Yeah, yeah. Just go back and read. Or don't. But don't complain about not knowing what's going on if you don't. No, I'm not providing all the links, because you're all smart people and can find the posts.
In the end, we were left with only two options: continue as we had been doing, the equivalent of throwing ourselves and our son against a large brick wall and hoping to make a doorway, or find some other way, something that was non-system. We figured we'd been bruised up enough by the wall and would look for a way around.
As an aside:
California has what is called the CHSPE, the California High School Proficiency Exam; it is exactly what it sounds like. It is a test to see if you possess the minimum requirements that they expect you to gain in high school. Passing the test is the same as a high school diploma. The only problem is that you have to be 16 to take the test. We weren't looking at that as an option.
But let me tell you a little bit about the test so that you can understand the extent of what I'm talking about when I say that the system is broken.
The CHSPE covers only two subjects: English and math. There's no history. No science. No arts or physical education. If you only need English and math to "pass" high school, why do we require all of these other subjects as part of graduating? And the math is pretty basic, algebra and a small amount of geometry. Stuff my son completed in middle school. The English, also, is pretty basic. That this is all that is required to pass this test tends to affirm my assertion that high school is mostly a waste of time.
Anyway...
We began looking at alternatives, because homeschooling was not an option. Homeschooling, in the general sense of it, requires that you enter into a certified program which, essentially, means you will be doing all of the normal things you would be doing at school but you'd be doing them at home instead. It is the same kind of drudge work we were trying to bypass.
This is an important thing to take note of. The reason for this, which I learned by talking to a few people at our school board, is because if you are not in a certified homeschool course then you can't actually get credit for any of it if you ever decide to return to regular school. You would have to start back where you left off.
The thing we eventually hit upon was something called "unschooling." I'm not going to explain it; you can click the link if you want to know what it is. What I will say about it is that the main guy I spoke to at the school board, the guy who deals with homeschooling and related "alternative" schooling methods, strongly counselled against anything that wasn't a certified program, and unschooling is not. It's not even a "program."
So we were all prepared for that.
Somewhere in there we discovered, though, that there was an exception to the age qualification on taking the CHSPE. The student must be 16 years of age OR must have completed 10th grade. So, well, my son has completed 10th grade. We signed him up to take the test.
I want to reiterate that he is 15 years old.
As I write this, he took the exam this past Saturday. His reaction to it was that it was easy. Granted, we don't know that he passed, but I'm going to operate under the assumption that he did (by the time this posts, we should have the results of the test). Which brings me back to the point of high school being mostly superfluous. Even within the parameters of the test for an average teenager, it is implied that a student should be able to pass the test by the time s/he has finished her/his sophomore year of high school, which is age 16 for most students.
Why, then, do we do high school at all?
Because it's tradition. And, sure, you could expound on all the conventional reasons for doing high school, but all of those come down to tradition. This is how it's done and, therefore, this is how you should do it. However, that's only true if you let it be true.
So we're proceeding, at the moment, with what is basically the unschooling path although we're also assuming that my son has passed high school. He is already hip deep in a (free online) Harvard programming course and having a lot of fun with that. At some point, probably sooner rather than later, we'll be looking into classes at the local community college for him.
All of which brings me to my point:
If my 15-year-old son can take and pass the CHSPE, then there's something very wrong with the system. That there were no avenues for him within the system shows that there is something wrong with the system. That there is this test and it is not presented as a viable option for every student shows that there is something wrong with the system. That the vast majority of what students are required to do in high school is considered nonessential by the state shows that there is something wrong with the system.
In fact, I would say that there is everything wrong with the system.
Right now, the plans for fixing the system mostly have to do with pumping money into it. And, while it's true that there are parts of the system that are in dire need of funds, that general response is about fixing the system by doing it harder. By banging yourself up against the wall over and over again hoping to break through. What we really need is a new system. We all need to be unschooled.
"Unlearn what you have learned."
[I also want to point out that everything with my son is better now. Since we decided back in January to explore other avenues for him, he has come back to himself. Rather than the constant battling over homework and the forcing him to buckle under and do what he "needs to do," we have our old, pleasant child back who is affectionate and jokey and fun to be with. We can do things as a family again. It is all well worth it.]
Update: We received the results of his test last week, and he passed. Not just passed; he totally aced the test. I want to point out, specifically, that he got a 5 on the essay part of the exam (the highest you can get on their 0 to 5 scale). I also want to reiterate that my son is 15. And, now, a high school graduate. So tell me again: What is the point of traditional high school?
Showing posts with label math. Show all posts
Showing posts with label math. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2016
Monday, July 11, 2016
How the System Failed My Son: Part Seven -- The System Is Broken
[If you're not caught up, go back and read. Just do it.]
We thought we had everything taken care of. Or, at least, we hoped we had. We had good systems in place and they had worked well during Phillip's freshman year. Or, at least, we thought they had. But, basically, his sophomore year began much as his freshman year had, an email from his English teacher (honors English) telling me that Phillip lacked the requisite intelligence and skills to be in her class and that I should move him to the academic class where nothing would be required of him. [You also have to admire the disdain that the teachers of the honors classes have for the academic classes. (Yes, that's sarcasm, because how is it okay ever for a teacher to have that kind of attitude?)]
Look, I get that there is some burden on my son in all of this. I'm not ignoring that. But the burden on my son was this: "Get with the system and do what you're supposed to do. Quit being difficult." And, well, that's the problem. Get with the system, the only system. The system that was not designed for you and, actually, cares nothing for you other than that you comply.
It's bullshit.
I say that as someone who flowed fairly easily through the system until I got to the part when I was in college working on an Education degree and realized that I couldn't stomach it. That I would never be able to work within that system because the system is shit and cares nothing about the students individually but only about them as a collective that is able to score well on standardized tests.
The system was built for people like my daughter, people who are very achievement oriented and competitive. And, for her specifically, someone who wants to accomplish her tasks quickly so that she can go on to other things. [That's a mindset that makes sense to me, because that's how I was. My goal was always to have as little homework as possible to do at home, so I worked hard during the school day (and on the bus) to get all of my homework finished before I got home; that way, I could do whatever I wanted once I was home. (Of course, my homework load was nothing like what any of my kids have had.) That's exactly how my daughter works. It's also how I wanted my son to be, and I spent years trying to convert him to that approach, pressuring him to work in a system that didn't work for him. It's just not the way he works. It's about like putting a fish on land and trying to talk it into breathing air instead of water.] For instance, her 2nd grade teacher, the same teacher my son had in 2nd grade, loved her. Because she was fast. Even though my daughter made mistakes from working too fast, the teacher thought she was brilliant. The teacher thought she was the "smart one."
