G20 and kids

"You know, if we’d only spent a billion more on security, we might have been able to save those three police cars."

Myles Murchison, White Rock, B.C. (Letter to the editor, Globe and Mail, June 29)

The G20 security fence is finally coming down. The chaos, anxiety and disruptions have come to an end and, like most Torontonians, I am relieved that it is over, irritated that it was here at all, and unimpressed with its so-called accomplishments. In the media, what really stole the attention was the so-called Black Bloc protesters, which politicians and officials of various stripes deemed "violent criminals," "anarchist thugs," and even "terrorists." Hyperbole? Perhaps. But what interests me is the way my children were influenced by the prevailing discourse about the protests.

I should preface this by saying that my kids watch very little TV, and they never watch the news. But they do check (local news station) CP24 for the weather daily. So when they turned it on during the Saturday of the summit, they saw images of protesters throwing rocks at store windows and setting police cars on fire. They heard pundits condemning the violence and thuggery, and their curiosity was piqued. They were very interested, and I decided that since they are almost 11 years old, they should be able to watch parts of this particular current event unfolding live on TV.

First they asked me why people were doing this. I told them most people were protesting peacefully, but that some felt the need to protest in a more violent manner, possibly to draw media attention to their extreme opposition to the summit and what it represents. This segued into a long discussion about the G20 and people's possible objections to it. But what stuck with my kids were the images of broken store widows and burning police cars. They began to parrot the politicians' and TV pundits' harsh condemnations of the perpetrators, with one of my daughters being slightly more nuanced in her view of what should happen to these people than the other. They both agreed that the Black Bloc rock-throwers and fire-setters needed to be apprehended and punished, though one thought several years in prison would be appropriate punishment, while the other thought a few months in jail, or possibly a stern talking-to might do the trick.

I then threw them for a loop by pointing out that the non-peaceful protesters were targeting things, not people, and the things they were targeting were—to them, anyway—symbols of larger things that they were opposed to. "They didn't actually hurt any people," I said. "Does that make a difference in how they should be treated?" My one daughter was shocked that I would even ask such a question. She'd just finished hearing commentator after commentator condemning the "violence," without making any distinction between violence against people and violence against things. I reassured my daughters that I was not condoning the tactics of these protesters, and that I do believe destruction of property is wrong. But I told them that to me, it does make a difference that the violence was directed against things, not people. One daughter saw my point of view right away, and tended to agree (which just goes to show how easily influenced some children are!). The other stuck to her guns, and tried to argue in her confused 10-year-old way, that violence is a continuum, and the Black Bloc protesters were of the same kind as those who do violence against people. Basically bad people, though not as bad as murderers, she conceded.

What to make of this? I really don't know. I have learned that it is difficult to talk to children about political issues without being heavy-handed, without trying to shove your own views down their throats. But as parents, I think we need to try to shut up a little, ask questions rather than supply answers, and allow our kids to think, even if what they end up thinking doesn't always dovetail with our own values. After all, kids will change their thinking on issues many times during their childhood and adolescence. They need to be able to grope their way through various provisional positions on current affairs, en route to some sort of—possibly always provisional—adult position. So for now I have one "law-and-order" child and one incipient civil libertarian. I can live with that.

NorthTOmom

Homework in TO

This spring we have been drowning in homework, despite the fact that it has been two years since the new, less-is-more Toronto homework policy came into effect. Today, I am guest blogger over at stophomework.com, the blog of Sara Bennett, co-author of the Case Against Homework. My (two-part) post is called The Toronto Homework Policy After Two Years: One Parent's Perspective. Take a look at part 1 and part 2.

NorthTOmom

Project Hell

Projects. How do I hate them? Let me count the ways. Before I count, though, some background. My twin daughters, who are in grade five French immersion, attend school in the Toronto District School Board, which revised its homework policy in 2008. The new policy, which was intended drastically to reduce the homework load of Toronto students in all grades, took effect in September 2008. In a future post I will examine the new policy in detail and evaluate the effect it has had (or not had) on homework in my daughters' school. For now, suffice it to say that given that my daughters have been assigned four projects in one term (this one), the effect of the new policy has not been as great as one might have hoped.

