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Maybe divorce is the answer… June 10, 2014

Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, family, feminism, research, science, societal commentary, work.
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8 comments

I think I am going to change my name.  It’s very annoying.

My last name, anyway.

If I had it to do over again, the one thing I would’ve done when getting married is to keep my maiden name.  Hyphenation was not the best idea by a long shot.

This has been an issue (a lot) because I worked with my husband for so long.  I suspect it will die off as we are no longer coworkers.  However, one of the most bizarre things that has come up is that I recently received some reviews of a proposal that we wrote before he changed jobs.  One of the reviewers noted that as a co-PI, I had the same last name as the PI and so a conflict of interest was a possibility.

Huh?

My university has a clear and very detailed conflict of interest policy, and I’m not clear how this applies.  As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with conflict of interest as these policies are almost exclusively focused on outside financial obligations.  I checked with the funding agency, and that was all they had listed for conflict of interest, as well.

If he were supervising me or vice-versa (that is, one of us was a subordinate), such a scenario would violate internal policies to the university.  However, even if he is PI and I’m a co-PI, we both reported to someone else.  Further, a PI isn’t necessarily a supervisory role.  Do faculty members who collaborate on research supervise each other or collaborate?  (My experience says there are very few faculty who view their role as co-PI is that of being supervised by the PI.)

In any case, it’s a completely ridiculous comment to make on a proposal review because we could have been two completely unrelated colleagues who happen to have the same last name.  I can think about some of the areas of research I do, and I know of several groups of researchers, particularly in Asia, where many members of the team do have the same last name.  I never once jumped to the conclusion that there was a problem with this.

Of course, it’s obviously my fault for the name, so I should probably fix it.  Do you suppose it’s cheaper to go through the legal name-change process or to just divorce and quickly get remarried?

Married to my work April 13, 2014

Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, family, personal, societal commentary.
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5 comments

In the past two weeks, I have been introduced as Mike’s spouse twice in professional settings.

I usually view this as something akin to the Kiss of Death: the person receiving this news is likely to consider me an appendage to my spouse and therefore rather useless.  It’s not that I mind people know I am married to Mike.  He’s very competent and he’s a nice person, so I’m certainly not ashamed of it.  It’s often the reaction I get that bothers me.  We have both noticed that some people will make a point of talking to him and ignoring me entirely, even when the project is mine and has nothing to do with him.  (Of course, people do this even when they don’t know we’re married…)

In the first case, I found this rather interesting because it had a couple oddities relative to other introductions of this nature.  First, the person I was being introduced to had no idea who Mike was, and in fact, never did meet him.  I’m not sure why my marital arrangement was the first thing that came up, but I just sort of sigh and roll with it.  Second, I think one of the people we were with was more annoyed about the way I was introduced than I was.  While I just sort of shrugged and carried on as though nothing happened, shaking hands with the visitor, one of the other people who knew me repeated my name to the person two or three times.  As much as I’m resigned to this sort of thing, apparently other people are not, and my inner voice yelled, “Huzzah!”

The second situation was very unnerving.  Mike and I coauthored a paper which was accepted at a fairly selective conference.  The introduction to our presentation explained that we were a husband and wife team, and I inwardly cringed.  I was expecting the fallout to be very awkward for me.  What was odd is that, for the most part, this didn’t seem to make a difference to anyone.  Or maybe they already knew so it didn’t matter.  Mike has had a paper accepted there before, and I was invited to give a presentation last year, so we’re not complete strangers to this group of people.  With perhaps one exception, there wasn’t any noticeable difference in the way anyone treated him versus me.

While the “being married to my coworker” thing has it’s problems, it seems like some people aren’t letting it be as big an issue as it used to be.  It’s kind of nice to be considered a colleague and not an appendage.

It’ll make my day when people regularly introduce him as my spouse, though.  (It has happened once or twice, but not nearly as often as the reverse.)

A filtered education March 3, 2014

Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, math, older son, physics, science, societal commentary, teaching, younger son.
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The older son is a lot of fun.  Despite his statements that he has no desire to go into science, he seems to get and make a lot of science jokes.  I know he’s not a scientist, but I feel comfortable that he’s scientifically literate.  As he was homeschooled, I’m feeling pretty proud of myself.

