bearing blog

bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

Imagining your opponents to be idiots.

At the VC, David Bernstein appraises the work of U. S. Solicitor General Verrilli (the "SG") in the oral arguments before the Supreme Court today:

http://volokh.com/2012/03/28/sg-verrilli-relies-on-the-the-constitutions-preamble

This strikes me as part of a pattern I detect throughout this litigation and especially in the SG’s oral argument: the government’s lawyers seem to have no idea how conservative jurists typically think about the Constitution. Instead, they make arguments that would get almost unanimous nods of approval in the Harvard (or Columbia, the SG’s alma mater) Law School faculty lounge, but are not remotely persuasive to the other side.

I noticed that too — that the SG seemed unable or unwilling to answer direct questions about limitation of government powers, in particular. The truly cynical view would be that he wasn't able to answer because there are no answers; the government doesn't take the position that there are any limits on the Commerce power.

Maybe that is so, but I think it is much more likely that he didn't answer in any terms that conservative jurists are going to appreciate because what Bernstein suggests seems to be true really is true: "the government lawyers… have no idea how conservative jurists typically think about the Constitution."

Admit it, you see it in your friends' Facebook posts, you see it in newspaper editorials, you see it in comments on news stories, you heard it in your college classes, you see it at work: people everywhere, increasingly even the most educated people, never bother to grasp the reasoning and ideas in their opponents' minds. Instead they dismiss them as evil or stupid, or set up a humorous straw man to poke fun at. The attempt to really understand what your opponent is thinking has gone by the wayside.

I know people, educated, many academic degrees, my age and older, who regularly post comments and statuses along the lines of "No thinking person would ever vote Republican." i see approving comments on caricatures of conservatives as backwoods racist rednecks or exploiting fat cats in suits — take your pick — and comments disparaging persons who belong to minority groups and yet — inexplicably, apparently! — have the temerity to hold conservative views. Sure, they might be joking. Some probably are, and if you cornered them they might admit that probably there are ideological conservatives who have reasons for holding the opinions they do, and those reasons are even reasonable, though disliked. I am coming to think, in some of the cases, the writer actually believes his own stereotypes. If these intelligent individuals can be snookered in that way, I don't see why a government lawyer should be exempt.

This is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to liberals, by the way. It seems pretty universal. Conservatives do it too.

Doubtless it is entertaining to think of your opponents as yokels, and maybe it is motivating to think of them as evildoers (and yourself, fighting them, as on the side of unvarnished good). But doesn't it strike anyone as rather foolish? Isn't underestimating your opponent kind of a classic blunder, the sort of thing that high school debate teams understand? Would it not make more sense to anticipate your opponents' arguments by thoroughly understanding their positions on their own terms?

But I guess it just isn't as satisfying.

Mar 28, 2012

—

|

3 comments on Imagining your opponents to be idiots.
test

test

Mar 26, 2012

—

|

No comments on test
Asking for forgiveness.

When I was a kid, I got into trouble for ordinary kid-sort of things. Not cleaning my room, backtalking (usually I didn't mean to backtalk, but somehow, I was told, things came out sounding that way), staying out too late, lying about where I'd been.

I often got myself into worse trouble for refusing to say "I'm sorry." I was one of those people who reasoned, "I don't really feel sorry — so it would be lying to say so. I don't really think I was wrong — no way am I going to 'admit' that I was wrong, since I wasn't."

(I had not yet learned the fine art of the fake apology, so well practiced by public figures, the "I'm sorry that you were offended," or the "I'm sorry that you had to see this," much of which boils down to "I'm sorry that you got caught.")

After a while I figured out that it was sometimes in my best interest to apologize, and I did understand that. I learned to say "I'm sorry" when I didn't mean it. I learned that this sometimes made things better.

But as I grew to young adulthood, married and had a child of my own, I also remembered being a child, and I remembered the peculiar humiliation of being "made to say sorry" when I was utterly convinced I had done nothing wrong or even negligent. It does happen, you know: just as happens to adults sometimes, children get misunderstood, misconstrued, wrongly judged. And I grappled for a long time with the question: what, after all, is the point of saying "I'm sorry?" What is so important about it that adults teach children that they must say it to someone who feels they have been hurt, even if it is not a true statement? What good does a "sorry" really do? Is the pretense just social lubrication, like pretending you care about the weather or the local sports team during obligatory small talk? Or is there some meaning?

Perhaps I was overthinking it, but I felt that it mattered. I was a young adult on the verge of having to teach a child of my own. I have never been satisfied with repeating the lessons that were drilled into me, at least not without understanding them. I wanted to teach my child something I believed.

My first child was a toddler learning to speak and interact with others before I figured it out, in a sudden insight: I saw the framework — maybe just "a" framework — in which an "I'm sorry" made sense.

What I realized is this: The purpose of an apology is to invite forgiveness.

