Bug Hunting

For the last few weeks, as DD and I walk around the neighbourhood, she’s been finding these little bugs on trees. She thinks they are adorable and tries to carry them around for as long as possible before they make a leap for freedom (or perish in the grip of her overenthusiastic fingers). We tried to search the Internet for its identity, but it’s not as easy as one might think to narrow descriptors down to a set that will produce a reasonable number of hits.

Today, we received a much anticipated Amazon.ca order containing Insects of the Pacific Northwest. Within about 10 minutes of perusing the pages we were able to identify our mystery bug. It was, as I suspected, the larval stage of an insect – turns out to be the Asian Lady Beetle. We see these around here all the time; they are a favorite of both kids. DD was very excited to find out that her favorite little black tree insect was actually a baby ladybug!

But there was more to be learned from leafing through this book. We also found the identity of a mysterious “leaf pimple” we’d been noticing. On regular green, maple-shaped leaves we’d see these raised, egg-shaped red bumps that seemed to be formed out of the leaf’s very own tissue. I thought it might be some parasite, except that it didn’t appear to be a separate entity. Well now we know that these are maple bladder galls, made by the maple bladder mite. They are abnormal growths of the leaf tissue itself, but inside these hollow protuberances are nurseries filled with baby mites. Next time we find a leaf with galls on it, we’re going to try and dissect it (these ones in particular are about the size of a small grain of rice).

Finally, we were able to identify the species of snail that DD keeps finding and wanting to bring home (yes, it’s an insect book but they did have a few snails in it). A few weeks ago we went so far as to buy a container in which to keep a snail she managed to hang on to all the way home, but it eventually died; we didn’t know what to feed it and the cage wasn’t cleaned (it was out on the balcony) so eventually the food scraps we threw in there rotted. Again a search of the Internet returned far too many hits with far too few photos, making identification difficult. But it only took a few seconds to find the snail in our book: it’s a pacific sidebanded snail, and it eats herbaceous plants. Maybe the next one will fare better with a steady supply of fresh leaves (turns out they don’t eat mushy fruit!).

All in all it was a rather exciting and informative day. We’ll certainly be carrying our “bug book” around with us for future insect identification. This is one of the wonderful benefits of homeschooling – we get to learn along with our children. I probably never would have taken the time to figure out what the leaf galls were if not for DD’s interest (in fact, I may never have noticed them in the first place). She not only stimulates me to stop and smell the flowers, she gives me an excuse to go find out what we can about each one.

Just say no to Adolescence?

My head is still spinning from reading this wonderful post by Miranda over at Nurtured By Love. I couldn’t help but consider the advantages that homeschooling, and particularly unschooling, give when it comes to allowing our children to experience adulthood when they are ready, not when the school system says they are (see the post below). I’ll expand on the topic later when I’ve had more time to digest it (and when I’ve ordered the book from Amazon, lol).

why was this girl in school?

Last night I watched a lovely speech by a 19 year old “scientific prodigy”. In her speech, she talks about a family trip to the Grand Canyon she took with her family when she was nine years old. Never an avid reader, her attention was drawn to a book about the Ebola virus epidemic. She became enthralled with the book and decided that she wanted to do research in neuroscience one day. From that time on she read every book on the subject she could get her hands on. By the time she was 14 she was begging for the opportunity to work in a research laboratory, and within a couple of years was designing her own experiments and making important contributions to her field.

It was apparent listening to this young woman that she had amazing powers of perception and critical thinking. In science, you need to ask the right questions. Being able to do so requires an appreciation of “the big picture”. You also need to be able to design experiments that test that specific question. Most of us require years of specialized training in research to reach the point where we’re able to tackle difficult subjects, but this girl is already doing what many PhD’s are still trying to do, and she’s only just starting University.

Several things struck me about her story:

1. her interest was sparked by picking up a book while on vacation: this was not something that was introduced to her through school as “required reading” or as part of any curriculum
2. she took the initiative to go out and find books relating to the subject that interested her; you can best believe that these books were not the ones she was being given to read in school
3. note that she needed no coercion to do this; it was not part of any mandatory education scheme; she had an interest and she pursued it on her own
4. by age 14 she was ready to go work in a laboratory and do productive science; she doesn’t elaborate on whether this was part-time work or a summer job, but presumably the time she spent in the lab was limited by the requirement that she attend high school for the next 4 years

I had to ask myself: what was the point of this young woman ever attending school? Everything she learned to get to the career she wanted for herself was done on her own merit, with her own motivation and self-direction. School could not provide her with the level of stimulation and information she was ready for. And while she didn’t elaborate on where she got her powers of critical thinking (other than to note that her grandmother was a scientist), it’s a safe bet to say that she didn’t learn those skills at school.

