Pronouns

Junior Mint and I are working on pronouns in English. We are also working on not yelling at each other when we do school. (It's tough for us not to argue a lot since our personalities are so similar). Today, I got so mad about his nasty attitude that I left the room. Junior Mint stayed and did more of his English. He was supposed to be writing sentences using the 8 pronouns he's learned. Here are two of his sentences:

He hates his Mom.
She hates her Mom.

Sweet.

Christmas and linguistics

First off, Merry Christmas!! What a beautiful, warm day we had to celebrate the birth of our Lord. I hope you all had as lovely a day as we did.

Curly Fry does not speak very clearly. There are a lot of sounds he doesn't say yet--like t's, k's, f's, any consonant combinations, etc. There are some sounds he can say, but only does in certain words for whatever reason. For example, He can say Mommy, but he won't say "moo" like a cow. Whenever we see a cow he yells happily, "Bow!! Boooooo!!!" (cow, moo)

Last night I was trying to help him ask to be excused when he finished his dinner instead of just yelling. A language learning opportunity! I had him repeat after me:

me: May
Curly: AAA
me: I
Curly: I
me: please
Curly: eeeeee
me: be
Curly: eeeeee

I stopped and said, "No, you can do this! Say, 'boo'." So he said, "boo."
I then said, "Good, now say 'be.'" He said "eeeee."
I said, "No, say 'boo'", which he did and then 'be', which he again said incorrectly. I was persistent and kept repeating the two words to try and help him make the sound connection. After a short while, the the ever helpful Junior Mint, with a wicked look in his eye, began chanting loudly, "Boo-bee! boo-bee! boo-bee!!"

Woops. I did not even see that one coming. Curly Fry still can't say 'be' and 7 year old Junior Mint won't stop yelling, "Booby! Booby!" Not exactly the linguistics lesson I had in mind...

pinafores?

I saw a show on TLC recently about this giant family of kids who were all homeschooled. Awesome! I love big families. I love homeschooling! Good for you, I say. But did the girls all have to wear matching pinafores circa 1890? I appreciate modesty as much as the next conservative person, but really, is that necessary? Keeping up a clothings style that is more than a century out of date is just strange. Maybe it's their way of promoting chastity. Also a great cause. But there are already so many goofy stereotypes about homeschoolers; I hate it when they're true...and on TV.

Why is it that nobody talks about all the cool homeschoolers? Did you know Will and Jada Smith homeschooled their kids until very recently when they founded their own charter school? If anyone is cool, it's gotta be the Smith family. Abigail Breslin, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jennifer Love Hewitt were all homeschooled. Lots of Olympic athletes are homeschooled. How else would they have the time to excel at such time-consuming passions?

I have no idea how this homeschooling business will turn my kids out. I hope they'll be happy, clean in body and mind, civic-minded, service oriented, smart, capable, and fun. And yes, I hope they'll be cool. I can't help it.

Onion Education

The following article is from The Onion. It was linked on a homeschooler yahoo group and it cracked me up. Even if you're all pro-school, I think it's still funny. I loved school as a kid and didn't get burnt out until the very end of college, but I love the idea of homeschooling now...even if it's not all warm fuzzies with my 7 year old every day. What do you guys think?