Now back to the the ways of, and reasons for, hating projects. In Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish's book The Case Against Homework, there is a section entitled "The Homework Hall of Shame" in which the authors list examples of egregiously unreasonable projects assigned to real students (sent to them by real parents). Projects such as building a volcano from scratch out of materials found in the house, or baking sixty decorated cookies in one evening to celebrate the Day of the Dead. It should be obvious that assignments such as these are pedagogically useless, but clearly it is not obvious enough or teachers would not continue to assign them. So here, set forth in plain language, are some of the reasons why the vast majority of projects are to be feared and hated, and one hopes abolished:

1. Most projects are beyond the capacity of students to organize. For instance, my daughter was recently involved in a three-way partner project on ancient Greece comprised of a written report, an arts and crafts component, and a dramatic presentation (costumes required!). This combination of elements proved beyond the capacity of three ten-year-olds to organize. The very divvying up of the work was beyond them. One child would decide to write on a certain aspect of the topic, only to learn later that one of her partners had chosen an almost identical aspect. The arts and crafts component (building a model of an ancient Greek temple) was impossible to divvy up physically because it had to be carried out at one house. Ours was the lucky house, and my daughter and my husband ended up doing all the work on the temple because the partners were rarely available to come over to assist. Which leads to my second reason for hating projects.

2. Projects invite and in fact necessitate a great deal of parental involvement. In the case of partner projects, parents must organize numerous work "play dates" which, given contemporary children's schedules, is a logistical nightmare. Parents are also called upon to provide supplies, help with research (see number 4 below) and supervise arts and craft activities. In my case, I must also play the role of typist because my daughters' teacher demands that all written assignments be printed out, despite the fact that her ten-year-old students have never formally been taught keyboarding (see blog post Keyboard v. Cursive). I've heard teachers complain that projects are difficult to grade fairly because parents are too involved. Well, here's an idea: don't invite parents in! Don't assign partner projects; allocate sufficient time in class for students to complete all parts of the project (including any arts and crafts component); and allow all written parts to be handwritten.

3. Three words: arts and crafts. The most fundamental problem with arts and craft-type projects is the mismatch between the stated learning goal and the activity assigned. Building a model of a famous building or sketching a body part might conceivably demonstrate whether a child can work well with her hands or possesses any drawing talent. What it does not demonstrate is her intellectual understanding of the subject in question. I can't draw people to save my life—I'm stuck at the stick man level—but I actually do know a fair amount about human anatomy. Why is this simple fact of the disconnect between project activity and project goal—a mismatch remarked upon often by my ten-year-old daughters—so difficult for many teachers to understand?

4. One word this time: Google. Google is a great source of information, a wonderful research tool— for adults. For kids it is entirely inappropriate as a resource of first resort. Even for adults, it is often difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff on Google, so how is a child of ten or eleven or even younger supposed to do this? Furthermore,whatever happened to the notion of teaching things in steps? Surely there is an argument to be made that elementary students should master the skill of gathering information at a library from books and encyclopedias before venturing online. But even if one were to grant that libraries and encyclopedias are becoming obsolete, and that children must focus on learning current research methods, aren't teachers once again inviting too much parental involvement when they suggest that children simply Google their topic? After all, teachers know first-hand that much of the information found on the Internet is unreliable; must they not also concede that it would be a foolish parent indeed who would let a young child surf freely on his or her own?

5. A fifth reason for detesting projects is that they encourage a forced "creativity" that is not actually creative at all. For one of my daughter's recent projects, the students were asked to choose a body part and gather research about it. They were given the choice of three ways to present their research. They could: write a children's story about the body part, hand-drawing illustrations and diagrams to accompany it; they could build a model of their body part and write a report explaining the model; or they could present their research on a Bristol board with a diagram or drawing, a glossary and a report. Now, proponents of projects might argue that the first option, writing a story about a body part, is an educationally valuable assignment, one which encourages kids to think creatively about their material. But the truth is, while my daughters love to draw and write stories, and in fact engage in both activities often and without prompting when they have time, the prospect of writing a story about a body part for pre-schoolers did not particularly interest them. For one thing, being told how to be creative seemed to take the joy out of it for them. But more important, they seemed to sense that the effort-benefit ratio of such an undertaking was skewed. Writing a story targeted at young children, while possibly a worthwhile activity for a language arts class, is of questionable value in the context of a science class. It entails simplifying the knowledge rather extending and deepening it, which is how children are truly challenged, and is what happens when they are being truly creative. In the end, both daughters chose to do the model and the report, because it seemed to be the least work. (Remember they have four projects to complete in this term alone.) So what this project ended up engendering was not creativity but cynicism.