I know – I was a product of the school system, too. It took me several years to “get” how scientific research is done. I see student after student come through my lectures, I mark their exams, and I see how little they understand critical thinking. And these students are the “cream of the cream”. They were A students just to get accepted into university, and then doubly A students to get accepted into our program. These are kids with 98% averages, and most of them are completely stumped when I pose an exam question requiring more than just regurgitating notes they took in class. I could write a whole ‘nother post on that subject (and I probably will), but suffice it to say that schools utterly fail at teaching the kind of critical thinking that this woman was naturally gifted in

Though I doubt most other people even noticed this aspect of her speech, what I got from it was a shining example of what children can and will accomplish when they are motivated, inspired, and driven to pursue that which interests them and which stimulates their natural curiosity. Her story demonstrates the sheer uselessness of school, because there was nothing in her formal education that led to her success. Had she been a homeschooled kid she likely would have been working in labs at an even earlier age and making important discoveries even sooner, since she wouldn’t have had to waste 75% of her time going to high school. Not that she isn’t young enough already to be achieving so much; my point is simply that school was not just “not helpful”, it was a hindrance.

Watch the video. When she speaks, she radiates the kind of raw enthusiasm, passion, and the sort of excitement that moves scientists everywhere to seek, to ask, and to explore. I know what she is feeling, and it is truly wonderful. That is the sort of passion that drives, and it is sadly absent in most classrooms.

college isn’t for everybody, and shouldn’t be

I spent 12 years at university and came away with three degrees. I loved my years at university; it was a time of total freedom and opportunity and I savoured all of it. I was able to work in a field that I found stimulating, interesting, and rewarding.

But university (or “college”, as it’s collectively called in the US) is not for everybody, and I don’t believe it should be. Nowadays post-secondary education is held up as THE goal for every caring and concerned parent who wants the “best” for their child. This post over at Open Path Learners is what inspired me to write today. It’s just one example of many showing how pervasive this attitude is throughout our society. And yet nobody stops to ask the obvious questions…

If everybody goes to college, what value does that place on a college education? Not too many years before I went to university, you could get a nice research scientist position at a big pharmaceutical company with just a Master’s degree. But by the time I was doing my M.Sc you needed a PhD for such a position. Not because the job got any more difficult, but because there were so many applicants with Master’s degrees that having a PhD made you stand out. By the time I was doing my PhD, you needed a post-doctoral fellowship to land the same position. Again, not because the job got any tougher, but because PhD’s were being churned out by the thousands. The more candidates there are with the minimum requirements, the higher the bar gets raised. These days, a Bachelor’s degree is almost useless. I can’t think of any science-related positions that you can get with just a B.Sc. You’ll end up washing dishes in a laboratory, or typing memos in a research institution, or schlepping free samples of the latest antihypertensive agent around to doctors’ offices as a pharmaceutical sales rep.

If everybody goes to college, how are they all going to get jobs? As far as academia goes, there are only so many research institutions and so much grant money to go around. And the tech industries, while growing, certainly can’t supply jobs for every college graduate if more and more of them are graduating each year (and let’s not forget that places like India and China are churning out a few more hundred thousand college-degree holding job applicants each year as well).

Is college the only (or even the surest) route to success? I don’t think so. First it depends on how you define success (money? healthy, mutually satisfying relationships? job satisfaction? quality of life?). Second, the world is rife with stories about those who have succeeded without college degrees. These folks are usually held up as some sort of anomaly. But I fear that our total emphasis on college education as the only path to success robs young people of the opportunities to pursue other, equally satisfying pathways: they don’t hear about these other choices, and those choices are not held up as worthwhile endeavours relative to the goal of going to college.

It’s ridiculous that we hold a university degree up as the goal all parents should have for their children. As a homeschoolers, one of the most frequent questions I get (second to the socialization myth) is “what about college?”. Instead of considering college as ONE option for kids whose talents would benefit from such an experience, we treat it as the only goal worth shooting for. Immediately we are doing two things. 1) we are setting up a whole host of kids for failure, and 2) we are depriving ourselves of the talents of millions of kids who would be better served by following alternate paths to education.

Case in point: the local construction scene. When I was growing up, being a plumber or an electrician was considered “blue collar”. And construction workers? They were the building-site equivalent of janitors. Then we had a real estate boom, a construction boom, and a home renovation boom. Plumbers, electricians, and other so-called “skilled labourers” are bringing in six-figure salaries and have more work than they can handle. Construction sites will hire anybody with four limbs and a hard hat, and if you prove capable and reliable you will have no shortage of well-paid work.

