Nobody's Right If Everybody's Wrong

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

--Buffalo Springfield, For What It's Worth

When I was 10 years old there were battle lines being drawn. We had a politicians war, unrest in the streets, the sexual revolution--I'm glad I was too young to be in the front lines for that one--and students shot down on campus at Kent State. And sometimes when battle lines are being drawn, when sides are chosen up, and when "paranoia strikes deep" it is easy to forget the principles for which we stand because we tend to be "sayin' Hurray for our side."

It happened then.

And now, 40 years later, it's happening again. Intensity is growing, anger is deepening, and we know that choosing a side is not voluntary. If we don't choose, the line will cross us. And in this kind of climate, it is very easy to forget the principles for which we stand in order to keep saying "Hurray for our side."

A small incident in Albuquerque last week illustrates very well that "nobody's right when everybody's wrong." And how those conditions can create a climate where the temptation is to not think, but to "ditto-head" all the way to the end of the Republic.

This morning I received one of those "I won't back down" e-mails. The message was that something happened here last week, and if I wasn't angry about it, why I didn't belong on the mailer's mailing list. But as I read the story and watched the video it became apparent that this was not exactly a case of cop bashing in innocent protestors. But neither was it a case of innocent cop being harrassed by Weathermen Underground wanna be's. Although I think the protestors were more in the wrong, the cop was not exactly a model of mature rectitude and professionalism.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Judge for yourself.

What Happened:

There was a heavy metal concert, Rob Zombies, at the new Hard Rock Cafe Albuquerque, which is not in Albuquerque at all; it is at the Casino on the Isleta Pueblo. Apparently, some Christians disapprove greatly of metal, or maybe of any rock music, because a small group of them appeared with signs and an attitude and stood a few yards away from the concert goers who were standing in line waiting to be admitted. The Christians, not content to carry signs that told the crowd they were going to hell, were also telling the people in the crowd that they were going to hell. Loudly. And did I say with attitude? The crowd was getting angry and shouting a few choice words back at the Christians. Enter a young deputy sheriff, J. Goff. He told the Christians that this was private property and that they would have to leave. The Christians began to argue with him, claiming a non-existent right to free speech and presence on private property. The deputy persisted. The Christians continued to both incite the concert-going crowd and argued with the deputy. With attitude. The concert goers began to look as if they were getting ready to throw things at the Christians. The deputy told them once again it was private property and that they had to leave "right now" or they'd be arrested. As the Christians finally began to leave, video-taping all the way, they also began to tell Deputy Goff that he need to repent or go to hell. Goff--apparently channeling attitude from the Christians--began to mock them saying that he was an unbeliever and that there is no god. He also incited the concert crowd further, asking them if they wanted the Christians to leave or stay.

There was Attitude. There was Unprofessional Behavior. Christians were violating private property rights. A deputy was acting like a snotty teen-ager.

Nobody was right. Everybody was hot.

You can read the story here. (The local paper didn't cover it, though there was a discussion on one of the local afternoon drive talk-shows). There is a You-Tube video associated with the story and that can also be found here. The video was taken by the Christians and in this case, sadly, shows the depths of their ignorance of individual rights. And even more sadly shows the shallowness of the deputy's understanding of his job.

But given the powder keg our nation is sitting on now, we have to keep our heads, and our principles. This is not a free-state vs. police state issue. This is an issue of private property rights and the initiation of force against concert goers by inconsiderate Christians. And I believe that in the present incendiary climate, we cannot get hot under the collar, we cannot be spoiling for a fight while ignoring our principles.

So when the guy who e-mailed me and a dozen or so others, saying:

"There's so going to be a fight" and " if this doesn't make you really, really mad then let me know so I can remove you from my address book",

I sat down and wrote a letter back to the whole list.

Because I refuse to be required to agree with the emotion of the day, and allow it to cloud reasoned defense of principle. Because we can't afford to start a fight over anything less than bedrock principles. And even then, we cannot afford to throw the first punch.

Here is what I wrote:

Given what was said in the WND article--and shown in the video--both the deputy and the protestors were in the wrong. The protestors do not have a constitutional right to trespass on private property for any purpose, but must have the permission of the property owners in order to protest. Clearly they did not, as they had not purchased tickets, and the law was called in to enforce the property rights of the property owners. Being Christian does not excuse one from the responsibility to respect the right to life, liberty and property of others.

However, the deputy needed to handle the situation in a professional manner, and his personal beliefs should have had nothing to do with the situation at all. It really should not have mattered why the protestors were violating the private property rights of the Hard Rock Cafe, only that they were.

It is clear from the beginning of the video that the protestors did not respect the private property of the Hard Rock Cafe, and they had not purchased the right to be on that property in the form of a ticket. Such a purchase is a contract, which requires the ticket-holder to follow the policies of the business that owns the property. The protestors were not only violating property rights; they were also inciting the crowd attending the concert, and the concert goers were responding, and the situation was escalating. In such situations, one particularly nasty gesture or statement could begin a riot. Crowds are not rational. The protestors were not only endangering the concert goers, they were endangering themselves. In such situations, a peace officer has the obligation to get the offenders--in this case the protestors--off the property as quickly as possible. When the protestors heard that they were invading the private property of another, they had the obligation to obey the peace officer or face arrest.

However, by injecting his personal beliefs into the situation, this deputy needlessly increased the tension and insulted all citizens (those who were present and those who were not) who pay his salary. Those citizens have a right to complain about the situation. At the same time, the citizens can request a particular disciplinary action, but they cannot demand it. Peace Officers, like any other laborer, sell their time to the employer--in this case, Bernalillo County--via contract. That contract will generally refer to departmental policies for discipline. The department and Bernalillo County are therefore obligated by contract to follow those policies, which may or may not allow for the deputy to be fired. Those conditions may (and probably do) have contingencies for the type of offense, as well as the record of the officer. The officer also most likely has the right to a disciplinary hearing, and legal representation, as well as arbitration, should he believe that the discipline received is not according to contract.

Overall, this situation was very different from the situation in Michigan in which Christian protestors were handing out copies of a bible to Muslims on a public street. There, the Christians were on public property, and they were not initiating force against anyone; the crowds there were able to refuse the interaction, which is their right.

As Patriots who respect the Constitution, it is incumbent upon all of us to respect the rights of others, to behave in a civil manner and to respect the law that protects our rights. As human beings, it is incumbent upon us to treat other individuals with good will, and to abjure the initiation of force against them and to respect their liberty to disagree with us. Being a Christian does not entitle anyone to violate property rights and incite a crowd. To say otherwise is to sanction mob rule, which is the opposite of the Republic based upon individual rights and the Rule of Law that has been bequeathed to us. All of us must respect the rights of others, including their right to disagree with us peacefully. We must be very careful to exemplify in every way the values that we claim to represent.

Since I am not a Christian, I cannot say what Christian ethics would require in this situation. But I can say that Christians do the Patriot movement no favors if they refuse to respect the rights of individuals who do not subscribe to their sect's particular beliefs. It is clear from the World Net Daily story that some Christians believe that Heavy Metal music is sinful, and others don't.

As a mother, though, I would say that good manners and polite discussion and persuasive arguments are more likely to get the attention of those one disagrees with than rudeness and force. Or as my first-grade teacher used to say, "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." We all get passionate from time to time, but that does not mean it is the best method of persuasion in every time and place.