I’m more anxious about the younger son, though.  This weekend, he brought home his science homework, which focused on optics.  The kids were studying filters, and one of the questions asked about what kind of light would you see if you shined a flashlight through a blue filter and then a red one.  I asked him what he saw, and he said nothing.  Unfortunately, he was told that he saw nothing because the flashlights just weren’t bright enough, but that what he should have seen was purple.

I’m pretty sure that if I had ever been bombarded with gamma rays in the past, I would’ve turned into She-Hulk at that very moment and started smashing things.  Fortunately (or unfortunately, if being She-Hulk happens to be a goal of yours), that didn’t happen.

I find it infuriating that, throughout my years of homeschooling older son and teaching younger son math, I have constantly been questioned about my ability to teach them.  The implication has always been that I may have a degree, but they are experts on teaching.  In fact, this particular teacher attempted to take me to task earlier this year about the younger son’s math curriculum…the same teacher who apparently doesn’t understand that light and pigments work completely differently.

After I managed to calm down, I explained that light filters are like sieves, except that they only let one size of particle pass through: nothing bigger can pass through the holes, but nothing smaller can, either.  After this explanation, the younger son was able to correctly explain that the reason he saw no light from his flashlight is that the two filters together had blocked all the light.

I’m going to be watching very carefully to see what kinds of scores he’s getting on his answers and whether the teacher realizes she made a mistake.  This was very disappointing.  There was a new science curriculum introduced this year, one which I was very excited about.  The focus was supposed to be on hands-on, problem-based learning, which is great for science.  Despite that, it seems that younger son’s science education may be lacking.  What good does it do to have a top of the line science education curriculum (or math…or anything else) when our teachers don’t understand what they’re teaching?  And how is it that these same teachers can justify questioning the ability to teach material that some of us understand far better than they do?

How to be condescending when you’re trying not to be February 9, 2014

Posted by mareserinitatis in career, family, societal commentary.
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5 comments

There are few topics more fraught with angst than the mommy wars. A friend recently posted a link to a defensive volley from the stay-at-home mom court.  Supposedly, this response was amazing.

I thought it undermined its own point.

Let’s start with the first paragraph:

It’s happened twice in a week, and they were both women. Anyone ought to have more class than this, but women — especially women — should damn well know better.

The opener disgusted me immediately, and I almost quit reading.  Let’s start with the fact that I agree with his main point: that women who choose one path over another (in this case, motherhood or career) are not necessarily superior to one other.  However, the whole tone of the post was condescending toward women (and men!) and did ultimately end up being judgemental of working women.

But the opener set the tone, and the tone was that women are held to a higher standard than men.  It’s okay for men to say stupid things about stay-at-home mothers (but not parents?), but women somehow have this innate, caring response that ought to be the first thing out of their mouths.

Sorry.  It doesn’t work that way.  I’ve been a SAHM and a working mom.  People’s response to this is always one that comes from their perspective and takes no account of whether you’re doing what you want to or why.  When I wanted to be a SAHM mom, people told me I needed to be supporting my family.  When I didn’t want to be but was, people told me they were so jealous that I got to be at home.  When I was working, people told me I was selfish and needed to pay more attention to my kids.

At all of these points, I was also told by other people that I had made the right choice.  It’s funny how few people ever asked me what I wanted to do or if I was doing it.  The reality is that, in each of these situations, I was doing what needed to be done for the good of my family, and each response had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the perspective of the person speaking those words.

When I find out someone is staying home or working, my response is, “How do you feel about that?”  If they’re enjoying their current situation, a good response is, “Glad it’s working out for you.”  If they’re not, I wish them luck in getting things sorted out so they can be more comfortable.  It’s really not my place to say what’s best for them.

The post that started all this, however, didn’t.  It came down firmly on the side of women needing to be stay at home moms.

Of course not all women can be at home full time. It’s one thing to acknowledge that; it’s quite another to paint it as the ideal. To call it the ideal, is to claim that children IDEALLY would spend LESS time around their mothers. This is madness. Pure madness. It isn’t ideal, and it isn’t neutral. The more time a mother can spend raising her kids, the better. The better for them, the better for their souls, the better for the community, the better for humanity. Period.

No.  It’s not as cut and dried as that.  Some moms really don’t want to be home.  Some moms are better being around other adults: being the sole caretaker for children with no adult interaction makes them depressed or anxious.  (I believe this was covered in the 60s in Friedan’s Feminine Mystique.)  I wouldn’t doubt that having mom home all the time may be advantageous for some kids, but I don’t know that it’s always the best choice for the whole family.

