a pension plan. At times I can spot envy when the relatives are over. Friends, however, know better because they listen and they are smart enough to know that in the end we are all in the same boat, barely scraping over the rocks that lie beneath the surface. Our lives, like those of most families in today’s world, are stretched thin. With long hours spent at work and in traffic and weekends cut short by work commitments, it’s like ships passing in the night. All along, we are led to believe that eventually it is all going to get easier. Our baby boomer parents believed that and those who cashed in on their savings in time probably will keep telling us that. What they conveniently overlook is that since then, salaries have stagnated for the large majority of us and across many sectors they have gone down, while those that find work in today’s struggling economies have no leverage left to negotiate. They work longer hours in exchange for less job security and fewer benefits than ever. Yet, afraid that things could get even worse, we keep plodding on. We throw our lives back on the Interstate every morning and stop by Best Buy on the way home. After all, we are told that consumer spending needs to go up in order to secure jobs...right? Nonsense. Consumer spending needs to stay up to keep us in bondage and the dividends flowing. It is what has turned life into one big work camp where day after day, empty spaces are filled by the anonymous new face. At least with blogspot, twitter and facebook we can wine about it when we find a moment. See, I already feel better. Let’s get on with it then, shall we?

Stretching

One thing which you will have to get good at fast, when you become a parent, is stretching! But while the physical side of stretching can be really helpful in order to strap on infant carriers onto your front or back and fastening those ever evasive car seat buckles, the most useful ingredient to peaceful parenting is mental stretching. Because you may suddenly find yourself doing things that weren't part of your "100 Things to do before you Die" like wearing nipple cups and monitoring bowel movements. Not to mention all the waiting. Waiting for the babe to wake, waiting for the milk to warm, waiting for the babe to sleep, waiting for the help to come, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the kid to grow waiting for your life to start. And all the time, you will tell yourself that all of this is really good, because you know eventually it will all be over and what then? For that there is Yoga.

Go Quota!

There are many reasons why quotas are no good. For one, they are “unfair” to those they disfavor, but also they are unfair to those they are intended to favor, because they tend to provide fertile grounds for office gossip.

And yet, they do what we have failed to do in any other meaningful way. They break through entrenched networks, racism and sexism, or, more generally speaking, they encroach on hiring practices that for eons now have favored the white male.

In fact, considering women and their particular life cycle which, as we all know, can impinge uncomfortably on their careers, I would actually propose an even tougher quota system.

Given that the most important time for women to make good money and move up on the career ladder is right when they come out of education, a strict quota system ought to secure their swift promotion at that point in their professional lives.

For one, if women get a head start and remain motivated, they may be far more likely to return to their swivvel chairs once their childbearing years are over. But also, it would give them a chance early on in their lives to make contributions to their pension funds.

This is crucial not only for personal but also for economic reasons as most countries around the world, including the US and Germany, don’t give any credit for the time women spent in child rearing - a blatant “oversight” which greatly contributes to high poverty rates among women in old age.

Quotas may not be fair, and they are definitely not a preferred option, but they are a decent plan B, where reasons beyond reasons blurr our decision-making.

...no chance!

I wonder whether our parts of the world will see a revolution again. Civil disobedience in western democracies doesn’t seem to go beyond strikes and demonstratrations and occasional clashes with law enforcement - usually following European football matches.

Seemingly functioning electoral systems have absorbed the major currents in society. All western democracies have left and right leaning groupings in their party landscapes with minor eccentric parties on the margins.

With plenty of bread and games there is no reason really to risk once life in the name of... say a better world. Granted, some people are better off than others, have better opportunies to move ahead and stay ahead, but generally speaking, very few are starving.

There are state funded schools everywhere, miserable as they may be, thrift shops pick up where more high end retail doesn’t want to go, and there is plenty of nonstop diversion around, for everything else there are drugs.

So, my bet is that we are done with this kind of bonding experience.

She Said...

Some of the more obvious problems with organized religion is that, for one, the big three and most of the others all have male deities reigning over the lofty heavens. From Allah to Zarathustra, there is not that much gender variety (if we neglect, for a moment, the bare- bellied sidekicks of Shiva et al.).

But beyond that, the great prophets, those claiming to carry on the divine message on earth, were all male - or so we are told. Of course, we know better, but then that’s probably not something to be discussed over turkey and stuffings.