Let's say that Billy believes Alex has harmed him, and is angry. It may be that Alex intentionally hurt Billy, or it may be that Alex negligently hurt Billy, or it may be that Alex did nothing at all and Billy's made a mistake. It may be that Alex ought to be punished for what he did, it may be that Alex owes Billy restitution, it may be that someone else deserves to pay, or it may be that no one is at fault at all.

One thing is certain to help and not to hurt: if Billy forgives Alex.

Christian doctrine requires believers to assert this, but so do many other sources. Look, even the Mayo Clinic says that forgiveness will help.

What clicked for me that day is that an apology does not necessarily have to be understood as pretending sincere regret (what if I know I didn't do anything wrong?) or repentance (what if I am still feeling angry and haven't yet received the grace of penitence?).

This is so even if the words of an apology come out sounding something like "I am sorry, I was wrong." The words are conventional words, part of an exchange that is ritual and thus has unspoken meaning. They are an idiom. They are not meant to benefit the apologizing speaker, by expressing the feelings that are inside him, so that the speaker feels his true feelings has been heard. Rather, they are meant to produce an effect in the hearer.

The intended effect? To make it easier for the angry hearer to let go of his anger, to make it easier to forgive. An apology is an invitation to forgive. We say whatever we can say that will produce that effect. If we cannot bring ourselves to say "I wronged you," perhaps because we know something different has happened, then at the very minimum perhaps we can bring ourselves to say, "Will you forgive me?"

+ + +

Getting back to the children. When I got my head wrapped around the idea that an apology is an invitation to forgive, I no longer fretted about how to teach my children to apologize sincerely. In this framework, a "sincere apology" means an expression of a sincere desire that the other person forgive you. Even if it is hard to be sincerely "sorry" sometimes, especially when wrongly accused, it is easy to sincerely ask for forgiveness. Who would ever wish a grudge on anyone?

So when my child says, "But it wasn't my fault, so why do I have to say sorry?" that is what I explain:

You will apologize to her so that it will be easier for her to forgive you. Jesus says we have to forgive each other, and it is hard to forgive when we are angry, so you will make it easier for her to forgive you by asking for her forgiveness.

I gave them a formula to follow to make it super-easy, so they will never have to search for words. It goes like this:

"Jane, I'm sorry I stepped on your toy. Will you forgive me?"

"Drew, I'm sorry I wasn't looking and I ran into you. Will you forgive me?"

"Sue, I'm sorry I said words that hurt your feelings. Will you forgive me?"

They have to speak the person's name, they have to look them in the eye, they have to follow the "I'm sorry" with a statement that acknowledges why the person feels hurt, and they have to ask for forgiveness.

(Furthermore, if the person they hurt is a much smaller child, I require my kids to approach the child's mother or whomever and say, "I'm sorry I hurt your baby. Will you forgive me?")

And of course, when one of them asks the other for forgiveness, I require them to say "Yes, I forgive you." As soon as they can.

+ + +

Sometimes the brother and sister, summoned to enact the Apologize So She Can Forgive You script before me, are already smirking at each other as they recite. I catch the little gleam of "There goes Mom again with her apologizing thing." I like to see that. It proves they aren't holding a grudge against each other; it's more fun to share a silent inside joke about their mom. I hope they are still reciting it to each other and laughing many years from now.

+ + +

Of course, there is a drawback to this particular script.

It's the fact that when I correct my children, or shout at them, or say "Argh! Again? How many times do I have to tell you?!?"…

…they ask for my forgiveness.

Sometimes many times a day.

My eleven-year-old will stand there listening to me lecture him for a full minute and then when I stop he looks me in the eye and says, completely seriously, "I'm sorry I didn't finish unloading the dishwasher, Mom. Will you forgive me?"

My five-year-old will look up at me through her tears and say "Mom, I'm sorry I crumpled up my math sheet. Will you forgive me?"

My eight-year-old will glance shifty-eyed at me and say "Mom, I'm sorry I woke up my little brother. Will you forgive me?"

And that is when I discover how hard it can be to say "Yes."

There is such a temptation to turn it into a "Yes, but…." which, basically, is not a "Yes" at all.

I am still the parent and "forgiveness" does not mean nobody experiences any consequences or pays restitution. I find, though, that the tone is altered: I cannot, with a straight face, say "Yes, I forgive you" and then go back to shouting about a punishment. It comes out, a little awkwardly, with some explanation: "You're going to have to do two math sheets now, to remind you that you mustn't crumple up your math sheet just because you don't want to do it." "You're going to have to finish sweeping the floor for me, because now I have to get your brother back to sleep."

And after it's been one of those days, sometimes I think: Damn it, why did I teach them to ask me for forgiveness? How many times do I have to forgive?

How many times, indeed?

Mar 26, 2012

—

|

8 comments on Asking for forgiveness.
A pleasant, non-threatening homeschool blog for you.

I have mentioned before that a steady diet of homeschooling blogs gives me indigestion.

