I always think I'm right...

Wow! I got so many great comments from the last post, I feel famous. And I've gotta add, it is totally cool with me when we disagree completely...like my awesome sister and some outstanding friends. One thing I think is true about me is this: I always think I'm right. Honestly, I think most people do. But, I genuinely WANT to know if I'm wrong, and have no problem admitting it if I find it to be the case. So, show me where I'm wrong. Or tell me I'm right. That's fun, too.

I didn't start posting political to convert the world to my view--all 8 of you. I think by speaking or writing and I couldn't think through my ideas any further without actually putting them down. Thank you so much for thinking, too, and contributing. I love it. I'm excited about some of the posts to come...Plainbellied's sure to be well-educated opposing point of view and Charity's personal Alaska perspective. Be St. Helen's, Charity. Blow your top and let us all learn from the fall-out. =)

Sarah Palin, among other things...

I've been obsessed with politics of late...It seems like everything matters so much, I feel really divided in how to spend my energies...homeschooling, adoption advocacy, the near destruction of our traditional foods, (Thank you for that terrifying knowldge, 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle'), physical fitness, yard work, parenting, missionary work, developing strong relationships with my family...It's amazing to me that God manages to care so much about each of us all the time. I feel like I have to choose what I can care about because I just can't handle it all at once. Anyway, politics is winning right now and I'm just attaching something I posted on some stranger's website. Here it is.

This Palin debate is driving me nuts. The feminists criticize her as inexperienced and say she should be with her family...like that's where they are...I'm a stay-at-home mom and even though Gov. Palin made a different choice, she shares my values. Should I not vote for her because people who despise everything I believe in think SHE should be at home with her kids so THEY can run the country?

The media is constantly talking down to her. Did you notice how the commentators kept pointing out how the speech-writers had changed the speech to suit her specifically, like every other politician in any party wasn't also following a script?! The media is also happy to promote completely false notions without any apparent sense of responsibility. News Week and The New York Times have had to retract statements they've made about her, to name just a couple.

Look. It can be one of two ways as I see it: 1) You're a real life feminist who believes that women should be able to choose what is best for them and their families without feeling a need to judge that decision by the varying standard of your own individual choices. {Why do working moms and SAHM's feel so threatened by each other, anyway?} 2) You're the kind of intellectual elitist feminist who believe a woman's personal choices are her own as long as they coincide exactly with your own world views--i.e. "You can choose to work, but choosing NOT to work is a slap in the face to all the women who came before you." Puh-lease.

If you're a real feminist, Sarah Palin's gender is entirely beside the point and her character and policy are center stage. NOBODY would call a liberal democratic woman candidate a "cheerleader", "good-looking", or "homecoming queen." Nancy Pelosi isn't an ugly lady, but I've never heard anyone demean her place in politics in any way by copping to her physical appearance. Can you imagine what the liberal press would do with that?!

In summary, kill the double standard. VP is a big job. So is being a teacher or working 3 jobs or anything else. One news guy got it right. (Yay PBS!) Every person who pursues politics at a national level is choosing their career or country over their family and they know it. I haven't heard anyone criticize Obama or his wife for the exact same decision.

I don't think we have a right to second guess Palin for choices we (as a culture, at least) applaud in other, more private sectors. It's especially odious that it's the elitist feminists criticizing a self-made career woman for doing exactly what they say everyone else should do. Maybe they just can't handle a strong woman who has the audacity to disagree with them. Then they can't play the gender card and intimidate any genuine opposition with "sexist" labels.

Orson Scott Card, My Hero

You may have read books by Orson Scott Card growing up. I did. I guess a lot of people think of them as 'boy' books. I love his science fiction, but I think it's his essays that mean the most to me. He has a wonderful book called, "A Storyteller in Zion" that is filled with his essays on all kinds of things. I have it if you have a yen to read it. He's also got a great website that is linked from his name on my site.

Today, I read some of his recent essays and decided to post the links here.

The first one is long, but it's worth it. It's about the striking similarities between communists and intellectual elitists in America.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-08-10-1.html

The second one is also political, but talks about the "religion of environmentalism." I'd be interested to hear what you think when you read it. It definitely gave me pause. Secularism is certainly it's own religion, but I'd never thought of environmentalism as one of it's sects.
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-05-25-1.html

I have to say, I agree with everything he says...I pretty much always do. I don't know if that makes me a sheep or it just means I've found a much more articulate, better educated twin soul. When I read what he says, though, I find I want to be more articulate and better educated and braver for that matter, so Card's influence must be good for me, at least.

In one of my favorite books, 'The Blue Castle' by L. M. Montgomery, (who could not be less similar to Card), a mousy character realizes she hasn't got any enemies because she never has any strong opinions. Now, I obviously have lots of strong opinions, but I do fear being disliked or disapproved of by others too often. I'd like to fear that never. It's fine to disagree--you with me and me with you. I'd just like to think a little more about things that are worth enough thought for disagreement.

Another Song

Hi guys. This is a song I wrote in June of 2006 for Girls Camp. If it seems a bit churchy, that's why. All the other wards were singing songs like, "I Am a Child of God" and "Teach Me To Walk in the Light." I wanted to write my own. It seemed like a good goal and deadline to make for myself. The girls were troopers about it and practiced through all my strange edits. I totally wrecked a pair of shorts by accidentally setting the permanent marker on me that I was writing with because I couldn't find a pen. This one actually has a melody and everything, but I only know how to put the words here. Maybe I'll get a camcorder someday and perform for you like my rad friend, "Nerd-bucket." You should totally check out her last post from the link on the side. She is so cool.

Enough stalling.

A Witness for His Name

I read, I study and I pray
To know what the scriptures teach are true,
So I'll have the Spirit with me every day
To guide me in all that I must do.

Chorus:
So, like a city on a hill,
Like a candle's glowing flame,
The light of Christ will shine through me,
A witness for his name.

The power to lead is given me,
To lead to God's love or lead astray.
The light I've been given is not mine to keep;
I share it by how I live each day.

Chorus

I know my Savior died for me.
What greater comfort is there than this truth?
I know while I work through my Gethsemane,
The Atonement of Christ heals every wound.

Chorus

Eeeewww!!

Last night, I took some wash out of the washing machine and I saw something funny at the bottom of the barrel. I grabbed a tissue to get it out, because it looked sort of stringy, but I was pretty sure it wasn't thread. I was right. It was a cricket...well...part of a cricket. It had a head and the antennae--one, anyway--and a kind of stick-like stem sticking out the back of the head creating the "spine" of the little bugger. It looked clean, I guess...kind of shiny. Today, I found a wing and a leg in a new wash load. Eeeewww.

It's almost as gross as the time I found something pasty white and squashy in the wash while I was in California waiting for Curly Fry's adoption stuff to clear so I could bring him home. It turned out to be reconstituted umbilical cord, which had somehow gotten stuck to my bathrobe and washed. I could not eat round noodles for some time.

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.