[Now, I don't want to make it sound like I have boxed my kids into labels, because that's not the case. My daughter is exceedingly smart, quite above average, but she is not as academically talented asher older brother. If you want to call it that, he is the "smart one;" she is the "sporty one." Those things are just objectively true. Labeling is really for ease of reference, but we don't consider our daughter not smart just because she's into sports. My son, however, is completely un-sporty.]
Anyway...
Our initial reaction to the email was to set up another conference with his counselor and this teacher... only to find out that he had a new counselor, too, and she was also questioning whether he ought to be where he was, not just in that class but math and even the school. I just wanted to scream. I mean, don't these people look at anything other than what's right in front of them? Could they not see that he'd made honor roll the previous year and see his standardized test scores and see everything or anything that came before that one moment? To accomplish anything, we were going to have to start completely over again with everything we'd done the year before.
Was it even worth it?
School, regular school, was clearly hell for my kid. It wasn't getting better. There was no routine that was working for him that involved him getting up and sitting through classes all day, classes he couldn't see any point to (or me, for that matter (but that's a different topic)), and doing hours of homework every night. And, honestly, it had worn us out.
It was time for other alternatives. If the system doesn't work or, more specifically, work for you, you should get out of it. It's like that what I've said about tradition in the past: If it's not working for you, change it. And, face it, school is mostly about tradition at this point. That's why we keep increasing the homework load on kids despite the fact that study after study shows that homework (other than reading) is counterproductive.
But change is hard and stepping outside of the system is, um, more hard. More harder. Look, it's difficult to look at this thing that is the way everyone does it (not counting homeschool (which we were NOT going to do), because homeschool is still within the system even though it might not look like it) and to decide to go some other way. But that's what it's come down to, finding another path because, honestly, there's not anything else he's going to learn at school, anyway, and he's already farther along, by far, in pretty much every subject than most high school graduates.
See, this is the part where you quit trying to do the same thing over and over and failing every time but doing it again anyway in the vain hope of a different result.
We thought we had everything taken care of. Or, at least, we hoped we had. We had good systems in place and they had worked well during Phillip's freshman year. Or, at least, we thought they had. But, basically, his sophomore year began much as his freshman year had, an email from his English teacher (honors English) telling me that Phillip lacked the requisite intelligence and skills to be in her class and that I should move him to the academic class where nothing would be required of him. [You also have to admire the disdain that the teachers of the honors classes have for the academic classes. (Yes, that's sarcasm, because how is it okay ever for a teacher to have that kind of attitude?)]
Look, I get that there is some burden on my son in all of this. I'm not ignoring that. But the burden on my son was this: "Get with the system and do what you're supposed to do. Quit being difficult." And, well, that's the problem. Get with the system, the only system. The system that was not designed for you and, actually, cares nothing for you other than that you comply.
It's bullshit.
I say that as someone who flowed fairly easily through the system until I got to the part when I was in college working on an Education degree and realized that I couldn't stomach it. That I would never be able to work within that system because the system is shit and cares nothing about the students individually but only about them as a collective that is able to score well on standardized tests.
The system was built for people like my daughter, people who are very achievement oriented and competitive. And, for her specifically, someone who wants to accomplish her tasks quickly so that she can go on to other things. [That's a mindset that makes sense to me, because that's how I was. My goal was always to have as little homework as possible to do at home, so I worked hard during the school day (and on the bus) to get all of my homework finished before I got home; that way, I could do whatever I wanted once I was home. (Of course, my homework load was nothing like what any of my kids have had.) That's exactly how my daughter works. It's also how I wanted my son to be, and I spent years trying to convert him to that approach, pressuring him to work in a system that didn't work for him. It's just not the way he works. It's about like putting a fish on land and trying to talk it into breathing air instead of water.] For instance, her 2nd grade teacher, the same teacher my son had in 2nd grade, loved her. Because she was fast. Even though my daughter made mistakes from working too fast, the teacher thought she was brilliant. The teacher thought she was the "smart one."
[Now, I don't want to make it sound like I have boxed my kids into labels, because that's not the case. My daughter is exceedingly smart, quite above average, but she is not as academically talented asher older brother. If you want to call it that, he is the "smart one;" she is the "sporty one." Those things are just objectively true. Labeling is really for ease of reference, but we don't consider our daughter not smart just because she's into sports. My son, however, is completely un-sporty.]
Anyway...
Our initial reaction to the email was to set up another conference with his counselor and this teacher... only to find out that he had a new counselor, too, and she was also questioning whether he ought to be where he was, not just in that class but math and even the school. I just wanted to scream. I mean, don't these people look at anything other than what's right in front of them? Could they not see that he'd made honor roll the previous year and see his standardized test scores and see everything or anything that came before that one moment? To accomplish anything, we were going to have to start completely over again with everything we'd done the year before.
Was it even worth it?
School, regular school, was clearly hell for my kid. It wasn't getting better. There was no routine that was working for him that involved him getting up and sitting through classes all day, classes he couldn't see any point to (or me, for that matter (but that's a different topic)), and doing hours of homework every night. And, honestly, it had worn us out.
It was time for other alternatives. If the system doesn't work or, more specifically, work for you, you should get out of it. It's like that what I've said about tradition in the past: If it's not working for you, change it. And, face it, school is mostly about tradition at this point. That's why we keep increasing the homework load on kids despite the fact that study after study shows that homework (other than reading) is counterproductive.
But change is hard and stepping outside of the system is, um, more hard. More harder. Look, it's difficult to look at this thing that is the way everyone does it (not counting homeschool (which we were NOT going to do), because homeschool is still within the system even though it might not look like it) and to decide to go some other way. But that's what it's come down to, finding another path because, honestly, there's not anything else he's going to learn at school, anyway, and he's already farther along, by far, in pretty much every subject than most high school graduates.
See, this is the part where you quit trying to do the same thing over and over and failing every time but doing it again anyway in the vain hope of a different result.
Monday, June 27, 2016
How the System Failed My Son: Part Five -- The Horse He Rode In On
[Seriously, you need to go back and read the other parts of this before reading this one. There's no recap, just full speed ahead.]
This is the period full of second guessing for us. Middle school was... Well, it was problematic, to say the least. Homework was a nightmare. We quit being able to do anything as a family, because my son would spend all night, every night, doing homework. There was never time left for anything else.
Sure, some of it was his fault. He did have the ability to work faster but, from his perspective, why was he even having to do it at all? I can't even think of a good analogy for this, because, other than school, there is no part of life that requires this kind of thing. Which is not to say that there aren't some jobs which require you to take your work home with you, but those are by choice. I mean, you choose those jobs, and you can un-choose them if you want to. School isn't like that.
Look, it was kind of like this:
It was like having to drag your horse to water because it refused to walk there. Once there, you had to force its head under to make it drink but, instead of drinking the water, it would just hold its breath until it couldn't, at which point it would breathe in a bunch of the water, so you had to pump its chest and do CPR just before holding its head under again.
Oh, wait, this sounds like some torture technique...