I don’t mean “bloggers who homeschool,” of course — I enjoy plenty of those, because homeschooling parents and their kids are interesting people with interesting things to say. But I try to limit my exposure to blogs whose raison d’être is homeschooling, unless I am actually searching for new ideas and inspiration. Too many virtual new ideas and inspiration all the time —> a feeling that the real house, schoolroom, and maybe even the children around me are scruffy, worn, old, beat-up, uninspiring, and in need of replacement.

I got a link to Steady Mom some time ago, though, and I have found her posts to be a nice counterpoint: the “inspirational” homeschool blog that doesn’t make me feel uninspired by comparison. Today’s post seems like a nice introduction to her, so I am sending you over.

http://www.steadymom.com/2012/03/life-as-an-interracial-family.html

Mar 22, 2012

—

|

No comments on A pleasant, non-threatening homeschool blog for you.
Cellular- level genetic analysis of a cancer.

I thought this was an interesting note from the field of cancer research: genetic analysis of renal cancer cells in the same patient, including metastasized cells, shows a great deal of variation pointing to rapid mutation and even what you could call rapid evolution of the cells to adapt to their environments, i.e., various sites in the body.

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/03/20/personalized_medicine_for_cancer_try_every_cell.php

Derek Lowe, the blogger who pointed to the paper, comments:

"Not only is cancer not a single disease, and not only is a single type of cancer not a single type of cancer, but individual patients contain a multitude of different cancerous cell lines, which vary by location."

Interesting. The more we find out, it seems, the more we begin to grasp why cancers are so mind-bogglingly difficult to treat.

Mar 20, 2012

—

|

No comments on Cellular- level genetic analysis of a cancer.
Quiet reconstructions.

(This post was updated at 5:10 pm to add links to the artwork mentioned)

Mark is off on his annual ski trip, leaving the children and me home for a rare weekend without him. We are quite used to being on our own on weekdays and weekday nights, because his job takes him out of town frequently, but weekend trips are unusual. We shook it up a little: I took the kids to Saturday evening Mass, so that there would not be a morning rush, and (here is a first for me) hired a babysitter for Sunday afternoon so I could slip out and get a little breathing space.

With no one to tell me to turn off the light, and no place to go early in the morning, I stayed up late Saturday reading. Long after the two-year-old had nursed to sleep, his jaws going slack and releasing me, I glanced at the clock and put my book aside, and then slid carefully out of bed, thirsty. The light from the bedroom cast my shadow on the stairwell wall as I descended to the kitchen in my pajamas and bare feet.

I had left a dim light on — I always do when Mark is gone — so I could see for the trip to the faucet with my glass. After I drank a long draught and set the empty glass on the counter, I paused to look around me. I had swept the kitchen thoroughly and wiped the counters before herding the children up to bed, and though the floor was probably not very clean, in the dim light no smudges were visible and the dark wood gleamed softly. The books were put away and the area rug was swept. The dishwasher hummed and swished. My rocking chair by the bookshelf looked suddenly inviting, and instead of climbing back up the stairs I went over and sat down, drawing my legs up under myself in the perch to which I, whose feet rarely extend to the floor from an easy chair, am accustomed.

Everyone else was asleep or absent. I looked around me and felt a sudden welling-up of pleasure in the ownership of my home. It is funny, of course I own this home with Mark — we literally "made" this home together, designed it for our family. I rarely think of the "mine-ness" of it. Being home in it is so ordinary, and it is usually the source of so many things I must get and do and fix and clean and prepare — I do not often stop and center myself in it. And yet, here it is, always all around me, sheltering us all together.

I kind of like it empty and clean-looking. I don't get to see it that way very often. That pleasure would not be so potent if I did not get to enjoy it noisy, full, and messy almost every day, I suppose.

I am not home now. I am at a local modern art museum (the Walker, for those who know Minneapolis). The kids are home with the babysitter. I will have to get up and go back in just a few minutes.

One of the exhibits that is here right now is called "Lifelike." It is a collection of pieces that look like ordinary objects, or really are ordinary objects. Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes are there, and Chuck Close's "Big Self-Portrait", as well as some photorealist paintings, and a charming painted wooden sculpture called "Weeds" of lifelike little plants that appear to be growing from the crack between wall and floor. There was a short film which at first glance appeared to be images of New York City street scenes, dumpsters and signage and the like, but on closer examination had been shot on a working sound stage that is used for city street scenes in movies. Things like that: either the truly ordinary brought into close focus, or illusions of ordinariness. One of the installations that attracted me most was "Bremen Towne," a room that had been carefully assembled to be an exact replica of the kitchen of the artist's midcentury childhood home. That artist, Keith Edmier, had obtained the correct model of refrigerator, vintage cabinetry, and so on. Where he could not obtain the right type of item, he had manufactured them: the linoleum tiles had been laser-etched using a single original tile as a pattern, and the dinette set had been sculpted.

