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.”

 

 

 

What's Right with the Teenage Mind and Wrong with Society

Thinking “I told you so” is gratifying. Saying it might be crass, but thinking it  feels pretty good. Reading a Wall Street Journal article entitled, What’s Wrong with the Teenage Mind? I definitely underwent an “I told you so” moment.  My husband and I tried as best we could to structure our children’s upbringing according to 3,000 year old Torah principles rather than to the latest issue of Psychology Today. After all, when the newest fad passes you don’t get a chance to press “rewind”. For instance, if you teach your children to call you by your first name when the currently reigning psychologist explains how that will foster closeness, you will struggle to regain lost authority five years later when the most recently crowned psychologist rejects that reasoning. 

One commonly accepted view that my husband and I disregarded was a prevalent concept of “adolescence.” We did not accept it as an inevitable stage during which our teenagers would automatically behave recklessly because their prefrontal cortex wouldn’t fully develop until a few years later.  We certainly expected their judgment to improve as they matured, but we were never tempted to excuse destructive, impulsive behavior by blaming it on biology. We anticipated their making proper choices and overwhelmingly, they delivered.

The author of the WSJ article cites the latest studies showing that real life experiences drive the maturation of the impulse controlling parts of the brain. She mentions how cultural psychologist Barbara Rogoff studied Guatemalan Indians and found that their children could handle machetes quite competently. Yet western teenagers basically sit in classrooms, an activity which often starts when they are toddlers and continues for years on end. They may very well be acquiring information; they are not acquiring wisdom. Wisdom means understanding how the world really works. It comes from interacting with people and things, slowly developing a variety of skills. This is best achieved with a mentor who gradually accords his or her disciple greater independence. Information has potential value, but activating its potential means applying, practicing, testing, reassessing and utilizing the raw data.

As our children grew, we helped them develop skills. At tender years they worked in the kitchen, using the stove and sharp knives at ages which would have made Child Protective Services uneasy.  They learned to read charts and check the gauges in a boat’s engine room, to care for infants and toddlers, to do their own laundry and to earn money in ways which probably didn’t meet child labor laws. In varying degrees they learned to sew and work with wood and how to use public transportation and navigate bureaucracies. They studied as well, but book learning and safe, cocooned adult-directed activities didn’t consume their entire time. As they proved themselves capable of shouldering responsibility we gave them more freedom, and for the most part their teenage years were a delight.

While discussing the later arrival of impulse-control in today's times, the author of the above article also says, “…for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age.“ For those of you who don’t have time to wait for the next psychological revelation to explain the mysterious reasons for the earlier onset of puberty, let me suggest an important component.  I believe that just as our actions influence our brain development in the prefrontal cortex, they also influence our hormones.

As a society we now give our children less and less freedom to roam and ramble and to push their physical limits. We provide them with an increasing number of electronic gadgets keeping them entertained and isolated in the home rather than playing in the streets. We organize their sports, arts and learning rather than allowing them independence. We do this (in my opinion usually to a much greater degree than is necessary) in the name of protecting them from the dangers which lurk outside. But at the same time we expose them to levels of sexuality which would have ranked as pornography in earlier times. We dress five year old girls like tramps and think it’s cute when little boys learn to parrot lewd expressions. This past week I was in a hotel room and flipped through TV stations. Three minutes of a popular show aimed at pre-teenagers were so brazen that I couldn’t watch it.  We force our children to lose their innocence in sexual education classes and bombard them with too much information as mommy and daddy host a revolving door through which boyfriends and girlfriends pass. We force intimate, private actions onto a public stage and we push our children into front row seats.  Lacking a shared moral compass in our society we contribute to early puberty with premature and excessive exposure to sexuality.

There may be satisfaction in seeing the world come to accept something which I never doubted. But I would gladly give up that satisfaction and instead be part of a correct-thinking community. It is incredibly difficult to defy the downward gravity of a society bent on devolution. Those of us who believe in timeless truths rather than transitory trends have a hard path to hoe – preferably shoulder to shoulder with our children as we guide them along.

 

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.

 

 

The Child Equation

 

Reading an article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Case for More Kids,” gave me the impression its real headline should have been, “Having Kids Isn’t as Bad as You Might Think, but It’s Still Pretty Bad.” A sunny, optimistic view of family it was not.