The backlash against women who have tried to impact this world with their thoughts has always been horrendous and continues to be so even today. Death and defamation hit them faster than they would have imagined. And so today, Mary Magdalene remains in the memory of the religious mob nothing but a lucky whore. Her teachings tossed into the Red Sea (...or was it the Black?).

Men are capable of that kind of thing. Nothing new.

And when some women bloggers in Germany today are told by investigators to tone down their messages and make their posts less ‘provocative’ to the sensitive ears of male supremacist, or else to expect their wrath in the shape of profanities and death threats, then it is nothing other than that:

Un-called for male posturing.

Just look at the world on the eve of 2011: Over-population, warfare, religious strive, sexual exploitation, torture, totalitarianism, nuclear proliferation, and melting poles...Not so great, guys! But thanks for flushing toilets and penicillin anyway!

Buckle Down

What I like is this: towns you enter and the first thing you see is NOT a Shell station or a car dealership but maybe an overgrown church yard or a pub by the name of ‘The Queen’s Tale’.

But what happened to the rest of the world? Everything is about cars: Fields are being eaten up by winding snakes of asphalt. Trees that line old roads are cut down so drunk drivers don’t hit them. Parking lots sprawl everywhere.

Even shopping nowadays means driving, and driving means seat belts and car seats, and subsequently confinement.

It’s strange what we will put up with for the sake of so-called convenience.

Not Bread Enough!

That Brits have the worst food in the world is most certainly a thing of the past. Restaurants, grocery stores, and cook books have adeptly incorporated tastes and dishes from culinary hot spots around the world.

In fact, grocery stores everywhere abound in a large variety of veggies and sauces from Asia. And get this -- and you won’t hear that very often from a German -- they tend to have a larger assortment of breads than one would find in Germany.

Everything from baguette, scones, to whole wheat, potatoe farls, stone-oven baked artisan breads, and focaccia is available, even dark German Vollkorn and Swedish crisp breads.

Yet, despite this variety there is not one kind of bread that is outright pallet meltingly delicious.

I feel truly bad to say this. It’s like a beauty contest, where everything is being done to prove that Dominicans can be blonde, too, and the judges just raise their overly arched eyebrows and say: “Not blonde enough!”

No such thing?

I remember the sensation of surprise and disbelief when my otherwise quite capable English teacher returned to me one of my papers with the remark, “There is no such thing as self-deception!”

In one respect she was, of course, right since the word ‘self-deception’ does not exist in English, but that wasn’t her point.

I had translated the German concept of a so-called ‘life-lie’ (Lebenslüge), as ‘self-deception’ in an effort to describe the human tendency to protect one’s peace of mind in the face of adversity.

My teacher insisted, however, that the word self-deception was illogical because it implies a subject and an object in the same person.

Maybe I would have faired better had I proffered more sophisticated terminology like “delusional disorder” borrowed from the abundant chest of treasures of the human psyche. But I wasn’t looking for the extraordinary. In fact, I was trying to describe a very ordinary state of mind.

In post-Nazi Germany one very common ‘Lebenslüge’ was, “I didn’t know that my neighbor was killed by the Nazis, I just took over his store.”

‘Lebenslügen’ can be inconsequential but sometimes they are outright criminal. Either way they are adopted to avoid unpleasant truths. They make one’s life a little easier. They are a common coping mechanism. But like all lies, they usually come back to haunt us in the end.

To this day, I find that English is just a tad bit poorer (and maybe less honest) for its inability to provide or simply adopt a term like ‘Lebenslüge’.

A person can be self-delusional or she can be in denial but neither expression captures the subtle as well as sinister state of mind implied in the German word ‘Lebenslüge’.

But then, language always changes and so do cultures. ‘Schadenfreude’, a German term describing an equally unattractive human quality (i.e., the rejoicing in someone else’s misfortune), has made it into English almost unscathed.

‘Lebenslüge’ should be a close runner-up. After all, just take a look around, it’s everywhere in this best of all possible worlds.

Winter Witch

We went ice skating on the lake next to my old school. What a blast. In an attack of insanity I had bought everyone skates for Xmas, the whole fam damily including Kristen, Lea’s doll.

Defying melting ice caps and rainy winters, I went ahead and invested in a whimsical idea that laid dormant in me for years: To be back on that lake where some of the happiest moments of my teen years were made and to sweep across the cold surface like a wild winter witch.

