Perspectives

I'm linking to a few ideas/articles that piqued my interest over the weekend.

1. Nancy Gibbs in Time magazine on a hitherto unexplored angle on President Clinton:

One person who did not leave Chelsea alone was her father. In acclaimed historian Taylor Branch's new book The Clinton Tapes — woven from Branch's recorded conversations with the President from 1993 to 2001 — the portrait of the relationship between Bill Clinton, a man who never knew his own father, and his daughter reveals a side we rarely saw on the public stage. Bill Clinton, it turns out, raised a daughter and ran the free world, sometimes in that order.

2. There was an awesome segment on 60 Minutes this morning about former Secretary of State Madeline Albright's collection of lapel pins. Each pin has a backstory - personal, political, historical - and now they are on exhibition in New York City, and Ms. Albright has a new book coming out called Read My Pins. I can't find the video on CBS' website, but all I found was this link to a short CBS News clip.

3. Andrew O'Hehir writes in Salon, in an article titled "Confessions of a Home-Schooler," about him and his wife starting out on the home-schooling adventure with their two five-year-old twins:

Both Leslie [the children's' mother] and I went to public school and had the usual assortment of excellent, mediocre and bad teachers. We're not zealots with some animus against public education. We're glad it exists and relatively happy to pay taxes to sustain it. As I said earlier, though, we feel dubious about the ideology that seems dominant in public education these days, and especially about the idea that sending kids to school virtually all day for 10 months a year, beginning at age 3 or 4, is the healthiest mode of delivering it.

...

I think home schooling has brought Leslie and me closer together.... The four of us are a pretty tight unit -- it's not us against the world, but us in the world, trying to experience the days as they come.

We've planted seeds and watched them grow into sunflowers taller than Daddy; read books about Alexander Calder and Squanto and the warm-blooded, egg-laying Maiasaura; told stories about how our beloved bunny Picaro made his final voyage into the Egyptian Land of the Dead. We say goodbye to the setting sun (when we remember to) and greet each new day with tremendous enthusiasm, often much closer to dawn than the adults would prefer. I'm not saying that other families don't do that stuff too. I guess I'm saying what I said already: It works for us.

4. Ra on the myths surrounding alternative education in India:

I thought I’d tackle some of the common points (some of them myths) that arise when there is a discussion about alternative schools first:

Alternative Schools Are all very Expensive:
I think people often think that alternative schools are the same as “international” schools and automatically assume that they will be expensive. There are some very expensive international schools in India, that do follow alternative models, at least in so far as they are “alternative” to the more conventional schools. But there are alternative schools that have been around for ages, such as the K schools and Mirambika that charge around the same as lots of other schools. Some of the alternative schools are boarding schools and thus charge more, but are not necessarily the most expensive boarding schools around. Some alternative schools offer scholarships and take children when the parents are unable to meet the full fees.

What caught your fancy this weekend?

War on War

A few months ago, C had to interpret the theme of 'WOW' and create art or compose music or write poetry based on his interpretation. He chose to write an essay and he interpreted the theme to mean 'War on War'. I produce his composition below.

As background, we had visited Arlington Cemetery in Virginia just a few days before he started writing. The tender ages of the soldiers buried there is just shocking. It apparently made an impression on C as well.

Formatting the essay was at the forefront of his mind when he started writing. He remembered what his teacher had told him about how to organize an essay ('tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and tell them what you just told them'). He gave me a lecture about it first, then wrote down the format on a separate page and diligently tried to follow it. He may not have succeeded in adhering to it to the letter, but I was thrilled that he had thought about it at all.

Since he wrote it down in pencil, it's not as clear as I'd like it to be. I do hope you don't have too much trouble reading it.

Thank you for reading.

Phelps, Marijuana and a Suddenly Empty Pedestal

My eight-year-old thinks Phelps is the coolest dude ever to walk the earth. With a devotion hitherto only accorded to cricket, soccer and football, he devoured the swim events at the Beijing Olympics this past summer. All his other activities were planned around the swim event schedules. The timing of the Olympics couldn't have been more apt - my son's team was on a roller coaster ride of victory and defeat on a weekly basis with the summer league competitions. We encouraged the enthusiasm, calling him down to watch HBO interviews with Phelps and a 60-Minutes segment with Anderson Cooper and Phelps.

