Susan's Musings

Happy (Homeschooling) Mother's Day

If you want to be enthusiastic, hang around enthusiastic, people. And there is scarcely a more enthusiastic group than homeschooling parents. I had a wonderful time this week as a keynote speaker for the 4th annual Torah home education conference. Homeschooling has grown rapidly in the United States, and there are churches I know where a majority of parents educate their children at home. However, it is only in recent years that the number of Jewish homeschooling families has grown significantly. There are reasons why Jews lagged behind in this American trend, including ongoing loyalty and well-deserved respect and affection for the system of religious Jewish private schools which has burgeoned in America since the end of World War II. Nonetheless, each year, more parents are assessing their individual children’s academic, psychological and spiritual needs as well as their family’s overall circumstances and declaring themselves homeschoolers. This year’s conference in Baltimore attracted parents from Denver and British Columbia; from Florida and upstate NY. It was a privilege to be there.

While fathers were well in evidence at the Torah Home Education Conference and homeschooling is almost always a joint decision, the bulk of the job usually falls on mom. Why would a Harvard graduate, a successful corporate lawyer, or an entrepreneur whose business is showing signs of exploding, walk away from the possibilities the world offers them? Why would they make a decision that nothing is more important than nurturing their children? How did we become a generation that can even ask that question?

In my sixteen years as a homeschooling mom, one or two days stand out when I hid from the kids in my closet crying that I just couldn’t do this anymore. I remember many more days when I was filled with gratitude for being present when I saw my child’s face beam as squiggles on a page turned into words or when I was able to facilitate a discussion of a current event or book, raising ethical and moral issues. I loved hearing my children answer that question beloved of pediatricians and random people in check-out lines, “What is your favorite subject?” with “history,” “chumash (Bible)” or “poetry” instead of “recess.” The fact that they never even considered reading or critical thinking or hashkafa (Jewish worldview) as a school subject was the hot fudge on the sundae. In the dark days of September 11^th or when a personal family loss occurred, I appreciated hurting together rather than apart. I cherished hours of reading aloud with children ranging from pre-schoolers to teenagers and giving those young adults hours to explore their own interests and transition safely to adulthood. I love that trips and experiences were shared with siblings and parents rather than only peers.

I miss my homeschooling days though I live it vicariously as one of my daughters continues on the adventure with her children. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of mothers love their children including those who work out of the home and those who focus on the home; those who work for pay and those who volunteer; those who have one child and those who have many; those who homeschool and those who send their children to schools. Nonetheless, in a country filled with intelligent, creative, powerful women who buck the establishment by declaring that encouraging, mentoring and cultivating one’s own child is a worthwhile career choice, not only the children but the nation should say, “thank-you.”

 

 

 

I Didn't Mean to be a Witch

Most book titles mean something only if you are familiar with the contents of the book. There is nothing particularly descriptive about the words, Little Women or Tom Sawyer. The titles evoke a reaction only because the books are well known. More intriguing names like The Red Badge of Courage or The Scarlet Letter are also only meaningful after reading the book. Even a short plot synopsis doesn’t automatically let you know that this book will be one of those that becomes a classic and which you might find yourself reading over and over. Four sisters during the Civil War years go about their daily lives, maturing from girlhood to womanhood. Not terribly gripping, is it?

The above doesn’t apply to one of my favorite reads, I Didn’t Mean to be a Witch. This mother’s lament at not always measuring up to her image of what she should be, grabbed me at the title. The author, Linda Eyre, had previously written a best-selling book with her husband, Teach Your Children Values, which evolved into a series of books like Teach Your Children Joy, etc. That information was enough for me to know that this book wasn’t going to be sordid tale of drugs or promiscuity. Indeed, I Didn’t Mean to be a Witch echoed my internal cry when I didn’t live up to my own standards. I enjoyed the book, but the title stayed my favorite part through the years. Just looking at it on the shelf could make me laugh and buoy my spirits. The book still fills that purpose for one of my daughters who has “borrowed” it, finding it reassuring after a disappointing day.  