I am glad I did. We all had so much fun! The ice cracked and whistled under our feet, Jules squealed with joy, Lea got brave and pushed off with her left foot again and again, Zoë raced with me to the island and back, and even Matt managed to gain some speed despite frozen feet and achy chins.

The sun was low in the sky, barely grazing the barren treetops of the woods like an apple stuck on an unsuspecting hedgehog. The air was full of tiny knives, cold and thin. I sucked it all up, air, sun, woods and the cold shiny surface of the lake.

A moment to behold. I am so happy to be back.

Homeschooling the German Way

Since we are in Germany for a little I am living the life of a German housewife/mother. Admittedly, I am having some trouble coming to terms with that, even though I know it’s just for the interim.

The last three months the kids and I lived in the States. And while demoted from my former ex-pat status, I was very content. Homeschooling two children and looking out after a third while running a household and being virtually a single mom wasn’t easy but it was a challenge I enjoyed working through because it all made sense and everyone was happy and moving forward.

This, however, stinks. Since homeschooling, as we know it, is illegal in Germany (state officials will knock on your door and eventually take you away in shackles if you keep your kids at home!!) we enrolled the girls in school. A couple of weeks into this bizarre experience we are trying to understand what went wrong in German education.

After the German education system was evaluated in a comparative international study (PISA) some years ago and fared poorly, and way behind the US, state bureaucrats got together and decided that instead of looking toward countries that had come out on top in the study, like Finland, they were going to simply do more of the same – at least in grade school as far as I can tell.

They did not reduce class sizes or assign two teachers per classroom, as is done in Finland. They decided to simply put more pressure on teachers to make the old approach work. That pressure then got passed on from teachers to students in the form of massive amounts of homework. Sound familiar?

Yet, just like when I went to school in Germany thirty years ago, the time in class is spent for the most part on listening to the teacher pontificate on some more or less abstract concept. My kids’ notebooks are curiously blank even after two weeks in school. The workbooks, however, are getting filled at a breath-taking pace, though not in school.

As a matter of fact, homeschooling is alive and well in Germany, because any hands-on work that is being done is done at home. As it is, all that pressure on performance by increasing the amount of homework has fallen to parents, i.e., generally well-meaning mothers, who more than ever before have to hover over their kids in the afternoons, so teachers can make their check marks and assign grades for one of the many tests they now have to administer.

There are two big problems with this approach – apart from the obvious one that drafting once again women for unpaid jobs is unfair!

Problem number one is that this will all but increase the difference in academic performance between children of different socio-economic backgrounds, a problem that already was cited as the most dramatic in the PISA study for Germany.

Problem number two is that it is a grand waste of time. Instead of doing what education should do: entice, encourage, and engage the student, mornings are passed doing…uh, well surviving the classroom experience, I suppose.

As far as I can tell all the enticing, encouraging and engaging is done by me in the afternoons when we all could be doing something else! There no longer is time for music, except in the car, or projects other than filing work sheets in color-coded folders, or for that matter reading something else other than excerpts stitched together in some orange textbook.

It really is sad and if this wasn’t but a short term stint for our family I would probably prefer shackles to this nonsense.

Interestingly, a recent study done by a fellow at Universität Salzburg, Austria, found that excessive homework is ranked as the second highest factor (after low family income) in explaining stress related symptoms in German school-aged children.

But then, that study didn’t hit the international press for weeks on end. What’s on bureaucrats’ budget-obsessed and otherwise distorted minds these days is PISA – and how to fix it the cheap way.

School Night Special

It’s late. I am still up because I am trying to turn this day around, I am still trying to give it that little positive spin. It looks like I am running out of time though.

It wasn’t even that bad a day but it also wasn’t really good. I had to work hard to keep my thoughts from turning into molasses and clogging up my entire system.

As I am thinking about it, I am done living life on hold. I am done checking in and out of different settings, like changing in and out of costumes. I am tired of living life on top of suitcases. I want to settle down. And I am ready to deal with the consequences. And, in the end, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

It’s all about accepting the good with the bad and being ok with it. I suppose, up to now, I still thought that I could do better. And we did better for a while. Costa Rica was pretty cool and for a family of five a lot better than life was in downtown DC.

But neither Matt nor I felt ready to deal with the consequences of an ex-pat existence any longer. So now we are back in the first world: We are back to where life is fast and dinners are short. We are part of the regular crowd again. We are, once again, middle class Europeans.

It’s not easy but it’s going to be good.

