Our Kids - Their Future

School - Conditioning or Education?

Many of my friends who have bright and aware 3-5 year old children worry about school. Will it shut their boy or girl down? Many North Americans share their concern.

The New York Times recently reported that nearly a million children in the US were being Home Schooled. Snip follows:

at least 850,000 children nationwide are schooled at home, up from 360,000 a decade ago, according the Education Department. In New York City, which compiled citywide statistics for the first time this year, 1,800 children are being schooled at home.

Newcomers to home schooling resist easy classification as part of the religious right or freewheeling left, who dominated the movement for decades, according to those who study the practice.

They come to home schooling fed up with the shortcomings of public education and the cost of private schools. Add to that the new nationwide standards — uniform curriculum and more testing — which some educators say penalize children with special needs, whether they are gifted, learning disabled or merely eccentric.

"It's a profound irony that the standards movement wound up alienating more parents and fueling the growth of home schooling," said Mitchell L. Stevens, an educational psychologist at New York University and author of "Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement" (Princeton University Press, 2001).

"The presumption of home schooling is that children's distinctive needs come before the managerial needs of the schools," he said. "And, it's easier to do than it was 10 years ago, because the ideologues were so successful in making it legal and creating curriculum tools and organizational support."

In addition to dissatisfaction with schools, Mr. Stevens and others say, social trends have fed interest in home schooling. More women are abandoning careers to stay home with their children. And many families yearn for a less frantic schedule and more time together.

"This may be a rebellion of middle-class parents in this culture," Mr. Stevens said. "We have never figured out how to solve the contradiction between work and parenting for contemporary mothers. And a highly scheduled life puts a squeeze on childhood."

Laurie Spigel, of the Riverdale section of the Bronx, chose home schooling for her 13-year-old son, Solomon, because he was overextended.

"He was taking ballet and piano and begging for flute," she said. "We'd already given up bedtime stories. He was tired all the time. We had no family life left. And all the wasted time seemed to be at school."

She had already given up on public school. A first-tier private school was so intense that "fourth grade felt like high school." So she chose home schooling, as she had for Solomon's brother Kalman, now in college.

Julia Attaway of Washington Heights made the home-schooling decision because the first of her four children was reading chapter books and counting to 100 by seven before kindergarten. "This is a very intense kid," Ms. Attaway said. "She dives into something until she has a sense of completion. It was so obvious that school was not going to work."

The Kjellbergs, Spigels and Attaways fit the profile of home-schooling families from a 1999 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, considered the only authoritative snapshot of home schooling. Nationwide, a majority of home-schooled children come from white, two-parent, one-income families with three or more children.

The top three motivations for home schooling in the survey were the prospect of a better education (49 percent), religious beliefs (38 percent) and a poor learning environment in the schools (26 percent).

Home schooling is legal in all 50 states, although there are widely different regulations. New Jersey, for instance, requires virtually no oversight. In New York, parents must notify their school district, file an instructional plan and quarterly reports and submit to annual assessments, alternating between standardized tests and portfolios.

Is this the right thing to do?

Well how good is school? We know this that authoritarian parenting shuts kids down and inhibits learning and proper socialization. We know that school is built on the authoritarian model. We know that this is the least effective model possible. We know that the typical school curriculum that breaks the world into discrete subjects make an effective world view based on systems difficult to bring into view. We know that they have poor outcomes in attainment. 40% of our kids either fail to graduate or leave without the minimum attainment to have a proper career.

We know that the poor social environment is driving a rise in bullying and promiscuity - so much for socialization being the big plus for school. We know that 30% of our sons have to be drugged to go there.

Maybe home schooling is not ideal but it is surely better than this?

Our Kids - The Problem Quantified

What is the Problem that we deal with on Prince Edward Island

Family Violence - !n 1999 there were 57,971 “Child Care Days” where a child on PEI was in care. Children are taken into care when the family setting is deemed to be too risky for them to stay at home. Family violence is largely a product of people with poor coping skills reacting to stimuli that they cannot control. The costs in court time, protection, fostering are substantial for the state. The social costs to the family and to the child are incalculable. At the heart of the Best Start approach is a focus on establishing strong parental bonding. Research in other jurisdictions shows a dramatic difference in family violence as a result of this type of intervention.

Learning and Literacy - PEI spends on average $85,256 to graduate a child from high school. In spite of this investment, our schools are having growing difficulty with a group of children who find learning very difficult. The national percentage of those who find learning a challenge is between 20% and 30%. Boys are more vulnerable than girls. Boys who have only one female parent are most at risk. It is important to understand that this poor outcome is not the fault of the school system. This group of children enter the school system on their first day already severely prejudiced with profound learning and behavioural challenges. In spite of all the effort of dedicated teachers and social workers, most of this group will leave school without the attainment and skills to make a living in modern society. Poor social skills, an inability to listen and to comprehend, are the prerequisites of being able to learn. These skills are developed in the very early years of childhood. Much of the work of Best Start on focuses on opening up these learning pathways and setting children up to be the best that they can be.