If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

If mom is going nuts staying home with the kids, I seriously doubt that’s the best situation for the kids, either.  Having a depressed or anxious mom who views you as a toddling, diapered impediment to her happiness isn’t good for anything.  What do we tell people to do if they’re unhappy with their job?  Quit and find another because it’s not good to be in a stressful situation.  Obviously, quitting being a parent isn’t an option, but finding time away from parenting certainly is.

The other thing that irritated me about this post was this:

Yes, my wife is JUST a mother. JUST. She JUST brings forth life into the universe, and she JUST shapes and molds and raises those lives. She JUST manages, directs and maintains the workings of the household, while caring for children who JUST rely on her for everything. She JUST teaches our twins how to be human beings, and, as they grow, she will JUST train them in all things, from morals, to manners, to the ABC’s, to hygiene, etc. She is JUST my spiritual foundation and the rock on which our family is built. She is JUST everything to everyone. And society would JUST fall apart at the seams if she, and her fellow moms, failed in any of the tasks I outlined.

Moms don’t need to be SAHMs to do this.  In fact, what’s most irritating about this that you don’t need to be a mom at all: dads do this, too.  This paragraph basically went back on the whole “I respect the choices that other parents make comment” and went ahead and tried to put those SAHMs up on a pedestal…doing exactly the thing to working moms (and ALL dads) that the writer was originally complaining about.  In fact, he even says so.

The people who completely immerse themselves in the tiring, thankless, profoundly important job of raising children ought to be put on a pedestal.

No, I disagree.  Parenting is a tiring, thankless, profoundly important job.  And a lot of people have tiring, thankless, and profoundly important careers, too, although they at least usually get monetary compensation.  Also, many people have jobs where they are greatly appreciated and are not easily replaceable.  Okay, maybe someone who is only looking at your payroll may think so, but chances are that many of your coworkers don’t think that…even if you do get on their nerves.

We get a lot of things wrong in our culture. But, when all is said and done, and our civilization crumbles into ashes, we are going to most regret the way we treated mothers and children.

No, I don’t think that mothers and children will be the only victims.  I think the problem is simply how we treat other people in general.  In general, we tend to be caught up in the “grass is always greener” syndrome without a realistic view of what other people are dealing with.  Most people are really just trying to get through their day and don’t realize that they may be simultaneously in worse and better situations than the next person.

I once was very jealous of a friend because of all the academic honors he had achieved.  He was so accomplished, and I felt like a failure next to him.  One day he told me he felt the same because I had a happy marriage and a wonderful family.  That was the day I realized that we all picked our own paths and had our own priorities.  We always have to give up something to get what we want because no one has infinite time and resources.  We almost always find the path of our lives takes unexpected twists and turns.  And if people could respect and understand that, we’d all be in a better place.  We’re not going to get there, though, by saying we respect all those paths and then telling someone they chose the wrong one.

plan_thinkingip1

If you can call me fat, I can call you stupid October 30, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in running, societal commentary.
Tags: diet, fat, fat-shaming, weight
2 comments

There’s been an article floating around about a local woman named Cheryl who is planning on fat-shaming kids at Halloween by giving them a letter telling their parents that those parents are irresponsible for not watching their kids diets.

I really, really resent this type of behavior.  I’m going to be blunt: at my heaviest, I had a BMI of 47.  If you don’t know, that’s downright awful.  But you know what?  Nothing I did made a difference,  I was running, I was eating ‘healthy’…but the changes I saw were incremental, at best.  I tried to keep doing those things because I knew they were making me healthy even if they weren’t helping me to lose weight.

Just over a year ago, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, ending what has been a nearly life-long struggle with a multitude of medical issues, including obesity.  Yeah, I was fat as a kid, too.  And now I’ve lost a lot of weight simply because I found out I can’t eat gluten.

And you know what?  It never once helped me when someone reminded me of the fact I was fat, from age 10 on.  The people who like to chide those of us with weight issues probably didn’t realize that I ate pretty close to the same thing as my uber-skinny husband, and more often than not, I have had a more rigorous exercise schedule than he.  (I’m not implying he’s lazy or anything, but even he said after a couple years that it perplexed him how our weights could be so different.)  No one ever made a point to give him diet tips, but I get them all the time.  Once he went to the doctor about a sore back.  The doctor xrayed him and ran some tests before sending him to a physical therapist.  Six months later, I went in with the same complaint…and was sent to a dietician because my sore back was obviously a result of my weight.

