I was reminded today of the irony involved in being a family that chooses home education because we feel there is too much religion in our state’s public school system.  A friend who is exploring the possibility of moving to homeschooling asked me for a few resources that address this issue, so I wrote her an email.  Then I commented in a public forum about having written said email and got several requests for a copy.  I figured, instead of forwarding it a dozen times, I would just tweak it a bit and make it blog ready.  I’m probably going to make some folks mad with this, but aren’t bloggers supposed to be controversial on occasion?  So what the hay, here goes.

The basic issue is the manipulation of Texas state education standards and the impact that can have nationwide, especially in the textbook market.  This is what, in my opinion, an informed citizen ought to know about.

As a beginning foundation to understanding the intricacies of this issue,  this is a good article that gets you started understanding how state governments and pressure from lobbying groups affect state standards, approved textbooks, and therefore- textbook authors and publishers.   Texas has A LOTof pull because of the sheer volume of textbooks they buy.  Textbook publishers are always more likely to focus on publishing exactly what Texas and, to a slightly lesser extent California and Florida, want.  Because of that, the preferences in Texas usually determine what is more widely available for the rest of the country to buy.  Vermont, for example, would have a really hard time getting their hands on more progressively oriented textbook resources because they just aren’t going to order that many, so it just isn’t as profitable for the textbook publishers to publish what Vermont might be looking for versus what Texas is looking for.  Anyway, the article is a bit of an oldie, but a goodie and explains this and other major issues with American textbooks well.  
 
The battle that is playing out in Texas right now has been raging in school systems across the country for some time.  When it comes to science standards, the lynch pin issue is evolution.  The Creationists don’t want textbooks or science standards that teach evolution.  They either want them severely watered down or even better, removed completely.  Or else they want Creationism (Judeo-Christian God created the world in six days, man came from dirt, there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, end of discussion) taught in schools.  This is Ken Miller’s site that outlines the battle scientists are in about this all over the country.  Ken Miller is a textbook author.  He wrote a biology textbook that was highly criticized for addressing evolution.  They placed these crazy stickers on his books in some school systems in 2005.  He eventually had to go to court over this whole thing.  Anyway, his experience is a prime example of the crux of the debate ongoing, nationwide debate. 
 
Last year, Texas public school science standards came under review.  The Chair of the State Board of Education was an ardent Creationist– Don McLeroy.  This guy is seriously scary  He’s very open about his goals for Texas public education and they are not even remotely tolerable when compared to the goals we have for our children’s educations.  He’s no longer the Chair.  Now it’s his protege, Gail Lowe  who is in no way an improvement.  Anyway– he and Ms. Lowe and many other State Board of Education (SBOE) members helped to effectively weaken science standards in this state.  I’m going to link to the Texas Freedom Network for you for their synopsis of the damage done.  TFN is clearly a liberal organization, so their bias is clear and they are honest and passionate about it.  But they are a very effective watchdog organization when it comes to keeping an eye on the SBOE and their actions lately.  Here is their summary of what happened in the science standards battle.  Scroll down and you will see where it says Science Curriculum Revision Recap.  You can read through those links or take a look at the video. 
 
Now the SBOE is at it again.  This year it is the social studies standards.  Recently, they listed several notable American historical figures that they felt should be cut from Texas social studies program.  The list included Thurgood Marshall, attorney in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case and later the first African American Supreme Court Justice– but Texas children don’t need to know about him.  Or about Cesar Chavez, major figure of the modern labor movement.  Why?  Because these individuals are not representative of a good conservative education and the current standards contain way too many references to minorities, apparently.  However, Rush Limbaugh should be included.  It’s insanity.  Again, TFN is the easiest place to go to read up on this to start with, but keep in mind they do have a strong liberal bias.  You can just go straight to their homepage because it is one of their top lobbying issues right now.    Right at the top it says “Far Right Moves to Rewrite History in Texas.”  So take all of this insanity and then go back to the issue of textbooks.  If Texas rewrites its science and social studies standards to reflect an ultra-conservative agenda, that is what the large textbook publishers will cater to and the entire nation’s public education systems will feel the effects.
 
