Not so Phun

Z. has to decide what her A Levels are going to be.  Here Physics teacher seems to think that she should try to take Physics alongside with Maths – especially because she is a girl – and handed her a leaflet “Physics is Fun” featuring a “fun loving” blonde writing convoluted formulas on a blackboard.

Hm.

What’s worrying is not only the haha connotation of blonde and “Fun” - which clearly has grown a bit moldy over time – nor the peculiarly odd way in which this seventeen year old adolescent girls is reduced to paddy-cake calibre nincompoop…

What really worries me is that it matters whether girls like Physics or not.   

And unless at my next PT meeting I will be handed a foldout entitled “Social Careers are Hip” brandishing a football jock in warrior pose, I am wondering whether people will ever understand that intelligence actually means to think creatively for yourself and not just to follow others.   

In fact I think that is is preferable to have different interests from men.  The problem is in the disadvantages that go along with that.  

Now there is a problem that awaits solving and me think its not Physics that's gonna do it.

Roaming School

The funnest thing about homeschooling is that we can pop up our tent about anywhere.  So we are off for a bit now to see how much French we really know.  Luckily my aunt has a house in the dunes - and it's gonna be a scorcher weekend.  Just what this slightly tattered soul needs.  So...bisous bisous! 

Dig that!

September and with it the love, turmoil and redemption.  We are back to homeEd.  I love it, but it makes my day that much shorter.  But, hey, I am back to studying classics, music theory and my much beloved book of 1,000 amazing facts!!  Did you know that there are salt water crocodiles in Australia?  That poor continent really got the short end of the stick.  Sharks, spiders, jelly fish, scorpions...you name it !!!

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?

British Schools - more BS

Here is another downer:  The British education system.  Nine out of ten Brits will readily attest to that. 

Not only is it horrendously skewed since anybody big in politics and finance usually comes from a handful of private schools - mostly boys only - it also has a regional, or should I say linguistic, bias. 

Getting yourself into one of the red brick institutions of higher education will be just that bit harder, if there is a trace of Cockney or, worse even, an Irish drawl discernible.

Once, after an audition for a leading part in The Mighty Mikado, which her choirmaster had recommended her for, but which she in the end failed to get, it was commented that my unfortunate daughter was lacking a “posh English accent.” 

That bit of blasé alacrity coming from a choir director of a children’s choir located in the Greater London diaspora was quite telling of the daily frustrations with the British class system. 

No it is not easy being British!  While this is a lovely country - indeed the best I have ever lived in - it is much more fun doing it while assuming the role of the eccentric outsider.

Tasty Lemonade

I have become very skilled at making lemonade from lemons over these past months. J.’s teacher was let go rather suddenly after class dynamics spun out of control and we found ourselves with a succession of substitutes - all well meaning but uncommitted - and so we went back to home ed. What a lucky break! J. and I are having a ball. Our latest coup was to fly to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands to learn how to swim (the season tends to be a bit short here) and to take a closer look at volcanic rock. I really enjoy being back in the game for a while. It is also really handy to know how to read, J. agreed.

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.

Oh what fun...!

Zoë and I just spent another afternoon with dear old Salman Khan. His youtube videos just crack us up.

This time, we had him explain the periodic table to us after we were left speechless last night musing about covalent and ionic bonds.

We couldn’t help grinning about the cool ‘guy’ lingo in explaining the odd on-goings in the outer shell of transitional metals...Notice....? It’s catching on!!

Cheating my way through chemistry exams in school, I always had the nagging thought that I might be missing out on something really interesting. But why weren’t my teachers like Sal? Instead, I was diligently copying chemical formulas off my palm, marveling at the secret code.

I had chemistry off and on for three years and later on it reappeared as organic chemistry in my biology classes. It would have helped immensely if I had watched that six minute video on the periodic table in year 7. Only neither youtube nor Salman had been conceived of then.

But, hey, this is a new generation!

Have fun!