You can’t tell why someone is overweight.  You can’t tell by someone’s weight how much exercise they do, how healthy they are, how much body fat they have (surprisingly) and, most importantly, how shitty they may feel about themselves because of the fact that their weight makes them a target for jerks like Cheryl.

People like Cheryl don’t realize that weight doesn’t equal health – there are many studies showing that overweight people who are active (that is, metabolically healthy) are actually at lower risk for many diseases than skinny people who are not.  Focusing on a person’s weight doesn’t improve their health…and likely makes their mental health a lot worse.

Cheryl, I do understand your desire not to hand out candy.  I also understand why you’re confused about how weight and health.  Rather than fat-shame someone, however, just give them an eyeball eraser instead…and maybe read some of the links above to understand why what you’re doing is not only morally repugnant but scientifically invalid, as well.

Good morning, Gentlemen. October 7, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, societal commentary.
Tags: ,
2 comments

Almost as soon as I got to work this morning, I was pulled into a conference call.  I was rather amused because, after everyone on our end of the call was introduced, the person immediately responded with a, “Good morning, gentlemen.”  The other people in the room with me laughed a bit.  I smiled, and in one of my moments of goofiness, attempted to muster a bright, cheerful (and somewhat high-pitched), “Good morning!”

I suppose I could have been annoyed at the assumption that all of the people in the room were men, but that didn’t seem right.  After all, this person could not see who was on the other end of the line.  Aside from that, there was an apology afterward for not realizing there was a “young lady” in the room (although that was amusing as both of those terms are relative, too).

I just tried to imagine it was like the Star Trek universe…if everyone were called, “Sir,” I don’t suppose I would be bothered if I were addressed that way, as well.  And it sure beats being called, “Miss.”

Food stamps and the SNAP challenge with celiacs disease September 28, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in food/cooking, societal commentary.
Tags: , , ,
4 comments

I grew up relatively poor: our family received food stamps during various parts of my childhood.  I remember what eating on the ‘food stamp’ diet was like.  We ate a lot of ‘goulash’: a pound of really cheap hamburger mixed with a pound of macaroni, a can of corn kernels, and a can of tomato soup.

To this day, I can’t stand the taste of corn with anything tomatoey because of it.

I thought of this after reading about Ron Shaich’s experience with the SNAP challenge.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, Ron Shaich, who is CEO of Panera, decided to try to live for a week on $31.50, which is the average amount someone on food stamps receives.  In the article, he said:

My approach to grocery shopping was to try to stay full. That meant carbohydrates. In retrospect, it was a poor choice. I ended up with a diet largely based around pasta, lentils, chickpeas and cereal. While it wasn’t a ton of food, I could mix and match for various meals and find myself not quite full — but enough to get by. Breakfast and snacks were Toasted Oats. Lunch and dinner varied between chickpea, jalapeno and tomato soup, lentil casserole and pasta with tomato sauce and garlic. Fresh fruit, vegetables and yogurt were too expensive.

I read this and my first thought was that I would neither be full nor healthy.  In fact, a diet like this would likely cause me to end up sick within a day or two.  I can’t eat wheat at all (and I have other food sensitivities), and if I ate tons of carbs (even if it was something like rice and beans), I would feel cruddy in the short run and, over the long run, end up with metabolic syndrome.

In fact, I know this because this is pretty much what happened to me growing up on foodstamps.

Reading this comment, I started to wonder about how my celiacs diagnosis would change things.  This made me wonder if I could put together a menu that would be less carb intensive (so that I would feel sated) and gluten-free.

Using the online shopping feature at my local grocery store, my grocery list looked like this:

  • tea – I buy bulk tea, which costs about $.05/day, so $.35 for a week
  • 2 cans of Starkist selects tuna in olive oil $3.18 (all other tuna adds broth)
  • an 8 oz brick of cheddar cheese $2.50
  • 8 oz. of butter $1.59
  • 2 dozen eggs $3.58
  • 2 lbs. of 80% ground beef $7.18 (cheapest protein with most calories)
  • 3 small heads of romaine lettuce $3
  • a 5 lb. bag of potatoes $3
  • 2 green bell peppers $2
  • 3 tomatoes $1.06
  • 7 bananas $2.10
  • 1 little can of cumin for spice $1.29

My total, therefore, was $30.83.  If I were to do this over a two week period, I might swap out the cumin and be able to afford half a bag of rice…but potatoes are generally better both in the nutrition and satiety department than rice.