And that's what it was, familial torture.
It was at this point we were just trying to power through middle school with the hopes that high school would be better.
Let me back up a moment:
For one thing, middle school is miserable for virtually everyone. I hated middle school. I mean, I loathed middle school. Not that my parents ever knew. My mom, despite how many times I've told her to the contrary, is still under the illusion that I loved middle school. But high school, which I had dreaded, once I acclimated to it, was pretty great. Okay, well, it was pretty okay. I mostly enjoyed high school.
We had had issues with his older brother in middle school; not the same kinds of issues, but we'd still had issues. When he got to high school, everything had turned around for him, and he loved high school
This may have been part of the issue that was created...
For years, Phillip had wanted to go to Tech High, a local area high school that specialized in math and, you guessed it, technology. Phillip really likes to build things, and they have a robotics program. It seemed like a good fit. He even applied there and was accepted. (You have to be ahead of the curve to get into that school, and Phillip was certainly that, being two years ahead in math when he got out of middle school (if you count the year he skipped, he was actually three years ahead).)
But, see, math... We had been struggling with him over his math homework constantly, and we couldn't see how it would be better if he went to a high school centered around math.
The thing that had turned everything around for his brother had been drama and choir, and, as I mentioned last post, Phillip developed a real love for acting and, specifically, musical theater during middle school, and he had decided that he wanted to follow in his brother's footsteps and go into the same program his brother had been through.
Trying to find the thing that Phillip would enjoy and give him some joy in school again, we let him make the decision. There was some ambivalence on his part because he had wanted to go to Tech High for years but, when he went to shadow there (if you don't know what that is, ask in the comments), it was a horrible experience where he was pretty much just left to sit alone for hours while the students worked on some project on their computers. He did get accepted there, but he chose the arts program and to go do drama. His shadowing experience there had been very positive considering everyone knew his brother and welcomed him right away.
He's really good, by the way. A natural actor and able to do character parts really well. He also has a great ear and voice. Basically, he's a natural.
So we made it through middle school, got him into the high school he wanted to go to, and we held our breaths. Just like that horse with its head being held under the surface of the lake.
This is the period full of second guessing for us. Middle school was... Well, it was problematic, to say the least. Homework was a nightmare. We quit being able to do anything as a family, because my son would spend all night, every night, doing homework. There was never time left for anything else.
Sure, some of it was his fault. He did have the ability to work faster but, from his perspective, why was he even having to do it at all? I can't even think of a good analogy for this, because, other than school, there is no part of life that requires this kind of thing. Which is not to say that there aren't some jobs which require you to take your work home with you, but those are by choice. I mean, you choose those jobs, and you can un-choose them if you want to. School isn't like that.
Look, it was kind of like this:
It was like having to drag your horse to water because it refused to walk there. Once there, you had to force its head under to make it drink but, instead of drinking the water, it would just hold its breath until it couldn't, at which point it would breathe in a bunch of the water, so you had to pump its chest and do CPR just before holding its head under again.
Oh, wait, this sounds like some torture technique...
And that's what it was, familial torture.
It was at this point we were just trying to power through middle school with the hopes that high school would be better.
Let me back up a moment:
For one thing, middle school is miserable for virtually everyone. I hated middle school. I mean, I loathed middle school. Not that my parents ever knew. My mom, despite how many times I've told her to the contrary, is still under the illusion that I loved middle school. But high school, which I had dreaded, once I acclimated to it, was pretty great. Okay, well, it was pretty okay. I mostly enjoyed high school.
We had had issues with his older brother in middle school; not the same kinds of issues, but we'd still had issues. When he got to high school, everything had turned around for him, and he loved high school
This may have been part of the issue that was created...
For years, Phillip had wanted to go to Tech High, a local area high school that specialized in math and, you guessed it, technology. Phillip really likes to build things, and they have a robotics program. It seemed like a good fit. He even applied there and was accepted. (You have to be ahead of the curve to get into that school, and Phillip was certainly that, being two years ahead in math when he got out of middle school (if you count the year he skipped, he was actually three years ahead).)
But, see, math... We had been struggling with him over his math homework constantly, and we couldn't see how it would be better if he went to a high school centered around math.
The thing that had turned everything around for his brother had been drama and choir, and, as I mentioned last post, Phillip developed a real love for acting and, specifically, musical theater during middle school, and he had decided that he wanted to follow in his brother's footsteps and go into the same program his brother had been through.
Trying to find the thing that Phillip would enjoy and give him some joy in school again, we let him make the decision. There was some ambivalence on his part because he had wanted to go to Tech High for years but, when he went to shadow there (if you don't know what that is, ask in the comments), it was a horrible experience where he was pretty much just left to sit alone for hours while the students worked on some project on their computers. He did get accepted there, but he chose the arts program and to go do drama. His shadowing experience there had been very positive considering everyone knew his brother and welcomed him right away.
He's really good, by the way. A natural actor and able to do character parts really well. He also has a great ear and voice. Basically, he's a natural.
So we made it through middle school, got him into the high school he wanted to go to, and we held our breaths. Just like that horse with its head being held under the surface of the lake.
Monday, June 13, 2016
How the System Failed My Son: Part Four -- A Moment of Hope
No recap. Just go back and read the previous posts here, here, and here.
4th grade was better. He had a good teacher that year, a teacher we had been looking forward to him having because of what we knew about him from when his older brother had had the same teacher. He began to enjoy school and quit asking if he didn't have to go. Not that he was being challenged, but it was at least interesting. He also started 6th grade math that year, which was still too easy, but at least it wasn't depressingly easy.
Well, it wasn't depressingly easy at school, at any rate. At home was another story. See, going into middle school math meant a certain amount of homework to go along with it. Unnecessary homework. It's not that he hadn't already been having unnecessary homework (and I would argue that nearly all homework is unnecessary (in fact, I have)), but it had been relatively small amounts of unnecessary homework. 6th grade math stepped that up to levels that became depressing, because, again, it amounted to busy work for him, and he hated doing it. Because he hated doing it, it became a huge ordeal every fucking day. Every fucking day that has lasted for years. That year to this one, in fact.
This homework thing is part of the system that has failed not just my son but is failing pretty much all students in the United States, right now, and we refuse to give it up because, well, it's how we do things. If there's one thing Americans are good at it's taking something that is failing and doing it harder and more intensely and hoping for a better outcome. Homework is a system that has proven to be a failure and, yet, we just continue to give students more and more of it.
As an aside, my kids' school, many years ago, now, did actually take a look at homework and considered doing away with it. That's what the research shows: Homework should be so minimal as to be almost non-existent. Except reading. Reading should be assigned and promoted, because kids need to be reading. However, when it came down to it, the teachers couldn't agree to drop it. Why? Because assigning homework is what they knew.
