There’s an article in the New York Times about the relentlessness of modern parenting. Americans love hearing about how hard parenting is because we all know it’s over the top. This article had some good statistics, though. For example, mothers today who work outside the home spend as much time parenting as stay-at-home mothers in the 1950s did. Read more
My older son has ADD and OCD and if I leave him alone for more than 20 minutes he is likely to start staering into space. Or doing one of his million OCDism that he probably wouldn’t want me to write about even though I think his best bet at getting into college is doing some sort of experimental film thing about repetition and delusion. After all, colleges want to know what makes you different from everyone else whose applying. Read more
I get hopeful every time I see people pushing back on schools. I think schools have way too much power in our society and I’m shocked by how many parents put up with it. And right now the group of parents pushing back the hardest are football parents. Read more
My new friend Amelia sounds like swift-footed Achilles or bright-eyed Athena or sensible Telemachus. I wonder how many of you recognize those epithets from the Odyssey.
I started unschooling when my younger son was 5 years old. I did not teach him math or reading. This is because my friend who is a teacher in New York City public schools, told me that everyone in the school system knows that you don’t have to teach most kids to read — they teach themselves. You only need to teach socially or economically disadvantaged kids how to read. Read more
When I was in high school I went to debate camp every summer. I distinctly remember thinking, when I arrived at debate camp at Bates College in Maine: wow, these kids are rich. They were from private school. I had never hung out with kids from private school. They were different. They had swagger. Read more
Yesterday women all over the US did a walk out to support Kavanaugh’s accusers.There are pictures of men and women getting arrested for protesting in the Capitol. As women are chanting on the steps of the Capitol they are telling the press they want Christine Blasey Ford to know that if the Senate won’t keep her safe, the women of this country will. We will not let her down.
There’s a piece in Time magazine about how teachers are in a pay crisis. Most of the teachers in the article say they can’t make ends meet with their teaching job.
In high school, I took French and German, and in college I took Hebrew. I spent four months in Israel studying Hebrew and three months in France learning ten french words for chicken coop. So I’m coming to this conversation with a bias in favor of learning a second language.
JDP did a study of LinkedIn photos to see which profession is making the most mistakes in how they present themselves professionally. Educators were right up at the top. One might say that’s because LinkedIn is not an important way for teachers to get jobs, but then why are they on LinkedIn at all? Read more