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/6_year_old_stares_down_bottomless
CARPENTERSVILLE, IL—Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported.
"I don't want to go to school," Bolduc told his parents, the crushing reality of his situation having yet to fully dawn on his naïve consciousness. "I want to play outside with my friends."
While Bolduc stood waiting for the bus to pick him up on his first day of elementary school, his parents reportedly were able to "see the wheels turning in his little brain" as the child, for the first time in his life, began to understand how dire and hopeless his situation had actually become.
Basic math—which the child has blissfully yet to learn—clearly demonstrates that the number of years before he will be released from the horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more than twice the length of time he has yet existed. According to a conservative estimate of six hours of school five days a week for nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless succession of nearly identical, suffocating classrooms.
This nightmarish but undeniably real scenario does not take into account additional time spent on homework, extracurricular responsibilities, or college, sources said.
"I can't wait until school is over," said the 3-foot-tall tragic figure, who would not have been able, if asked, to contemplate the amount of time between now and summer, let alone the years and years of tedium to follow.
The concept of wasting a majority of daylight hours sitting still in a classroom when he could be riding his bicycle, playing in his tree fort, or lying in the grass looking at bugs—especially considering that he had already wasted two years of his life attending preschool and kindergarten—seemed impossibly unfair to Bolduc. Moreover, sources said, he had no idea how much worse the inescapable truth will turn out to be.
Shortly after his mommy, homemaker Ellen Bolduc, 31, assured him that he would be able to resume playtime "when school lets out," Connor's innocent brain only then began to work out the implication of that sentence to its inevitable, soul-crushing conclusion.
When pressed for more detail on the exact timing of that event, Mrs. Bolduc would only reply "soon." At that point, the normally energetic child grew quiet before asking a follow-up question, "After [younger sister] Maddy's birthday?" thereby setting the stage for the first of thousands of rushing realizations he will be forced to come to grips with over the course of his subsequent existence.
Madison Ellen Bolduc was born on Sept. 28.
After learning that the first grade will continue for eight excruciating months beyond that date, it was only a matter of time before Bolduc inquired into what grade comes after first grade, and, when told, would probe further into how many grades he will have to complete before allowed to play with his friends.
The answer to that fatal question—12, a number too large for Bolduc to count on the fingers of both hands—will be enough to nearly shatter the boy's still-forming psyche, said child psychology expert Eli Wasserbaum.
"When you consider that it doesn't include another four years of secondary education, plus five more years of medical school, if he wants to follow his previously stated goal to grow up to be a doctor like his daddy, this will come as an interminably deep chasm of drudgery and imprisonment to [Connor]," said Wasserbaum. "It's difficult to know the effect on his psychological well-being when he grasps the full truth: that his education will be followed by approximately four decades of work, bills, and taxes, during which he will also rear his own children to face the same fate, all of which will, of course, be followed by a brief, almost inconsequential retirement, and his inevitable death."
"Even a 50-year-old adult would have trouble processing such a monstrous notion," Wasserbaum added. "Oh my God, I'm 50 years old."
The first of Bolduc's remaining 2,299 days of school will resume at 8 a.m. tomorrow. On the next 624 Sundays, he will also be forced to attend church.

Catching up and Mandatory Pre-school

I've wanted to blog loads in the last few weeks, but haven't. Here's the paraphrased version of stuff I would've said.

Bob Costas...Really?
His and Matt Lauer's commentary of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics was asinine. Honest-to-goodness, this is how the web dictionary defined that word.
"1. foolish, unintelligent, or silly; stupid: It is surprising that supposedly intelligent people can make such asinine statements."
Too true for Bob and Matt that day...Arrogance and ignorance are such an ugly combination.

The Olympics
Does anyone else want to cry while they watch all the time? Here's me: "Look. A group of starving, gangly women running as a pack." (The marathon). "Oh, jeez! Find me a tissue." True. Ever since I saw the Atlanta Olympics on TV as a high school student from my military base home in Germany, the nationalistic pride has gotten me every time. I really do love America and it leaks out my eyes during the Olympics. Plus I get no sleep. Curse this 12 hour time difference!!

Back-to-School
I am overcome with a desire to buy new clothes every Fall. Such a beautiful school-start tradition. Maybe I can justify new clothes because I'm finally joining the local homeschool group and we'll have some monthly activities??? See, it's not even really for my kids. It's for me. I am not the mom who always wants to get stuff for my kids before myself... Is that evil? They are already so cute. And seriously, they have loads of clothes.
I thought I was finally over school-starting jitters. Last year was the first time since I was 6 that I didn't have some kind of back-to-school anxiety dream. "Finally!", I thought, "I am a grown-up." And then last week I dreamed that I was an 8th grader and I couldn't remember my locker combination and I missed my whole first class trying to figure it out. And if I went down the wrong hallway, the 7th graders would beat me up and vice versa.
Can I blame that on the fact that my husband teaches middle school? I don't think so.

Finally. Today's issue. Mandatory Pre-school.
I'm pasting an article about mandatory pre-school here. I homeschool, so obviously I have strong feelings on this and many other issues. I just thought this was informative and timely, so I'll pass it along sans any major ranting. (I already ranted a little about it on our local homeschooler yahoo group, so it's out of my system for the moment.)
It's from the Wall Street Journal online. Here's the link that goes with it:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB121936615766562189-lMyQjAxMDI4MTI5MjMyNjI2Wj.html

