Thanks, but no Sam !

Here is what's great about homeschooling: 

My job ends at the beginning of summer, I don't have to write reports because I know where my kids are at and I have a fairly good idea what we will have to cover when we get back. 

I don't have to clean up my classroom in addition to my house and I also won't have to come back in August to paint the walls (I will do that in November).  

Granted, I don't get baskets filled with crackers, chocolate and Thank You cards, but then, I don't have to put in my time&energy&idealism for $25,000/yr, find childcare, transportation AND worry whether the Earned Income Tax Credit will still be in place when I file in April !!!

Ssshhht...he can hear you!

I am up writing this when I know I will regret it tomorrow, but while I will be drowsy tomorrow I am wide awake right now.  A leaden headache has finally lifted off and blown away, after a day of probability problems and the Konjunktiv Irrealis (do I need to say more).  

We finished the day with a walk in the milky fog of and English November afternoon.  The kids all needed airing and I needed to gain some territory.  Eventually, J. caught up with me and, tugging on my sleeve, reassured me “You are doing everything right, mom!

”Was I talking out loud...?

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! 

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?

Review

"Ok, let's see Jules...can you name one of the Great Civilisations of antiquity?" - I decided to keep it as open as possible...

"The Czech Republic!!" - Maybe I should review my approach...

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.

Holding the Fort

I am off to Balcombe again first thing in the morning. Despite the positive national and international press coverage and media attention it has received over the past seven weeks, the protest camp is suddenly under threat of eviction. Time and date: September 10th, 9am. 

So off I go, Jules with me - another day in the life of a home educating family.

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.

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!

That Thing about the Pie

Whoever came up with the saying “You can’t eat the pie and have it too” was not only grammatically challenged, s/he was right. You see, something usually has got to give no matter how good the deal seems. However, it is not always apparent what that ‘something’ is, least of all if you’re the one enjoying the pie.

We have been enjoying the pie for quite a while. Homeschooling. We have had all the freedom and time in the world to explore; there were no schedules to abide by, no exams to pass, and no curricula to dutifully stick to.

Learning up to this point has been free, unencumbered and enjoyable. And no matter how eagerly people in the past have tried to point out that we were supposedly missing out on ‘something’, we were one happy group of larks.

But it looks like we are finally coming to a point where our freedom will have to give way to the culturally overpowering system of British formal education. In a class society like this one, eyebrows are constantly raised, and noses pointed upward at non-conformers (unless you have the funds and/or arrogance to back it up).

I never really cared because I know it is not only reprehensible but also futile to measure people by the school they attended, the badges they have obtained, or the number of A-pluses on their report cards. But Zoë is beginning to be more aware of cultural norms and the expectations that go along with them.

At eleven, she wants to be like everyone else. She wants to enjoy the walk to school with her friends and join in on the complaints about her teachers and the terror of the next upcoming exam. She has all but forgotten about her time in Germany, where she was sidelined and walked home from school alone every single day.

I SO get her.

"Excellent!!"

I believe that it is our fear of failure that makes us pressure our children to excel and be nothing less than excellent.

With that much more ‘excellence’ around every generation, the bar has been pushed higher and higher since the 1970s: more homework, more exams, more exclusive (and expensive) schools...

Children lose their childhood years to memorizing random facts and cramming for one test after the other - and I am not just talking about China.

But why do we seem so nervous about the future of our gene pool? Why the clenched teeth and pulled up shoulders? Is it maybe because at the age of 38 we as parents feel outsmarted? Is it because we already are being out-competed by somebody only ten years younger who is willing to apply his IT conditioned brain for even longer hours?

I admit it can be scary, but fear has rarely proved to be a good guide for decision-making.

As it is we are ruining our lives and those of our children by dedicating the few precious years together to night time homework, tutoring, and pre- and post exam anxieties.

And the pressure is rising on homeschoolers as well. So far I am fairly resilient but I wonder how long my bastion of pig-headed opposition is going to to hold up. The force behind this insanity is pretty formidable.

A No Go

I am trying to figure out whether I should brief Zoe on the current credit crunch crisis. She is almost ten, she probably would be quite interested, she actually might have figured out that something is in the bush already, and so far she has taken any crisis, including my daily one’s, with untrammeled equanimity.

We could, for instance, run a little homeschooling project on “How not to be greedy and mess things up for everyone,” but then, we already did that with the Kyoto Protocol, land development in the Americas (just to name one continent), and a couple of World Wars.