So many people claim that they stand for liberty, for individual rights, and for the American values. But so many of them appear to have no idea what liberty is, or what individual rights mean. They believe that it is permissible to violate the rights of others because they have "the truth" and therefore can force it upon everyone else. They believe that their rights supercede the rights of others--that rights do not belong equally to all individuals.

These Christian kids were not only initiating force against the property owner, they also videotaped their lack of respect for the rights of the concert goers, their lack of good manners, and they also revealed their embarrassing lack of fundamental knowlege about freedom and liberty. They have the right to free speech--absolutely. But the property owners are not slaves. They are not required to provide protesters with a platform to make that speech.

The concert goers have a right to choose their activity and engage in it without being verbally assaulted without recourse. They paid for the privilege of enjoying that right on the private property of the Hard Rock Cafe. And because of that payment, the Hard Rock Cafe was obligated to remove protestors.

"Paranoia strikes deep,

And into your life it will creep.

It begins when you're always afraid . . ."

If we are to restore the Republic, we must be zealous defenders of liberty. We cannot create paranoia within ourselves by convincing ourselves that peace officers are against us, without considering the parameters of the law. We must stand on the principle that every individual enjoys that same liberty that we expect, even if we do not like him or agree with his activities and choices. We have no right to initiate force against him. And we must know and practice the core principles that created our liberty.

Ferrari Hind-Brain, Dune Buggy Frontal Lobes

Fads in education tend to be oversimplified, and the newest of fads is no exception.
Think about this current catch-phrase in education for a moment: Brain-based learning.

People are writing curricula and textbooks and making a lot of money from this phrase.

Whenever I hear it in a seminar or discussion, I am always tempted to raise my hand and ask, "Isn't all learning brain based?" Because it is. At least the learning we are supposed to be talking about when we are talking about educating children in school.


The other one--and it's been around for a while now--is the whole left-brained vs. right-brained cliche. You know it: right-brained people are so much more enlightened and spiritual than those who dwell in the concrete-sequential left brain. Except . . . it appears the religious experience is partially mediated by the left temporal lobe. Sorry, wrong hemisphere.

There is some truth to the idea that there is a hemispheric division of duty in the brain. In males, language processing is normally in the left hemisphere, whereas certain associations of the images that language evokes take place in the right hemisphere. But females tend to distribute language processing across the two hemispheres, and since the female corpus collosum tends to be larger and denser and signals move across it more rapidly, why shouldn't they?


Guys, this may be why you cannnot win at verbal tete-a-tete with your mothers. But I digress . . .

Consider the paragraph above the digression about guys. The word "normally" is operative there. Because neuroplasticity is such that people do all kinds of things with parts of their brains normally reserved for something else. And there are those on the autism spectrum that make an art of it, experiencing synasthesia, the ability to smell color, for example, or hear shapes.

The semester's work that I just finished (thank Heaven and the PsychInfo data base) was about differences in sensory processing between people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and typically developing individuals (NTs). I looked at visual processing, but I could have just as easily looked at other senses. In all of them it is the same. Autistics process differently, using different parts of the brain on both the right and left sides, because the real difference is between front and back.

Uta Frith, one of the researchers about this, says that non-autistics have a drive towards central coherence. NTs will look at the picture, and initially see the parts and then the whole, but they do it very quickly, and then prompty forget the details in that drive to the big picture. Many with ASD do not. Rather, their focus on the local processing is intense, and they remember the details and focus on them, sometimes not seeing the big picture at all. This makes them very good at the Block Design subtest on the Weschler Intelligence Scales (WISC or WAIS) and very bad at the Comprehesion portion.

And what portions of the brain light up on fMRI when these kids are doing tasks like BD? It appears that they shift their function backwards, to more local function. Some researcher think they mentally move shapes needed to match detail to the whole, rather than place the figure in working memory, like NTs do. The NT strategy for embedded figures and block design has many more top-down features, and thus on these kind of tasks, individuals on the spectrum are more efficient and work faster. And in time-constrained situations, they also tend to be more accurate.


These visual processing differences appear to be primary in nature, by which I mean that they show up on both social and non-social tasks. It is true that autistics process faces differently, with much of the activations happening outside the fusiform gyrus' face area. But in ASD samples, processing of right-side up and upside down faces is equally as fast, whereas in NTs it is not. This may mean that it is perception that is fundamentally different, and that it is possible that many of the other characteristics of autism flow from it, rather than from a fundamental difficulty with social interaction.

Some researchers believe that these perceptual differences are the root of savant skills like card-counting, calendar calculating, or perspective in drawing.


There are still arguments in the field about whether of not this "weak central coherence" is compensation for a deficit or whether it is an enhanced perceptual function in its own right. There is evidence that those with ASD do engage in top-down control (from the frontal lobes), and that the local perceptual functioning (bottom-up) is more efficient. But there is also evidence that the observed top-down processes are qualitively different than those in NTs.

But it is safe to say that perception in ASD (and to some extent in ADHD as well) is fundamentally different than in NTs.

fMRI activation maps do show difference across the hemispheres, but also from the back of the brain to the front. In autistic perception, the activated areas are more scattered throughout the brain, and different areas light up for perceptual tasks than in NTs.


All of this means that the structure of intelligence is different in ASD. On the new WISC and WAIS scales, the Working Memory and Processing Speed indices result in much lower scores than the norm, whereas the Perceptual Organization and Verbal Comprehension are much higher. This is true within the individual scores, so that any full-scale IQ score is essentially meaningliess. When fluid intelligence, which is the ability to reason abstractly, is measured alone, as it is on Ravens Progressive Matrices, scores are generally very high in high-functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger Syndrome (AS).


One problem with intelligence testing done by educators as opposed to those done by professional psychologists, is that they often calcuate a FSIQ when the gaps between subtests and indices are so wide as to make that number meaningless. This meaningless number is then used as a measure of a child's potential, and is attached to him/her, sometimes for years, and limits what the child is allowed to do in school. To add insult to this injury, schools are designed for the average (and with NCLB, the slightly below) child, and instruction is auditory-sequential in nature, which relies heavily on auditory working memory and processing speed. This is why school is a difficult place for a child on the spectrum to actually get an education.

The rules are made for NTs. Thus one has to memorize math facts before being allowed to take higher math. And one must take algebra before geometry. Neither of these Stupid Neurotypical Rules (SNTR: coined by Temple Grandin) make sense for kids who see the world through such different perceptual lenses. The should use a calculator. And take geometry first. And then use hands-on equations for algebra. Even so, the teacher must be able to teach math outside the SNTR box.

Here's the bottom line:

It's not about right- or left-brained people. But we could say that Aspies, Autistics, and ADHD's, all have Ferarri motors in the hind brain, but with a dune buggy control system in the frontal lobes, the drive for them is anything but smooth in the narrowly defined normal of the typical school.

End of the Semester Crunch Time Squared

Hold my blogging!

We will be dwelling in that end of the semester crunch time for the next several weeks.
(Quantity squared).

The Boychick is finishing up or has just finished up several major freshman projects. He has done his Inquiry Project for Humanities, and he has given his presentation.
He is working on his Big Ideas Project for Science. This project is cool because the project has to be about Big Ideas and their connections for the Scientific Revolution for the big Medieval Faire the school is having this coming week. He has chosen to explore the connections between the Plague (Pestis yersinius), Galileo and Newton. Ought to be interesting! Newton had repaired to his mother's country estate to escape plague infested London, when he was sitting under the apple tree and observing the waning moon, when he had his AHA! moment that the force that caused the apple to fall to the earth was the same force that kept the moon in its orbit. I know that Newton refined Galileo's ideas about motion, particularly falling bodies, but I don't know how Galileo is connected to the plague! Except that the falling bodies he dealt with were not corpses. They were marbles and cannon balls and oranges from Africa.