I could not help but feel a certain link between the gleaming vintage kitchen and dinette, nostalgia for the past executed in Formica and harvest-gold Amana finish, and my feeling of nostalgia-for-the-present-moment of being in my own quiet kitchen late at night. The artist had created a clean, perfect kitchen after his own memories, and it was pleasant to stand in the cheery, midcentury (so retro!) space. His memories, though, must contain more noise and mess than this, just as my life usually does. At the same time, there is something real and really peaceful, not artificial, about the quiet of my late-night kitchen. The children are real, and really sleeping upstairs. Maybe it is just a little message to myself that I need to take the time to enjoy the space I live in on my own terms, a little more often than I do.

Mar 18, 2012

—

|

No comments on Quiet reconstructions.
The difference between faith and belief.
"I do believe; help my unbelief!" — Mark 9:24

+ + +

Darwin excerpts a cordial discussion between some theists and some atheists about the meaning of the word "faith."

It's worth reading on its own, and I am not going to respond to the entire excerpt, but just make my own comment and expand on it here.

Some proposed definitions from the excerpt:
- "Faith is knowing by testimony rather than by experience. I believe that the Earth orbits the Sun, because the scientists tell me so, and I believe them. "
- "[F]aith is what fills in the gaps of the probabilities. If, say there is a 70 % probability something is the case then to conclude more than that 70% probability is faith…"
Darwin chimes in to make two points. First, what "faith" originally means:

The old Catholic Encyclopedia in its article on faith describes the Old Testament use of the term to be essentially "trustfulness" or "steadfastness"…. This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc.

Second,

faith is an act of the will.

Darwin's points are both correct, but he does not go as far as I do. He classifies "faith" as being an act, and this is correct; but it seems that he identifies it too much with "belief," or with being convinced "enough" of something. Here is the statement of Darwin's that I disagree with:

This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc.

Obviously, in this sense one can have faith in any number of things or people, and as it notes, faith in this sense necessarily presupposes belief. I can hardly have faith in my wife's love (as in, trust in its existence and steadfastness) if I don't really believe that I have a wife or don't really believe that she loves me. When Christians talk about "having faith" however, they're pretty specifically talking about "having faith in God" — that combination of believing in God's existence and of trusting in God to remain steadfast and trustworthy in His love for us.

Darwin is failing — at least clearly — to make a distinction between "I am faithful to my wife" and "I have faith in my wife."

The first is concrete. The second is the metaphor.

The faith that Christians are supposed to have is not the same thing as trust that God's love exists and is steadfast to us. The faith that we are supposed to have, I am certain, is faithfulness *to* God — fidelity to the laws and precepts that He sets out for us insofar as we are aware of them. When we are told to have faith, this is not at all a command to believe something. (How can you be commanded to be convinced of a truth?) It is a command to do something: to live your life, in your body, in your mind, in accord with the will of a God.

Faith is not trust in God's steadfastness; it is a firm determination to remain steadfast to God. It is as the original Hebrew meant.

And the point that I want to make, the point where I disagree with Darwin, is that faith understood in this way does not presuppose belief.

Faith understood the way (I think) Darwin is trying to understand this would presuppose belief, because he is identifying faith with belief. "I can hardly have faith in my wife's love if I don't really believe that she loves me." Well, of course, if "faith in my wife's love" == "belief that my wife loves me."

But my understanding of faith does not presuppose belief. Darwin could choose to remain faithful to his wife — by which I mean nothing more nor less than the earthy sort of "faithful," i.e., he could remain sexually faithful to his wife, forsaking all others, and not abandoning her or their children — even if he lost all confidence in her love for him. Indeed, he could (and should) choose to remain sexually faithful if Darwin became thoroughly convinced that MrsDarwin did not love him at all.

And what if he did not believe that he even had a wife? Well, millions of still-single people find themselves in that situation every day, not having promised marriage to anyone, and yet they can still be "faithful" to the future spouse they might or might not have by living a chaste life. Such is faith: steadfastness.

One may be "faithful" while having severely impaired belief, even no belief at all. (Which raises the question: Why would someone who did not believe in God ever strive to live according to God's laws? I will not answer the question here, and maybe will bat that question back to Darwin, but I will simply note that it is not logically impossible to be faithful in this way without belief; whereas if faith == belief, it does become logically impossible to have faith without belief.)

The idea of "faith" as a purely mental or spiritual assent to a theological statement is, I suspect, a highly Protestant innovation. Because if you understand "faith" to mean "faithfulness" or "fidelity," then there is no distinction, none at all, between faith and works. The whole concept of "faith vs. works" presupposes that it is even possible to segregate a thing called "faith" away from the daily acts of living and interacting with other human beings and with our God. I say, it is not possible.

Here is the second chapter of James:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?ⁱ 15If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?^j 17So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. 19You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. 20Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? 21Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?^k 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. 23Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.”^l 24See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?^m 26For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

The Greek word for "faith" in James 2 (the faith and works discourse) is the same Greek word (pistis) translated as "belief" in the passage from Mark that I quoted above. Does pistis mean "steadfastness" in any way? Or does it only mean an intellectual assent? It goes on to use pisteuis in the next verse to mean "believe" as in "You believe that God is one" and then "pisteuousin" in "Even the demons believe, and shudder." The "faith" mentioned in James is then the same as the "belief" which even demons can have.