Juvenile Crime - In 1999, there were 8,912 days spent in corrections on PEI by young men. Young men with low self-esteem and with no hope for a better future tend to commit most of our crime. Until recently, our response has been to invest more in the justice system. California spends more on prisons than on schools. The insights of the Early Years inform us that we can make a difference to juvenile crime by supporting the parents of young children. Self-esteem is a product of effective parenting and of warm family environments. This linkage is the reason for the support of the National Crime Prevention Centre for Best Start and their decision to invest in strategic prevention.

Teen Pregnancy - In 1999 on PEI there were 5,000 single parent families. Most of these, over 4,000, were headed by women and most of these were young women. As with boys who commit crime, the evidence suggests that teen pregnancy is often also a product of poor self-esteem. The costs of teen pregnancies are considerable both in direct terms of social support but also in human terms. In most cases there is a direct correlation between single parenthood and poverty. In many cases, the cycle of poor self-esteem continues into the next generation. The best time to work on esteem issues is in the early years and the best way to help a mother regain her own self-esteem is to help her become an excellent mother herself.

Employability - PEI persists in having one of the higher rates of unemployment in Canada. There are many causes for this complex situation but poor attainment at school and low employability are important drivers. People with a poor experience at school are most at risk. The 1996 census shows that 43% of adults on PEI had not graduated from high school. This compares to the national average of 34%. Again the only effective time to make a difference to this pattern is in the early years.

Smoking and Addiction - PEI is ranks second, at a rate of 33.6%, in Canada, with the highest rate of smokers who are aged between 15-24. Smoking drives a significant later burden of poor health, chronic illness and early death. PEI has the highest death rate from lung cancer in the nation. Research tells us that smoking is not as much an individual issue of will power but is a societal issue largely driven by environmental and control issues. Smoking is one of the significant factors in poor health that we can identify. Changing smoking habits is very difficult. As with all addiction, common sense and information have little impact on the addict’s ability to change powerful habits. Smoking is strongly linked to self-esteem and to place in the social order. So again the root for taking much effective action is in the early years where an intervention with parents and in the home has a chance of working.

Obesity and Diabetes - The establishment of good nutritional habits. One of the trends of modern society is obesity. Atlantic Canada and PEI have the dubious distinction of being the most obese part of Canada. In Canada, 29 per cent of boys are now overweight, almost double the 1981 rate of 15 per cent. Among girls, the rate rose to 24 per cent from 15 per cent in the same period. The number of children considered obese now tips the scales at 14 per cent for boys and 12 per cent for girls, almost triple the 1981 rate of 5 per cent. Poor nutrition is directly related to obesity which in turn drives a pathway for a significant series of health-related outcomes, such as diabetes and Coronary Heart Disease. There is no “cure” for the diseases of obesity and there is no adult way of sustaining a significant weight loss. We can however intervene at the foundation of obesity. How and what we eat at home as young children sets up exceptionally powerful lifetime habits. By 6 the pattern for eating and meals is set for life. If supported, parents can develop the skills and the habit off eating well when their children are young and so set a different pattern and a different pathway.

Utilization of the Health System - Healthcare costs are rising faster than our economy can afford. Health Canada warns that Canadian healthcare costs could double in the next 10 years. The large and aging population, the increasing costs of drugs and of new technologies will drive these costs. Most of the costs, particularly the geometric increase in the use of drugs, are driven by the heavy user. The profile of the heavy user includes the poorly educated, the poorly nourished, heavy smokers, the over-weight, the under-employed and those with poor social support systems. The expressions of poor health in this group tends to include, circulatory disorders, respiratory disorders, back pain and non-specific chronic pain. Obesity also is driving an epidemic of adult-onset diabetes which weakens the overall immune system opening up other avenues of health problems a high incidence of Coronary Heart Disease. None of these problems are easily and cheaply dealt with by the healthcare system. They tend to be chronic and require constant intervention The research informs us that this group became high risk as young children. Intervening in the early years gives us a chance to reduce the pool of heavy users.

Columbine, Ritalin, Hooking Up, Dropping Out, Child Obesity, Bullying - What is going on?

I am 53. If you are my age or maybe even in your 40's you will maybe share my bemusement about what is happening to our kids. Yes there was the occasional flash of violence where a boy driven to desperation might challenge him to a boxing duel; I did meet the odd easy girl;yes there was a bit of bullying; yes there might have been two fat boys in my whole school; yes one of two boys in the whole school did not fit in at all. But did I even come close to experiencing or witnessing what is now commonplace with children today? No way!