My diet would consist of a couple eggs every morning in 1 tbsp of butter.  For lunch, I would have salad every day with either tuna or a hard boiled egg.  For dinner, I would have potatoes every night with some variation on toppings of cheese, butter, or maybe meat with tomato and pepper cooked in.  I could have stuffed peppers a couple of nights.  I’m not sure if I would have salad left over for dinner, but if I did, I would try to have a bit.

I decided to look at the nutritional content of the food using fitday.  This would be about 1460 calories per day…assuming you eat all of the hamburger grease.  If you look at the vitamin and mineral content for the entire week, you get this:

nutrition

All in all, not horrible.  Keep in mind that this is over 7 days, so anything close to or above 700% RDA is good.  I’d probably be okay if I could take a multivitamin…except you can’t buy those on food stamps.

I know I could eat like this because this is actually not too far off from what I do already.  I don’t have as many potatoes, instead having more berries, yogurt instead of cheese, and some nuts and dark chocolate when I’m really hungry.

The kicker is that most people could not, however.  I’m trying to lose weight, and this is the best way I’ve found to do it because it doesn’t leave me hungry.  The rest of my family eats this way, but they eat a lot more than I do…and both Mike and the older son are under doctors orders to NOT. LOSE. MORE. WEIGHT.

You see, since going gluten free, both of them are actually struggling with eating enough to not become underweight despite me constantly piling more fruits and vegetables on their plates…and the occasional gluten-free brownie.  (The older boy is six feet tall and has a 29″ waist, to give you an idea.)  Therefore, I know that a normal healthy person cannot eat this way and sustain their weight.

My conclusion, therefore, is that it’s only possible if you’re planning to lose a lot of weight…and once you’ve lost that weight, you’re going to be starving.  If you are a normal weight adult or, worse, a growing child, you will not have enough to eat regardless of how healthy your choices may be.  There are a lot of people out there with dietary needs who are stuck: if they don’t follow their diet, they can become sick and unable to work with the best alternative becoming disabled.  (And as one blogger wrote, that doesn’t necessarily help the problem.)  If they do follow their dietary restrictions, they’ll still likely end up starving.  This whole issue is a reflection of a series of larger problems from inadequate health care to having a living wage.

I thought about trying to do a SNAP challenge and eating this way for a week.  I’ve decided I’m not going to, though.  I spent a good chunk of my childhood doing that, so I already know what it’s like.  I have the utmost empathy for anyone going through this.

A manly woman September 19, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, societal commentary.
Tags: , ,
3 comments

I recently read an article about a woman, Norah Vincent, who went undercover to become a man.  It was very interesting, particularly the difficulties she had dating and the preconceived notions that were shot down in the process.  It sounds like the process was horribly stressful for her, though, so it should give us thought about how difficult it can be to actually *be* a man.  I’m impressed by her willingness to go through with the experience and try to see things from another’s point of view.

This got me thinking, however, about the fact that I spend most of my time around men.  I work with mostly men, my kids are both boys, and even a lot of my closest friends are men.

I came across a gender analyzer that looks at the text you write and tries to assess your gender.  (If you’re curious, it’s here.)  It’s interesting to me that every piece of my own writing that I analyzed ended up giving a male result.  In the notes below the analyzer, it said:

For example, a woman who has spent 20 years working in a male-dominated field may write like her co-workers. Similarly, professional female writers (and experienced hobbyists) frequently use male writing styles.

That makes sense…but it made me think about how, as an engineer, I have to pretend to be male in order to be accepted.  However, accepted and respected are two different things.  I often wonder if I would have better luck accomplishing the latter if I took notes from Norah Vincent:  maybe I need to get a buzz cut and start wearing a fake 5 o’clock shadow.

Making fun of Fix the Family September 13, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, religion, societal commentary.
Tags: , , ,
4 comments

I came across a blog post on facebook.  It was one of those that’s so absolutely stupid that you simply can’t help but respond.  I realize I’m potentially feeding trolls here…but you have to see it to believe it.  The one redeeming value in this post was that, for once, it was actually worthwhile to read the comments.