I don't really think of demons as "steadfast."

Anyway, as I said in my comment to Darwin's post, the image of a faithful spouse is apt. Faith in, and faithfulness to, a spouse are very precisely designed to be an image of faith in, and faithfulness to, God. They are so bound up in each other as to not be separable; but at the same time, it is possible to "be faithful," to "do faithfulness," even in times of doubt or — God forbid — abandonment.

This is what I would like to get across to anyone who says they wishes they could have faith but that it has never come to them. Anyone can, without committing a single act of intellectual dishonesty. It is simply a matter of becoming a faithful servant, or spouse, or child of God. To act faithfully — the precise nature of the "acts of faith" depends on our state in life and our circumstances — is to have faith. The ability to act faithfully, the possession of faith, both come from grace, the only thing by which we are saved.
Mar 18, 2012

—

|

No comments on The difference between faith and belief.
“Colored Me.”

A fascinating story that begins with a curious anecdote of family genealogy and leads to a discussion of the history of eugenics and racial classifications in midcentury Virginia.

This [photo] is the marriage license of my great-great grandfather, born in Ireland in 1854 and married to a Virginia native in 1884. His race, you’ll notice, is given as “colored.” Since when are Irishmen colored?

My father found this when he started doing family history after he retired. We mostly laughed, a lot, when he revealed it at a family Christmas party: that year he sent us all Kwanza cards as a joke.

But being a historian I couldn’t help but be fascinated…. I thought the “Irish were not white” bit was wildly overstated.

I was clearly wrong, and looking into it a little more resulted in a whole class lesson around the image of the Irish in the 19th century and the range of anti-Irish nativism. It focused on the malleability of stereotypes, and how what seems “natural” and obvious in one era seems odd in the next.

But still how to explain this document? It was his marriage certificate: surely even the greenest Irish immigrant knew enough to avoid being classed as “colored.”

If you take a close look at it, it gets more and more interesting….

Read the whole thing.

(h/t commenter HCCarey in this really interesting comment thread on Ta-Nehisi Coates's Atlantic blog about mutual cultural understanding, or the lack thereof, between American Jews and African-Americans.)

Mar 14, 2012

—

|

1 comment on “Colored Me.”
Perceived deficits in the homeschool.

There are some good conversations going on in the comments on the recent post about the "one-room" schooling techniques and in the post about deficits in the homeschool.

I want to talk a little bit about perceived deficits in the homeschool.

What are you comparing your homeschool to, anyway?

If you think you are comparing it to an institutional school, do you have a realistic idea of what goes on in your average institutional school? Sure, many high school students have access to excellent teachers and a great peer group, but even in the good schools there are often mediocre teachers and bad classes. I went to a pretty good high school, and I encountered some really excellent teachers there — my French teacher was absolutely top-of-the-line, my English literature teacher was memorable and engaging, my chemistry teacher could have taught Bill Nye how not to bore people. I learned a lot in those classes. But I also had some really bad teachers — substandard ones, or mean ones, or incompetent ones, or lazy ones, or possibly-mentally-ill ones — whose classes were a waste of time or worse. A lot of it is hit-or-miss. Few schools of any kind excel at everything.

Is the problem that you cannot give enough one-on-one time to each student? How much one-on-one time do you think students get in an institutional school? It is not the equivalent of a full-time tutor every day of the week.

Certainly there are efficiencies in an institutional school that a large-family homeschool cannot match. When one teacher teaches all the English classes and the curriculum is always the same, he just does not have to spend as much time on preparing and planning as we parents do when we are designing our curriculum and schedule to fit a family which forms a new configuration basically every year. When there is a fully stocked chemistry lab available all the time, laboratory prep time is minimized. It's easy to put together group learning experiences, like discussing literature or putting on plays or holding debates or setting up games, when there are many other students at the same level.

But there are different kinds of institutional schools with different strengths — set up purposely! — and that's often something we celebrate. Magnet schools! There's a performing-arts K-8 public school up the street from me, and within close walking distance is a small public high school specially organized for students who speak Spanish in their homes. There are language immersion schools and schools designed as interventions for students at risk of dropping out. There are vocational schools which specialize in turning out students who are already prepared to enter the skilled-labor workforce at age eighteen. And yes, there are college-preparatory schools. They all serve different purposes, promise a different educational experience, and turn out young people who are prepared for life in different ways. Even within those broad categories there are wide variations in style.

And this is a good thing. People don't typically complain that their child graduated from a college-prep program without also learning in school how to rebuild an engine (though maybe they ought to). It's not the college placement rate, but the job placement rate and job performance, that we're interested in when we measure whether a vocational-technical high school program is adequately preparing its students.

The homeschool, too, has its own essence, its own reason for being, its own niche in the educational ecosystem.

