Container Gardening

On Saturday, we started adding a mix of potting soil to self watering garden containers that Jacob made from old storage containers. The potting mix is comprised of peat moss, compost, and vermiculite. You can find out more about the making of the containers on Jacob's blog to see how to put those together. We live in a condo, so although the sunlight is limited in our small yard, the containers should work well. On a recent trip to Lowe's, W picked out a kid shovel which we actually found really handy. Both the boys had a lot of fun spending so much of the day outside and helping with the gardening project.

We read Compost Stew: an A-Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals earlier in the week which was a fun complimentary book to read when planning a garden with young kids. It can be read in a sing song manner which even little ones can appreciate. Jacob recently started a compost bin although it will take a few more months for our compost to be ready.

Mixing the vermiculite into the compost. You may want to keep in mind that using face masks might be handy if it is very windy and you are working with a lot of peat moss and vermiculite.

C getting in on the action filling the containers.

We are hoping to grow lettuces, tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. This year is an experiment, since we do not have very much first hand gardening experience so as a family we are learning as we go. It will also be a wonderful homeschool project, as we are starting from seed so W can learn about the process each step of the way.  We will post about our successes and failures here in the near future. I am also planting several herbs which grow pretty easily on our deck.

W found a little caterpillar while playing, and decided to put him on a nice green leaf. This is big progress for the young man who sometimes gets freaked out by bugs like his Mom. :) 

Little April Showers

We are beginning to plant some seeds and plan on using this weekend to work on our yard and square foot gardening system that Jacob put together. On our Aerogarden there are currently around 17 tomatoes of various sizes so I am looking forward to our early crop. This picture was taken last week and my how they have grown since then, although all the tomatoes are still green and our niece calls them pumpkins.

Reading List!
Here are some spring time favorite books appropriate for April. These should all be available at your local public library.

• The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, Illustrations by Crockett Johnson
• Bunny's Noisy Book by Margaret Wise Brown, Illustrations by Lisa McCue
• Little Quack's New Friend by Lauren Thompson, Illustrations by Derek Anderson
• Good Night New York City by Adam / Veno, Illustrations by Joe Gamble

It was a sad day when I noticed Bunny's Noisy Book had gone out of print, although you can still find reasonably priced used copies on Amazon. I had wanted to gift it at a baby shower, it is filled with beautiful prose (what else would you expect from Margaret Wise Brown?) and the illustrations by McCue are really lovely. It was a book I picked up for my eldest son on a whim and I am so glad I did, even when he grows up  I plan on keeping it in our "library". Another favorite of our family is the Little Quack series, and Derek Anderson also illustrated the classic The Potty Train, which was helpful to our oldest a couple years ago. Mr. Anderson has an excellent web site, check it out.

We are also planning on reading books about NYC because we will be taking a little trip there in a couple of weeks. If anyone has any recommendations for New York City themed books let us know by next week so I have time to get to the library for them! We plan on visiting Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History. Photos to come on Little Men after our adventure.

Who Killed Phoebe Prince?

A couple of days ago I became aware of the tragic case of Phoebe Prince, an Irish immigrant who was a freshman in South Hadley, MA.  She committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied.

One knee-jerk public response is to bully the bulliers, as various spurious charges are being filed against nine students involved in the bullying.  Politicians, smelling blood, are speechifying and passing laws saying not to bully.  Theatre.

People are also angry at the school administration and teachers for not stepping in, even though it was open knowledge that Phoebe was being harassed.

Everyone at that school must bear some responsibility for Phoebe's death.  How many students participated in the harassment in order to gain social status with their peers?  How many watched in silence, for fear of becoming the next victim?  How many teachers looked the other way, not wanting to get involved?  Many of these individuals will be wrestling with their consciences for a long time.

But the responsibility for Phoebe's death goes well beyond the particular individuals involved at South Hadley High School.  While it may be rare for such harassment to drive one to commit suicide, bullying and harassment in government schools is commonplace.  

This is what I fear that few people understand, that it was not just those particular bullies and onlookers who drove Phoebe Prince to an early death; it was the backward socialization scheme of government schools.  Those looking for a root cause ought to look there. 

One irony for parents of home-schoolers is that the primary question raised about the desirability of home-schooling is the "socialization".  As if natural socialization is for a child to interact only with other children of the exact same age, and then grouping thirty of these children together for one adult supervisor.  As if natural socialization is a highly regimented, command and control environment where children cannot use a restroom without an authority's permission, and yet that authority figure is often absent or ineffective.