Combine all of this with the 2007 legislation that encouraged public schools in Texas to teach Bible classes but without an specific guidance on how to do that, plus statements by the Texas Attorney General that require high schools to teach the influence of the Bible in history and literature (again with no guidance on how to do this in an appropriately academic manner versus a religiously dogmatic manner) and we have a whole lot of political and religious propaganda being fed daily to public school students.  It has been a very effective backdoor campaign to create a politically and religiously motivated education in government funded classrooms. 

Basically, it’s enough to make my skin crawl and convince me that my kids are better off homeschooling.  Funny that, unlike the popular cultural image of home educating families,  we homeschool because we believe there is too much religion invading my state’s public education system!  At least when I’m homeschooling, I am the textbook purchaser.  I can look for what I judge to be objective, secular resources that provide us high caliber materials for science and social studies– no radical bias needed from any political or religious agenda in my classroom.

I don’t do it well.  I once wrote a poem about it that won a prize in a poetry contest actually.  I’m pretty sure I wrote it while waiting for something.  I have a hard time just sitting around doing nothing but waiting.  Hence, the blogging while waiting today.

Today, I’m waiting for a phone call from the pediatrician’s office about Artemis’ x-rays.  While they were playing on Wednesday, Apollo fell on her arm and she is still favoring it.  We saw the doctor yesterday and missed getting into the imaging center before they closed, so we headed in early this morning to get the films done.  Now we’re in a holding pattern, waiting to see if she just needs rest and maybe an ace bandage or whether a trip to a pediatric ortho is in our near future.  Why is it that they always seem to do this on a Friday? 

When things like this occur, it occassionally makes me miss the military.  We would have been able to do the pediatric consult, the x-rays and the ortho in one day in one building if we were still active duty.  Of course, it might very well have been my parents doing it since it is more than likely that, had we stayed, Patris Maximus and I could have both ended up in the same or different deserts without each other or our children had we chosen th remain in the service.  So from that perspective, I’m grateful that we are out.  I don’t know if anyone in the country has a decent idea how to fix the problem really, but there really is no denying that our health care system on the whole is majorly lacking.

So we wait.  And goodness knows how many things I’ll find to occupy myself with while we do because I am just no good at this waiting thing.

ETA: We’ve confirmed that she does not have any breaks or fractures and as of Sunday the 13th, she’s beginning to use her hand again so it looks like she is on the mend!

Life is clipping along.  I turned around the other day and discovered it was July.  Not sure exactly how that happened, but it obviously did.  We haven’t been up to anything earth-shattering so there’s sort of a general lack of blog fodder for me these days.  I sat down the other day to finish up a post on my homeschooling blog about our plans for the 2009-2010 school year, but ended up getting side-tracked and completely lost my motivation to finish it. I’ve also been kicking around the idea of addressing the lack of part three of the twins’ birth story, but that one just hasn’t come together for me either. I want to write. I actually get a bit crabby if I go too long without some writing release. But it’s just not there for me right now. So I’m wondering how to rectify this low blogging mojo that is holding me up.

I can’t seem to sleep tonight. The kiddos are at the very tail end of a bout of flu and are still hanging on to a touch of cough. They’ve timed their coughing jags perfectly with the time it takes my body and brain to relax into oblivion after perking up to monitor the last unconscious coughing fit i heard from across the house. So I got up. Checked my email. Checked my Facebook feed. And ended up here. “Enough is enough,” I said to myself. Just type up something. Read at you own risk.