This is all to say that I truly appreciate a clever title. Especially after laboring over the chore of selecting titles for my husband and my books and audio CDs, I value the time, creativity and frequently the angst that accompanies naming a creation. So, rather than skipping over the name of a professor’s book, which was mentioned only as a means of establishing his credentials in a recent Good Housekeeping magazine, I took the extra second to read his book’s name. Unlike Linda Eyre’s book, where I paid for a copy just to have the title peeking out of my shelf with the contents being an added bonus, this book’s title convinced me not to even order it from the library. Having not read it, perhaps I am misjudging it, but if that is the case then the author and publisher made a really big marketing mistake.

What would you think is the message of a book called, You and Your Adolescent: The Essential Guide for Ages 10 to 25? To me it says that a fair number of my children, who are functioning perfectly well as adults, should still be treated as—and think of themselves— as adolescents. Why I would want to confer immaturity on them and added responsibility on me is beyond my comprehension.  In a tepid approximation of research (I have a rather limited time each week to devote to this blog), I did look the book up on the Amazon website . Guess what I found? This is a new and revised edition. The 1997 edition was titled, You and Your Adolescent: The Essential Guide for Ages 10 to 20. I don’t know how to write sounds of me shrieking in the background, but if I could, I would. Perhaps the comic book rendition, “AAARGH!” says it best.

In a world where I feel increasingly out of step with what are considered mainstream ideas I want to take this opportunity to thank you for making  me feel less alone. To those of you who, like me, think that adolescence as a concept should be severely limited; who believe that “old-fashioned” values never go out of fashion and who struggle to be not only better parents but also better spouses and citizens in a society which increasingly makes all of those undertakings difficult, here’s to making our voices heard in 2012.

P.S. I am alternately excited and hesitant about the debut of a new DVD in which I co-host four episodes of the Ancient Jewish Wisdom TV Show with my husband. You can read about it here.  I’d love to hear your feedback.

Worth Their Weight

It is entrapment, pure and simple. My local bookstore has beautiful, hard-cover, classic books for sale for under $5 (using my 30% off coupon).

Titles like Swiss Family Robinson and Little Women coquettishly peek from the shelf, enticing me to come closer. A quick calculation tells me that my eldest grandson won’t appreciate the Wyss father and son collaboration just yet and that my oldest granddaughter is at least eight years away from enjoying Louisa May Alcott.

Mustering immense self-control by picturing my husband’s response if I was to walk in with these purchases, I regretfully leave the volumes behind. Our latest marital agreement is to give away or throw out two books for each one we bring in to the house which has substantially crimped my impulse buying.

We travel a great deal and increasingly passengers in adjacent seats are reading on NOOKs, IPads, and Kindles. Perhaps one of those devices even has a place in my future. But as millions of parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents look for a gift to delight a child this December, I can’t help but hope that they opt to buy real books. There may be a cool factor in possessing an electronic reader, but a book with real pages to turn and a new book smell isn’t just an acquisition. One enters into a relationship with a book; it possesses you as much as you possess it.  A book that is read over and over looks and feels different than a new book. Like a well-worn pair of shoes, it exudes comfort and adjusts to the owner. Favorite pages are more worn than others; the book opens of its own accord to beloved sections.

There was a time when prognosticators envisioned the end of home-made bread. Not only did most people live within reach of a bakery, but sliced and wrapped loaves were easily accessible in supermarkets. Yet, over the past years there has been a resurgence of home baking. One type of bread is a food item, the other is an experience. Does anyone doubt which is more valuable?

I don’t think I am alone in pitying a child whose room isn’t full of books even if he can instantaneously access thousands of volumes electronically. Technology can be wonderful, but books feed the soul. The bargains in my bookstore may not have fit my immediate needs, but the hour I spent browsing reminded me of so many physical, tangible treasures I can’t wait to share.

I May Not Agree with What You Say...

My soon to be eight year old grandson has taken to peppering his conversation with phrases like, “Golly” and “That’s swell”. This is not surprising for those of us who know of his fascination with the Hardy Boys series. He is an avid reader and books expand his vocabulary (sometimes amusingly) as well as his knowledge of geography, history and so much more.