South Hadley High School is not unique.  Turning over a few teachers, administrators, and bureaucrats will solve nothing.  The root problem is the system where the center of a child's existence lay not with the family or larger community but with the social pressure of other children.  Here, a child learns warped priorities and pecking order survival techniques.  This environment will always produce the Mean Girls and other social elements that made Phoebe's life unbearable.  All of us who contribute to and create that environment killed Phoebe Prince. 

Parents, it is within our power to pull support from the toxic government school environment.  It does not require politicking or letter-writing, or any other mass campaign.  It requires only direct action: pull your kids out of the government school system now!

March Madness

This post has absolutely nothing to do with basketball, but everything to do with the excitement W has each day as the calendar creeps closer to his fifth birthday. I am afraid his actual birthday will seriously underwhelm him, although we are planning on having a small party. For months, when there is anything that he does not feel "brave" enough to do, such as use the shower instead of the bath, or eat particular vegetables, he has exclaimed "when I'm FIVE, I'll do it". We shall see! :)

We have been greatly enjoying the book That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting, Illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully. It is a library book that I am seriously considering purchasing for myself because it is so amusing. It follows the adventures of three little Leprechauns who on their way to do their important business also make sure to find a little mischief. Sounds like an almost five year old I know.

School's Failure to Motivate Students

Several months ago I posted a failure example of the standard education system.  I hope to pick this area back up and continue the series.  In this post, I will provide a second example of how the standard education system fails. 

"Why do I have to learn this?"

The question can be asked in any classroom.  Students are given material to master but rarely any good reason why they should bother.  Looking back at my own schooling career, I can find here and there a few lonely examples where the subject material was interesting and I enjoyed learning it for what it was.  Mostly, here are the reasons I found to try hard at school:

* To seek the approval of authority figures (teachers and/or parents)
* To prove one's superiority over one's peers
* To have the tools to succeed at the next tasks given

I pity the children who are seen as lazy and unmotivated.  Government school teachers tend to believe they should not be responsible for motivating the students and tend to blame the students (or their parents).  Rarely do they question the schooling system itself or the manner of their own teaching.

When asked "Why should I learn this?", no teacher says "So you can feel better about yourself by out-competing other students" or "So you can have my approval".  These are obviously unhealthy motivators.  The only fall back is "You will need this when you graduate."

Yet that answer only begs the question.  Of what use will it be when one graduates?

The education failure is that, for most students, there is no intrinsic motivation for learning.  I remember students occasionally asking why they need to learn a subject throughout all levels of school.  Always the answer was that it would be needed at the next level.  In grammar school, we needed to learn it to succeed in junior high school.  In junior high, so we could succeed in high school.  In high school, so we could succeed in college.

Having graduated college, I see that most of what I was taught along the way has either been long forgotten or is of completely no use to me (or actually detrimental to me).  The only validity to the "you'll need it at the next level" reason is with respect to having the external recognition of achievement on one's resume. 

The best subject that exemplifies this education failure is mathematics.  Math is presented as a cumulative series of recipes to be "learned" by the student.  There is no start or finish to the material, but it continues on and on.  The math is never applied to any actual problem of interest, and no justification is given for learning it.  Even as the top math student throughout most of my schooling, I really understood very little of the math.  It was always primarily recipes to memorize and apply.  (Though to be fair there were occasions where some understanding would accidently slip in and provide a fleeting sense of satisfaction).  Sadly, this paradigm for studying math was continued even into college. 

It was actually through my engineering classes that I most came to appreciate and enjoy math, where there was clear application and scope.  These classes provided me with an intuitive understanding for not only college-level concepts as the Fourier Transform but also high-school level concepts such as the matrix.  Of course, in high school the matrix is just some strange thing on paper for which you must memorize operations for a test.  These operations were quickly forgotten after the test, and in the process no actual understanding of the matrix was gained. 

If students were taught language the way they are taught mathematics, they'd march along for twelve years of school memorizing progressively larger words and sentences, yet never reading a single book.

Of course, purely intrinsic motivation will not work for every subject for every student.  But always we should seek to maximize this type of motivation, so that the student actually obtains some satisfaction in the process of his or her education.  When this is the case, actual understanding of the material will be gained and not just fleeting memorization for a test.  When this is not the case, the source of the problem is not the student but the education system; what is being given to learn and how it is being taught.