The essence of homeschooling is not academic excellence (although homeschools can provide that). The essence of homeschooling is not preparation for a job (although homeschools can provide that). The essence of homeschooling is not "special" education for students with particular challenges that make institutional schools a poor fit or a toxic environment (although homeschools can provide that). The essence of homeschooling is not that it can set its own schedule rather than being tied to external ones (although homeschools can provide that). The essence of homeschooling is not its freedom from externally imposed ideological structures (although homeschools can provide that).

The essence of homeschooling is simply that it happens within the family.

That schooling happens as an outgrowth of family life and family work.

That the young person is surrounded by people with whom he has meaningful and permanent relationships: parents, siblings, perhaps grandparents and cousins, friends who are connected to him through a web of relationships between families rather than a single point.

That the "curriculum" and schoolday is designed neither exactly to suit him as an individual with the perfect environment for his own personal success, nor to shove him along in a faceless crowd that on average receives an education adequate enough to keep trouble away… but for the best interests of the family as a whole, the innate natural grouping of the human organism, the grouping in which we can truly be known as human persons and in which we can learn the art of balancing needs and wants of the self and others.

That is the essence of homeschooling. That is its specialty. That is where it shines.

+ + +

H. said to me yesterday, "My standard answer, when someone asks me, 'So, how is the homeschooling going for you?' is "Great. I love having my kids with me all day.' It's true, and it's the reason I do it." Even though H. is confident that she is providing a really excellent education to her three children, she said, it isn't the academic excellence that she chooses to emphasize. Because that isn't the primary reason she does it.

I laughed and said, "I could never get away with saying that I love having my kids with me all day. Especially if it had been one of those days. You know I have no poker face." But I went on: "My standard answer doesn't have anything to do with academics either. I mean, if they press me I say so, and sometimes I tell them that I enjoy the work of planning the curriculum and things, which is true.

"But most of the time I tell people, 'What I really love about homeschooling is that my children spend all day surrounded by their siblings, and that they have wonderful relationships with each other.' Which is also true.

"Sometimes I get the response, 'Oh, my kids drive each other crazy if they have to spend ten minutes in the same room.' But it isn't hard for people to understand that if their kids spent lots of time together, they would probably understand each other better. Most people get that."

+ + +

Why do homeschoolers judge themselves so poorly, so often? I really think it's because we are constantly judging ourselves based on external standards, sometimes imaginary ones, and often ones in which the homeschooling paradigm doesn't make sense.

We shouldn't judge ourselves against the standards of the urban vo-tech high school, or against the wonderful parish school, or the impressive classical charter school out in the suburbs, or the neighborhood public school.

We definitely shouldn't judge our homeschools against the imaginary standard of an imaginary school that somehow provides the best of all those worlds: immersion in a foreign language, and valuable real-world hands-on job skills, and a broad liberal-arts education, and time to go deep into the subjects that are most loved, and an opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument, and connections with other young people who live in the same neighborhood, and education centered within the family's own system of values and philosophies, and preparation for the best colleges, all at once.

Nor should we judge our homeschools against the imaginary standard made up of all the best things we read on the blogs of other homeschools, and none of their drawbacks, because who wants to write at length about those? (Face it, homeschoolbloggers, we like to brag about our good ideas, not our bad ones, unless we can do it while sounding really Witty and Gritty and Real.) So, please, let's not fret because we are not able to keep nature notebooks from age four through eighteen, and have all of our children in Suzuki lessons, and have a working wood shop, and collect and use all the official Montessori-method practical-life learning materials, and read the entire Ambleside book lists to the children, and co-school twice a week with another family, and have a field trip three times a month to a local museum/theater/zoo, and operate a working family business wherein the children will learn the Real Meaning of Money, and send them all to the National Spelling Bee… because nobody else is doing all that either. We can pick one or two things and do them really well and create massively cool experiences out of them. We can't do it with everything.

We are families. Families! As different as families can be.

We need to set our own standards for ourselves, and meet those.

That's all.

Mar 14, 2012

—

|

7 comments on Perceived deficits in the homeschool.
Outdoor weather is coming back.

Here's a well-thought-out, specific guide to putting together a "ten essentials" daypack for hiking.

If you’re just getting into hiking, everyone is going to recommend that you pack the 10 Essentials when you go for a hike. Then they list about 30 pieces of gear that you should bring with you, but they never actually tell you WHAT to buy. If you find this frustrating or confusing, or worse, you’re going for hikes without the 10 Essentials, I’ve pulled together a few sample gear lists for different hike durations (up to 4 hours and more than 4 hours) that I hope you find helpful.

When you're hiking with kids, you might need a few extra essentials, but it isn't hard to extrapolate them from the listed "ten essentials." Have adult medications in your first-aid kit, like ibuprofen or antihistamines? Maybe you need the same stuff in liquid-dropper form for your little people. And if your kiddoes resist plain water when they're cranky, you might need some drink mix powder just in case you really need to coerce them to hydrate.

In general, put together your emergency pack based on things that are likely to happen. For example, I have already learned the hard way that if anyone in your party is hiking in newish footwear, it pays to dedicate some space in your first aid kit to blister care.