Protect Our Kids from Preschool
By SHIKHA DALMIA and LISA SNELLAugust 22, 2008; Page A15
Barack Obama says he believes in universal preschool and if he's elected president he'll pump "billions of dollars into early childhood education." Universal preschool is now second only to universal health care on the liberal policy wish list. Democratic governors across the country -- including in Illinois, Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia -- have made a major push to fund universal preschool in their states.
But is strapping a backpack on all 4-year-olds and sending them to preschool good for them? Not according to available evidence.
"Advocates and supporters of universal preschool often use existing research for purely political purposes," says James Heckman, a University of Chicago Noble laureate in economics whose work Mr. Obama and preschool activists routinely cite. "But the solid evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions is limited to those conducted on disadvantaged populations."
Mr. Obama asserted in the Las Vegas debate on Jan. 15 that every dollar spent on preschool will produce a 10-fold return by improving academic performance, which will supposedly lower juvenile delinquency and welfare use -- and raise wages and tax contributions. Such claims are wildly exaggerated at best.
In the last half-century, U.S. preschool attendance has gone up to nearly 70% from 16%. But fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) -- the nation's report card -- have remained virtually stagnant since the early 1970s.
Preschool activists at the Pew Charitable Trust and Pre-K Now -- two major organizations pushing universal preschool -- refuse to take this evidence seriously. The private preschool market, they insist, is just glorified day care. Not so with quality, government-funded preschools with credentialed teachers and standardized curriculum. But the results from Oklahoma and Georgia -- both of which implemented universal preschool a decade or more ago -- paint an equally dismal picture.
A 2006 analysis by Education Week found that Oklahoma and Georgia were among the 10 states that had made the least progress on NAEP. Oklahoma, in fact, lost ground after it embraced universal preschool: In 1992 its fourth and eighth graders tested one point above the national average in math. Now they are several points below. Ditto for reading. Georgia's universal preschool program has made virtually no difference to its fourth-grade reading scores. And a study of Tennessee's preschool program released just this week by the nonpartisan Strategic Research Group found no statistical difference in the performance of preschool versus nonpreschool kids on any subject after the first grade.
What about Head Start, the 40-year-old, federal preschool program for low-income kids? Studies by the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly found that although Head Start kids post initial gains on IQ and other cognitive measures, in later years they become indistinguishable from non-Head Start kids.
Why don't preschool gains stick? Possibly because the K-12 system is too dysfunctional to maintain them. More likely, because early education in general is not so crucial to the long-term intellectual growth of children. Finland offers strong evidence for this view. Its kids consistently outperform their global peers in reading, math and science on international assessments even though they don't begin formal education until they are 7. Subsidized preschool is available for parents who opt for it, but only when their kids turn 6.
If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada's C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.
The only preschool programs that seem to do more good than harm are very intense interventions targeted toward severely disadvantaged kids. A 1960s program in Ypsilanti, Mich., a 1970s program in Chapel Hill, N.C., and a 1980s program in Chicago, Ill., all report a net positive effect on adult crime, earnings, wealth and welfare dependence for participants. But the kids in the Michigan program had low IQs and all came from very poor families, often with parents who were drug addicts and neglectful.
Even so, the economic gains of these programs are grossly exaggerated. For instance, Prof. Heckman calculated that the Michigan program produced a 16-cent return on every dollar spent -- not even remotely close to the $10 return that Mr. Obama and his fellow advocates bandy about.
Our understanding of the effects of preschool is still very much in its infancy. But one inescapable conclusion from the existing research is that it is not for everyone. Kids with loving and attentive parents -- the vast majority -- might well be better off spending more time at home than away in their formative years. The last thing that public policy should do is spend vast new sums of taxpayer dollars to incentivize a premature separation between toddlers and parents.
Yet that is precisely what Mr. Obama would do. His "Zero-to-Five" plan would increase federal outlays for early education by $10 billion -- about 50% of total government spending on preschool -- and hand block grants to states to implement universal preschool. This will make the government the dominant source of funding in the early education marketplace, vastly outpacing private spending.
If Mr. Obama is serious about helping children, he should begin by fixing what is clearly broken: the K-12 system. The best way of doing that is by building on programs with a proven record of success. Many of these involve giving parents control over their own education dollars so that they have options other than dysfunctional public schools. The Obamas send their daughters to a private school whose annual fee in middle school runs around $20,000. Other parents deserve such choices too -- not promises of subsidized preschool that they may not want and that may be bad for their kids.
Ms. Dalmia is senior analyst and Ms. Snell is director of education policy at the Reason Foundation.