A friend gave me an intriguing book called Writing Motherhood for my birthday a couple of months ago. I’ve been reading bits and pieces of it the last few weeks. The author recommends putting a notebook in one’s purse and writing wherever you go. I put the notebook in my purse. At one point, I sat down to write something in it. Then the doorbell rang. I haven’t gotten back to it yet. She also recommends setting aside a time and space to write everyday. Hmm. I keep thinking that I should get up before the kids. In my mind, this early morning oasis of time allows me to share a cup of coffee with my husband before he leaves for work and then fit in writing, a workout and a shower all before the first child awakes, chanting “FEED ME!” It sounds heavenly in theory. Then my alarm goes off and I am yet again seduced by that sultry snooze button. I can’t seem to do it. (Of course, blogging at 1am may have something to do with that…) I could handle the most grotesque early mornings when I was ordered or ordering others to, but knowing I only have flip flops to slide my feet into and not combat boots makes it so much easier to roll over and go back to bed. Am I destined to always be a night owl? I’ve read many places that it takes about twenty-one days to make or break a habit. Could I commit to shunning the snooze button for three weeks? “Don’t knock it, till you’ve tried it.” I think to myself. But when that morning moment of truth arrives, who knows what will happen.

In a brilliant marketing move, our cable provider has given us access to a wad of movie channels for free this month and I’ve been catching up on my controversial films. Like Wall-E. Man, was that a sharp piece of social commentary or what? An almost hopelessly trashed planet? The entire human race obese, technology-obsessed consumers hell-bent on instant gratification? Is that the rock bottom we’re headed for? And what’s with the kiddie movies trying to make us think? I know I’m behind on this, but I don’t get out to the movies much. I also finally saw The Business of Being Born. I must be the last crunchy mama in the country to see this, but now I have and now I’m angry about America’s twisted birth culture all over again. I’ve experienced one unmedicated vaginal birth and one c-section. Why anyone would choose major abdominal surgery if they didn’t absolutely need it right before entering one of the most physically demanding times of your life while caring for a newborn completely escapes me. It is like deliberately breaking your leg right before competing in the Olympic Decathlon. I was also really struck by Dr. Odent’s words. What are we losing as a species by short cutting the natural hormonal process of birth and breastfeeding? The process of the release of love hormones. Can we survive without love?

As it is now 2am and the coughing seems to have abaited, I’m going to call it a night. It feels good to have gotten at least a little something posted. Even if it seriously lives up to the name of the blog itself. Sorry about that. Maybe the next few posts will be better quality. Maybe they’ll even have a 7am time stamp. Stranger things have happened.

I’ve spent about a week dealing with some intense interpersonal conflicts and I am gosh darn exhausted from it at this point.  But I seem to be unable to mentally let go of it all yet.  Everything is still very fresh and I find myself turning various events and conversations over and over again in my mind to view them from various angles and perspectives. 

There was a time when I would have dealt with situations like this in a very different manner.  A manner that I would not, now, be proud to admit to using.  As this situation has progressed, I have tried my best to remain open, calm, honest, firm in my beliefs, respectful of the needs of others, caring and polite.  I am hopeful that I have succeeded in those goals.  However, as this situation begins to resolve itself, I still find myself wondering whether it could have turned out differently and whether I did everything I could to work through it positively, especially to the benefit of the community in which the situation unfolded. 

I think what I am finding myself doing at this point is looking for the lesson for me.  I am looking for what I am to take away from this situation through various lenses- the lens of leadership, the lens of spirituality, and the lens of motherhood to name a few.  A part of me just wants to put this away and be done with it.  But I sense there is still much for me to learn here and I am attempting to stay open to that instinct.  I hope to find a quiet time and space to meditate upon all that has occured.

I am also hoping for a nap.    

I escaped for a few hours to my book club last night and when I arrived home, I found Patris Maximus and the Triad of Chaos in our living room.  Inside our eight man tent.  Artemis and Apollo were wrapped in fleece blanket cocoons and had obviously called it a night, while Patris Maximus and Athena were kicked back, hands behind their heads watching a History Channel program on Ancient Egyptian warfare and weaponry.  I peeked in the door of the tent and was promptly instructed to change into pajamas and get in there before the show started talking about the battle of Quadesh.  I stashed my purse and snuggled in for the night. 