So... He did better at school, but the homework he was having cancelled all of that out and, rather than his level of dislike for school going down, it just sort of simmered there at the same level. But, other than spending hours on homework every night, the year went well.
About a week before school started the next year, the year he would have been in 5th grade, we got a call: The school had just received back the results from the STAR test from his 4th grade year and he had, essentially, scored a 100% on it (like a 99.5% or something). He had always had high STAR test results, scores in the high 90s, which is why they had done an academic review in 3rd grade, but they couldn't ignore the 100, and they wanted to skip him to 6th grade. Of course, we said "yes."
>sigh<
I mean, of course, we said "yes." Along with the request to skip 5th grade was also an apology for not having listened to me about him for the last several years. Yeah, the principal said something to the effect of, "We should have listened to you. We're sorry. But we'd like to move him up to 6th grade this year." And, actually, they had to know right then because school was going to start in a week.
In hindsight, that was probably the wrong year to have done that. Not because he wasn't ready but because we had finally found a teacher he enjoyed, and he would have had the same teacher in 5th grade as he'd had in 4th grade. We did, briefly, consider that, that he would have to leave that teacher's class, but we figured it would be better to get him more closely aligned to where he was academically.
But the 6th grade teacher, as nice as she was and as much as he liked her, was not engaging in the way his 4th grade teacher had been, and it wasn't long before he'd moved back to being bored with school because nothing interesting was happening, and they weren't doing anything that he didn't already know. Not in the core classes, at any rate. There was some history he wasn't familiar with, but there was nothing in math, science, or English that he didn't already know.
There were two saving graces for him in 6th grade:
1. He was in the middle school musical production of Alice in Wonderland, and he discovered a love of musical theater.
2. I went in once a week to teach creative writing, which he loved. [I discovered that my son is a brilliant writer, which was a surprise. Not that it was a surprise, but just how brilliant was a surprise. At 10, his writing had a fullness to it that most high school students never achieve. It was way beyond what I was doing at 10, that's for sure.]
The problem with all of this is that once the perception becomes a belief, it's really hard to shake. My son's perception of school was that it was a waste of time, and, by the end of 6th grade, that had become a belief. A solid belief. He couldn't see a point in it and found nearly all of the work beneath him. But, still, he had a successful year in 6th grade and, probably, other parents would have been unconcerned with what was going on. People tend not to worry about their kids' performance at school when they're bringing in A's.
4th grade was better. He had a good teacher that year, a teacher we had been looking forward to him having because of what we knew about him from when his older brother had had the same teacher. He began to enjoy school and quit asking if he didn't have to go. Not that he was being challenged, but it was at least interesting. He also started 6th grade math that year, which was still too easy, but at least it wasn't depressingly easy.
Well, it wasn't depressingly easy at school, at any rate. At home was another story. See, going into middle school math meant a certain amount of homework to go along with it. Unnecessary homework. It's not that he hadn't already been having unnecessary homework (and I would argue that nearly all homework is unnecessary (in fact, I have)), but it had been relatively small amounts of unnecessary homework. 6th grade math stepped that up to levels that became depressing, because, again, it amounted to busy work for him, and he hated doing it. Because he hated doing it, it became a huge ordeal every fucking day. Every fucking day that has lasted for years. That year to this one, in fact.
This homework thing is part of the system that has failed not just my son but is failing pretty much all students in the United States, right now, and we refuse to give it up because, well, it's how we do things. If there's one thing Americans are good at it's taking something that is failing and doing it harder and more intensely and hoping for a better outcome. Homework is a system that has proven to be a failure and, yet, we just continue to give students more and more of it.
As an aside, my kids' school, many years ago, now, did actually take a look at homework and considered doing away with it. That's what the research shows: Homework should be so minimal as to be almost non-existent. Except reading. Reading should be assigned and promoted, because kids need to be reading. However, when it came down to it, the teachers couldn't agree to drop it. Why? Because assigning homework is what they knew.
So... He did better at school, but the homework he was having cancelled all of that out and, rather than his level of dislike for school going down, it just sort of simmered there at the same level. But, other than spending hours on homework every night, the year went well.
About a week before school started the next year, the year he would have been in 5th grade, we got a call: The school had just received back the results from the STAR test from his 4th grade year and he had, essentially, scored a 100% on it (like a 99.5% or something). He had always had high STAR test results, scores in the high 90s, which is why they had done an academic review in 3rd grade, but they couldn't ignore the 100, and they wanted to skip him to 6th grade. Of course, we said "yes."
>sigh<
I mean, of course, we said "yes." Along with the request to skip 5th grade was also an apology for not having listened to me about him for the last several years. Yeah, the principal said something to the effect of, "We should have listened to you. We're sorry. But we'd like to move him up to 6th grade this year." And, actually, they had to know right then because school was going to start in a week.
In hindsight, that was probably the wrong year to have done that. Not because he wasn't ready but because we had finally found a teacher he enjoyed, and he would have had the same teacher in 5th grade as he'd had in 4th grade. We did, briefly, consider that, that he would have to leave that teacher's class, but we figured it would be better to get him more closely aligned to where he was academically.
But the 6th grade teacher, as nice as she was and as much as he liked her, was not engaging in the way his 4th grade teacher had been, and it wasn't long before he'd moved back to being bored with school because nothing interesting was happening, and they weren't doing anything that he didn't already know. Not in the core classes, at any rate. There was some history he wasn't familiar with, but there was nothing in math, science, or English that he didn't already know.
There were two saving graces for him in 6th grade:
1. He was in the middle school musical production of Alice in Wonderland, and he discovered a love of musical theater.
2. I went in once a week to teach creative writing, which he loved. [I discovered that my son is a brilliant writer, which was a surprise. Not that it was a surprise, but just how brilliant was a surprise. At 10, his writing had a fullness to it that most high school students never achieve. It was way beyond what I was doing at 10, that's for sure.]
The problem with all of this is that once the perception becomes a belief, it's really hard to shake. My son's perception of school was that it was a waste of time, and, by the end of 6th grade, that had become a belief. A solid belief. He couldn't see a point in it and found nearly all of the work beneath him. But, still, he had a successful year in 6th grade and, probably, other parents would have been unconcerned with what was going on. People tend not to worry about their kids' performance at school when they're bringing in A's.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
It's Time For You To Grow Up (part 1) (an IWSG post)
Let's start with a story:
My wife is a data analyst. It's a job that requires some math skills. Not a lot. Not like calculus or trig or, even, all that much algebra, but it does require some maths. There's a lot of working with percentages and fractions. There are a few months each year when her job is really busy and requires lots of overtime. Last year, not long before the rush, one of the people in her department retired. Like any good company, to get through the busy time, they hired a temp. A temp with the potential to stay on. That was rather than hire someone permanent for the position at the point when they still had time to do that and provide adequate training, but that's another story entirely.