Maybe I am overly sensitive but phrases such as, “every additional child makes parents just 1.3 percentage point less likely to be ‘very happy’,” and “child No. 1 does almost all the damage” didn’t leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

The piece would leave most readers wondering why in the world anyone has any children.  It did not have this effect on me.  My children have brought immeasurable joy to my life (despite occasional periods where I need to remind myself of the long term picture).   I was further inoculated from the article’s baleful proposition because I had spent the previous Sunday with parents who delight in their families.

That day, my husband and I both had the privilege of speaking at the second annual National Orthodox Jewish Homeschooling Conference in Baltimore, MD. This event brought together mothers and fathers from around the country who are a part of a growing group of religious Jewish homeschooling families.   My husband spoke about stepping outside convention by removing our daughter from the school we had ourselves founded.   For my part, I tried to give newer homeschoolers reassurance that down the road their children would be well-balanced and happy members of the larger community.

But we received more from the conference than we gave. Firstly, I delighted in meeting women whom I have known as members of an online support group, but never before had the opportunity to greet face to face.  Getting to know them was such fun.  Over the years, we have shared questions, suggestions, difficulties and triumphs and it was a thrill to actually talk in person. 

But more importantly, the day was an opportunity to be surrounded by folks who are passionate about parenting.  While this passion for parenting isn’t exclusive to homeschoolers, it is overwhelmingly present in the homeschooling community.  Rather than adding up the financial cost of having children as the author of Saturday’s newspaper article did, these parents count the blessings. Rather than seeing children as an emotional drain, these parents view their kids as a source of emotional pleasure. Most importantly, rather than asking, “What’s in it for me,” these parents see children as a gift from God to be treasured. 

There was a great deal of practical homeschooling advice offered over the course of the conference, which is no longer relevant to my daily life.  Nevertheless, the day provided an injection of fun and optimism along with a reminder that there are still young parents who view having children through a bright lens rather than with a jaundiced eye.

 

Lifetime Learning

 

After he had served multiple military tours overseas and was back in civilian life, a friend explained to me that one is never an ex-Marine. You may not be on active service, but you are still a Marine. I hope he and his comrades won’t find this offensive, but I feel somewhat the same way about being a homeschooling mom.

Although I have no children left in my homeschool, a large part of my identity was forged by those years, and I have no desire to leave it behind. One of the most important lessons I learned, and I hope that my children did as well, is that learning is not confined to a particular time or place. Learning takes place as long as one is alive and isn’t necessarily related to sitting for a certain number of hours in a specific location during designated months. You certainly can learn in a classroom setting; you just as certainly can accomplish no more than logging wasted time. Worse, you can be indoctrinated with the idea that once school is over, so is learning.

God created us with a natural desire to learn and to communicate with others. It is enchanting to watch a toddler manipulate an object until he understands its properties.  As he bangs it, chews on it, and throws it, he is learning to discern textures, shapes and size. His frustrations as he yearns to get an idea across before he actually has the language skills to do so may result in furious tears and make him difficult to handle, but they are signs of growth.

Over the years that wonder diminishes. There is a natural attrition as we become competent enough to navigate through life and less curious about what there still is to explore. Too often our love of learning is actively squelched, even by the very people and institutions that are officially dedicated to advancing learning.

I hope that my children benefited from our homeschooling adventure. I, for one, miss it.

There were subjects that I did not enjoy when I was in school, like ninth grade algebra, that I not only began to understand but actually began to have fun with when I covered it for the second, third and fourth time as a homeschooling mom. I had the opportunity to spend Wednesday mornings for an eight week period sitting in on a series of fascinating World War I history classes at our local library. I no longer have time for activities like that. Since I am no longer technically homeschooling it is hard to justify spending hours reading biographies or trying some really fun kitchen science experiments as a valid part of working hours.

My children may not (yet) enjoy algebra, might confuse Woodrow Wilson with country singer Gretchen Wilson and most likely don’t remember what all the abbreviations on the periodic table stand for.  The one thing that I do hope they acquired and internalized is a love of learning and the realization that it can and should be pursued at all times and through limitless paths.