 In the morning, I took a look at how Patris Maximus had been able to pitch the tent without staking it through our living room carpet and into the foundation.  My darling husband is really pretty fantastic at these sorts of things, but it was obvious that it had taken some time for him to get it set up for them.  Over our mini-waffle breakfast, I tested the waters just for fun and asked the Triad if the tent should come down after we got home from co-op class.  I must know my kids, or just kids in general, pretty darn well because I got exactly the response I figured.  The tent is there to stay for today and tomorrow at least and they are negotiating for another day or so.  This afternoon we’ve done just about everything except eat and go to the bathroom in the tent.  (Any camper or ex-military officer worth their hiking/combat boots knows that you don’t eat or….. you know, where you sleep.)  But other than that, we’ve barely come out of the tent.  Athena even managed to come up with the inevitable “tentschooling” comment for today’s educational efforts, observing gleefully that “After all, you can learn anywhere, can’t you?”  The girl is wise beyond her years. 

I am looking forward to a fun evening of living room camping and I figure since it did take my husband so long to put it up, we might as well get some lengthy enjoyment out of his indoor engineering efforts.  I’ve already mentally adapted all of tomorrow’s plans to fit inside the tent because really, in all honesty, this kind of thing is just as much fun for me as it is for them.  And I’m betting I can get them to do just about anything (like helping to fold the laundry) as long as I suggest we do it in the tent.  Did I mention that this gig is actually my dream job?  Back to the campsite!

Oh, put a stake in me!  I just can’t take all this mamby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians.  You won.  Alright?  You came in and you killed them and you took their land.  That’s what conquering nations do.  It’s what Julius Caesar did.  He’s not going around saying, “I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.”  The history of the world is not people making friends.  You had better weapons and you massacred them.  End of story.

~Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4, “Pangs”~

I adore Thanksgiving.  It is possibly my favorite annual celebration.  In the nine Thanksgivings since I left college, I have been known to put on some serious feasts.  The compulsive planner in me thrives on reviewing recipes, writing up a menu, gathering ingredients from at least four different grocerey stores,  and preparing each dish with love.  And like the Buffster, the sentimental mystic, in me is attracted to the ritual and tradition of the day and the spiritual nature of collecting loved ones around the table.  But the budding history buff in me (cultivates by Athena, actually) struggles with the background for this cultural melee and has to acknowledge that Spike has a valid point. 

So what’s a girl to do?  Especially a girl who espouses the goal of homeschooling socially conscious children with an accurate understanding of the true events of human history with all its inherrant beauty and malice, amazing acts of love and mind boggling atrocities alike.  The best I’ve been able to come up with is to focus on the “Thanks” part of Thanksgiving for now.  To teach our children that, in this day and age, it is our country’s cultural tradition to take a day to focus on our blessings, to cultivate a spirit of gratitude.  We’re going to skip stereotypical dancing pilgrims and singing natives.  Two years from now, when we reach that period of history in our curriculum, we’ll get to the settlement of North America by the European colonists and tackle the history behind Turkey Day. 

Modern Americans cannot make up for all of our early historical mistakes.  And this modern American is not going to waste time trying.  I’ll spend tomorrow revelling in the modern customs and rituals that are meant to invoke that spirit of gratitude within me and my offspring.  I will give thanks for my family and my life with reckless abandon.  And I will continue to strive to raise children who, with any luck, will turn out to be the type of Americans who can successfully lead this nation through their contemporary history-making events, learning from previous generations’ mistakes and moving forward into a brillant future. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

At times I am certain I am living life at near terminal velocity.  It is practically a compulsion.  I am also almost certain I am pretty incapable of slowing down much at all.  I find the need to be working on about ten to the google power at the same time.  Books, I’m reading, various writing projects, something in a half finished state hanging out on almost every set of knitting needles I own, homeschooling the kiddos, baking muffins, bread or both, watching my latest television obssession (currently My Own Worst Enemy– Christian Slater is soooo back!) planning the latest class or activity I’m facilitating, listening to a variety of weirdo podcasts, and the list goes on and on.  So, really, in theory, adding something to my plate is probably insane.  But I have never been the picture of perfect mental health.  Enter NaNoWriMo. 