But danger as well as treasure can lurk in books.  While the Hardy brothers with their sense of responsibility, honesty and respect for law are welcomed into his home, his mother, the doorkeeper, keeps some other books out. Recently, supervision of reading material was a hot topic on a homeschool web discussion group to which she and I both belong. The fascinating and provocative exchange of ideas that shot across cyberspace is one of the reasons I stay on this group even though my own homeschooling days are over. 

To an outsider, the group would seem to be homogeneous; Jewish mothers and fathers who approach homeschooling from a Torah perspective. However, even within those parameters, differences emerged. Members passionately (homeschoolers tend to be passionate about anything having to do with their children) explained why they do – or don’t – allow their children to read various genres of literature; what types of books they prefer; and how strictly – or leniently – they impose their views on their children.

Despite the variety of opinions, respect for each other’s ideas permeated the conversation. Just the opposite took place when the Wall Street Journal’s children’s book reviewer, Meghan Cox Gurdon, wrote an article criticizing how dark young adult literature has become. While her point seemed a no-brainer to me since I long ago learned to steer clear of much of current young adult literature, it provoked a firestorm of controversy. As she wrote in her follow-up article, “If the American Library Association were inclined to burn people in effigy, I might well have gone up in smoke these past few days.” Many who disagreed with her engaged in personal attacks on her intelligence and character rather than her ideas. 

The contrast between the conversation on my homeschool group and the one sparked by the Journal article was stark. The fact that so many of the belligerent participants were young adult authors, librarians and teachers, seemed to me to be one more reason not to entrust one’s children to their influence. While, to their credit, some later offered apologies for their ad-hominem assaults, the vehemence and nastiness of the offensive suggested that Ms. Cox Gurdon was quite accurate when she said in opposition to crude and violent literature, “Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.”

Hidden Neighbors

About a year ago, my friend Judy recommended a book to me, which I finally got around to reading. It is the story of an Egyptian Jewish family forced to leave their, multi-generational, extremely comfortable life in Egypt when Nassar came to power. (One family among the thousands of Jewish refugees from Moslem countries who are never mentioned because the world-wide Jewish community took responsibility to resettle them rather than move them to camps where they could be kept in abject poverty and taught terrorism skills.) For most of the book the story gave intriguing, though sometimes disturbing, insights into a culture that was tremendously different from the one in which I was raised, despite that fact that on the surface both were observant Jewish families.

Over the centuries, Jews have been scattered to the four corners of the earth. While some communities shrivel or vanish through assimilation, expulsion or murder, the survivors who move on to new places bring with them myriad cultural nuances. If they stay faithful to the Torah (which unfortunately most do not), core observances remain, but with ‘twists’. While you would get kosher food whether you dined with a family whose roots over the past centuries were in Hungary, Egypt or India, the dishes at the Shabbat table would be completely different. The types of meat or fish featured, whether the dishes are spiced with paprika or cardamom and many rituals would reflect the family’s background. While everyone would know Hebrew prayers, the conversational language of the immigrant generation might be Yiddish or Ladino, Arabic or Farsi. Strikingly, each community’s religious values and social ethics would be a conglomeration of Torah-directed conduct intertwined with, and frequently distorted by, their host country’s general culture. Since the protagonists of my book immigrated to New York, a city where most previous refugees had been from Europe, they were a minority within a minority.

I had quite a shock when the author, a child at the time the family fled Egypt, spoke about the neighborhood to which her family relocated. The street names, train stations and landmarks were all very familiar. It turns out that we grew up a few blocks from each other. Since feet and buses were the main forms of transportation, we likely passed each other more than once. She even went to the same high school as my best friend.

Not only did we not meet, but I was never aware that there was a community of Egyptian Jewish refugees in the neighborhood. I had Italian-Catholic friends and Jewish friends of all levels of observance including those whose parents had come from Syria, but somehow this author’s family and compatriots’ journey never registered. It was quite an uncomfortable discovery to realize that I was completely blind to an entire group living –and struggling- so near to me.

