Boys and More Boys

A new baby born in my extended family today.

And yes, he is a boy.

Of course he is a boy. A lovely boy. Congratulations to my brother and his wife.

I was reading some family history to the boys tonight. We started with my paternal grandfather's parents and worked backwards. He was one of five boys (two daughters died before age 1). He fathered 10 children, 7 of whom were boys. Of his grandchildren, 2/3 of them are boys. It is even more slanted if you just look at his daughters. The three daughters have nine children together. Only ONE of them is a girl.

Now to my generation. My parents had an even split, two boys, two girls, but they have 10 grandsons and two granddaughters. My sister and I only have boys (Six between the ages of 3 and 11). The daughters belong to my brothers. Of all my female cousins (the 1/3 minority that we are) in that line we have only two girls and something like 16 boys. Several of us have ONLY boys. Two others had daughters that died within a month or two of birth.

I don't really think doing the math at this point is very productive, but if it seems a little bit tilted in favor of the boys you wouldn't be wrong.

The same well-meaning sister who has been telling me once a month for four years that I need a daughter spoke up again on Sunday.

I won't scream.

I won't.

But I might want to.

I don't blame anybody or anything for my pretty firm belief that there isn't a daughter waiting for me. I think in my case it might have plenty to do with genetics. I don't mean my husband's seeming x-chromosome problem. On his side of the family things are about as even as can be. Each of his siblings has at least one of each gender (provided the one on the way didn't have her ultrasound read incorrectly). It might just be a body chemistry thing. Maybe I am too logical. Maybe I don't have enough faith.

Maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe. . .

Maybe I've just learned to be content with what I have.

Wild Abandon

I took my 7 year old on a mommy-son date yesterday. He wanted to go roller skating. It was some hard work and encouragement to get him going, but the pride on his face for having figured out how to do this thing was so wonderful.

I had a blast.

I made several of my own quick turns around the rink, skating especially fast during the 80's music. I probably haven't been on roller skates in 25 years, but I've still got the magic. What a remarkable day of silly forgetting my old-lady self and remembering the girl still inside.

And not a moment's worry about which boy was holding which girl's hand. The joy of getting older!

Dreaming Redux

It might have been helpful if I had first said WHY I want to start a school.

I had a great education. I think part of the reason it was so good, however, is that school was interesting to me. I took full advantage of the opportunities that were given to me. I was able to study sciences, history and literature at the highest level offered in my school. In addition I was able to do drama and debate. I participated in mock trial and learned a lot about government. I traveled with various teams and groups both to compete and to watch. I learned much about community from being part of the strong culture in our school.

I have spent many years pondering why I enjoyed school so much, but I've also realized something that every school must come to face sooner or later: my education primarily prepared me to be a successful student, and by extension, a teacher. I'm not certain that it prepared me all that well for other things. I've come to believe over the years that school should prepare students for more than just more school. It should prepare them for what the culture of their chosen fields of study will look like. In other words, they should spend less time in science reading textbooks and more time experimenting, collaborating, publishing and crunching numbers. History students should also spend less time in books (unless they are primary sources) and more time relating current events to older ones. History should have a heavy component of geography driven by cultural studies to achieve true understanding. Math needs to be studied in the context of real-world engineering problems so that students see how it is practical, useful and lucrative. You get my drift. And always, always, in every single course, students should be writing, writing, writing all the time.

We need to enculturate children to be citizens of the world and not just into school, or even just into the United States.

My other gripe with school is that it is too compartmentalized. English. History. Biology. And so on. The problem with that approach is that students miss completely the connections that make the world exciting, wonderful and functional. For example, how awesome to study evolution as a unifying theory of biology while simultaneously studying the naturalistic literature that rose out of the time, or the political and religious forces that came into play while society turned more to science than faith. How truly fantastic to overlay all of this with the era of colonialism and discuss exactly what was going on in the western psyche that made this colonialism okay. Did increasing secularism make this better or worse? Are we so different now? Is the US ideal of democratic governments in the middle east just another way to gain resources we don't have? To spread Christianity? Is it different?

I want students to leave school learning to ask questions, not just to answer them. And I want them to know how to search and search until they find answers, or at least better questions. I want them to know how to think critically and engineer solutions to complex problems. I want them to be able to speak in front of a group, write a paper that is truly professional in whatever subject is given them, to present their findings and hold a smart discussion, to write a resume any young person would be proud to hand off.

Schools need to be structured in ways that tailor a child's education to their needs: Smaller schools. Technology. Teachers more often as tutors instead of "sages on the stage." A cohort of student-colleagues and teachers. A cohesive framework in which to work. Teachers paid like professionals who are paid full time to work full time.

Stay tuned . . .

Paid

Today I got my last paycheck from my newspaper job.

I have been enormously relieved not to be working this week and after just a few days off I can't help but wonder how I have managed all these years.

My relief today, has been somewhat overshadowed by this idea of the "last paycheck." It has been a long time since I've been without a paycheck, and under our current plan this will last for another year. I hope not longer.

While I have gained sleep, there is definitely lost income. And lost income, for me, is often associated with loss of autonomy. Perhaps it will be a year to discover a new kind of freedom.