This is not to say Phelps is a role model. Yes, when it comes to swimming technique or work ethic in the pool, he is hands-down a parent's dream example. When my son struggled with his finishes, all we had to do was invoke Phelps' or Jason Lezak's example or show him the videos on Youtube and he would get it in a flash. But beyond his exploits in the pool, Phelps did not figure into any of our daily conversations.

For me, the most interesting character in this story was Debbie Phelps, his mother, and to a lesser extent, his sisters, also swimmers of star quality. A single mother, Mrs. Phelps raised three kids while holding down a full-time job, found a good outlet for her son's formidable energies and guided him to a coach who could recognize his talents and nurture them. Phelps himself has acknowledged repeatedly that whatever his accomplishments are, they are to be attributed to his mother.

My son must have somehow gleaned this. Perhaps my admiration for her came through whenever he heard me talk about her (usually when she was on TV), because the first non-rhetorical question he asked when he learned about Phelps' tryst with drugs was, "What did his mother say?"

But first came the shock, shock I could see on his face. No, Phelps would never do that. How could he? I can't believe he did that. Drugs? Why would he take drugs? Which drug was this?

And if you're wondering about eight year-olds and what they know about drugs, believe me they know a lot. Each year they have a "Say no to drugs" campaign at school where all the students, even the first-graders, must sign a pledge not to use drugs. Last year was his first year in a public school in the US and I was horrified. I am a subscriber to the "ignorance is bliss" school of thought, but who am I kidding? Whether the school or the parents tell them or not, they know about these things and a lot more. It's better that they have a credible frame of reference rather than floating around in a vacuum of misinformation.

When he asked what drugs they were, I first pretended I did not hear it. He ranted some more and came back to that question. I hemmed and hawed. Do I tell him that it was just marijuana? That a whole section of this country thinks it's nuts to have laws against the use of marijuana? That there is a raging debate around the medical use of the drug and its legality? Do I tell him that it's just a 23-year-old having some fun with kids his own age?

In the end, I copped out, deciding to keep it simple. I said it was a drug I did not know about. But that it was against the law and that the cops were looking into the matter and that he might end up going to jail for it.

Now his face crumpled. He knew Phelps' training for the World Championships in Rome was set to begin any time. Then came the line I was completely unprepared to hear. Where did he even get it? So Godfatheresque. "He has brought real dishonor to his family!"

I turned my face away. I had to stifle the giggle that was threatening to bubble up. I quickly changed the topic and got him busy with prepping the table for dinner.

But he came back to it again, later in the night. It really bothered him. He was trying to reconcile the image of the super-successful swimmer with the guy who did something stupid, something he should have known never to do, that might lead to him not swimming. I just let him talk and we agreed that it was the stupidest thing to do, that his mother must be feeling bad. Where is his dad, he asked at one point. And I told him what little I knew.

There is a strain of opinion that opposes letting Phelps off scot-free. So what if he's the best swimmer in history, asks The Washington Post's Michael Wilbon. On the other hand, Let a kid be a kid, says Kathleen Parker.

As for me, the idea that celebrities should be role models just took another hit, an idea I was leery about already. Why should sports stars and film stars and politicians be role models? I say this not only from the perspective of where our children should source their models from, but also from the perspective of the celebrities. Why should they be forced to put on a persona and behave well in public just because they are famous? There was a big brouhaha about Tiger Woods and Charles Barkley are few years ago. So what if Tiger Woods said the F word when his golf ball sailed clear of the grass and landed in the Pacific Ocean? So what if Charles Barkley behaves badly off court? Why do we celebrate them when they accomplish nearly inhuman things but bring them down the minute they show us they are human? Why are they in charge of teaching our children what is right and what is wrong? Sure we could emulate so-and-so's work ethic or so-and-so's volunteer work, but their lives as a whole are not for our children to copy.

In fact, these episodes, however distasteful they may be, are great life lessons about actions and their consequences. Celebrities' lives are exemplary when they're actually human.

That being said, I do hope there's some good news about Phelps soon.

US Schools: Public vs. Private

If you've ever thought about whether to send your children to public schools or to private schools and were looking for a way to assess the pros and cons, then this past weekend's Washington Post Magazine provides the personal insights of two families who've grappled with this issue.

In Learning to Conform, Fredrick Kunkle "reflects on how the drive to test and label students at his daughters' public school has snuffed out freedom and fun," and in Unreal World Pamela Toutant argues that, "for all their privilege, private school children miss out on the richness of being around kids not so like themselves."

As you will see, the choice is not an easy one to make and doubts linger no matter what.