So often, we, as individuals, as a nation, as human beings, step forward to help victims of natural disasters, terrorism or illness.  But the prerequisite to helping is awareness. Some people or events get a great deal of publicity, and good people respond. But this book reminded me that there are always those in our immediate vicinity whose travails don’t have the numbers or timing or ‘allure’ that forces their plight to our attention. They may suffer no less than others, but the onus is on us to search for them rather than wait for them to be thrust upon us as they make headline news.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Do It

Kathrene Pinkerton was a prolific, 20th century writer of both fiction and non-fiction books. In Three’s a Crew she tells her own story, including how she and her husband managed during the Depression years. She speaks of organizing an artisan’s co-op and how, by banding together, the participants generated more income than they were able to rustle up on their own. Her frustration jumps off the page as she writes of the co-op’s demise as government assistance became available. The co-op participants’ motivation for working hard eroded as they, perhaps even sub-consciously, felt less dependent on their own actions.

I re-read Three’s a Crew while spending time with my two year old granddaughter recently, and like many toddlers her favorite expression is, “I do it.” Whether the task is one she can accomplish, like getting into her chair by herself, or whether it is beyond her capabilities, such as getting herself one hundred percent dressed, her first instinct is to be self-sufficient.

I can scoop her up and carry her up the stairs in a quarter of the time it takes for her to get upstairs herself. (On the other hand, by sliding on her stomach like an otter, she gets downstairs in half the time it takes me).  I can put her shoes on the correct feet the first time and when she helps unload the dishwasher it becomes a prolonged activity rather than a quickly accomplished task.

Children seem to be born with industrious souls. If we could harness the accumulated energy of infants and toddlers, there would be no energy crisis. Unfortunately, we often treat that energy as a nuisance and tamp it down. Wouldn’t it be smarter to encourage children’s spirited attitude? Unfortunately, the required environment actually runs counter to current culture.  It is difficult to find non-electronic or battery operated toys which promote imagination; it is a struggle to provide unhurried, unscheduled hours with time for children to learn skills and participate in family tasks.

Admittedly, it is a stretch to draw an analogy from Kathrene Peterson’s Depression year experiences to interacting with children. Nevertheless, I do think it worthwhile to remember how easy it is to extinguish a ‘can do’ spirit and how the human soul intrinsically values being productive, capable and independent. 

Growing with Nancy

Superman comic books may not generally be considered advanced literary material, but the childhood hours I spent reading them did help me do well on my SATs.  While I didn’t read the comics for vocabulary lessons, years later the spurious documents that one criminal used served me admirably when I needed to pick the correct multiple choice synonym for that word.

This recently came to mind when I was shown an original Nancy Drew volume and one of the newer Nancy Drew: Girl Detective books. The “titian-haired girl” had transformed into a “strawberry blond,” she no longer “chafed at delays” and the sentence structure and plot were watered down.  Even worse, her personality, character and intelligence had reverted to the median. Instead of Nancy Drew, role model, she had turned into Nancy Drew, one of today’s crowd.

How unfortunate. A story is told about one of the great 20th century rabbis and one of my husband’s teachers, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky, whose portrait hangs in the entrance hallway to our home.  He was visiting a pre-school and noticed that there were mezuzot (scrolls with specific Biblical verses written on them) on the doorposts, in accordance with Deuteronomy 6:9. However, they were placed lower than mandated. When he asked why, the teachers responded that they were low so that they would be accessible from the children’s heights. The rabbi commented, “What we must do is put a stepstool in order for the children to reach higher -- to the proper level of the mezuzah (singular)! Raise the child at an early age to reach the height of the mitzvah (commandment), instead of lowering the mitzvah to the child!"

I am certainly not comparing Nancy Drew to the mitzvah of affixing a mezuzah to one’s doorposts. But I do believe in parents strongly supervising what their children read. Rather than thinking, “Well, at least they’re reading,” my husband and I were acutely aware that what our children were reading would help form their characters, attitudes and intelligence. While we didn’t always manage to apply the supervision we knew was needed (our children were voracious readers), our goal was for everything they read to make them greater, not lesser people. That didn’t mean filling our home with uninteresting, pious tracts. It did mean hands-on library visits, occasionally not allowing a popular book or series into our home, and a great deal of children’s literature on our own bedside tables. It frequently meant using the books the children were reading, or that we read aloud as a family, as a launching pad for discussion. 