In the meantime, this was my home today, and I will be spending more time there in the next few days. It is Zimmerman Library at UNM. I work there, because the Lobo lab lets me print journal articles for free and because there is a coffee shop right in the Library. (A tired student can take a cup of joe right into certain areas of the reading room, if it is properly covered). I make occasional forays over to Centennial Science and Engineering Library (CSEL) and even rarer trips to the Health Sciences Library and Infomatics Center (HSLIC). Much of what I need can be obtained electronically from the more centrally located (right next to the duck pond) Zimmerman.


My crunch time involves two papers for courses, and doing organizational work, research and editing for a paper to be published.


Today, I did a lot of work finding imaging studies for my Psych 650 (Neuroimaging Analysis). I am looking at two competing theories on visual processing differences in autism. The studies I was interested in finding are to provide evidence to suppport or discount either of them. For Psych 650, my job is to look at the experimental designs and imaging analysis techniques to determine if differences of opinion are the result of different analytic styles, or problems in the data. Overall, however, my research purpose is to become really knowledgable about the "vageries of visual processing in autism" (as one paper is called), because there is a growing consensus that the "deficits" we see in autism may be the result of a very different way of processing sensory input; a way that does not obligate the brain towards global perception.


My other paper is a lit review for Special Education 695 (Readings). I will place what I learn about the neuroimaging results from the Psych paper into a larger look at the recent literature about cognitive theories of autism, and the structure of intelligence in autism viewed through the lens of visual processing differences. I will looking to find the gap between the science and interventions that is the ground for all good translational research.


I will be probably be lurking a bit on my favorite blogs, old and new. But if I am not commenting, don't feel too lonely. I still owe ChristineMM an answer in a discussion sparked by this blog entry weeks ago!

It is, after all, ACT--Academic Crunch Time! Squared.

Years ago in Russian class, our prof, Boris, taught us a delightful little song: "From session to session, a student's life is fine!" A "sessiya" is exam and paper time.

We made up our little ditty to the tune of Frere Jaques:
Ya niznayu, Ya niznayu, na evo, na evo,
Ya n'panimayu, Ya n'panimayu chorosho!
(I don't know, I don't know, from it, from it! I don't understand, I don't understand, at all!)

It's Academic Crunch Time!

See you Mother's Day.

That Only a Mother . . .

In the past year or two, the Zits comics in the Sunday paper have begun to make sense in a frightening sort of way; as if the authors actually have a video of what goes on in our house.

I am sure it has something to do with Prefrontal Cortex . . .
. . .But there is something strange about my 15 year old boy and his friends:
They are like baby bears or bulls in a china shop.
They have a restless, uncoordinated energy.
They run into the chairs as if the dining room was very small instead of large as it is.
They have a permanent shadow above their upper lips, that makes the mother in me want to get them to wash their faces.
Whatever they touch seems to get dirty or broken, or both.
Their conversational skills often devolve to monosyllables spoken in deepening voices.
They want to sleep 'til noon, and they literally grow overnight.
They are at that stage that only a mother could love. And that's a stretch sometimes.

And they have put on what I call the Queen Night at the Opera attitude: "Nothing really matters . . ."

Until something does.

And then my 15 year gets into the car after school and says, "Mom, you'll never guess what we learned in Humanities today." Ah. I've got my Boychick back from wherever the alien teenager stored him.

This spring, the Boychick seems to have gotten it that we are not taking him to Machon to torture him. He comes home to tell us about what it would be like to celebrate Shabbat like the orthodox do. Or that he learned about empathy in his Leadership class because the teacher taped two fingers together on the strumming hand and he had to try to play that way . . .

Now that he's gotten over imitating what he thinks is 'cool', he is actually permitting himself to get excited about what he's learning.
And it's all very experiential.

And the sea change in attitude started with that strumming I mentioned.

This spring, when we arranged his schedule according to his Aspie needs, the Boychick insisted on keeping a Guitar and Music Theory class on his schedule. I thought: "Why not? It's something physical. And his grandmother was a concert violinist, after all. Maybe this will turn into something good for him."

And so it has.
He practices every spare moment.
Hours of video games have been replaced with hours of strumming.
He is learning to read music.
He is working to earn the use of my Guild.

Another passion has been unveiled.
Now, with some more motherly work and worry, perhaps his several passions will build together into something good for his future.


This is the faith that only a mother can summon up, when the Boychick looks like this at 11:00 AM on a Sunday morning.

Yikes! I am glad you can't see the rest of his room in the picture.

School Update: AS, Academics, and Advocacy

I can't believe that the Boychick's first semester in high school is almost over!
When did December sneak up on us?

Since we are almost to the halfway point of the Boychick's freshman year at EMHS, I think it's a good time to post a school update. (I meant to do so at the quarter, but we were in the middle of the High Holy Days).

This semester has been one of adjustments, testing, social triumphs and tragedies, and learning.
It has been a good semester!

That the Boychick is an Aspie has definitely had an impact, more so now that he is in school.
Although I did a lot of teaching of strategies to compensate academically during our homeschooling days, some of the sensory and social issues were more easily dealt with at home, and some did not rear their pointy little heads.

Now that he is in school, the Boychick has had to deal with being overwhelmed by sensory stimuli and emotional drama--his own and that of others. In some cases he has shut down, and in others, he has become hyperkinetic and contributed to the overall problem in the classroom. He has a skilled special education teacher to whom he can go when he needs help coping. Just today, for example, he left his Humanities homework on his desk in his room. He had worked on it with a friend last night, as was proud that he had completed it without Mom's help or reminding. But then he forgot to put it into his backpack.
So he called, sounding wrung-out and near tears to tell me to bring it with me when I came over to the school. I teach on Tuesday afternoon there.
He told me exactly what to bring and where to find it on his desk.
Bless his pointy little Aspie head! His visual memory is very exact!


When I arrived at school for my weekly volunteer duty (I teach a writing workshop for 6 special education students), the Boychick was in the Resource room. I was surprised to see him, since he is not in the group I teach. I said: "You are the luckiest boy in the world! You forgot your homework for the first time on a Tuesday."
He seemed better then, and took it immediately to his Humanities teacher.
Later, Ms. R., the special education teacher told me that the Humanities teacher did not believe that he had done it. This upset the Boychick, and he shut down and had to go sit in the Resource room to clear his head.

The case of his math class was more difficult. There, he was placed in a class composed of boys with a new albeit very enthusiastic teacher. In the first weeks of school, this group developed a synergy that made them one of those proverbial classes from hell. The problem for the Boychick is that he is very distractible and has great difficulty focusing on his work in a relatively quiet classroom; the drama of this class meant he was not learning.
But the Boychick is perseverative, and easily influenced by others. So he would pick up the pencil tapping or whatever and then continue it long after the others had gotten tired of it.
We have been working with the Boychick on understanding this about himself and developing strategies to cope and prevent the perseverations.