Mar 13, 2012

—

|

No comments on Outdoor weather is coming back.
Some Saturday morning links for you, from yesterday.

The Curt Jester goes all social-justice on us, reminding us of the duty and right to be a conscientious objector. It is probably time to re-read the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, to strengthen our wills.

‎"Unjust laws pose dramatic problems of conscience for morally upright people: when they are called to cooperate in morally evil acts they must refuse….Such cooperation in fact can never be justified, not by invoking respect for the freedom of others nor by appealing to the fact that it is foreseen and required by civil law. " — CSDC #399

+++

Somewhat more women scientists than men are dissatisfied with work-life balance or put off having children because of it, but it is really a significant problem for both, says the Chronicle of Higher Education. (And, of course, if higher-ups realize it affects men too, maybe they will take it more seriously.)

Most research on work-life balance in …STEM field tends to focus on women… But… efforts to make the academic workplace more family-friendly for scientists will keep falling short as long as women are allowed to serve as the primary faces of work-life balance gone awry.

+++

Derek Lowe of In the Pipeline, guest blogging for Megan McArdle: An anecdote about the divide between tech workers (specifically drug development chemists, but it applies to engineers and other scientists as well) and the HR and other management folks. Emphasis mine, because I love this line:

I remember trying to get this across to representatives of the managerial group pushing this new system. We kept hearing about how better goal alignment, "coaching for success", and a good dose of positive attitude would make this whole thing a success, and I couldn't take it any more. "Look", I said, "I can't 'just put down what I'm going to be working on for the year', because I don't know. I can't 'just focus on the projects that are most likely to succeed', because I don't know what those are. I don't care what it says on the org chart. I'm in research, and my real bosses are a bunch of cells in a dish and a bunch of rats in cages. They determine what I'm going to work on next. And they can't be coached for success, and they don't care how much team spirit I have, because they don't listen to me."

This didn't go over well. My audience from HR seemed to think that I was either lying, trying to be funny, misinformed, or (most likely) just not enough of a team player. But the argument illustrated two different ways of looking at the world….

+ + +

A list of four proposed reforms to reduce class divide includes this provocative tidbit:

The bachelor’s degree has become a driver of class divisions at the same moment in history when it has become educationally meaningless. We don’t need legislation to fix this problem, just an energetic public interest law firm that challenges the constitutionality of the degree as a job requirement.

After all, the Supreme Court long ago ruled that employers could not use scores on standardized tests to choose among job applicants without demonstrating a tight link between the test and actual job requirements. It can be no more constitutional for an employer to require a piece of paper called a bachelor’s degree, which doesn’t even guarantee that its possessor can write a coherent paragraph.

(Besides ditching the B.A. B.S., the author suggests we should get rid of unpaid internships that mostly benefit those who can afford to work for free, drop the SAT in college admissions, and adopt colorblind socioeconomic affirmative action.)

+ + +

From "Rebecca" in the comments on the REALLY REALLY GOOD post by Amy Welborn I linked yesterday:

One of the most illuminating things I ever read on “talents” was in the book “The Gift of Faith”, by Father Thadeusz Dajczer. (see here at

http://www.inthearmsofmary.org/thegiftoffaithbyfrtadeuszdajczersoftback.aspx )

He writes that an illness can be a talent; a misfortune, a loss, a cross can all be talents. Having nothing – as in, being deprived of something- can be a talent. Anything that can be turned into spiritual gold, as it were, is a talent, and is given to us as a rich resource if – if – we know how to use it.

This little book is a quiet gem. I can’t recommend it enough.

Yup — a talent in the Bible is a unit of currency. Something that can be converted, and changed.

Mar 10, 2012

—

|

1 comment on Some Saturday morning links for you, from yesterday.
Santa Francesca Romana: The saint of traffic? (REPOST)

In November, I discovered Santa Francesca Romana (St. Frances of Rome), and wrote a lengthy post about her. Today is her feast day, so why not repost? (I added one photo and updated the text)/

——————————————————————————————————————

My eight-year-old was maybe thinking about how he's going to be picked up to go to a slumber party this afternoon, just before rush hour, and so he asked me: "Who is the patron saint of traffic?"

I was (and am) sitting at the computer, having my coffee, so I googled it. Didn't find the patron saint of traffic, but I did find the patron saint of automobiles and driving, Saint Frances of Rome.

Turns out she is pretty interesting and cool, and would be a fine saint to recommend to your daughters.

Saint Frances of Rome, Obl.S.B., (Italian: Santa Francesca Romana) (1384 – March 9, 1440) is an Italian saint who was a wife, mother, mystic, organizer of charitable services and a Benedictine oblate who founded a religious community of vowed oblates.

I'm a sucker for any saint who was a wife and mother. It's not that virgin martyrs aren't cool, too, but at this point I have some difficulty relating to them. Also the wives and mothers stand out because there seem to be so few of them among the famous saints.

Frances was born in 1384 in Rome to a wealthy and aristocratic couple…When she was eleven years old, she wanted to be a nun, but, at about the age of twelve, her parents forced her to marry …Although the marriage had been arranged, it was a happy one, lasting for forty years, partly because Lorenzo admired his wife, and partly because he was frequently away at war.