I feel sorry for people who get sucked into this, and even more sorry for their kids. For the lucky few whose talents and learning style fit the mainstream educational system it will be fine. But what about all those kids who don’t want to go to college – who will support and encourage them? And will they recognize that this doesn’t make them any less capable, or potentially successful than their university-bound peers? And will the parents recognize that there is more to life than getting a degree before they have permanently damaged the relationship between themselves and their children?

I’ll end with a link to a marvellous speech by Sir Ken Robinson entitled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”. In it, he talks about the college issue. The clip is about 15 minutes, but I promise you it’s well worth the time.

but wait, it *does* get even more lame!

In a recent post I linked to a site that is a prime example of how ridiculous our society’s attitudes are regarding school and its importance. Caps and gowns for preschool graduation?! You gotta be kidding me – what exactly is there to celebrate? What exactly did these kids do that is cause to applaud them?

I’m reminded of a line from The Incredibles: Mrs. Incredible is harping on Mr. Incredible for not being more involved with the family; case in point: her son’s “graduation”. Mr. Incredible replies:

It’s not graduation! He’s moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade. It’s psychotic – they keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity!

I experienced this “celebration of mediocrity” firsthand last night. I attended my best friend’s son’s high school graduation. My first shock came when the emcee welcomed us to their “School-Leaving Ceremony”. Huh??

It seems that the kids aren’t done with their exams yet, and so nobody has officially graduated. Why not wait until they know they passed? Well, that might leave out the ones who didn’t. And one may presume from the title of the ceremony that those who don’t graduate won’t be doing their repeat year at this school (apparently that would be a social death sentence). So instead of celebrating graduation, the entire evening was celebrating the fact that they are leaving high school. In fact, when the kids walked up to receive their diplomas, what they got instead was a “School Leaving Certificate”.

I shit you not.

This was a pretty fancy shindig. It was held in The Orpheum, an ornately decorated and beautiful theatre in downtown Vancouver (pictured here). There were representatives from the School Board, and of course the friends and families of over 200 graduates (my entire high school had just over 200 kids!). There were florid speeches about “going out into the world” from the principal and cheesy songs from the senior choir. The speakers used words like “dedication”, “accomplishments”, “perserverance”, etc….

All this to describe the fact that they are leaving high school???

And you know, even if we are talking about getting one’s diploma, really – what exactly are we celebrating? As the principal said, the kids “have met the requirements for education as established by the BC Ministry of Education”…blah, blah, blah. It all sounded so institutionalized.

These kids did nothing more than what they were told to do and what was expected of them. It’s pretty safe to say that none of these kids chose to be in school, none of them had any say in what they learned, how they learned it, or when they learned it. The measure of their learning is a subjective one at best, and those who scored highest on the tests are not necessarily those who will meet end up happiest or most successful.

There were academic awards handed out, and I found myself wondering about the kids who received them. How many of those kids felt intense pressure to maintain high scores so that they could meet their parents’ (and society’s) expectations that they go to college or university? What was the attitude of the parents – were high marks rewarded and anything short of an A punished? What were the kids’ lives like in terms of finding a balance between striving for academic excellence and just being a kid? How many of those achievers were motivated by their own inner dreams and aspirations, rather than those that others imposed upon them?

As I sat watching the ceremony I felt as though I were at the end of some giant assembly line, applauding as yet another package of product was wheeled out the factory door. This featureless crowd of 200 faces appears on stage every year, getting the same cliche-riddden speeches and the same vague acknowledgements. It seemed all laid out for us there, for those who choose to question what they’re watching, rather than accepting it as the immense rite of passage our society makes it out to be. I think only those who contemplate a life for their kids where the children lead their education, create their own successes, and have the freedom to truly revel in their own accomplishments can appreciate the irony of last night’s pageantry. The cogs and wheels of planned, institutionalized education grind on, spitting out those who are lucky enough to navigate the system and discarding those who do not.

But not without awarding them a “School Leaving Certificate”.

Hilarious homeschooling comics

Check it out:

www.inflatablestudios.com/

Could it get any more lame than this?

http://www.rhymeuniversity.com/deluxe_package.asp

Oh how hard we work to convince our children that this is something truly valuable…

What we’re missing out on…

When we visit the local PS playground and the kids come out for recess or lunch break, I am continually saddened by what I see. There are about 50 kids running around with only 1 or 2 adults in supervision. They are there for the major incidents, but the myriad little travesties occurring all around them go unnoticed.

First there were 3 girls, around age 8 or 9. Two were up top of a play structure, informing the third girl that she was not allowed to come up right now. Apparently, this girl really wanted to join the other two, and followed them around the whole time. The other two would make her perform tasks, saying things like “you can come up with us but first you have to climb up the slide to pass the test”. Basically this one girl really wanted to be part of their small group and the other two were not interested, but taking advantage of her desire by abusing her and playing power trips on her.