What post is this? Six reasons not to send your daughter to college  Except it’s not six reasons: after posting, two more reasons were added.

Yeah, seriously.  Not only do people still believe this crap, they’re apparently stupid enough to post it in a public place for all to mock.  They begin the article by supposedly diffusing all claims that they’re misogynist and sexist (not to mention blatantly anti-feminist).  Here’s what they have to say:

  • You don’t believe in educating women.  Sure we do…as long as it’s to become a stay-at-home mother.
  • You believe in oppressing women. Bingo!  But we’re not going to call it that because we’re in denial about our position of privilege.
  • You believe in taking away opportunities for women and trapping them into a subservient role.  As long as she’s only subservient to her husband…cuz God says so.
  • God calls women to use their talents.  As long as those talents are raising children and keeping house.
  • A  woman needs to have something to provide income in case her husband dies, becomes disabled or leaves her.  But this never happens to people who are responsible.  If this is a problem, it’s because you stupidly didn’t take care of it when you could have, you idiotic woman.  Or you weren’t subservient enough to keep that dead-beat around.  Either way, you’re still stupid.

So now that we’ve established their real stance, let’s take a look at the actual reasons women shouldn’t go to college.  I tried to provide a translation to make the meaning more transparent:

  • She will attract the wrong types of men.  You see, college men are the wrong types.  They’re all lampreys, seeking the perfect woman to support them and take care of them while they sit at home and play video games all day.  Once they have the perfect woman trapped, they will inevitably give up their career goals and sit at home eating bon-bons all day while she wears the pants in the family.  None of them would consider actually being responsible, pursuing a career, or desiring to marry a woman who is actually an equal in the relationship.  Obviously, a man’s life goals are going to crumble in the face of that particular temptation.
  • She will be in a near occasion of sin.  You see, women are too inept to actually be able to handle sexual temptation.  They might find out they like having sex, and that’s not okay unless they’ve been duped into marrying someone.  Then it’s okay to like sex because it blinds women to mens’ faults (which is the only way to maintain a civil marriage), and more important, it makes teh babiez!
  • She will not learn to be a wife and mother.  College is useless, you see, because women are only there to raise kids and take care of their husbands (as long as they remain subservient to them).  So obviously it’s not teaching her the right skills.  If she wants to have the right skills, she must get hitched and start making babies immediately, obviously with a man who she meets at church because those college guys are just too lazy…otherwise she’s just wasting her life.  Baby bootcamp is the only way to go…and women should get there as soon as possible.
  • The cost of a degree is becoming more difficult to recoup.  You see, men are obviously worth more in the marketplace, so it makes economic sense for women to only take on menial labor tasks until they can find someone who has real economic value to take care of them.  Then they can do the job that they were meant to do: make babies!
  • You don’t have to prove anything to the world.  Women only go to college because of peer pressure.  In reality, fulfillment and independence really have no place in the decision.  The only fulfilling thing a woman can do in her life is raise kids.
  • It could be a near occasion of sin for the parents.  Parents are financially responsible for their children might not pop out as many babies as physically possible, so they’re just a bunch of sinners.  Parents should only be responsibly financial for their sons because girls don’t really need educations: they’re only going to be mothers, anyway.
  • She will regret it. Women may think they want to go to college after high school, but once they are a bit older, they’ll wish they’d made more babies instead.
  • It could interfere with a religious vocation.  If she doesn’t want to be a mother, she might want to be a nun, and college degrees are useless for nuns and may make them ineligible, as well.

I guess I’m lucky I don’t have any daughters and I’m not Catholic or I might be in a quandry right now.

If you send your kid to public school, you’re a dunce September 1, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, societal commentary.
Tags: , , , ,
3 comments

That’s a strong statement, calling someone a dunce because they allow their children to go to a school that’s provided for free and, in most cases, even required by law.  Why would anyone say that?  I’m not sure, but it was about as useful as the title of an article on Slate: “If you send your kid to private school, you are a bad person.”  Generalizations are, in general, pointless things, and they aren’t much better as titles.

The article itself, however, was downright appalling.  The author, Allison Benedikt, starts out by saying:

I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental.

That’s probably the only point in the whole article I can agree with.  The whole thing was a judgemental screed against people who don’t send their kids to public schools.  None of it was backed up with evidence or even anything remotely resembling solid reasoning.  She discusses the fact that she attended public schools, and after reading her complete inability to form a cohesive argument, I dare say she made me even more convinced that our public schools have gone down the tubes.