I'm also a sucker for arranged marriages that turn out to be happy. Unlike the virgin martyrs, I can relate to that. All true marriages are arranged marriages, because our younger selves set them up for the older men and women we will become.

Frances experienced many sorrows in the course of her marriage with Lorenzo. They lost two children to the plague. In their case, it sensitized them to the needs of the poor….During the wars between the pope in Rome and various anti-popes in the Great Schism of the Catholic Church, Lorenzo served the former. However, in his absence during a period of forced exile, much of his own property and possessions were destroyed.

Political intrigue and infighting within the Church: you think it's bad now, how do you think it was in the early 1400s?

Here's a miracle story with some provoking subtexts. (Wondering about the term "superstitious" used here? It's from Wikipedia.)

According to one legend, their son, Battista, was to be delivered as a hostage to the commander of the Neapolitan troops. Obeying this order on the command of her spiritual director, Frances brought the boy to the Campidoglio. On the way, she stopped in the Church of the Aracoeli located there and entrusted the life of her son to the Blessed Mother. When they arrived at the appointed site, the soldiers went to put her son on a horse to transport him off to captivity. The horse, however, refused to move, despite heavy whipping. The superstitious soldiers saw the hand of God in this and returned the boy to his mother.

There's more of those back at the article. Moving on,

Although a mystic, Frances was not oblivious to the civil chaos which ruled the city …With her sister, Vannozza, as a companion, Frances prayed, visited the poor and took care of the sick, inspiring other wealthy women of the city to do the same. She turned part of the family's country estate into a hospital.
On 15 August 1425, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, she founded the Olivetan Oblates of Mary, a confraternity of pious women, attached to the Church of Santa Maria Nova in Rome, but neither cloistered nor bound by formal vows, so they could follow her pattern of combining a life of prayer with answering the needs of their society.

Okay, now there's something I'm really a sucker for: finding some way to blend life in the world with the devout life. Sounds like she and St. Francis de Sales would really have gotten along well.

Eventually the group of oblates got more organized and even obtained a monastery-like community house that is still active. Here's a picture from the outside:

(source)

Such community life, complete with white veils and black habits, seems kind of unusual for people calling themselves Oblates:

In March 1433, she founded a monastery at Tor de' Specchi, near the Campidoglio, in order to allow for a common life by those members of the confraternity who felt so called. This monastery remains the only house of the Institute.

On 4 July of that same year, they received the approval of Pope Eugene IV as a religious congregation of oblates with private vows, under the authority of the Olivetan monks who serve at Santa Maria Nova. The community thus became known as the Oblates of Saint Frances of Rome. When her husband died in 1436, she moved into the monastery and became the group's President. She died in 1440 and was buried in that church.

According to this site run by Benedictine Oblates attached to St. Scholastica up in Duluth, "Some consider St. Francis of Rome to be a patron saint of all Benedictine Oblates." Her feast day is March 9.

This site has some photographs of the frescoes in Rome's Tor de'Specchi depicting Santa Francesca's life. Here is one that shows the saint pouring out grain for the poor. The writer of the site points out the lovely detail of the last of the grains spilling out, white "against her dark habit."

From that site:

Santa Francesca Romana's Tor de' Specchi is very strictly cloistered, only opened to the public on two days of the year. 'We are not a museum', they sternly and rightly said. But their work of charity continues, their cloister filled not only with themselves but the elderly poor and poor young students with whom they share their wealth. As Oblates they ask for no privileges from the Church, they pay all taxes, and hence are loved down the centuries, theirs the only convent not subject to attack by angry mobs. They continue Benedict's Rule of work, study, and above all, prayer. Their faces today have the same contemplative beauty that is seen in these frescoes.

She was canonized in 1608 even though nobody knew where her body was buried because it had been hidden to protect it. A search ensued, and her body was eventually found — I would like to know more about that particular mystery! — and reburied later. Since 1869, when she was exhumed again, her body has been displayed in a glass coffin in the Church of Santa Francesca (was: Santa Maria Nova).

So after all that, why is she the patron saint of automobiles and driving, and presumably of traffic? What could have led to this situation, in which every March 9, Rome gets a little more congested as cars drive past the Church of Santa Francesca to the nearby Piazzale del Colosseo to get a special blessing?

(this is from 1952. Source)

Wikipedia sez:

In 1925 Pope Pius XI declared her the patron saint of automobile drivers because of a legend that an angel used to light the road before her with a lantern when she traveled, keeping her safe from hazards.

Because the Pope said so, capisce? Nevertheless, I bet you won't forget Santa Francesca the next time you are stuck in traffic, fuming about the chaos in the city, the car in front of you no faster than a stubborn horse. And remember: however bad the traffic is here, it's probably worse in Rome.

Mar 9, 2012

—

|

1 comment on Santa Francesca Romana: The saint of traffic? (REPOST)