6. Multitasking. Another word, and another reason to hate projects. For the project on ancient Greece mentioned above, there were simply too many elements—written, arts and crafts, dramatic—for fifth graders to wrap their young minds around. As my children were desperately trying to work on and coordinate all three elements of this project, it occurred to me that perhaps the point of modern education is to produce efficient multitaskers. A project like this one certainly does nothing to encourage serious, focused work on a topic, given the number of elements that it forces the child to juggle at one time. As it happened, students in the class focused on the component they felt most comfortable with; however, if the other two parts were deemed weak, the grade was lowered accordingly.

7. Projects eat into weekend family time. I could say that projects eat into weekday family time as well, but I emphasize weekend time because weekday time is already eaten into—not necessarily by extracurricular activities but by regular homework. So, although the new Toronto District School Board homework policy discourages weekend and holiday homework, when else do teachers think models are going to get pasted together, machines built or costumes sewn? I've heard of parents having to cancel family events or forgo weekends away because of projects. Enough said.

I could go on and on, because the reasons to dislike projects are as various and endless as the projects themselves. But seven seems like a good number to end on, lucky or unlucky depending on your cultural perspective. If I'm lucky, my daughters' grade five teacher will never set eyes on this post! (For the record, she is a pleasant, well-meaning person, who just happens to love assigning projects.)

Thanks for reading.
NorthTOmom

Sex Ed

Recently the McGuinty government here in Ontario introduced and then quickly withdrew a new Sex Education curriculum that was to come into effect next September. The cynical interpretation of this rapid flip-flop is that McGuinty caved in to pressure from vocal members of fringe Christian right groups who objected to students in Grade 1 being taught proper body part names (e.g., penis and vagina), and to students in Grade 3 being introduced to "invisible differences" such as homosexuality. Well, this whole debate reminded me of an article I wrote two years ago for the Toronto Star, about my twins' emerging understanding of the notion of "gay." I think it's clear from the article that Grade 3 is not too early but, on the contrary, possibly too late to be introducing the concept of sexual orientation. Here is the link.

The New Report Cards: D (Achievement falls much below the parental standard)

My daughters' school was one of 19 in the Toronto District School Board that participated in a pilot program designed to test new, improved elementary report cards. In the second term report card—issued March 3—teachers were able to choose from a bank of comments that have been, according to the TDSB, simplified and purged of unnecessary jargon. The pilot project was spearheaded by school Trustee Howard Goodman who was responding to long-standing complaints by parents about the language used in report cards in Ontario. There is no question that the comments section of the old report cards was jargon-heavy. Take, for instance, this written assessment accompanying my daughter's mark in writing from last term's report card (grade 5):

In writing, with a high degree of effectiveness, [. . .] can identify and order main ideas and supporting details and group them into units that could be used to develop several linked paragraphs in order to write narrative texts.

The trouble with this sentence is not only the educational jargon and awkward construction (in a note on writing!), it is also that, as with most of the other comments, the wording is lifted practically verbatim from the abstrusely written guidelines of the reformist, Harris-era curriculum. (In fact, I would argue that much of the animosity towards the language of report cards is in reality animosity towards a curriculum whose pedagogical clarity and soundness many parents question. But that is an issue for another post.) Goodman has pointed out that provincial law does not require teachers to draw comments from curriculum documents; the habit of doing so, he believes, results in parents having a hard time understanding the written assessments. I find this attitude a bit patronizing. Yes, the writing is full of jargon; it is awkward, inelegant, you name it. But any reasonably intelligent, literate adult can understand it. Granted, as Goodman also points out, there are many parents in the Toronto area whose first language is not English, and for that reason alone, simplification of the comment bank is justified. The new comments are indeed simpler. Here, for example, is the new writing comment from my daughter's second term report card (same daughter, same mark):

In Writing, [. . . ] competently produces a variety of written pieces (procedures, opinions, and marketing[!]) for various reasons.

Simpler yes, more informative, no. The real failing—of both the old and the new comments, and by extension, both the old and the new report cards—is that they are completely impersonal. I find it especially revealing that my other daughter, who is in the same class and who achieved slightly different marks in writing, received identical comments for this subject in the fall and winter reports. In fact, although my daughters could not be more different—not in ability, but in the particular nature of their abilities—their comments in both report cards are virtually indistinguishable.

What is abundantly clear to me, then, is that neither the first nor the second term comments tell me anything about my daughters' specific skills: about how, for instance, one has taught herself to rhyme in French because she enjoys writing poetry (my daughters are in French immersion), or how the other has worked especially hard on her composition, learning to use verb books and dictionaries because she wants to express herself more precisely and accurately in French. The comments tell me, in other words, absolutely nothing that pertains to my actual children. And that is the problem with comment banks in general, simplified or not.