But somehow I think she got the point already. Knowing her, she probably would look at me with that ‘Okay-what’s-your-point-mom’ look that would bring home HER point: Don’t be so bloody (yes, we are acclimatizing quite well) redundant, mom!

Learning never ought to be boring!

Woof !

After four months into this island adventure I have to owe up to my unremitting ignorance concerning the ins and outs of the UK education system. In my defense it should be mentioned, however, that there seem to be more outs than ins.

For one, it is rather unlikely that a first attempt at entering an educational institution in this country will be successful. When trying to place a child, so called catchment areas for state schools must to be considered.

However, living in one of these areas does not automatically grant a child access into one of these schools. In fact, we were told that London parents run off to secure a place for their child on the day of her or his birth. Now that’s a bonding parent!

However, as will be made clear to parent and child, remaining at a decent state school will depend on a series of drawn out tests and examinations starting at the age of seven.

Here is another little island fact: girls take secondary school entrance exams at eleven years of age but not so boys. For some reason only obvious to Brits, boys take the exam at thirteen, which by the way is also the last possible date to get accepted into secondary school it seems. I am not kidding. It’s 11, 13, or tough luck folks.

I virtually was told that moving to England with a child older than 14 at the most is a really bad idea since no ‘reputable’ school would want to ‘run the risk’ of taking in a...well, they didn’t outright say stray dog, but somehow I think that’s what they meant.

When in Britain...

One thing I am beginning to realize two months into our lives in Britain is that British culture is one to reckon with. The Brits have their very own way of doing things and for most part, I think, they’ve got it right.

While it may be debatable whether tea must always be served with milk, they certainly have got a point when promoting locally grown produce, preserving farm land, and supporting the arts in the class room.

As a matter of fact, I like their take on most things. Maybe that’s just because their stubborn approach to so-called progress in some way mirrors mine.

After all, why should streets be broadened only so that more cars can drive on them? Why should more farmland be given up for development so that more people can commute from further away? And, really, why should the UK become part of the EU only because everyone from the Balkan to the Baltic is doing it?

However, I am, to say the least, mildly bewildered when it comes to understanding the rational behind their extremely complex education system.

While it may be regarded as merely cute that they call public all that is in fact private (for what else would you expect a Brit to do?), it can become rather time consuming and annoying when trying to figure out the sheer endless variations on the theme.

There are state-funded state schools, religious schools, grammar schools, and comprehensive schools. Prep-schools and pre-prep schools, however, seem to be always private, uh, public.

And while it is generally conceded that state funded schools are not as good as privately run institutions, some of them may actually be very good and quite exclusive. To get into them you have to be eleven years old and must have taken an exam, the 11+. That much I have figured out. However, different age requirements seem to apply for boys.

I also have figured out that it is basically impossible to find a reputable school to take a child beyond the age of 15 because the so-called top schools are very concerned about their final exam averages and, therefore, wouldn’t want to run the risk of taking on anyone but Einstein (if, in fact, they could make him out in a crowd).

I conclude, therefore, that the Brits are just as confused and panicked as everyone else in this world as far as their off-spring, i.e., their gene pool, is concerned.

How to ensure that their children will make it in this breathtakingly fast and efficient (albeit otherwise doomed) world doesn’t seem that clear to them. And, really, it isn’t.

It’s just sad that for all their stubbornness they haven’t come up with anything more... British.

Just like everyone else they scurry around like a mad bunch of chicken like in the movie Chicken Run advocating tougher entrance exams, national standards, and if all fails, elite education. Like everywhere else, mummies in this country busy themselves running their pallid third graders across town three times a day to keep up with that elusive thing called ‘a good education.’

What ever happened to four o’clock tea, I wonder? What happened to that minute or two reserved for quite introspection?

I saw an add for an after-school study program yesterday that read, “(...)exams, coursework, homework, revisions, essays...secondary school education is not an easy thing. Many children are suffering the symptoms of stress and exhaustion as the demands and expectations on them increase. So what can you do to help your child (...)?”

AFTER-SCHOOL STUDY PROGRAM??? Hellooooo, anyone home? Where are all ye smart Brits now??

I have to admit that while I have a hard time concealing my disappointment about this blind frenzy, I am grateful that at least the Brits are elitist enough to allow home education.

However, for a moment there I was swaying ready to succumb to the pressure, spurred on by the human desire to fit in, because after all most is good imn this corky little island state.

But then, what’s wrong with being more British than the Brits?

Mad Scientist

I usually have a pretty good gut instinct when I throw clothes into the washer. Anything light or with light stripes or dots, even if most of the fabric is a darker shade, I wash them with whites. It seems logical and has worked for me. Well, friday it didn’t.