Now, the temp they hired seemed qualified for the job, which was not the full job, just some of the lower level routine stuff that required a lot of time. She looked qualified on paper, anyway, and got through all of the interviews and stuff. However, when it came time to do the job, she couldn't math. At all. It was almost immediately apparent that she wasn't going to work out, and there was still time to hire someone else. But, guess what, that's not what happened.
What happened is that they kept her on. The initial hope, I think, was that if they kept working with her that maybe she would "get it" and be able to do the job they hired her to do. But, no, that didn't happen. She never "got it" and, in fact, for a while, she made more work for everyone as she continued to not get it, because she would spend time doing a task (more time than it should have taken) and, then, someone else (usually my wife) would have to go back and re-do the task because it hadn't been done correctly. Eventually, after weeks of this, she became a kind of glorified filing clerk, because that's the only thing she could do.
I want to point out at this point that she was, as my wife put it, "a perfectly nice person, very sweet." She liked her. Everyone liked her. There was no one that thought she was a bad person or a dumb person or anything like that. But she couldn't do the job. And, yet, the people who should have told her that she couldn't do the job were unwilling to do their job of letting her know that she wasn't working out. Nothing positive came out of the situation.
1. It created more work for everyone involved.
2. It caused the marginalization of the temp as they looked for tasks to keep her busy because they couldn't give her any real work.
3. It created a false sense of hope in the temp as the message she received was, "you're doing fine," even though everyone knew that wasn't the case. But, you know, they kept her on, so she must have been doing something right, right? No...
4. It caused resentment toward the people who should have stepped in and said, "Hey, you're not ready for this work, yet. We need to let you go and find someone else." And, maybe, she never would be ready for it or, maybe, she just needed to get reacquainted with her math skills. No one will ever know, because no one ever told her that she wasn't doing the job. They just kept decreasing the level of the tasks given to her.
5. She was never told in what way she failed at the job. When the time was up on the job, they just didn't retain her. There was never any feedback on what she could have done to be kept on.
And, see, that's the real issue. No one ever told her what she was "failing" at, so she never knew what to get better at. Well, other than my wife explaining the same errors to her everyday, to which she would always reply, "Got it!" in a way that seemed the first few times that she really had gotten it. But that, having a coworker try to show you what you're doing incorrectly, is not quite the same as having your superior, the person who has the ability to tell you they need to let you go, sit you down and explain to you where you're not meeting expectations.
See, no one wanted to be the one to hurt her feelings.
Wow.
So I'm just going to say this:
Screw your feelings.
And, yes, that sounds more harsh than I really mean it, but, still, screw your feelings.
The problem is twofold:
1. Indie writers who hold their friendship for you hostage in order to get good reviews.
But here's the other thing about being a grown up, and maybe this comes from having spent so much of my life as a teacher, you have to be able to tell people when they haven't done a good job. If the only thing you can do is tell people "good job" because you're worried about hurting someone's feelings, you need to grow up, too. This is not a dinner party where you nod politely and tell the host that the substandard food is "wonderful" and "delicious." In fact, that behavior at a dinner party will lead people not to come back and leave the host wondering why. You know, since everyone said they loved the food the previous time. The problem here is that in this "dinner party," we're all responsible for the food and, when we go around telling each other "oh, I love that" when you actually want to spit it out then that's the food that gets served. But, see, we're not the guests. Readers are the guests and, when they keep coming to the indie writers' banquet only to find a bunch of crap food that the all the "cooks" are saying is wonderful, well, then, those readers will decide that ALL indie food is crap.
Basically, if you are unwilling to give a negative review, you shouldn't be giving any reviews at all. The whole thing where you opt out of reviewing the books you don't like and only giving reviews to books you do like would be like me only giving As and, maybe, Bs in my classroom and leaving all of the other kids gradeless. It doesn't help the situation.
So, no, when I read a book that I don't like, for whatever reason, I get to say I don't like it and, even better, I get to explain why I didn't like it. Other people can then come along and figure out if they want to try it. So, if I say, "This one is too sweet," someone who likes sweet things will go, "Oh! I like sweets! I'll try this one." Or, if I say, "This one was too salty for me," someone else has the option of saying, "Oh, yeah, I don't like lots of salt; I'll stay away from this one."
Honesty is important in reviews. Period. It's not about treating my "friends" like they're five and saying, "Oh, it's beautiful!" and hanging it on the refrigerator. So sorry if you think that's what this is all about. There comes a point when even parents quit hanging those things up. Usually right about the time the kid realizes the drawings are actually pretty crappy.
So, just to reiterate, if you're approaching this whole indie writing thing as if it's some weird support system of giving good reviews to your buddies so that they won't feel bad, well, just grow up. Actually, and excuse the language (or not, I don't really care), it's time for you to grow the fuck up.
[This post has been brought to you in part by Alex Cavanaugh and the IWSG.(But, mostly, this one is just me.)]
My wife is a data analyst. It's a job that requires some math skills. Not a lot. Not like calculus or trig or, even, all that much algebra, but it does require some maths. There's a lot of working with percentages and fractions. There are a few months each year when her job is really busy and requires lots of overtime. Last year, not long before the rush, one of the people in her department retired. Like any good company, to get through the busy time, they hired a temp. A temp with the potential to stay on. That was rather than hire someone permanent for the position at the point when they still had time to do that and provide adequate training, but that's another story entirely.
Now, the temp they hired seemed qualified for the job, which was not the full job, just some of the lower level routine stuff that required a lot of time. She looked qualified on paper, anyway, and got through all of the interviews and stuff. However, when it came time to do the job, she couldn't math. At all. It was almost immediately apparent that she wasn't going to work out, and there was still time to hire someone else. But, guess what, that's not what happened.
What happened is that they kept her on. The initial hope, I think, was that if they kept working with her that maybe she would "get it" and be able to do the job they hired her to do. But, no, that didn't happen. She never "got it" and, in fact, for a while, she made more work for everyone as she continued to not get it, because she would spend time doing a task (more time than it should have taken) and, then, someone else (usually my wife) would have to go back and re-do the task because it hadn't been done correctly. Eventually, after weeks of this, she became a kind of glorified filing clerk, because that's the only thing she could do.
I want to point out at this point that she was, as my wife put it, "a perfectly nice person, very sweet." She liked her. Everyone liked her. There was no one that thought she was a bad person or a dumb person or anything like that. But she couldn't do the job. And, yet, the people who should have told her that she couldn't do the job were unwilling to do their job of letting her know that she wasn't working out. Nothing positive came out of the situation.
1. It created more work for everyone involved.
2. It caused the marginalization of the temp as they looked for tasks to keep her busy because they couldn't give her any real work.
3. It created a false sense of hope in the temp as the message she received was, "you're doing fine," even though everyone knew that wasn't the case. But, you know, they kept her on, so she must have been doing something right, right? No...