To their credit, Goodman and the people at TDSB have used the occasion of report card reform to encourage teachers to exercise the option of using more personal comments. The reality is that most teachers, presented with a comment bank, will use it. I don't even really fault them for this. I'm not one of those parents who believe teachers have too much time on their hands—quite the contrary: I know they work extremely hard. I understand that preparing report cards is grueling, time-consuming work. Nevertheless, I think comment banks should be gradually phased out, at least for the core subjects, and perhaps teachers could be given a little extra time to prepare report cards. (Reducing the number of graded report cards from three to two, as the Ontario Ministry of Education is proposing, could help, but only if the proposed ungraded fall "progress report" does not end up replicating, via standardized comments, the graded winter and spring reports.) One sentence about an actual, flesh-and-bones child would speak volumes more than any statement, however complicated or simple, drawn from a list of impersonal, one-size-fits-all comments.

Footnote: When I asked my daughters what they thought of the new comments, they both told me that they didn't notice a difference because they don't read them, focusing instead on the actual marks. When I asked why, one daughter said that the comments aren't important because they're just general remarks about what they're learning. End result: student preoccupation with grades, which I'm sure is not the TDSB's intention—or is it?

Thanks for reading. NorthTOmom

Keyboard vs. Cursive

Several weeks ago my daughters arrived home from school with rough drafts—written in French, as they are in French Immersion—of their first book report of the year. They had chosen difficult books, but since their reading skills are strong, that didn't worry me. I read both books myself so I could help them with the reports if need be, though the teacher had warned them, as she frequently does, not to let parents do the work. I understand the teacher's concern. My twins are now ten years old, in grade five. I realize that I should not be as involved in their school work as I might have been even two years ago. I don't actually want to be involved; as each year passes, and I convince the girls to stay for lunch in the "horrific" (their word) lunchroom one or two days a week, my elusive dream of finally "getting a life" seems...well, slightly less elusive.

But—and here's the kicker—the teacher has stated that henceforth all written material should be handed in printed out from the computer. To that end, the children are given access during class time to the school's computers to input their masterpieces. But there's a problem. Neither of my girls can keyboard to save their lives. In Ontario, there is no formal instruction in keyboarding in elementary school. Students in grades four and five at my daughters' school have been introduced to a computer typing program called UltraKey, but instruction is sporadic and it seems to have taught them nothing. Yet teachers are increasingly asking for assignments to be handed in typed.

I realize that many ten-year-olds can and do keyboard regularly. They're emailing or texting friends, surfing the Internet, instant messaging, etc. My kids are not among them. I am not a Luddite by any stretch of the imagination. I was using email and surfing the Internet back in the late eighties when most of my friends had not yet bought their first PC. Today, I own multiple computers and although my daughters don't use them much, they are quite enamoured of their Nintendo DS's. They do not have a strong interest in the Internet, or email or texting, so they have not learned to keyboard through these activities. For my part, I simply don't understand why my kids must type their assignments at this stage. I would rather see them at a desk with a pen and paper than sitting in front of a computer tapping away with two fingers—for the same reason that I prefer to see them reading a book than playing a video game.

There is also a class issue at play here: we do at least possess computers on which, theoretically, my children could learn to type. What of the many students in less affluent neighbourhoods who don't have access to a computer at home? Is it fair to ask these students to type their assignments? In any case, the the real question is: if the Ministry or school boards or teachers want students in grades four and five to hand in printed documents, why is keyboarding not taught in a thorough and systematic way? Especially since cursive, mentioned perfunctorily at best in the new Ontario Language Arts curriculum, has been more or less dropped from the curriculum.

Which leads to another problem: the decline of cursive. If my girls can't keyboard to save their lives, neither can they write (as opposed to print) with any degree of confidence or competence. They began learning cursive in grade two, spent a little more time on it in grade three, and then it was summarily dropped, presumably due to some new policy (but try finding any real information on this issue on the Ministry of Education website). I'm not arguing that cursive is the be all and end all of writing tools. I'm not advocating bringing back the quill or fountain pens, or Latin. But shouldn't a child who will one day be an adult be able to sign his or her name? In cursive? Apparently the powers that be at the Ministry of Education do not think so. I've sent an email to the Ministry asking when and why cursive was dropped from the curriculum and how and when formal instruction in keyboarding will replace it. I'll let you know if/when I receive a response.