I discovered the changes in the Nancy Drew series because one of my daughters showed me her ‘rejection’ pile after her children’s visit to the library. Her family’s shelves are filled with many of the books that she and her siblings loved as well as more recently written ones that she has discovered. There is little that can fill a grandmother’s heart with as much joy as knowing that her children are making sure that their own children reject the spurious values and prevalent trends surrounding them, for a greater goal than SAT scores.

 

 

Please Read My Book, You Evil, Hate-Filled NRA Member - originally published 1/1/2009

My reading list tilts heavily to the past. I recently finished The Minister’s Wooing, a pre-Civil War Harriet Beecher Stowe novel. Leaping over decades, I then moved onto A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich, written in 1931.

But as I listen to the radio and read current newspapers and magazines, I often jot down contemporary titles that sound intriguing. Every once in a while I log on to the library’s computer system and go down the list, placing holds on those titles. Over the next few days (or weeks, depending on how popular or obscure the book is) a computer generated voice on the phone lets me know that I have books waiting at my local branch.
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Occasionally, I find a gem, as I did this past week-end when I had an extremely enjoyable time reading Ruth Reichl’s depiction of her life as the restaurant critic for the New York Times.

But way too often I don’t get past the first few pages of books that were praised as intriguing, humorous, thought provoking, etc. It seems that the reviewer neglected to mention that the book was also downright vulgar. Am I the only reader left in America who finds profanity on every page a surefire reason to stop reading? Somehow, I don’t think so; but clearly enough readers consider four letter words to be necessary for meaningful and/or witty repartee so that their inclusion is distressingly frequent.

There’s another common denominator to a great deal of modern writing that I’ve discovered. It is the inclusion, often in otherwise good books, of throwaway lines that are totally irrelevant to the plot. These lines attack conservatives, Republicans and the great big evil, the NRA. It seems as if the author, in the middle of doing what he or she is supposed to be doing, namely writing a book, was seized by a paroxysm of hatred that necessitated a venting of feelings before getting back to the topic at hand.

I admit to finding this jarring as well as depressing. For example, in an otherwise enjoyable book I looked at recently on a totally non-political topic, the author felt it necessary to betray his unquestioningly acceptance of anti-NRA propaganda. I don’t assume that people who support gun control do so because they believe that only criminals should have weapons, and I admit to being confused as to why any intelligent person would believe that people support the NRA because they enjoy seeing innocent people killed. The author’s seemingly uncontrollable need to insult NRA members also suggests a belief that the millions of Americans who support the second amendment are all illiterate rather than potential readers. I do find the naiveté and close-mindedness in terms of actually seeking to understand the issue quite shocking, but does the author realize how he’s limiting his readership? I really do not tend to buy books that insult me (and when I read something from the library that I really like, buying it is not infrequently the next step).

My suggestion is that these authors do two things. First, stick to their topic without being sidetracked by ideology. Second, they might want to take the time to research their positions rather than assuming that NPR or the New York Times gives balanced and broad information. I imagine that expanding their universe will only make them better writers.

As for me, Arthur Ransome’s 1936 masterpiece (I’m prejudiced. I love Arthur Ransome’s writings) Pigeon Post is on my bedside table next to Barbara Tuchman’s Bible and Sword from 1956. Before attempting to read the next batch of current literature, I need a break from profanity, intolerance and prejudice.

 

 

Bookstore Battlefields - originally posted Dec. 11, 2008

What do you think of when you remember Charlotte’s Web?

Perhaps images of pigs and spiders come to mind, or maybe you picture yourself huddled under a blanket reading on the couch. That book might have been the first time you recognized a relationship between the food on your plate and the animal world. (As a Jew who kept kosher, the book might have been an easier read for me) Whatever your memories are, they probably didn’t include high school students having affairs with their teachers or participating in a host of other immoral and un-childlike behaviors.