If you aren’t familiar with this particular brand of insanity, the basic premise is that hundreds of questionably insane folks around the world join together and attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. From the first to the thirtieth of November, they all typety-type-type like mad, squashing any self-doubt or self-criticism with the simple goal of just getting it all down on paper sans editing. It is pretty crazy. I’ve considered doing this in the past, but have always been a little intimidated by novel writing. Almost all other forms of writing (except any form of playwriting) delight me and I love indulging in them. Hence this blog, as a small example. But novel writing, with all its dialog and need for a coherent plot that could carry the length of the piece, always freaks me out. The level of commitment to a work that long is breath-taking. NaNoWriMo, however, strives to make many of the intimidating factors of novel writing irrelevant. Who cares? is the mantra of the month. Who cares if your plot totally falls apart and changes directions a quarter of the way into the story? Who cares if your main character’s name isn’t the same all of a sudden? Who cares if your novel is a total piece of hyena dung? It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you keep writing until the very end.

So this year, I registered at the site. I was really, until this morning, still unsure that I’d even get started. I dug out my old hunk-of-junk-barely-a-decent-word-processor-now laptop and a notebook with a few ideas scribbled down in it this morning. It sat on the living room floor while the kids played. I vacuumed around it, sorted laundry next to it, and during naptime finally booted it up. Day One of NaNoWriMo. I am happy to say that I have a plot. And a name for my main characters. And a little structure. And, most important of all– 876 words, so far. That’s about half of what I need to get down today to be on pace, so hopefully I can get the Triad of Chaos settled in a speedy fashion and knock out the rest of the daily quota. Who knows? Twenty-nine days from now, I could be a novelist. That is insanity.

No, not those headlines. These headlines. I seriously just almost peed my pants laughing. At the second link, of course. I don’t even want to talk about the first link. Stephanie at Throwing Marshmallows has done a fabulous job addressing the first link. All I have to say about that is “Here, here!”

I am exhausted.

Seriously exhausted.

But in a very positive way.   It is actually somewhat amusing to me that, as a year round homeschooler, I am being struck by the physical, mental and emotional adjustment period that is Back-To-School time.  Athena had no desire to take a break over the summer for more than a few days at a time, so we’ve been clipping right along through the heat and humidity of Southeast Texas, but in the last two or three weeks something has shifted and the pace has suddenly quickened.  It is as if she is tapped into some sort of energetic flow that causes the nation’s children to suddenly crave knowledge and new shoes again with a voracious appetite now that late August approaches.   Whatever it is, the girl is on an educational rampage.  Last Saturday became “The Day of Mesopotamian Madness.”  And she was not kidding when she made that proclamation over breakfast.  I asked her where that idea had come from and she showed me the source of her inspiration– blueberries and scrambled eggs.  Athena had used her breakfast to craft a map for the Fertile Crescent, complete with a blueberry Persian Gulf and two blueberry rivers.  You guessed it, the Tigress and the Euphrates.  She also decided to spend the rest of the day calling me “Mother of the Euphrates River“ whenever she wanted anything.  She used an old crib sheet to fashion herself a robe appropriate to wear to the ziggurat and presented Patris Maximus with a bedsheet, instructing him to do the same so he could assume his responsibilities as temple guard.  Amazingly enough, I was able to scrounge together a dinner that met her strict standards of authenticity- lamb chops, dates, kumquats, apple slices and sebetu rolls (which she helped to bake.)  The next day she wore her Mesopotamian robe to church and to a friend’s birthday party, came home, built yet another building block model of a ziggurat and opened a Mesopotamian jewlery shop in the playroom, magnanamously accepting Artemis as her apprentice and convincing Apollo to trade her animal skins (READ: beenie babies) for a hand crafted lapis lazuli necklace (READ: blue plastic luau party favor.)  It is on weekends like this, witnessing this all-consuming passion for learning shining out from her very spirit, that I wonder how anyone could ever mistake her own unique internal drive for hothousing on my part.  But it has happened.  It shouldn’t matter.  And really it doesn’t matter.  We are doing what works for us and Athena is thriving.  That is what matters.  All the same, it does sting a little to be accused of pushing your child in an unhealthy way when it is all you can do most days to keep up with her need for knowledge and keep meals on the table and just enough clean underware available for everyone to get through the rest of the week. 