4. It caused resentment toward the people who should have stepped in and said, "Hey, you're not ready for this work, yet. We need to let you go and find someone else." And, maybe, she never would be ready for it or, maybe, she just needed to get reacquainted with her math skills. No one will ever know, because no one ever told her that she wasn't doing the job. They just kept decreasing the level of the tasks given to her.
5. She was never told in what way she failed at the job. When the time was up on the job, they just didn't retain her. There was never any feedback on what she could have done to be kept on.
And, see, that's the real issue. No one ever told her what she was "failing" at, so she never knew what to get better at. Well, other than my wife explaining the same errors to her everyday, to which she would always reply, "Got it!" in a way that seemed the first few times that she really had gotten it. But that, having a coworker try to show you what you're doing incorrectly, is not quite the same as having your superior, the person who has the ability to tell you they need to let you go, sit you down and explain to you where you're not meeting expectations.
See, no one wanted to be the one to hurt her feelings.
Wow.
So I'm just going to say this:
Screw your feelings.
And, yes, that sounds more harsh than I really mean it, but, still, screw your feelings.
The problem is twofold:
1. Indie writers who hold their friendship for you hostage in order to get good reviews.
And, man, have I run into this one. I've lost count of the number of "friends" I've lost over negative reviews, but I'll just say this: If our "friendship" is conditional upon me saying that I like what you write, then we have no friendship. If I can't say to you, "You know, I don't like this one," without you yelling, "Well, you're not my friend," then we're already not friends. Or, likewise, if I can't say that about something some friend of yours wrote. It's the same thing. All I have for you is this:
It's time for you to grow up.2. Indie authors who are unwilling to give honest reviews to their friends because they are scared of losing their friendships.
I know you "think" you're supporting your "friends" by giving them positive reviews of their not-better-than-average books, but, really, you're just making it harder on everyone, yourselves included. Every 5-star rating you throw out there that should have been a 3 or a 2 or, even, a 1 is destroying the credibility of the indie book market in general. You know how I know? Because I see it said repeatedly by book reviewers who refuse to review indie books and by readers who will not buy indie books (sure, they'll download free stuff because who cares if it's free). They see all the false positive reviews out there and have learned that you can't trust indie authors. I'm sorry, but the fact that you are out there lying (because you are lying) about the quality of your "friends'" books is making my job more difficult. And, you know, it's encouraging them to continue to write the same crappy stuff rather than working on getting better. What I have for you is this:
It's time for you to grow up.Here's the thing, people say it all the time, "If you want to be a writer, you better develop some thick skin," and that's true. Except it's not about having "thick skin." It's about learning separation. The things people say about your work are not things they are saying about you, and someone can very validly say, "I don't like this thing you made, but I like you." When you flip out about that and do the virtual equivalent of yelling, "Then, I'm not your friend," you're acting like a first grader. At best. And, well, if that's where you are developmentally, then you need to go find something else to do with your time, because, frankly, writing is not for you. Or, at least, writing for anyone other than yourself. You need to do what Dickinson did and store it all in a trunk and leave it for someone else to sort out after you're dead.
But here's the other thing about being a grown up, and maybe this comes from having spent so much of my life as a teacher, you have to be able to tell people when they haven't done a good job. If the only thing you can do is tell people "good job" because you're worried about hurting someone's feelings, you need to grow up, too. This is not a dinner party where you nod politely and tell the host that the substandard food is "wonderful" and "delicious." In fact, that behavior at a dinner party will lead people not to come back and leave the host wondering why. You know, since everyone said they loved the food the previous time. The problem here is that in this "dinner party," we're all responsible for the food and, when we go around telling each other "oh, I love that" when you actually want to spit it out then that's the food that gets served. But, see, we're not the guests. Readers are the guests and, when they keep coming to the indie writers' banquet only to find a bunch of crap food that the all the "cooks" are saying is wonderful, well, then, those readers will decide that ALL indie food is crap.
Basically, if you are unwilling to give a negative review, you shouldn't be giving any reviews at all. The whole thing where you opt out of reviewing the books you don't like and only giving reviews to books you do like would be like me only giving As and, maybe, Bs in my classroom and leaving all of the other kids gradeless. It doesn't help the situation.
So, no, when I read a book that I don't like, for whatever reason, I get to say I don't like it and, even better, I get to explain why I didn't like it. Other people can then come along and figure out if they want to try it. So, if I say, "This one is too sweet," someone who likes sweet things will go, "Oh! I like sweets! I'll try this one." Or, if I say, "This one was too salty for me," someone else has the option of saying, "Oh, yeah, I don't like lots of salt; I'll stay away from this one."
Honesty is important in reviews. Period. It's not about treating my "friends" like they're five and saying, "Oh, it's beautiful!" and hanging it on the refrigerator. So sorry if you think that's what this is all about. There comes a point when even parents quit hanging those things up. Usually right about the time the kid realizes the drawings are actually pretty crappy.
So, just to reiterate, if you're approaching this whole indie writing thing as if it's some weird support system of giving good reviews to your buddies so that they won't feel bad, well, just grow up. Actually, and excuse the language (or not, I don't really care), it's time for you to grow the fuck up.
[This post has been brought to you in part by Alex Cavanaugh and the IWSG.(But, mostly, this one is just me.)]
Friday, December 19, 2014
Math Is Dumb (and Why)
Okay, so to be fair to math, it's not math that is stupid. I mean, math is just math, after all. Math, regular math like addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, algebra, doesn't change. 2+2 will always be 4. Always. The quadratic formula will ALWAYS be the quadratic formula:
Am I giving anyone flashbacks? Or nightmares? Or flashbacks to nightmares?
So it's not math that's the problem; it's the people who write and/or produce textbooks.
There's been stuff in the news recently about how some school districts have been offering classes for parents who need help with their math skills in relation to the new common core math standards. Every one of the news stories I have heard or read make it sound like there is some issue with these adults. They're having to go back to school because they're just dumb. Smart parents don't need help with the math. I don't think this is necessarily the case.
Granted, I don't think a lot of adults have retained much of their high school math and, really, that's okay, because you don't need, in general, much math to get by on. Heck, if you have any kind of cell phone or tablet (and who doesn't? I mean, even I have a Kindle at this point), you can get free calculator apps and stuff, so all you need to know is when to add or subtract or whatever, not actually be able to do it. But I don't think the issue with the new common core stuff is lack of ability or knowledge; I think it's because it's full of made up crap that didn't exist thirty years ago.
And, yes, I mean made up crap because, as I said, basic math doesn't change. There is nothing new to add to it, because, guess what, 2 + 2 = 4! Period (okay, exclamation point). End of story.
So, a few weeks ago, my daughter asked me to help her with her math. This not an uncommon occurrence, nor has it been an uncommon occurrence with any of my kids. I mean, I have spent time teaching both algebra and calculus so getting asked to help with BASIC MATHEMATICS should not be an issue, right? RIGHT? Except what she said was, "Hey, Dad, I need help with this neutral table."