In another scene, a group of girls age 9 were on a see-saw. DS wanted to play and one of them came over and said they’d make room for him. They were sweet girls and very kind to DS. A boy ran screaming past and said “shutup” to one of the girls when she said hello to him. She turned to me and said “he hates me, but I don’t mind”.

While we were on the see-saw an overweight girl, probably the same age, came over and started talking to the girl at the end of the see-saw. I didn’t hear exactly what she said but her body language was disturbing. She had that Jerry Springer thing going, with the wiggling head, hip thrust to the side, and finger pointing attitude. She was laying into this other girl, who seemed to be doing her best to ignore it. I could see how this large girl was exerting a lot of power over the other one, and from the perspective of a 9 year old this girl must have seemed very intimidating. I didn’t hate on the girl – her weight for starters, combined with who-knows-what sort of emotional issues, were obviously warping her ability to relate to others in an empathetic way. But tell that to the victims of her agression.

I saw boys being bullied by other boys. I saw kids being taunted and teased. To an unwary eye, it might be easy to dismiss this as “normal kids stuff”. The nature of the teasing is so childish to an adult that its easy to forget how much it hurts when you are, in fact, a child.

It’s true that many of these kids come from immigrant families who have recently experienced war (many Bosnians and Serbs). It’s true that many of these families are poor. There is a large after-school care program, a testament to how few hours these kids get to spend with their families each day. But I don’t think anything I see on that playground is different from any school in the country, with a few very minor exceptions.

It frustrates me that so much lip service is being given to “anti-bullying” campaigns in the schools, with nobody recognizing that the very structure of school creates the unnatural social dynamics that lead to peer culture, bullying, and cliques.

Of all the reasons not to send my kids to school, these factor high on my list.

getting comfortable with "doing nothing"

Despite how confident I am in unschooling as a choice for my kids’ education, there are certainly days when I have my insecurities. Today I was thinking that we hadn’t done much this week except “play around”. No matter how many times I ponder this I still find myself succumbing to this notion that I’m supposed to be “doing something”. Three things dispensed me of that notion today.

The first was recognizing that Summer Vacation is about to begin. School kids are out for the summer now, so they won’t be doing any “schooling stuff” either. I decided to consider this our summer vacation, too, relieving myself of the pressure to organize activities and order the children’s learning somehow. Phew! I’m off the hook!

The second was reminding myself, for the millionth time, that my kids are young. DD is not quite five yet, and I honestly believe that there is nothing a child of five needs to know that they can’t pick up by just being a kid and playing in the way that kids that age want to play. As I’ve documented here before, this naturally includes all sorts of learning experiences, thus also relieving me of the pressure to make sure they do stuff that “teaches something”.

The final realization came today. It was a gorgeous day, but I didn’t feel like being out in the sun, so I decided to take the kids to our nearby Massive Urban Park for a walk around Beaver Lake. It’s actually within walking distance of our apartment, but it’s a bit of a walk for the children and I wanted to go strollerless today. It would take you about five minutes to drive there, perhaps less than that with no traffic.

In our short walk along one side of the lake we saw: a group of bumblebees busily gathering nectar from some flowers that looked a bit like daffodils (growing right out of the lake), dragonflies of various sizes, a butterfly that wasn’t white (as most of them around the city are), hoverflies, red-winged blackbirds, mallards, a turtle sunning itself on a log, and a frog. The frog swam quite close to us and hung out next to a lily pad while I took photos. There were also numerous chickadees flying about which we knew from previous experience would eat right out of your hand should you offer it.

We talked about the various creatures we saw, what they were doing and how. DD asked what the “purpose” of Canada Geese is; most would say “to be really annoying and poop everywhere”, but she was asking because she is starting to understand that creatures are all interconnected. We had just talked about what would happen if there were no bees, so it was neat to see her applying this idea to other creatures.

I marvelled for the umpteenth time how lucky we were to have such bounteous natural beauty right in the heart of the city. It’s hard to imagine looking at this photo of the kids staring across a very plant-dense lake that we are mere minutes from the downtown core.

But the ultimate lesson that was driven home to me that day was that Learning Happens. On “beach days” when we end up going through tidepools and looking for crabs, on “woods walk” days when we see all sorts of creatures, even when we end up at the water park and the kids play with how water moves when it’s coming out of a hose, a pipe, or a spout in the ground (and how, when you block one spray, the others get more intense – water pressure)…all these things we just “do for fun” are educational. THIS is learning. So even though I feel like we’re not “doing anything” with respect to schooling, we are.

One of these days I won’t have to keep being reminded of it. But then again, it’s nice to experience the joy of discovery over and over again, lol.