Finally, the day one of the other boys spilled iced tea all over the Boychick's homework, the Boychick had enough.
He got up. He wrung his papers out in the sink.
He put them on the corner of the teacher's desk.
And he left the room.
Permanently.
He told the Educational Assistant that he was not going back there.
Period.
The math teacher invited him for a conference, and the Boychick stuck to his decision.
But he also explained to her why he could not learn in that environment.
They switched his schedule and moved him to another group for math.
Problem solved.
The Engineering Geek and I, Ms. R., the EA, the social worker and the dean of freshman, were all overjoyed at his self-advocacy! This is a giant step towards self-understanding and independence.

There have been other social challenges: dealing with bullies, other freshman boys, upper-classmen. And girls. Oy! But he is finding his way and even met a girl at the Homecoming dance.

Academically, there have been challenges as well.
We told the Boychick that we were not concerned about grade percentages this year, as long as he is passing his courses. He needs to maintain at least a 70% in each class to pass. Otherwise . . . Dum, da dum dah! . . . it's credit recovery a.k.a summer school.
There is also homework every night, major projects and high expectations for performance.

This has been difficult for the Boychick.
This fall, he was re-evaluated for Special Education, and the testing shows why he has difficulty. Once again, no valid IQ score could be calculated.
He had the classic Asperger pattern: very high verbal comprehension (does not require language pragmatics), very high perceptual organization (requires good visual-spatial skills); very low working memory (requires auditory input), very low processing speed.
In the academic testing, he shows large discrepancies between his potential and performance in math calculation (it's the working memory and processing speed), as well as in writing organization and mechanics. He has auditory processing deficits, and considerable visual strengths.

I do expect that we can improve working memory, but only marginally, if we have passed the known critical period of development. We will need to work with him on organizational skills, as well as on compensatory strategies for his deficits.
He also needs to be challenged in his areas of considerable strength.
Like reading: I am so glad that he is a reader!
The IEP will have social and transition (to adulthood) goals as well.

Sigh. I had really thought that we might not need the IEP given the great progress the Boychick made while homeschooling. But because of his social deficits and mind-blindness, as well as his considerable difficulties with auditory processing, he needs interventions to even out his skills and succeed academically in the school setting. He also needs accommodations such as extra time on written assignments, small-group testing, written instructions, and the use of a calculator for speed work in math.

Overall, though, I appreciate that the Boychick's considerable intelligence makes it much easier to compensate for and circumvent his considerable learning disabilities.
The same is true for the social-communication disability which is at the heart of AS.
Cognitive methods can be used to teach social skills and language pragmatics because the Boychick is smart enough to use them.

The Boychick can have a good and productive life.
His considerable intellectual skills may even make it a spectacularly successful life.
But he (and we) will have to work much harder to make it so.

Fortunately, I think we up to the challenge.

Changes

IN WHICH THE BOYCHICK FLEXES HIS WINGS

AND THE MOTHER LOOKS FOR GRACE....

Although the days are still sunny and hot,

and the afternoons feature spectacular thunderheads building over the mountains, the mornings have been cool, foggy and misty in the Sandias. The sunflowers are blooming, and will soon become heavy with seed; the first harbingers of autumn wildflowers comes to us with mid-August.




This morning, I wore my 'hoodie,' on our morning constitutional--a sure sign of the approaching seasonal shift.


And this autumn is bringing changes to Los Pecos Homeschool.


Difficult and yet joyful changes, as our once small chicks take different steps towards leaving the nest.


The Chem Geek Princess is preparing to buy a townhouse in Albuquerque. She has already started her professional life as a chemist, starting paying her own health and car insurance, and acting like a responsible adult in many ways. Now, she will take that final step of moving out on her own, well-launched, if I do say so myself!


The Boychick has decided to attend high school. This decision was a full year in the making, and we did not take this step lightly. The decision was predicated on securing him a place in the freshman class of East Mountain High School, a small community charter high school. This school has a block schedule that reduces transitions, small class sizes, and a curriculum that includes many options in the natural sciences. The Boychick has gotten a place in the class of 2012, and yesterday we registered him for his classes.


It all started last fall, when the Boychick and I sat down to discuss his options for a high school education. These were: continue with homeschooling--which I was fully prepared to do--and add Central New Mexico Community College classes as needed, or try for a place at EMHS. There was no talk of returning to regular public schools in our area. The Albuquerque high schools are too big and far away for a homeschooled boy from the mountains, and the Moriarity school--we are technically in their district--is equally distant and does not have the academic emphasis we think is necessary. During our discussions, the Boychick floated the idea of going to school. My heart was heavy--I have invested quite a bit of my identity into being a homeschooler--but I heard him out objectively.


His reasoning was that he has developed confidence in his ability to learn, that his sister is moving out soon and our lives will change, and that there are certain subjects that he wants to learn in the company of friends; his friend A., for example, was planning to attend East Mountain. "Could we consider it?" he asked.

Yes, of course we could.


This spring, we entered Boychick's name in the lottery, and we attended both a parent meeting and a student open house. The school is indeed small and there is no possibility of Boychick becoming lost in "the system." The school has a reputation for academic excellence, parent involvement, and unique methods, such as discovery learning and project-based learning. These are all good for our young maverick mind .


Then, in March, we heard that the Boychick had not made the lottery and that he was placed on a waiting list. Part of me was sad for my boy's high hopes, but part of me was already planning our homeschooling alternatives. However, in April, the school called and told us that a place had opened up for the Boychick, and so the round of planning and placement began.

At his interview, the Boychick wowed the committee with the reading he was doing, and there was some discussion of re-testing him for special education and gifted services. I wrote a up report about his previous IEP--which has expired. Then, there were questions about his AS and whether we needed LD services. I was not so thrilled because of the confusion engendered. I know, I know--I am a special educator--but I am also a homeschool mom, and the 'officialness' of the paperwork and labels that follow our kids is intimidating.

Until registration, there was a little part of me that wondered how this might all work out.


Yesterday, the registration was a little chaotic--I forgot to remind the Boychick's advisor (who is new) to give him a Student Planner, there were no supplies lists available, and the question of special education was brought up. More confusion, because this new special education teacher did not know that the interviewing committee thought that Boychick should be placed in gifted humanities; she was focused on remediation--which I do not believe we need. She had no paperwork, and wanted "a clear copy of his current IEP." He does not have one. The last one written for him was at the end of grade 4, and does not in any way describe the Boychick as he is now. She brought up the idea of re-testing. I demurred, but there was no time for discussion. They found the report I had written but there was no time for us to talk intelligently.


I was ready to take my son home and prepare to continue homeschooling. It just felt safer.

But then my son talked to her for a moment or two so intelligently about his strengths and weaknesses, that I thought better of it. He does not want to be tested again. He does not care to be is placed in the gifted humanities. He has very specific goals for himself. And he wants to go to East Mountain High School.

Deep. Breath. Okay.

Today, I am trying to make an appointment with his advisor, the special education teacher, to convey our goals and desires in a private, quiet setting as much unlike registration as possible.

I am trying not to panic. I am trying not to imagine the Pink Floyd Movie "Another Brick in the Wall" scene.

This is a small, alternative high school. We can work this out. I. Will. Breathe.

I have to remind myself that we made a good, reasoned decision.

That we researched this thoroughly.

That it is always hard to let them go into the big, big world with their big, big selves!

That this is hard for me. For me, and not for him. I'm a Jewish mother, I worry!

The Boychick, on the other hand, is having a marvelous time.
He is saying what he thinks.
He is being heard.


I need to change my tune from "The Wall" to John Denver:



"Its a sweet, sweet dream--

Sometimes I'm almost there,

Sometimes I fly like an eagle...

like an eagle, I go soaring high..."
---John Denver, Looking for Space



That's the Boychick. He is flexing his wings.
He is looking for space.