But back to the book report. With hand-printed rough drafts beside them, my girls dutifully sat at the school computer and later at our laptop at home typing with two fingers, sometimes spending 30 seconds or more simply looking for a letter or an elusive accent key. After watching their fumbling, painstaking efforts for several minutes, I'd had enough. I typed in the damned reports myself in all of fifteen minutes, and proceeded to write a letter to the teacher asking that henceforth my daughters be allowed to hand in all assignments handwritten. The fallout? Stay tuned!


(See also, Keyboard vs. Cursive—Update)

Introduction: Parenting is Hell

Parenting is hell. Parenting is work—much of it pure drudgery, in fact—with little "real world" reward or status. Stay-at-home-parents, most of whom are still women, have their own special ring of hell allocated to them. I inhabit that ring, though I also belong to the generation of women who had, in theory at least, all options open to them. It isn't as if I chose not to pursue a career. I dabbled in editing, publishing, freelance writing. I completed a BA, then an MA. I drifted again, thinking the world would eventually come to me, as it had to my older, baby-boomer siblings. (I was on the tail end of the boom, the edging-towards-bust end.) The world laughed, and I went back to graduate school—started, completed most of a PhD. in English. I got caught up in the world of "theory." I "theorized" about a lot of things, not just literature. I theorized that having children would be ruinous to any remaining possibility I might have of succeeding in a career. A friend of mine, a fellow graduate student, told me, "if you're going to have a child be prepared to "put your life in the shredder." Another who had recently had a baby, told me point blank, "there is no me."

But yet . . . .You're probably thinking, here comes the sentimental part, how I met a suitable partner (that would be true), and decided to have children, and it was all worth it in the end. Well, yes and no. I met a suitable partner and we agonized for years over whether or not to have a child. We did not just worry about how such a life-altering act would affect our still inchoate careers. We also wondered what two curmudgeonly, pretentiously cynical, Foucault-reading people could offer children. We saw how boomers around us handled parenthood and we cringed. Hyper-scheduled, under-disciplined, over-privileged children; stressed-out, over-involved, pseudo-democratic parents using soothing monotones when addressing their out-of-control charges. ("Now, Johnnie, do you want to talk about your feelings around biting Jessica?") But in the end we chose to pursue parenthood for the somewhat banal reason that we worried we might regret it later if we chose not to.

Irony of ironies (okay, it's not really irony, I know that from my grad studies but, thankfully, now I don't have to care), I became pregnant with not one, but two babies. I had a horrifically nauseous pregnancy, quit grad school, and the rest is . . . well, our particular hell.

But, I have to add (and this is why I think parents, or mothers at least, have a hard time being writers, because every little thing we do or say in the public realm affects or has the potential to affect our children), I love my kids to death. But I don't love all kids, and I don't love being a mother. My twins are now ten years old. To the world it looks as if in ten years I have done nothing (see Meg Wolitzer's insultingly titled The Ten Year Nap). But there is nothing more arduous, more physically and psychologically—and yes, intellectually—demanding than staying at home with children. Which I chose to do because 1) I still had no career to speak of 2) I didn't understand how anyone not related to my kids could possibly care enough about them to do a good job raising them and 3) circumstances related to my partner's job allowed me financially to do this.

Okay, okay, but the title of this blog-to-be is: Parenting is Political. I do not think that we need another "Bobby had the most awesome poop today" type of blog. There are many, many blogs that document the day-to-day realities of parenting very well. That is not my intention. In my grad school days I learned and took to heart the adage "the personal is political." I still believe it to be true, though not in any simple way. I especially believe it to be true when it comes to parenting. When I am at home with a child in tears and me with heart palpitations over a ridiculous "media studies" project, this is not just a personal predicament. To me, it is a socio-political predicament, one that is not adequately addressed in the socio-political sphere. Even when parenting issues become political issues—for example, the availability, or lack thereof, of daycare—the coverage and commentary is at best superficial. The hard right in both the US and Canada (where I live) sees parenting as a purely personal, pay-as-you-go enterprise. (Yet, interestingly, most of them send their children to public schools.) The liberal left sees parenting issues as political only in the most narrow, superficial sense: pre-school education good, daycare good, and that's about where it ends. Never discussed or debated is the fact that earlier and earlier education may not be good for children (but it is indeed good for working parents, which is not the same thing, though not insignificant either); the example of countries such as Finland, where formal education does not begin until the age of 7, and yet whose educational outcomes are second to none, is rarely brought to bear on the public discussions of the importance of early schooling. What if what we needed was better, later schooling? Or salaries for parents staying at home taking care of their own children? The truly radical possibilities are endless. It is these possibilities—born of the personal, but dragged kicking and screaming into the realm of the political—that I would like to explore in this blog.

Thanks for reading.
NorthTOmom