Ocassionally though, I do catch a little break.  Apollo and Artemis are teaching themselves American Sign Language these days and will watch these videos, quite literally, for hours. Then, of course, Artemis wakes me up at 4am, vigorously signing something at me in the dark from the foot of my bed, so I pay for letting the video do the work later, I guess. That is the way of things though, isn’t it? Eventually the lesson comes back around to you. Funny episodes of karmic retribution have been taking place in recent days all over the place. The most amusing of which is probably the re-enactment of the Eighth Plague of Exodus everytime we return from a grocery run. I was mid-sentence, explaining for what felt like at least the twenty-first time, that we did not have to immediately devour every last scrap of food we had just purchased before I could even get it shelved, when I began to giggle hysterically. The Triad of Chaos just looked at me and then each other with this “Has she finally snapped for good?” sort of look passing between them. But I couldn’t help it. I sounded EXACTLY like my own mother when her four children, who also moonlighted as locusts, descended on her after her return from the military commissary. Here it was. The karmic boot to the behind for every time my younger sisters and brother and I managed to snarf an entire 2lb. bag of grapes or box of granola bars straight out of the grocery bags plopped hodgepodge across our kitchen floor while my frantic mother raced to store everything before it dissapeared for good. When I finally got my giggles under control, I tossed the Triad a bone and let them inhale a pint of blueberries while I finished putting everything else away.

It has been raining a great deal here the past week or so. This morning the Triad and I sat in the window seat of our kitchen and watched a small creek appear on our property line. We also got to watch the construction trucks attempting slow motion u-turns in our cul-de-sac through a little over a foot of water. But once the torrential downpour subsided, we discovered that the neighborhood actually has pretty descent drainage. The kids had a lovely time puddle hopping and delightedly drawing with chalk on the still-wet pavement after dinner tonight. They ended up drawing out most of the rest of the kids and parents on our block to join the fun actually. More storms are headed our way tomorrow. This sort of weather also contributes to my general sense of exhaustion. Rain just plain makes me sleepy. I better set the coffee pot on a timer for tomorrow morning so at least two mugfuls of steaming inspration and motivation will be ready and waiting for me. Athena warned me over dinner that tomorrow would be “Crazy, Fun Learning Day.” I asked her what such a day would entail and she looked at me with a mouth full of sweet potato and grinned. “I don’t know yet Mommy. That’s your job.”

….this weekend, so we decided to go out and buy a house!

 Actually it’s not quite as random as it sounds, believe it or not.  Our lease on our beyond lame luxury apartment is up at the end of August.  At first we were not sure what to do, seeing as there is a small chance of us winging our way to Australia in about a year.  We considered staying in the apartment and barely tolerating dealing with the substandard service and neighbors, but I eventually vetoed this course of action for the sake of Patris Maximus’ blood pressure and general stress level.  Then we also considered renting a house, but discounted that option since there is also a possibility that we will stay put right here for years to come.  So we began poking around to see what was out there for purchase and we were pleasantly surprised. 

 It took us one week of house hunting and research to decide we wanted to buy a new home instead of a pre-existing one.  Our last house was a pre-existing one that we struggled with constantly.  It was, in general, a good home.  But Patris Maximus spent many hours repairing stupid construction mistakes that caused all sorts of issues.  We decided that buying new would give us warranty protection should any of the same issues arrise.  So we began hunting around to see what sort of inventory homes were available and how desperate the builders were to off load them.  After our experience with buying a home in an insane market four years ago, we were enjoying the luxury of being rational.  Methodical.  Cautious even.  And then I saw The House.  And I fell in love.  And Patris Maximus fell in love with the price tag and the builder’s financing offer that expires this weekend.  So we took it.  

I am itching to dash off to the hardware store for paint samples, but the packing and cleaning here must come first.  In less than three weeks we’ll be home!