And I must have the grace to send him forth into the big, big world with my blessing.

IRD Second Week: Immediacy and the Ghost of Failure

Yesterday, my teaching day in Santa Fe, marked the end of my second week teaching reading.
This week, I have been thinking about my older students, particularly those who have difficulties with reading.




In my dealings with students, I have noticed a marked contrast between the enthusiastic, look-what-I-can-do attitudes of the younger students (even the shy ones) and an attitude of discomfort and resistance in the middle and high school students.





Part of that difference is, I am sure, the sense of terminal coolness that American teens feel obligated to project. That accounts for the quieter room, and the uneasy glances these students direct to the opposite sex, and to me, the "old lady" invading what would otherwise be TeenSpace. But what I am observing in some of my slower readers is deeper than that. It is a sense of failure that dogs their efforts and fuels their resistance to working towards improvement.

As I was talking with my supervisor the other day, I realized that they have been taught to see themselves as failures in school. Now, before the AFT and NEA come after me, I want to clarify! I am not saying that teachers have actually called these kids failures to their faces, though I would not be suprised if some have. What I am saying is that the way we teach in the public k-12 schools today teaching many students to see themselves as failures.


I believe this sense of inadequacy has roots in two ideas; one of which we teach inadvertently and one that underlies our entire culture of learning in the United States.
I will address the last part first.


American public schooling is modeled on Prussian schooling (I refuse to call it education!) that was developed in the 19th century. The purpose of the Prussian model was to inculcate a student's sense of place in the social heirarchy by training in a rather deterministic way. The vast majority of school-children in Prussia were to be trained to work and obey their betters, who received a real education in separate schools. In the United States, we followed this model in the name of education, ostensibly to teach the unwashed, immigrant masses to be a good and obedient workforce. However, this model never had quite the same results as in Prussia, because Americans also carried the Jeffersonian ideal of an educated, civic-minded populace responsible for reigning in government and enjoying rights protected by the Constitution.


Nevertheless, in American education, as in the American populace in general, the idea that educational success is due more to native ability than to hard work has become entrenched.
(This is, oddly enough, not the case in modern, western Germany, where hard work and discipline receive more credit for educational success). What this means where the rubber meets the road is that students who are not immediately successful in school begin to see themselves as unable to succeed, and give up, resisting attempts by teachers and parents to help them through other instructional methods.


In the culture of American education, we inadvertently reinforce this notion of some "congenital" propensity to failure among otherwise normally intelligent children by nurturing and rewarding immediate success above long-term growth in knowledge. We do this by how grades are calculated and by how we view struggle in learning. We tend to equate lack of struggle and immediate good test results with success, at the expense of rewarding success that come with struggle and hard work. In so doing, we teach students that education means the ability to put the one right answer in blank rather than the ability to ask good questions and solve problems.


NOTE to Classical Education Yeckies: I am not disparaging the learning of facts. They are an important and indispensible part of the background required for reasoning. I am suggesting that the mere ability to spout facts does not an educated person make. Children must be taught background (facts, known information, developed concepts) and reasoning (the ability to manipulate previously aquired knowledge in order to understand patterns of thought within a discipline).


In so doing, we have taught the students that there is an immediate right answer that can be bubbled in on a test form, and that it is more valuable to be able to immediately put the right answer in the blank than it is to work doggedly on a problem, making and correcting numerous mistakes, in order to arrive at a successful solution.


By these criteria, Thomas Edison was a failure.
Remember him? The inventor of the lightbulb who said that it's discovery was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?

We need to think about how we view struggle and hard work when we are teaching our children. Yes, there is much in the early stages of learning to read that is fun and, for many kids, painless. But there does come a point where the child must practice decoding even though it is slow, in order to gain facility with reading that will become automatic.

For our older kids, those who are already convinced that they are failures, it is much harder but definitely worthwhile for use to talk to them about their struggles and express confidence in their ability to be finally successful. But since it did not come easily to them at the beginning, we now must expend more efforts overcoming their resistance.

Just remember, though, that this is resistance we have taught them.

I often hear smug adults critizing young people about their propensity towards immediate results and immediate rewards.


I want to respond by saying: "What do you expect? We taught them to measure success this way."


And more, this reflection becomes reason number 257 for why I am glad that I have homeschooled my kid.

Proud to Claim the Title

There has been much discussion in recent months about the California ruling that might have required all homeschooling parents in that state to obtain a teaching license in order to teach their own kids. That ruling was decertified.

However, I just learned over at Corn and Oil that the California Teacher's Association filed an Amicus Brief that claimed, among other things, that allowing homeschooling would cause "educational anarchy" in the old Bear Flag Republic. This assertion is discussed further at Principled Discovery.

Now, I am a certified teacher in my state. I also hold an MA in Special Education, alongside advanced degrees in Biology, and I am currently teaching reading programs for IRD, a private company founded expressly to help people of all ages become absorbed and proficient readers.

However, given the state of public education today, I am proud to claim the title of Educational Anarchist. Public education in the United States has become a political boondoggle in which the interests of those who gain power and treasure through the Educational-Industrial Complex are paramount, and the interests of those being educated counts for very little. As in many other areas of life in these United States, the Federal Government has claimed for itself the power and authority that ought to be held by citizens making decisions for themselves as to what constitutes the good life.

According to dictionary.com, the word anarchy is derived from the Greek word Archon, which means an absolute ruler, a tyrant. I am opposed to tyranny in all forms, and bow to no earthly absolute ruler. I believe that the increasing centralization of power in public education is destructive to the very idea of education, and I have written extensively about that on this blog.

I am a proud educational anarchist!

Long live liberty and the freedom of thought that made this country great!

The Educational Anarchist logo above was designed by Imperceptibility and was found at Principled Discovery.

In Training: The Heart of It All

Today in training we had a special treat.

In the afternoon, the director of the teaching division of IRD was with us, and he spent an hour talking to us about the importance of reading to the development of a child. It was an informative and passionate talk that reminded us all of why we had chosen this commitment, delivered at that time when we were all feeling more than a bit tired, albeit willing to soldier on. But we needed the philosophical justification to balance all of the technical teaching nitty-gritty that we had been focused on.

I remember the tone more than the actual words, but here is some of what I do remember.

Fifty years ago, and more, young people 18-22 were the demographic group that read the most in the United States Now, they are the least likely to pick up a book. To me, this is sad beyond words.

There is a great deal of research that shows that the paths of readers and non-readers diverge after the summer between 4th and 5th grade. Those kids who love reading will begin reading voraciously--and over the next year read tens of thousand to a million words. These readers will gain more and more fluency and reading speed, and will come to love immersing themselves in books, and thus gain very important cultural, personal and spiritual value from their reading. Those kids who do not love reading will read only what is required and never for pleasure. They will lose ground in many important ways, and are likely to never experience the joy and pleasure of reading. They are also far less likely to develop the value systems that come from immersion in reading of great fiction and literature. So our students who are entering the 4th or 5th grade next fall, and particularly those who are struggling readers, present a small window of opportunity to us to help them become readers relatively painlessly. We do work with older kids as well, but in those situations we must do a great deal of catching them up in their technical skills as well as teaching them to love books. This presents a far greater challenge, although it is doable.

I will have more to say about this in the coming weeks but I really wanted to share this tidbit with you.