Just to remind us all about what we now take for granted now. On PEI sex is commonplace for girls as young as 12. It is not just oral sex but going the whole way in the school washroom on the floor. If you think I exaggerate have a real heart to heart with a teacher. Amazing to me for whom young girls were sacrosanct, boys of 18 think nothing of having sex with a 12 year old. The "Ho" look is now essential to fit in. If you don't wear a thong, you are a loser. 30% of boys are on Ritalin. Think about this before you pass onto the next point. 30% of our boys have to take drugs so that they can cope at school and at home. Most of the really dreadful violence such as at Columbine does not occur in inner city schools but in middle class or even upper middle class settings. Its the kids who have all the things who are most desperate. PEI sent a choir to France recently. One of the sights that struck the parents who accompanied the kids was not the Eiffel Tower but the fact that not one - not one - of the French kids was fat and about half the PEI kids were fat. Bullying is endemic and no longer linked only to boys. There have been girls who have killed girls and girl hazing is as bad as anything in the Paratroopers.

Like the fog in the pot of water that is slowly heating, we have not noticed as life for our children has grown steadily worse over the last 30 years. Well folks the water is boiling now and we have to act. But what is the problem? We at least can sense that there is a problem. All the issues are now out in the open with sex at school being the last one to make the front-page and our news screen. In response of course we have started to blame others. TV, the Media, advertising, poverty, the teachers and the schools. We point to the hooker look of the stars, we point to how women's bodies have been forced into an ideal shape and every product has sexual overtones. We point to the inanity of TV and its hypnotic effect. We complain about the consumerization of our world and how our kids now have to have all these things. We think that violence is is a problem of poverty when it is in reality mainly middle class kids who are in trouble. We blame the fast food firms who tempt our kids to eat the wrong things and we blame the teacher who cannot control our kids. Well folks it is time to hang up the mirror and to look at ourselves as parents.

Something has changed in a generation to give disconnect our kids from their intuitive good sense.

We as parents are not paying our children enough attention. We are not paying enough attention to ourselves. We have become consumed by a distraction. It is called work. Our relationship to work has become distorted and it is leaving us bereft of the energy that we need to parent well and to keep ourselves well. We are becoming the most spiritually poor group of humans to have lived.

I am going to say things now that are hard to hear but if you have a better idea, let's hear it I think that we made the world of work the central part of our life. We have always worked but is the culture of the the world of work that has changed. The problem is not work but the prevailing culture in the workplace.

For my father work was more like a family. There was a contract of mutuality. Loyalty was rewarded, lifetime friendships were established amongst people who lived and worked in communities. Yes there was anguish and conflict in some areas such as in the birth of the steel and auto industries - this was not golden age. But there was true community at work and at home.

Now the last remnant of the old contract of loyalty and service has been broken and all at work are expendable - work has truly become a rat race for most of us. It increasingly consumes us and changes the way we see ourselves and everyone else around us. In the global rat race you have no colleagues you have only competitors. We leave our communities and travel to places where we have no connection or relationships. It is becoming every-woman for herself. Everyone feels helpless and no one feels that they have a voice. This is not just true in business but parts of the public sector are if anything worse. Know any happy nurses or teachers?

So why do I raise this. OK he is going to say that women made a mistake and have to go back to June Cleaver Land. No I am not saying this. I am saying that how we organize work today has become inimical to life. At work we find a culture of the "Borg". We take home these lifeless relationships and we play them out with our spouses and with our young children. Becoming only objects at work, we treat ourselves and those that we love at home increasingly as objects. We see care as being objects. We see things as being care. We see objects as love. We see each other as being disposable.

This is why the media can tap into us so easily. They feed on our feeling that if I had this new object I would feel better. They feed on our loneliness and on our pain. If I act out enough might she pay attention to me? If I wear this I will be attractive. If I give him a BJ, I will be popular. I get a BJ from a kid I am powerful. If I bully I have power in a world where I have power. If I eat this I feel comforted.
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I say these things not because I am a good person and you are not. I am guilty of this too. In the mid 1980's I was a "successful" investment banker. I earned lots of money that only a career in crime could replicate. I travelled incessantly, I was at work all hours of the day and when I was home I was still at work in my mind. We had all the goodies. Nice homes, kids at private school, all the cars, clothes etc. But Robin was miserable. She was raising Hope and James on her own. She was in effect a single parent. I could not see that - after all I was focusing all my energy on important things like my work. One evening she broke down and in tears told me how unhappy she was - there it was on the table. My response. I said I am doing all of work for you. Look at all the great things that we have. I am doing all of this for you - what more do you want I asked.

"You" she said. "You". "We want you". It took me a long time to understand what she meant. Many of us lie to ourselves when we go to work. We say that we do this for us but we do it for me most of the time. We say that we need the things but our spouses and our children do not need the things they need a real relationship with us.

Our choice is not about work or not - it is about what relationship we chose to have with work. The context will be to understand why relationships are so essential to humans and how we seem to lost hold of that insight and how we have organized a world that kills relationships which will in turn kill us by shutting down our next generation.

I am going to be writing a series of articles about this topic this week and I will be drawing on the science of relationships that is contained in a remarkable book called the General Theory of Love. We will look at how small babies have to attach themselves to us. We will look at how they do this and we look at how our emotional brain as opposed to our thinking brain affects so much of our lives. We will then think of some of the choices that we have in this context