Hire a friend, grass roots employment

So here is the link:

Hire a friend for a day

Let me know if you would participate in a day to hire. If it were big enough we could put millions of folk to work for at least one day. Who needs congress??

Dave

This is a test to see if I can post a poll

I am thinking about polling for those who might like to create a "hire your friend for a day" as a small contribution to the employment problem. I need a poll to sense the interest.

Here is a link to a poll as a trial:

Are polls good?

Dave

Unschooling

I am a part-time cloth diaperer, I compost, I heat my home with a pellet stove and I mow my lawn with a reel mower. I am part of the growing group of parents who are trying to teach our children how to create less of a carbon footprint, consume less and respect the earth more. I am actually in a mom’s group called “Mindful Parenting,” in which members discuss where they got the latest natural wood toy or how little TV they let their children watch.

One trend common among these types of families is homeschooling. Many of my very close friends here in Connecticut are homeschooling their children, not for religious reasons, but because they don’t want their children in the public schools, cannot afford to send them to private school, or simple think they can do a better job of educating their children than the community at large. The most common way to homeschool among these parents is a method called “unschooling,” which has no curriculum and allows the child to learn as they go through life, choosing what interests them at different times. Here is a typical day at the home of my friend Renee's house, who homeschools her son Bobby:

They wake up and have breakfast. Bobby (Renee's 4 year old son) watches some cartoons. They attend a playgroup. They have lunch. Bobby asks why worms shrivel up and die on the pavement. Renee segues into a 30 minute “Well, let’s learn about worms” segment in which they look things up on the internet or in books and go looking for worms outside. Bobby gets bored and starts playing basketball. They play in the yard until dinnertime. They have dinner then play with John, who is home from work and then it’s bedtime.

You’re probably thinking, “not too shabby for a 4 year old” and it’s not. He learned about worms. That’s awesome. But what happens when he is 11 years old and wants to learn about other things? What happens when he doesn’t think his mom is cool and doesn’t want to listen to her and she doesn’t know how to teach advanced algebra anyway? Her answer might be something like, “Who uses advanced algebra?” In the same breath she will say something like, “If he is really interested in it as a teenager then he can attend a community college class to learn about it.”

Hmmm…

I believe that children need structure. One of the by products of unschooling is that children learn that they can do whatever they want whenever they want. Children guiding their own education is like an untrained German Shepherd guiding a blind person. They may stumble across many interesting things to learn, but they will lack a general knowledge base that our society has deemed important.

The biggest reason people give to not homeschool is that the children are not “socialized.” My friends have a field day gunning down this concern. However, I think it is a legitimate one. Yes, my friends take their children to the museum and parks and dance classes. However, the friends that their children play with are the ones the mother chooses. Our playgroup of friends is made up entirely of middle class white families. If the children were at school they would have a classroom full of ethnic, poor, rich, disabled, smart, and not-so-smart children at their disposal and no hovering mother to help guide their decisions. These children have no sense of independence from their mothers and the mothers have no sense of independence from their children, which seems to be what the mothers want, but in turn limits the children. Who among them is going to become a brilliant geneticist or even discover their passion when all they really know is what their mother has presented them? Who among them will discover the love of Shakespeare or Mozart or the French language or biochemistry if they are not first forced to discover it? I am a firm believer in the old adage “You can’t break the rules until you learn them first.” These children seem to be given cart blanche as far as their education goes. They are breaking all the rules before they learn them and most often, they don’t even know the rules exist. What if your child doesn’t like to read? I do not like to read. I would have read maybe three books my entire high school career if I had not been forced to read in my English classes. Instead I read Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Twain, Bronte, Atwood - so many amazing authors that I now appreciate and even like and I am a better person for it.

I understand that parents want their children to love learning, but this is just not the reality for most people. For many people it takes seeing others passionate about a subject to inspire them to want to learn more. It takes teachers and teachers open doors.

Perhaps I am against unschooling because I come from a family of amazing teachers. Or perhaps it’s because I have a very stubborn daughter who sasses me but acts like an angel at school. Teachers can get Evelyn to do many things I cannot. All I know is that unschooling is like gambling on our children’s futures. It’s an experiment. These children will either end up becoming successful performance artists, plumbers (which wouldn’t be bad) or will end up living with their parents for the rest of their lives floating around and doing whatever they want. I wonder if, as adults, they will say "I believe in un-working."

The whole thing just goes against my fundamental views of what education is, what it can offer a child and my role in it as an educator. I’d like to end this with a list of the 10 most inspiring teachers I had up through high school. These are people whose passion for their subject matter made me briefly think I might want to go into their field. They presented options to me I would never have thought possible had I been homeschooled (sorry Mom). And I would never have met them if not for school. (Interestingly, I now realize none of these teachers taught my two favorite subjects – math and music.)

Ms. Thayer-Bacon (elementary)

Ms. Taylor (science)

Mrs. Turner (English/history)

Mr. Williamson (English)

Herr Livingston (German)

Mrs. Cates (history)

Mrs. Hermanson (history)

Mr. Roswell (history)

Mrs. Guerra (P.E.)

Mrs. Kelly-Gillen (Biology)

Ten amazing people who made all the bad teachers I had over the years worth it.

Despite the fact that overpopulation has made many of us want to segregate and seek out our own "kind" to the exclusion of others who think differently, I think it is important for us to force ourselves to be around society at large, and school is a perfect microcosm of our world in which our children can grow and learn. Children need to be among a community of intellectuals who inspire them. They need to be led by adults who are not their mother. They need the freedom to discover passions. They need school.

Losing a Friend

Went to a memorial service today. Gordon Baker. The family was there to celebrate this wonderful life. I had not been in this community for more than 20 years. I knew a fraction of those there. I did know the major participants.