...
...
...
Neutral table? What the heck? I'd never heard of a neutral table. Which is kind of what I said except it went more like:
"What are you talking about? There's no such thing as a neutral table."
"Well, I have to do one for my homework."
Great, my kid had to do some thing that wasn't even real for homework. So I had to take her math book and figure out what the heck she was talking about because, guess what, neutral tables are SO made up that you can't conveniently find them online.
Are any of you wondering, now, what a neutral table is? Well, I'll show you.
Pretend you need to figure out the answer to 7-3 and you can't work that out in your head and you don't have any fingers. Guess what! You can use a neutral table! It looks something like this
+ + + + + + +
- - -
only with a box drawn around it. You match the +s to the -s and remove all of those pairs. Whatever you have left is the answer to your problem, so the answer to this one is 4+s. The problem here is that doing it like this does not address something like 7 - (-3), because you still have to know to make that into 7 + 3. To be fair to my daughter, the problem she needed help with was slightly more complicated although not much more. My question was, "Why aren't you just using a number line?"
Remember those?
That, actually, is still my question. And she didn't have an answer for it.
But I actually know the answer. It's an answer I don't much like.
You can't sell new textbooks without "new" math in them. There's no incentive without new material, after all, other than to just replace books that are falling apart, but how often do schools really need to do that? Judging by the texts I used when I was in school, not more than once a decade at best. But if there's new material... Well, that changes things, so you have to make up brand new "math" to convince schools to re-invest in new texts.
The problem is that it's not really math. I'm sorry (okay, I'm really not); neutral tables are not math. There should not be a section in a math book about how to use neutral tables. They are not a THING. At best, they are an example of a thing, a way of showing a kid who isn't getting adding and subtracting a way to figure it out. So, maybe, you give this info to teachers of 1st and 2nd graders (to the teacher) as a way to explain adding and subtracting, but it does not belong in a 6th grade math text as a THING that you need to know how to use to algebra.
Neutral tables are not the only thing my kids have asked me about that didn't exist in math a couple of decades ago; they are just the most inane thing they have asked me about. And they are inane. It's a waste of teaching, a waste of class time, a waste of brain space. And, now, it's a waste of my own brain space just knowing that these things exist.
Seriously, that our education system is tied up with textbook publishers is one of the reasons that our education system is suffering so much. The education system should not be allowed to become like the military, paying for gold-plated toilet seats and the like. But, again, the education system and what's wrong with it is another topic entirely.
So it's not math that's the problem; it's the people who write and/or produce textbooks.
There's been stuff in the news recently about how some school districts have been offering classes for parents who need help with their math skills in relation to the new common core math standards. Every one of the news stories I have heard or read make it sound like there is some issue with these adults. They're having to go back to school because they're just dumb. Smart parents don't need help with the math. I don't think this is necessarily the case.
Granted, I don't think a lot of adults have retained much of their high school math and, really, that's okay, because you don't need, in general, much math to get by on. Heck, if you have any kind of cell phone or tablet (and who doesn't? I mean, even I have a Kindle at this point), you can get free calculator apps and stuff, so all you need to know is when to add or subtract or whatever, not actually be able to do it. But I don't think the issue with the new common core stuff is lack of ability or knowledge; I think it's because it's full of made up crap that didn't exist thirty years ago.
And, yes, I mean made up crap because, as I said, basic math doesn't change. There is nothing new to add to it, because, guess what, 2 + 2 = 4! Period (okay, exclamation point). End of story.
So, a few weeks ago, my daughter asked me to help her with her math. This not an uncommon occurrence, nor has it been an uncommon occurrence with any of my kids. I mean, I have spent time teaching both algebra and calculus so getting asked to help with BASIC MATHEMATICS should not be an issue, right? RIGHT? Except what she said was, "Hey, Dad, I need help with this neutral table."
...
...
...
Neutral table? What the heck? I'd never heard of a neutral table. Which is kind of what I said except it went more like:
"What are you talking about? There's no such thing as a neutral table."
"Well, I have to do one for my homework."
Great, my kid had to do some thing that wasn't even real for homework. So I had to take her math book and figure out what the heck she was talking about because, guess what, neutral tables are SO made up that you can't conveniently find them online.
Are any of you wondering, now, what a neutral table is? Well, I'll show you.
Pretend you need to figure out the answer to 7-3 and you can't work that out in your head and you don't have any fingers. Guess what! You can use a neutral table! It looks something like this
+ + + + + + +
- - -
only with a box drawn around it. You match the +s to the -s and remove all of those pairs. Whatever you have left is the answer to your problem, so the answer to this one is 4+s. The problem here is that doing it like this does not address something like 7 - (-3), because you still have to know to make that into 7 + 3. To be fair to my daughter, the problem she needed help with was slightly more complicated although not much more. My question was, "Why aren't you just using a number line?"
Remember those?
But I actually know the answer. It's an answer I don't much like.
You can't sell new textbooks without "new" math in them. There's no incentive without new material, after all, other than to just replace books that are falling apart, but how often do schools really need to do that? Judging by the texts I used when I was in school, not more than once a decade at best. But if there's new material... Well, that changes things, so you have to make up brand new "math" to convince schools to re-invest in new texts.
The problem is that it's not really math. I'm sorry (okay, I'm really not); neutral tables are not math. There should not be a section in a math book about how to use neutral tables. They are not a THING. At best, they are an example of a thing, a way of showing a kid who isn't getting adding and subtracting a way to figure it out. So, maybe, you give this info to teachers of 1st and 2nd graders (to the teacher) as a way to explain adding and subtracting, but it does not belong in a 6th grade math text as a THING that you need to know how to use to algebra.
Neutral tables are not the only thing my kids have asked me about that didn't exist in math a couple of decades ago; they are just the most inane thing they have asked me about. And they are inane. It's a waste of teaching, a waste of class time, a waste of brain space. And, now, it's a waste of my own brain space just knowing that these things exist.
Seriously, that our education system is tied up with textbook publishers is one of the reasons that our education system is suffering so much. The education system should not be allowed to become like the military, paying for gold-plated toilet seats and the like. But, again, the education system and what's wrong with it is another topic entirely.
Monday, December 15, 2014
I Hate Homework!
I'm going to come right out of the closet and say, "I hate homework." Is there a closet for that? If there is, I'm coming out of it. If I was ever even in it. Actually, I didn't mind homework so much when I was a kid but, then, I almost never had homework. Not that I didn't have homework, but I almost always made sure that I finished it at school or, at the latest, on the bus coming home. Because, other than reading, that's what the school bus is for.
We don't have school buses here.
Not that we don't have them -- there are some -- but they aren't for busing kids to school like they were when I was a kid where I was from. They are mostly short buses, here, and the regular long buses seem to be used only on special occasions for field trips and stuff. But I digress...