She did have some reasons for her premise that those of us who send our kids to private schools are bad people.  She starts by saying that if everyone would send their kids to public school, they would improve…it would just take ‘a generation or two’.  You see, those of us who have the means to send our kids to private school are just supposed to sacrifice our kids’ and grandkids’ educational needs to meet some utopian goal that has a small likelihood of occurring.  It apparently never occurred to her that she has made exactly the wrong argument to these people:  people who send their kids to private schools may have several reasons for doing so, but I would guess that the main three are going to be that they strongly value education, they  strongly value the ethical systems taught at some of these schools, and they are worried about what I would generally call ‘status issues’ (things like who their kids hang out with and perception of their families).  Does she really think that parents who are that concerned about one or more of these three things is really willing to ‘sacrifice’ their kids?  That’s the whole reason they’ve elected to go with private schools to begin with: the sacrifice of large sums of money is less important than the sacrifice of their kids’ education (and the things that go along with it).  However, Benedikt wipes these issues away and says they’re not compelling.  She started her whole argument by finding the most compelling way to isolate her audience.

In fact, she starts belittling education and claiming that you really don’t need those things.  She is a perfect example, apparently, because her parents sent her to school and really didn’t care about those things.  That is quite obvious given her line of reasoning…and, as I said above, compels me to want to send my kid to private school even more.

Benedikt says school is really about is interaction with other people.  I won’t disagree that a large part of school is socialization, but I, of course, don’t buy this argument as I’ve written before about how public school is actually generally worse than options like homeschool when it comes to socialization.  Throwing together a lot of immature people to learn socialization from each other results in, surprise surprise, lots of immature people.  More adult interaction with those adults role-modeling mature behavior is a far better socialization system than the one present in most public schools.  Again, this is actually an argument against the public schools, in my opinion.

Finally, Benedikt says that if only we redirected our private school endeavors to public schools, that would make everything better.  Here, I can only assume she is incredibly naive on so many levels.

I will start by saying that I don’t hate the public schools.  The notion of free education available for everyone is most definitely a public good and vital to maintaining democracy.  However, I think that our public schools have some major problems.  As the political right wing says, they don’t work to educate children.  The structure is set up for teachers, not for students.  As the left wing says, they are underfunded and undervalued.  I think both sides have very valid arguments.  Schools have, for generations, taught children using the least effective methods, mostly by people who aren’t well-educated themselves (particularly in the grade school years).  They have a better handle on crowd control than educational psychology.  On the other hand, they have to because of they way the public school system ties the hands of teachers.

There are so many educational reforms that would make the schools *work* but people are not interested in trying them out or are scared that it may affect their job security.  Or they are just apathetic about education.  I’m not talking about things like vouchers or charter schools.  I mean things like making grade levels fluid, getting rid of grades, making the classroom a place where students are leading their learning and teachers are facilitators.  The notion of allowing children to excel in areas of interest and take more time in areas of difficulty is almost heresy.  In other words, what schools ought to be are places where kids really learn, where interaction provides useful feedback about knowledge and behavior, and where you’re not locked into doing something simply because of how old you are.  Education needs to be tailored to the individual student because teaching to the average is useless for everyone.

These are the kinds of reforms that would bring parents back from the private schools.  Simply saying that the schools would be better if all parents sent their kids to public school is naive, at best.  It is as blind a solution to the problem as just shoving more money to the schools, privatizing schools, or forcing kids to pray in school.  Almost every reform out there is completely blind to the fact that we are using teaching methods that actually fail to education children.  If you don’t change our fundamental assumptions about how to educate students, you’re not going to get any different results.

I will say that I agree that it’s sad not more people take an interest in seeing public education thrive.  However, part of the reason is that the way public education is conducted is virtually set in stone.  It takes a divine act for most places to change even the smallest things.  Too often, school teachers don’t have the time or knowledge to deal with individual students’ issues and the parent of such children is viewed as an enemy combatant.  My choice as a parent then becomes whether I want to devote my time to change the outcome for my individual child through whatever means I have (for instance, by homeschooling or sending to private school) or continuously shoving an immovable object.  If I had left either of my kids in public school, I wouldn’t have fought harder…I would have quit because of the futility in trying to work with most teachers and administrators who have no interest in seeing the system change.

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