The sounds of my quiet and subsequently less quiet desperation called everyone in the kitchen where I sat kneeling on the floor, a pile of bright pink dress shirts on my lap. The culprit, a light pink T-shirt was guiltily cowering on the edge of the open washer.

“Not good,” I scolded the wet miserable lump in front of me (in fact, I may also have used some other more pointed words). I used to be even more of a compulsive type, taking this kind of defeat rather personally. And even though I wanted to kick my own ass (and almost succeeded in doing so), I managed to move on leaving failure behind me like dried out tube of toothpaste.

Years of living with children and being forced not only to face my shortcomings but also to live with them has taught me a neat trick: shrugging. I am still no pro at it and the tenseness between my shoulders tends to get in the way of it...but I am working on it.

Anyway, after the halo of fumes lifted I decided to google and find out what exactly had happened to Matt’s shirts and to see whether a lesson could be learned and maybe even taught. I also decided that maybe the inevitable bleach bath would be fun for the children to observe.

And did they have a ball. Clad in my white bathrobe to avoid further unwelcome stains and wielding toxic substances while elaborating on pigments and dyes I looked like the mad chemist from their comic books. In fact, Zoe liked my performance so much that she has decided to study Chemistry when she is done being a concert violinist and a relief worker in Sudan

That, or she may just have gotten the wrong idea...that scientists are people who walk around in bathrobes all day...

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…

Now What

Zoë picks my brain all the time. She can get pretty deep when she is going after something, just like a couple of weeks ago when she was poking around for the meaning of life while I was checking her thick mane for lice. And just like that day, I often can’t help but fail her miserably by providing her with nothing but more questions. But I always give it my best shot or at least suggest to Google a couple of key words!

The other day, after another marathon of ‘why is that?’ her big eyes suddenly began to beam at me and her face broke out in a wide smile (I love it when I see her like that) and she says: “Mama, I really like this when small questions lead to big ones. I love talking to you.”

You’ve done it, kiddo, you kill me.

/U/ as in Son

There are days, like today, when homeschooling has to happen without me. Since Lea is only five years old I usually spend a fair amount of time with her as she tackles her early reader’s books and counts blocks.

She is into big numbers right now and tends to raise her eyebrow at anything lower than eleven. Remarkably, she is taking considerable risks identifying numbers and often ends up with new creations such as four-and-forty sixty. There always is some logic behind it, I just can’t figure out which one.

In general, however, she likes to have time to do her own counting without my cheery presence towering over her. Reading, on the other hand, wouldn’t happen if I didn’t sit down with her.

But today, I simply couldn’t get around to it, not even for two minutes. Instead, I asked Zoë to help her sister. Together they sat down on the sofa and got the Bob Books out. However, less than a minute into it the two got into an immense and messy argument over the letter ‘o’ as in the word ‘son’.

It left Zoë devastated, her aspirations of ever joining the honorable corps of educators crushed. But who said teaching was easy? Even at this point in my career, my understanding of the proper pronunciation of /o/ continues to be slightly abstract.

Whether /o/ as in ‘ox’ or /u/ as in ‘umbrella’ I have to admit, as a German native, I find the argument for /u/ as in ‘ox’ no less compelling. But after hours of attentive listening to the Leap Frog series of short vowels and repetitive trance-like chants of hot-hut, got-gut, and not-nut I have acquired at least a basic, understanding of it.

My kids must think I am a genius!

Fear Factor

Zoë is sitting across from me at the table: Arms folded over her chest, chin down – a serious frown announces her resistance to me and my attempts at bullying her through the last of five story problems. It’s one in which Timmy is supposed to figure out how many boxes of overly sweet raisin treats will be left over if he has thirty-four of them to give away to six of his miserable little friends. Honestly, I can’t blame her.

In a way, we are both stuck in this. I know I need a break. Yet, I feel I can’t let her off the hook. It’s just one last math problem and she is almost done. But she has had it. It’s 11:15am.

“You are making this pretty hard on both of us, wasting all this time and energy over nothing!!” I let her know. In the end, however, I do let her off the hook – both her and myself. Doing so doesn’t feel right, but it is the best I can manage right then. So, both of us are taking a break from math, Timmy, and each other.

Five minutes into the break, as I am hammering away on the keyboard in my study, Zoë comes into the room and sits down next to me heaving a sigh that seems to come from a long ways down in her belly, “I am sorry, Mom,” she whispers, “It’s just that I am not afraid of you.”

Go figure!