My Fall

I don’t know how your fall has been so far, but mine has been exactly that: a deeper than ever tumble into the depths of motherhood...ah, and just as I have sat down here to whine about it all, in comes a phone call from Zoe...and off I go to pick her up because she missed her ride - did I say too much?

Back again... So, on my way back from school, I also picked up Julian’s bike from the shop and a pint of milk from the store since I never leave the house for just one errant - I can’t, I virtually would have to quit eating a sit-down meal all together. As it is, I only have one of those a day anyway.

I have given up on breakfast ever since the daily fights over the bathroom began...I could have changed my routine a gotten up earlier to resolve it, but that would mean earlier nights on the other end and since I only get to see Matt in the evening, I decided to go for plan B...a protein-joghurt shake on the run.

So let’s see what else did I accomplished today...? After a brisk and very wet walk to school, I sold used children’s books at the canteen to raise $$ for the class trip and after 1.5 hours had brought in a whopping 17.00GBP!! When there was no further hope of talking an unsuspecting fellow parent into buying an almost new copy of Winnie the Pooh, I hauled the sad rejects back and decided that maybe class trips are over-rated anyway.

Next was the wash - three loads - the dishes, chili con carne and a futile effort to fix the recessed lighting in the kitchen, which ended up tripping a fuse and subsequently also blowing out the fridge which shrewedly went into defrost mode over the rest of the morning.

Next I wrote on a monologue for yet another fundraiser - this time to restore the clock house - an epic endeavor. But this one should be fun, given that it can’t possibly be any worse than the first one I staged. There came a moment during that performance when I actually thought that to cut my losses, I should just drop the microphone and put the house on the market. That was last month.

Since then, I had the flu, travelled to Lisbon for a reunion where nobody showed up except for Matt, watched the school musical five times in a row (because Zoë, after years of being cast and recast as a Viking, finally scored a female lead), and made lanterns, a dragon head, and seventeen calendars depicting every inch of our existence in order to quench any requests for pictures - forever!

I also made three sour dough Friendship Cakes that nobody wants to eat because they suck (don’t ever get talked into making a cake called Herman!), and nit-checked diligently every Wednesday as ordered by the school nurse...actually I skipped the last two times....

Anyway, my fall has been a blurr of maddening hyper-activity tempered only by a few hours of restless sleep here and there with my face esconded between seven downy purple pillows, that and a walk through the olive garden of São Jorge.

I don’t know where it all will end...it says pride comes before the fall but I wonder what comes after?

Mug Shots

When you wonder how and when bankers became bankers, or why some people are just in it for themselves, just think back to your high school class. They were all there then and they haven’t changed: the notorious liers, tricksters, bigots, socio-paths, and...yes, loosers, their mug shots are all neatly lined up in your yearbook and those of your friends. People don’t just change over night even if your average Newborn Christian will swear they have found the light. Well, yes, maybe in their closet.

Twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one

As we are nearing the end of our first school year, I am beginning to drag like a wind up toy on its last leg. Any chance to slow down even further is welcome. I have started to drink Earl Grey (with milk!) - whenever offered.

By the time everyone at home is up in the morning, I usually regret I made it out of bed in the first place. Approaching school, my feet become laden like in a time warp and after drop off, I linger to an extend that seems suspicious to even the chattiest of parents dotting the parking lot.

I will talk about anything - and at length - just to avoid having to trott back up the hill to my mountains of laundry, patches of weeds, and oceans of to-do lists. Sometimes I wonder whether I am lacking some life-enabling gene that makes tedious routines feel like comfort food.

But, hey, this is June and the countdown is running!

Baaah!

Goodie Goodie, ‘half-term’ is just around the corner when school ‘breaks up’ and we get a chance to come up for air from between stacks of cookie sheets and mixing bowls.

However, in light of my rapidly waning enthusiasm for 'special events', I have called off our family trip to Wales since it is not my intention to spend these few precious days messing around with five sets of muddy rain gear in the mournful twilight of late afternoon down poors at the foot of a bleak mountain next to a sheep.