There is one thing, however, that has to change fast lest I lose my mind: That’s school. Since Zoe has started, it’s dominating our entire family 7am to 8pm: if it’s not something that’s missing, or some heap of homework that needs to be done, it’s who said what or did what to whom.

With homework here taking the form of endless not-so-funny spelling riddles and math problems ad nauseum there isn’t really time anymore for Harry Potter (sorry pal). Also, Fiamma, Zoe’s violin, has acquired patina along with several cardboard boxes that I can’t help but keep just in case there is a fifteen minute break in her hurried schedule to erect one of her awesome fortresses with ramparts, gatehouse, turrets and all.

We all agree homeschooling is a lot more sane and fun and as soon as we can we’ll go back to it. The countdown is running…

Dog Days

I am back in Germany, at least for a couple of months, now. One wouldn’t think that in this day and age going back and forth between countries is such a big thing. But it can be pretty intense at times.

I haven’t lived in Germany for a while. All our kids were born abroad. But now, that I am back and the of them are with me, I have started to reconnect with my own childhood. I re-live my school days, getting up in the dark, taking in the wet cold of a November morning, the scent of decaying leaves in the air.

Zoe is enrolled in school until Xmas and so I am slipping back into the old familiar school routine of my school days: Getting up in the dark, taking in the wet cold of a November morning, the scent of decaying leaves in the air on the way to school, feelings of hope and exasperation, and ah…those slippery classroom floors.

I find myself step outside at night just to feel my lungs fill with that old November sensation again. It’s beautiful to be back and exhausting at the same time. To some degree it’s like chasing my own shadow.

Driving the Kids

I no longer do that. And I sure hope I’ll never have to it again. What a waste of time.

However, if we choose to live in remote locations, far enough out so that we can afford to secure an acre of land, maybe we owe it to our kids: Driving them to where they really want to be.

But then, maybe we owe it to our kids not to chew up the countryside and instead live in cluster developments, also known as towns, that leave the surrounding fields and woods intact and not pocked with mailboxes and scared by dirt roads in every direction.

Come to think about it, towns are a really great idea, and so far they have done a fine job for humanity. What makes them so enjoyable in part is that everything in them is within walking distance, whether you have to mail a letter, need a quick make-over, or want to sink some money into ice cream

If I wanted to I could get a reasonably sophisticated henna tattoo, check out the latest Carl Hiaasen, and slurp a second-to-none mountain moose blizzard all within less then an hour.

And if I decided to make my way over to the railway station, I could still be on my way to the rest of the world that same afternoon...for a wider selection of ice cream.

But not only are towns a lot of fun they are also a lot healthier, at least for me, my children, their friends, the trees, and everyone who breathes.

Plus, with all that time one saves on NOT driving the kids around one can…let’s see…for instance give that blog a spiffy make-over, if nothing else comes to mind.

News Flash

Nothing gets more consistent coverage in German media these days than: childcare. That’s new. And that alone makes it noteworthy.

Like anywhere else, childcare traditionally is a mother’s problem and, hence, generally overlooked. Who really cares about how the next generation makes it through the first years of their lives? It’s a dirty job some idiot has to do – preferably done quietly and with a smile, right?

In a country without school lunches, where children generally appear back on the doorstep at 1:00 pm, and toddlers toddle at home, the prospects are bleak for many mothers. Part time work often remains the only ungrateful option. Well, thanks but no, many of them say these days, “Why ruin my life so that this madness can continue?” But mind you, it’s not voiced that way because the radicals can lean back these days and enjoy.

With an average rate of 1.3 children per women, the tables have turned. The idiots are those who look the other way now. Ah and, voilà, suddenly childcare is one of the main topics in German politics and media.

It’s fun to watch as one front page after another pinpoints issues around formerly scorned topics such as family, parenting, education, and women. That’s new. The role of the state in childcare now is hotly debated by panels of educators, faces are turning red over the principles of quality childcare and voices of panelists reach falsetto level as family values are debated.

Of course, there are always those atavists who declare that everything was better before and the world would be such a better place if only women were to return to the ‘Three Ks’ of Kinder, Küche and Kirche (children, kitchen, and church). But their days are so obviously numbered it almost makes you want to hear them say it one last time for old times’ sake.

This turn of events is good not only because it refreshes and broadens public debate but also because it’s crucial. Locking women out of public life and limiting their choices is not the way to go. It’s still the way most societies are organized, mind you, but most of them share one facet: Low levels of development. Go check it out.