Also, as I had my fingerprinting done--all of us must have a background check to work with children--the technician out from IRD's Novato office noticed that I had been a school teacher before teaching for the institute. He said, "My wife's a teacher, and she sometimes comes with me on these trips and hears some of the training you are doing. She says that all teachers should get this kind of training."

I had to agree. It is difficult for those of us with old habits that must be changed, but the more I grok (remember that word?) the logic of the curriculum, and the beauty and economy with which it is put together (there are no superfluous words or activities in the lessons), the more I can imagine the transformations it can accomplish with our students. I am learning so much about teaching that will transfer to any other teaching I will ever do.

I am still a novice, but I am learning to teach reading from the philosophy of immersion.

Every lesson, every word we will say has the ultimate aim of developing in our students the capacity and the desire to immerse themselves in books.

Today, I am feeling grateful to have the opportunity to learn like this.

Today's Chicago picture is of the Chicago Theatre in the Loop.

The small picture here is the same--I accidently posted the thumbnail version, and I can't figure out how to delete pictures.

But Is It Education?

So, I've got the angst off my chest. Sniffle. I feel much better now.

And while surfing the homeschooling blogosphere, I happened upon an interesting post by Dana over at Principled Discovery about higher education and what has been termed the "educational industrial complex" by none other than Paul Peterson, Harvard's Education Policy and Governance chair.

I have had some grave concerns about the differences between my own college education, and the college experiences that my daughters' generation is having. I have thought for a long time that such universities have neglected undergraduate education and have forgotten their mission to truly educate students at that level. In my experience listening to and mentoring young people in college, I have learned that the university bureaucracy, which is mitigated for the sake of graduate students, has become a daily ordeal for undergraduates; sucking up their time and their money, it often costs them extra semesters of study to get their degrees because of adminstrative lack of concern and sheer, unadulterated incompetence. Harsh words I know, and certainly not applicable uniformly upon all adminstrators, and yet how else does one explain advisement by administrators rather than professors, or the frequent, repeated loss of paperwork?

But in my opinion, what is even more damning in the 'Educational-Industrial System' is the lack of understanding by those who ought to know better about what teaching really means at the level of "higher" education. Instead of being a mentoring process that nurtures and challenges young minds, higher education at the undergraduate level, like K-12 education, has become a conveyor belt in which thinking has been replaced by the reflexive desire to treat unequal things equally.

And we all know the result of such an education for conformity:




Mind-sausage.

In talking to young students that I know and mentor, I hear stories on a regular basis of upper division classes being taught by first-year graduate students, many of whom do not know the content they are expected to teach the students with no supervision from professors. I hear tales of professors who refuse to meet with students that want to know why they did poorly on exams and papers. I have heard of professors who spend class time discussing their political views and thereby making short shrift of the content the students have paid to learn. In the eyes of many of the young people I have talked to, therefore, a college education has become a series of hoops to jump through as efficiently as possible rather than an opportunity to participate in the Great Conversation of our culture.

Being in an academic setting, I have heard professors lament that "students these days" do not care for the knowledge that they could take home, but only for the points needed to make the grade and graduate. But I seldom hear these professors lament the lost opportunities to teach their students to think differently. The undergraduate system is set up in such a way that students must care about points more than knowledge.

Among many university professors, there seems to be an attitude that "raising standards" means acting as gatekeepers to diplomas, rather than mentoring students to help them achieve their best work. This spring, a number of students, some of whom are academically quite talented, were refused graduation under rather unreasonable circumstances. For example, a student who choses a difficult and challenging course for this last semester of the college career, and who struggles with the material early on, may earn an A on a cumulative final and still fail the course.

During my college days, such a thing would not happen. A professor who is truly concerned about students would consider that, yes, the student struggled at first--but the learning curve is logarythmic--rising slowly at first, and then reaching an inflection point and then taking off to heights previously unattainable. (This is how Dr. Reiter, my P-Chem professor explained it to me when I wanted to drop the course back in 1980). If you aced Dr. Reiter's cumulative final, you would pass the course, even if you had flunked a test at the beginning. This was so not because he was giving an undeserved grade. Nor was it because he did not care about "standards." It was because a person who can ace a cumulative final has mastered the material in the course and has earned a passing grade. So I was taught--mentored--by my old chemistry "prof" not to be afraid to take difficult courses and learn very difficult material.

Students now are afraid of the hard courses. And with good reason. Lose one too many points out of the total, and no matter how much one may have learned, it doesn't matter. A person could have spent much money and lost many opportunity costs, only to come out with nothing except the label failure after four years.

When I was responsible for student grades as a graduate instructor for genetics, I thought of it this way. Two people climb a mountain. Maybe one starts out at a different point than another, and encounters a more difficult course. That one slips, slides, groans and gets back up, trying another way. And maybe another. Both reach the top of the mountain. Both has "mastered" the mountain. But which one knows that mountain better? It may very well be the one that struggled, and fell numerous times, scraping his knees, losing skin from his hands on the ropes. That one left pieces of himself on the mountain and received pieces of the mountain into himself. Likewise, it is the student who struggles who often knows the content of a difficult course the best.

These are the students who, like Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman (z"l), (who almost did not complete his Ph.D.), often have the most contribute to the field. Thank goodness Feynman had a mentor who did not dismiss him as a failure; instead he entered into a discussion with him, and they walked it through to completion.

But what of the Feynmans of tomorrow? They cannot afford to risk four years, all the money and opportunity costs, and thus may play it safe and do what is easy and predictible.

And those who do take risks may very well be labled failures for the very characteristics that give them the most to contribute to their fields.

Yes. It's still college. But you can hardly call it an education.

A Practical Matter: Power and Control at Machon

Last week, I wrote about my thinking on Jewish prayer. That post was a response to ideas that came from a Christian writer through another blogger, as well as a difficulty N. has been having in Machon--his secondary religious education program. When I wrote, I said that I did not know yet what I was going to do about N.'s concerns.

Concerns. Note the plural ending there.

There has been more going on at Machon than the experience N. had during T'fillah last Wednesday night. I have discussed the concern we had last spring, as well as problems that occured this fall in other posts here on Ragamuffin Studies. And those problems combined with some incidents that happened in early January, are what is driving my thinking about the goodness-of-fit between N.'s unique needs, my educational philosophy, and the Machon program. Once again. Oy.

Our rabbis taught in Pirke Avot: "Turn it and turn it again, for everything is within it." They were talking about wrestling with Torah, but it seems that N. and I --and even Bruce and the Chemistry Geek Princess--are having a similar experience with our discussions about wrestling with Machon. So although I am feeling rather grumpy about it, since I have once again made an appointment to go see the rabbi about this, I can say that this mizukis does have the benefit of making us struggle with what our Jewish practice means to us, consider what we want N.'s Jewish education to accomplish, and clarify our values concerning our affiliation with a particular religious institution.

And there is another piece to this puzzle, one that comes out of something N. witnessed in January at Machon, an incident that illustrates issues of control that pertain to a wider discussion about the purpose and practice of education in general.

Last month, N. witnessed part of an incident in which a staff member at Machon engaged in a power struggle with another child at Machon. This staff member is the same one who insists that the students keep their eyes on the prayerbook in T'fillah and follow the Hebrew words with their fingers.