What a feeling to be the next generation to "go". The entire audience was above 50 but the range still seemed extreme. There were those who did not recognize me (funny how I did not recognize my own aging process.)

Gordon Baker was a great man. We miss his fairness and compassion.

It was a great celebration. There were those that seemed unchanged (but older).

Although attempted, I was not able to recreate the bonds that were once there. Sad. It became an event of remembrance.

I guess this is the next stage. Losing a spouse, sister or brother will be difficult to the extreme. This experience is just a reminder of this.

The wonderful plus is that those that I will eventually lose -- or they lose -- have given great value already.

Hurray for the continuance of what we have and vision.

Don

Condominium Hopping

We flew up to Spokane and spent the night near the airport. Can't remember what it looked like -- that spectacular. Next, our friends from next door picked us up and we drove to Seaside Oregon. We were on the 7th floor looking out over the pool to a huge sandy beach. Did you know that this is where Lewis and Clark ran out of land? There is a statue of them at the beach looking forlorn-- S__t! no more land.

On the way to Seaside, we stopped at two beautiful waterfalls. We stumbled onto a Vista House at the top of a bluff overlooking the Columbia river. Unreal. The Vista House was surprising. Google it.

At Seaside, we went to a strange historical column (164+ steps to the top -- inside). You could buy a little wooden plane to throw off. So much for pollution in Oregon.

We next moved down to Klamath Falls (no falls in Klamath) to a condo on a golf course called Running Y. The most interesting thing was Crater Lake. Been there before but this time the water was so smooth that it looked like a mirror. We could not tell where the land ended and the water began. Unbelievable. The next day a guy fell down 300 ft. because he went over the barrier and slipped on the snow. So much for stupid.

The birds we saw up close were inspiring. Osprey, hawks, egrets, vultures, and a ton of small birds. They flew right over our patio (we were on the 3rd floor).

We next drove to SF -- always a culture shock. We moved from wide open country to an unbelievably dense human condition. We have a condo on Powell. The cable cars stop just outside our window. We have a room on the corner -- we sit at a round window seat looking up and down three streets.

It is amazing how so many people can be so close and so many of them seem barely functional. The poor, the predators, the well dressed standing on the street sipping white wine, a young boy in Walgreens looking to be picked up, and so many individuals walking with their heads in the wind -- it just goes on and on.

We leave tomorrow to visit my elderly in-laws for lunch and then home.

I can't wait to see my garden.

Don

It's July

Happy New Month.

This is the birthday of my oldest daughter -- always an enlightening perspective. She is on the East coast and should really be out of sight, out of mind. However, the world of technology has made this less than a reality. When I was her age, it cost so much to make a long distance call we just didn't. Now with universal phone accounts and the amazing reality of iChat, we are in contact minutes, no hours a day. I remember how much a single picture cost -- to buy film and develop it and then send it by mail if we could afford a copy.

We now try to make time to see all the media sent to us each day from all of the extended family. I do not have a FaceBook account but my wife does and just sitting down to her computer can consume an enormous amount of time before she can pull herself away from all the content thrown at her.

It is so difficult to not be aware of a child's every activity -- especially when they are sick or can't sleep or want a new toy or a sweet.

It is amazing how food is the common denominator for establishing a happy child.

A good time? or an Invasion?

Don

Service

Business model for Education -- A pipe dream

My entire career the boards of administration (mostly successful business persons) have been convinced that there is a business model for mass education.

They have never been successful but they continue to preach the possibility.

The difference between service in business and service in education is that there is no control over the top line (gross income, funding, endowments) in education -- regardless of the quality of service, the income to the school or district remained the same -- political.

Therefore the bottom line becomes the argument. "What has been delivered for the money available?" And what is left. In business, if expenses can be cut (people being the most expensive) the bottom line (profits) can improve without an increase in top line. In education political will determines the amount of money given to the top line. There is no profit motive because it is all gone when the service has been rendered.

Two premises must be defined:
1. When there are profits to be made then the business world is the most efficient.
2. When there are not profits to be made the business world fails.

If you have gone to a 5 star hotel, then you understand how effective the business world is when delivering services. The obvious observation is that there are no poor people there. They poor have no money to spend and therefore deserve no service (and it is great service).

So who delivers services that do not generate income? The government. The business world insists that if we had better civil servants (teachers, firemen, etc.) then schools would excel and be more successful. The problem is that the top line does not increase with greater service. If the government (business?) does not give more for better service (measured by whom?) than more cannot be paid to the "better employers". Then, the result is that civil servants will produce what they feel is necessary. Being fired for less sounds like a threat. To ask these workers to motivate is laughable. And believe me, motivation from the working class is short lived and shallow.

So there are two categories of service.

1. Service that can make you rich.
2. Service that is given by the government to those who cannot pay.

Mass education is only profitable at the post secondary level where schools can convince parents and teachers that their product is better than what the government can provide. Again, if you have the money you can take advantage of these schools (if it really is an advantage).

There is one thing all business world individuals agree upon.
If you can't make money while serving, then discontinue the service. Here again is the reason for government feeding the top line.

It is more than understandable that those in government want to cut "entitlements" because they are the non economically producing segment of our population. So they are labelled "free loaders", "lazy", etc. so that they can be labeled as not having value worth supporting. In this way, the poor can be written off as not deserving any support from the business community.

So in politics, the business types (congress) want to cut entitlements because those that are served "have no money".

Solution: the middle class and poor need more money to oil the machine. How do they get money? The cards are stacked against them. It is time to re-distribute the wealth in some manner. The wealth has been moving to the top for too many years. If the poor get too poor and see the wealth at the top -- Egypt

The only arm of the poor and middle class against the powerful elite is to unite and force wealth into the middle class. Unions?