Which is why it was incredibly disturbing to me when I approached a copy of Charlotte’s Web prominently displayed in a bookstore on a shelf advertising “Recommended Reading for Children”, and found that the book featured next to it included the above depravities.

What is the manager of that bookstore thinking? And how sad is it that parents can’t allow their children the liberating pleasure of freely browsing through the children’s section of a bookstore or the library without having to worry about what they will find. With all the (necessary) warnings about children being accidentally exposed to pornography and other evils on the web, how about a little concern for what they will find in what should be seen as safe locations?

Using judgment and taking the responsibility for what children see should be an obligation every bookstore owner accepts. The fact that the government shouldn’t censor reading material is unrelated to what adults in positions of trust should do. In the years that passed between when my eldest and youngest daughters each became voracious readers and devoted bookshelf browsers I saw a scary change in the offerings on those shelves. I’m not talking age appropriate realism – I’m talking age inappropriate depictions and the presentation of deviation as the norm. What a sad reality it is when any caring parent today has to know that the sheltered harbors of their childhood, libraries and bookstores, are no longer protected environments.

 

Who Wants to Get Hurt?

Don’t you love synchronicity? God places different things in our path at the same time so that we can view them together. The recent headline, “Workplace Injuries Down” coincided with my reading a fascinating book. In the early 1970’s Jan Wong was a nineteen year old Canadian student of Chinese descent. Like so many of her peers she viewed the western culture in which she was brought up as decadent and evil, while the communist/socialist vision represented happiness and prosperity for all. Unlike her peers, she had a chance to move to Communist China and attend school there.

 In Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, and its sequel, A Comrade Lost and Found: A Beijing Memoir, she writes with candor and brave self-examination of her experiences.  Ever so slowly, her naive belief in Mao and the system crumbled, as she came face to face with the reality behind the propaganda.

She writes, “I noted in my journal that the skies were a startling azure, but it didn’t occur to me that the lack of pollution was due to lagging industrial production. As I biked down car-free streets, I thought happily that China had chosen the right path for development.  I didn’t think about how the very old, the very young, the handicapped, the sick, not to mention entire families, got around the vast city. Everyone glowed with health. China resembled a Colorado health spa. There was the same low-cholesterol vegetarian diet, known as meat rationing. There was the same early-to-bed regimen, known as power outages. And instead of working out with a personal trainer, the Chinese just plain worked. The only difference was you could never check out.”

I had to laugh (though it wasn’t funny) when the same day as I read that paragraph, I also saw the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that workplace injuries fell by 17% last year. At least reporters openly acknowledged that injuries were down because of unemployment. Since fewer people were working, there were fewer opportunities to get hurt.

Imagine the utopia of no workplace injuries, no car accidents, and no mass salmonella outbreaks. We could achieve that. All we would need to do would be to shut all workplaces, close down the food industry requiring every family to eat from its own back yard or window garden, and ban cars.

One of the greatest Jewish rabbis of the late 19th and early 20th century, Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, told his students that people should keep two pieces of paper in their pockets. On one should be written, “For me the world was created,” and on the other, “I am nothing but dust and ashes.”  Two opposing views; both true. It takes a great deal of maturity to integrate them and live with both those ideas constantly in the forefront of one’s mind.

Similarly, it takes a great deal of maturity to accept that trying to eliminate all risk eliminates life. A nineteen year old might be excused for shallow thinking, though he or she can do great damage at the ballot box. But those of us older than that need to know that the government that acts on its promise to deliver total security, safety and equality can only deliver an unsafe, subsistence level existence equally to all (well, those in power would do unequally well).

When Labor Secretary Hilda Solis responded to the Bureau of Labor report by saying, “A single worker hurt or killed on the job is one too many…,”  she joins a long list of statements by politicians of both parties that sound good and are ridiculous. At one and the same time, the government should care about workplace safety and also know that complete workplace safety comes at the cost of shutting down all workplaces. I doubt whether the Americans out of work, who may well be facing increased depression and illness for lack of having a paycheck, feel better hearing that the administration wants to reduce workplace injuries even more.