An aside: This is not necessarily a bad technique to improve Hebrew reading skills for some students. And it is true that in the Jewish practice of prayer, a tight focus on the Hebrew words is emphasized. My objection to this practice is two-fold: where it is done, and to whom it is done. First, that this kind of drill is better reserved for Hebrew school proper, and not for the practice of public prayer. Second, that the technique be applied kindly and creatively, and only with students who's learning will be benefited by it. Some students either do not need it because they already can track the service well, or they will not benefit from it because it is not the best match for how they learn. One size does not fit all.

Back to the incident. The gory details do not matter to us here. (N. gave me a blow-by-blow account, so the incident clearly made an impression on him). The precipitating event does matter. The power struggle started because the student asked this particular staff member for permission to go to the bathroom. And the staff member refused the request.

Think about that. Kids in school are relatively powerless. They must follow the instructions and directions of adult who may or may not care about them. They must accept humbly numerous evaluations of their work, their disposition, their very selves from adults who may or may not appreciate their individuality. And their personal power over their bodily functions is limited by adults for institutional reasons. They may not be allowed to eat when they are hungry, get a drink when they are thirsty, and they must notify an adult if they need to leave the room in order to use the bathroom. Their lack of privacy extends also to the emotional realm, in that feelings such as happiness, joy, rambunctiousness, hurt, anger, and sadness, are all judged as appropriate or not by adults.

Much of this powerlessness and lack of privacy is necessary for the sake of safety and accountability in an institutional setting. But in my years in the classroom, I have witnessed many teachers who took their power over children to an extreme that I judged to be harmful to the child's dignity. Such adult behavior puzzled me and still does. Not every word that comes out of a teacher's mouth is a pearl of wisdom. And even if each word was, a child in need of the bathroom, a drink, or a good cry, is unlikely to hear those pearls anyway. And sometimes, believe it or not, a kid really needs a break from the teacher. And that's okay.

I have taught children of all ages, and I quickly learned to set policies in the classroom to minimize my control over a child's need to use the bathroom, get a drink, or even to go cry in private. I did this by establishing a permanent pass to leave the room. I had two such passes, made of wood, and nicely painted. They were on my demo bench where I taught high school science, and these same passes hung by the door of my Gifted Pull-Out classroom. At the beginning of the year, I explained to the kids that although I understood their desire for dignity and privacy, I also had the obligation to know who was out of the room. And I also had the need not to be verbally interrupted in the middle of a thought. It was distracting. Therefore, a child in need of leaving the room ought to quietly get up, get the pass, and go. Of course, if s/he did not return in a reasonable amount of time, I would probably come looking or send someone else to see if s/he was still breathing. Emergencies like needing to be sick were exceptions, I told them, and if they bolted without a pass, I would certainly follow up right away to ensure their safety and inform the nurse.

It was amazing how well this worked, too. (Of course with the younger elemetary kids, I also had regular bathroom breaks, because the little ones can get so absorbed in the classroom activities that they forget until...oops). I think that the kids appreciated my understanding of their need for some dignity and privacy, and they responded to my respect of their situation by respecting my need to account for them.

Back to the incident N. witnessed at Machon. I might have chalked it up to a mistake on the part of the staff member, except for other evidence of an extreme need for control over others. Evidence that comes from the way in which the T'filllah experience has been handled, the use of a disrespectful tone towards parents when policies are questioned, and attempts to control adults in other situations.

I cannot even guess at what drives this kind of behavior. I can say that it is unlikely to provoke a desirable response. And it certainly did not in this case. The details of the fireworks that ensued, including use of various inappropriate words by the angry student, were known throughout the school. (Another lesson I learned very quickly as a teacher: the kids know everything. Always). Of course, this did nothing to provoke respect by the other students towards this staff member. And, although I am not excusing the response of the student (there are better ways to get your point across), ultimately the responsibility for an incident lies with the person in power. Another lesson I learned early on in my teaching career: never, never engage a power struggle with a student. Nobody wins. But the teacher will be the bigger loser.

On the more personal level, this incident, as well as the other issues of control, have resulted in problems for N. He has become afraid. His generalized anxiety about everything--a common comorbidity of AS--has found a target. He is now anxious about Machon in general, and about T'fillah in particular, when this person is present. On Friday night, we went to Shabbat services, and when this staff member entered the chapel, N. departed. He sat out services in the lounge. This indicates that for him, the fear is not about Machon, but about T'fillah. Or about T'fillah with this person.

So at Seudat Sh'lishit (supper on Saturday evening), we had a discussion. Bruce told him that he understood why N. left services, and explained that we thought if best to let him do so on Friday night. And then I talked about the need to take control of the fear, and focus on the keva (appointed ritual) and kavanah (aim of the heart) of T'fillah in order to carry him beyond his anxiety about this person. After all, he cannot control the presence or actions of another person, he can only control his own. And then we gave him permission to politely tell anyone his limits.

If, for example, during T'fillah, an adult insists on a certain practice--and he is not being disruptive (very important)--he should nod politely and when the adult moves on, go back to praying his own way. Later, after the service is over, he should then respectfully but firmly tell that adult that he has his own way of praying, and that he would like to be left alone to do it. And that should be the end of it. We hope.

If an adult asks him for a hug--another control issue with--you guessed it!--the same person, he should say: "I'm not a touchy, feely person. But I'll be glad to shake your hand." And that should be the end of it. We hope.

Naturally, we practiced these situations, and helped him form a statement that would be seen as polite but firm. In this way, we hope to return to N. some sense of control over his situation and alleviate the anxiety.

This, then, is what we are going to do about it. And this will be the content of my conversation with the rabbi. We've determined that we cannot change the overall situation in Machon, but we hope to change the situation for N. in order to alleviate his anxiety so that he can pray.

I hope this is truly the last time I have to go to the rabbi about Machon. The whole situation feeds my own anxieties. Parents with children who are behaviorally different will understand what I mean. When your kid responds differently than others your parenting is always on trial. And the judgments never go in your favor.
But it's the child's needs that matter.

"A person's a person, no matter how small!"

Smoothing the Stones: Wrestling with the History of Education

First, a favorite quote:

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing just because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its philosophy will hold water."- John William Gardner



This semester, I have been thinking about the ideology of inclusion in special education in the public schools. And in my thinking and reading about the issue, I had come to the conclusion that the mindset of the inclusion ideologues--those who would have us essentially deconstruct special education in favor of full inclusion in the face of contradictory evidence about what kind of instruction works for many students with disabilities--is the consequence of a shoddy philosophical foundation for American education. Essentially, the epistemology (theory of knowledge) embraced by modern American education has been positivism--which has its philosophical origins in Pragmatism. But Positivism is an incomplete philosophy that has neither metaphysics (a theory of reality) nor ethics that are grounded in the foundational axioms of the philosophy. And worse, Positivism does not simply neglect metaphysics, but actively rejects them. An incomplete philosophical basis makes the philosophy unable to "hold water" as John Gardner says in the quote above, or more to the point, it cannot hold its own against the incursions of post-modernist (deconstructivist) thought.



As my thinking on this issue has evolved to this point, I realized that for my Trends and Issues in Special Education class it might be useful to look into the foundational ideas of modern American education, a review of the history of the field, so to speak, in order to understand how we got to this point where advocates for children with disabilities could, with the fervor of the true believer, want to tear down the field entirely, and reconstruct it as a kind of place in which every child will be treated the same regardless of their differences.



And so I have been reading. I started out with secondary sources, such as Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, and then went to primary sources such as John Dewey's Democracy in Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education.And as an antidote to the "schooling" mentality, I also pulled out John Taylor Gatto's An Underground History of American Education. I had ordered this book last year, along with A Different Kind of Teacher, and I read part of it, but got busy with other things and did not finish it then. Although it is not a scholarly book in the traditional sense, Gatto does cite his sources in the text, and presents a compelling view of the aims of modern American education from his experience, as well as from some of the same sources that I am reading.

And this is where it all gets so very interesting, because in the past few weeks I have also

read the columnist Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. (I just realized that I was reading an "underground" history and a "secret" history at the same time. I am hearing the Twilight Zone theme in my head). This book is about the American progressive movement's foundations in, and admiration of European fascism, the history and consequences of progressive politics in the US, and the consequences of a marriage of progressive policy and the American character. Although I am not going to review the book here, I will say it is a fascinating read and that I learned a lot about the history of the early 20th Century in the United States that I did not know previously.

Reading both of these books at the same time produced one of those moments of serendipity that seem almost prophetic. I began to notice that I was reading about the same people and the same big ideas. John Dewey. William James. Jane Addams. Woodrow Wilson.
Of course it was not a complete confluence of thinking--Gatto also discussed the founders of American education as we have it today, and Goldberg was outlining the progressives of the same time period. But the interesting thing to me was that many of these people were the same. Or they knew each other. And they had the same pragmatic, statist world view. Essentially, the goal was to overthrow the "cult" of individualism, and create humanity anew, as cogs in the wheel of the state. If you had to read Bellamy's Looking Backward in high school (a very boring dystopia meant to be a utopia--I admit I read the first 50 pages and then used "skippibus" to pass the test), use that to get a picture of what these people envisioned.If you have not read it, think of the dull, gray monotony of the Soviet Union in its waning years, but without the KGB and the Gulag. Or think of the movie GATTACA.

Of course Education (with a capital "E") was to be the principal way this would be accomplished. In the system envisioned by these reformers, schools would be used to separate the children from their families, their particular cultures and belief systems, and made into useful slaves of the state. Woodrow Wilson said: "The chief job of the educator is to make your children as little like you as possible." In other words, the point of schools at least from the point of view of the educational establishment at Columbia Teacher's College, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, was to destroy the sovereignty of the family, and train (I will not use the word educate) students to think of the state as their true home. Only a few, elite people would be educated in the true sense of the word, those who would have the wisdom to order life for everyone else.

These are scary ideas. And they can be found in the primary sources that I have mentioned. This is not some wild conspiracy theory made up by Gatto, Goldberg or others on the right. Gatto presents a much darker view of the envisioned "nanny state" education, the pernicious violence of empty minds, and the dull unreality of Disneyland. Goldberg believes that an American fascism would be 'totalitarian-lite': Less of the jack-booted brownshirts, and more of the social worker mentality. Less of "Sieg Heil!" and more "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

One ray of light in all of this, is that the teachers and school administrators do not necessarily share these ideas nor do they agree with the incomplete philosophies upon which they are founded. In fact, most schools of education do not teach this history of education in the United States. In my own experience in graduate education (although I cannot speak for the undergraduate level having come by my teaching license in an alternative way) at the master's level, the focus was on methodologies and curriculum, and the history of educational thought was not considered. And although some of the ideas could be gleaned from these very methodologies, I suspect the average teacher working on a project for a class after a full day's work, was not likely to even begin to think about the big ideas at all. Since I was in Gifted Education, we did consider some larger ideas about teaching, and we did discuss the hostility inherent in American education toward the gifted. It was clear to me that American educational philosophy was anti-intellectual, but we did not explore the roots of this, leaving the student to think that it was engendered in the ordinary citizen. We were not let in on the "secret" "underground" history that would make it plain that the anti-intellectual bent of American schools comes from the social engineers of the Progressive movement, not from the farmers and factory workers who wanted their kids to be educated for a better life in the singular, individual sense.

Do you dectect some frustration on my part? You are correct. It is part and parcel of the rearrangement of my internal "maps" of the world. It is the sense of betrayal that Adam and Chava must have felt when they partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and discovered another layer of reality.

Ah, well, this is an education in the true sense. It is the need to grapple with the big ideas of a field, and consider how those ideas shaped the reality we call school and schooling. Certainly, with respect to the current trends and issues in special education, the problem is an incomplete philosophy. But there is an even larger problem to consider. The argument on this larger level is about the purpose of public education in the United States. Is it about preparing our children for the future, teaching them to read and write, to think and to take their place as free citizens of the Republic? Or is it about re-making humanity, and creating a utopia controlled by those who know best what's good for us? The first idea is what the general public thinks about education, and the second resides on the level of progressive social planning. And that leads to another question: Which one of these goals does school, as we currently know it, best fulfill?

And that brings me in a round about way to a personal insight about my choices with regard to my career as a teacher and my choices about the education of my own son. In my years as a teacher, my job choices were toward smaller classrooms where I could teach kids using methodologies that were different than those commonly in use in this day of educating to least common denominator. By teaching special education for children with learning difficulties, behavioral difficulties, and then, the gifted kids, I placed myself outside the mainstream. The first such class I taught were the throw-away kids, the ones that no one cared how I taught them. And the gifted kids were those that the system did not worry about--they'd already met the minimum standards. In this way, I was perhaps, a guerrilla teacher, although certainly I did not think of myself as engaging in subversive activities. My purpose was simply to get through each day with these kids without boring either myself or the students to death. That required the use of 'stealth' methodology. "When an administrator comes in," I'd tell the kids, "look serious. When we close the door, though, we can have fun and get something real accomplished."

And I still had to leave the classroom. Not because I was a bad teacher, nor because I disliked teaching. I was a pretty good teacher, I think, and I enjoyed the teaching. But dealing with the educational establishment became more and more joyless and wearing, though I did not understand why. And there was my son to think about. He was not making it in the classroom. This was partly because he had disabilities that the school had difficulty dealing with, but it was mostly because they could not capitalize on his unique strengths.

But when I took N. out of school, I did not fully realize the implications of our choices. As we evolved toward unschooling, I still did not recognize the revolutionary nature of what homeschooling means. Only now, as I reflect on how it has impacted the growth of my son, who has become a confident, self-reliant, adventurous learner; and the impact on our family, for we have become people who like each other and want to be together--only now do I have an inkling of how revolutionary homeschooling is. It appears to be a political act done for deeply personal reasons. It is a repudiation of the fascist notion that people are interchangable parts, who exist for the purpose of some greater "utopia" governed by those who always know what's best for everyone. And it is a very personal journey from the narrow places where my son's future could be predicted by IQ scores and standardized tests, to a vision of the high places of individuality and choice.

And is there hope in this field? How will I continue in it, knowing that everything I believe stands in opposition to the philosophy and to the commonly held beliefs about the field I have chosen? And yet, within me there is a sense that this is an important pursuit. And I take hope from the very sources that have made me wrestle with my internal maps.

"A relative handful of people could change the course of schooling significantly by resisting the suffocating advance of centralization and standardization of children, by being imaginative and determined in their resistance, by exploiting manifold weaknesses in the institution's internal coherence: the disloyalty its own employees feel toward it. It took 150 years to build this apparatus; it won't quit breathing overnight. The formula is to take a deep breath, then select five smooth stones and let fly. The homeschoolers have already begun."
--John Taylor Gatto, "I Quit, I Think" from The Underground History of American Education.

This wrestling with a philosophy that does not hold water may have its uses. After all, it is water that smooths the stones.