Homework!
There's a lot of conflicting data out there, right now, about the amount of homework kids are doing today as opposed to a few decades ago, too much so for me to wade through for a blog post. However, my experience tells me that there is more homework today. Or, maybe, it's just my kids' schools. Or, maybe, it's just that my kids do their homework whereas most kids don't, which is why the overall amount of time kids spend on homework doesn't seem to have changed much in the last few decades. But I'll get back to that in a moment.
What there is not a lot of conflicting data about is the efficacy of homework. Most of the newer studies indicate that homework is only effective in rather small doses (except for reading); beyond that, the effect of homework becomes more and more negative the more there is. The problem is that not all kids do homework the same way, so what might take some students 20 minutes to do, others take an hour to do. That, of course, is more and more compounded as you add other classes to that.
Do you want to know the biggest drawback of homework?
It makes kids hate school.
We've had issues with and around homework with each of our kids. Not the same issues but issues nonetheless.
When our oldest was in middle school, he just wouldn't turn in his homework, which we could never figure out. Why spend the time doing it if you're not going to turn it in? But he didn't know the answer to that then and still doesn't know it now. Fortunately (for everyone involved), he got all of that figured out by high school and had a successful high school career. The thing is, though, by high school, he just did his homework, even though it meant hours a night doing it. He would go to his room and take care of it. Later, when he was involved in all kinds of after-school activities, he did it all at school, and it was never an issue. Never an issue beyond the loss of family time, that is, which we weren't having anyway since he wasn't home. Him not being home, though, was more of the issue than the homework.
The younger boy has had escalating issues with homework. Actually, he's a great example of how homework damages kids. For the last many years, he has come home with hours of homework every night. This started before middle school with him. There's more to be said about all of this, but I'm going to sum it all up by putting it this way: For years, the entire family has been held hostage to his homework. Not only does it continue to interfere with us doing things as a family, but it has caused him to miss events because he just has too much homework.
Granted, part of that is because he's meticulous, which makes him slow, BUT...
The youngest, my daughter, started middle school this year. She's like I was when I was a kid and, until now, has never had much homework. Anything she could do at school, she did at school. Sixth grade changed that and, suddenly, she was coming home with two to three hours of homework everyday. Now, my daughter is very active. She likes to be out doing things. She plays softball and the accordion. Between homework and accordion practice (which is only half an hour), she quit being able to go out and play. There have been days when she has come home and broken down into tears over the amount of homework she has. To her credit, she would then go do it, but I'm worried that she's going to start hating school the way her brother does. She has always loved school.
And, see, it wasn't just my son being slow with his work, because my daughter is quick.
I hate homework! I hate it for them, and I hate it for what it does to our family.We spent a huge part of Thanksgiving break overseeing homework, and I'm not really okay with that. Okay, I'm not at all okay with that. I'm tired of my family being focused all the time on whether homework is finished or not. It's too much, and it's wrong. I mean, how many adults do you know who would be okay with going to work and, then, coming home with two to three (or more) hours of more work for which they weren't being paid? Sure, there are some but not most of them.
And this is the part where I want to go into a larger rant about the education system and how the system is broken and mired in tradition -- face it, possibly more than any other system we have (except, maybe, the Republicans), the education system believes in doing the same thing over and over again (only harder and faster) while it waits for a better result -- but this post has gone on long enough, and I'm going to leave all of that for some other time. But expect something about math soon, because math is stupid (with respects to Tina Downey). Okay, not all math... You'll just have to wait for me to explain.
We don't have school buses here.
Not that we don't have them -- there are some -- but they aren't for busing kids to school like they were when I was a kid where I was from. They are mostly short buses, here, and the regular long buses seem to be used only on special occasions for field trips and stuff. But I digress...
Homework!
There's a lot of conflicting data out there, right now, about the amount of homework kids are doing today as opposed to a few decades ago, too much so for me to wade through for a blog post. However, my experience tells me that there is more homework today. Or, maybe, it's just my kids' schools. Or, maybe, it's just that my kids do their homework whereas most kids don't, which is why the overall amount of time kids spend on homework doesn't seem to have changed much in the last few decades. But I'll get back to that in a moment.
What there is not a lot of conflicting data about is the efficacy of homework. Most of the newer studies indicate that homework is only effective in rather small doses (except for reading); beyond that, the effect of homework becomes more and more negative the more there is. The problem is that not all kids do homework the same way, so what might take some students 20 minutes to do, others take an hour to do. That, of course, is more and more compounded as you add other classes to that.
Do you want to know the biggest drawback of homework?
It makes kids hate school.
We've had issues with and around homework with each of our kids. Not the same issues but issues nonetheless.
When our oldest was in middle school, he just wouldn't turn in his homework, which we could never figure out. Why spend the time doing it if you're not going to turn it in? But he didn't know the answer to that then and still doesn't know it now. Fortunately (for everyone involved), he got all of that figured out by high school and had a successful high school career. The thing is, though, by high school, he just did his homework, even though it meant hours a night doing it. He would go to his room and take care of it. Later, when he was involved in all kinds of after-school activities, he did it all at school, and it was never an issue. Never an issue beyond the loss of family time, that is, which we weren't having anyway since he wasn't home. Him not being home, though, was more of the issue than the homework.
The younger boy has had escalating issues with homework. Actually, he's a great example of how homework damages kids. For the last many years, he has come home with hours of homework every night. This started before middle school with him. There's more to be said about all of this, but I'm going to sum it all up by putting it this way: For years, the entire family has been held hostage to his homework. Not only does it continue to interfere with us doing things as a family, but it has caused him to miss events because he just has too much homework.
Granted, part of that is because he's meticulous, which makes him slow, BUT...
The youngest, my daughter, started middle school this year. She's like I was when I was a kid and, until now, has never had much homework. Anything she could do at school, she did at school. Sixth grade changed that and, suddenly, she was coming home with two to three hours of homework everyday. Now, my daughter is very active. She likes to be out doing things. She plays softball and the accordion. Between homework and accordion practice (which is only half an hour), she quit being able to go out and play. There have been days when she has come home and broken down into tears over the amount of homework she has. To her credit, she would then go do it, but I'm worried that she's going to start hating school the way her brother does. She has always loved school.
And, see, it wasn't just my son being slow with his work, because my daughter is quick.
I hate homework! I hate it for them, and I hate it for what it does to our family.We spent a huge part of Thanksgiving break overseeing homework, and I'm not really okay with that. Okay, I'm not at all okay with that. I'm tired of my family being focused all the time on whether homework is finished or not. It's too much, and it's wrong. I mean, how many adults do you know who would be okay with going to work and, then, coming home with two to three (or more) hours of more work for which they weren't being paid? Sure, there are some but not most of them.
And this is the part where I want to go into a larger rant about the education system and how the system is broken and mired in tradition -- face it, possibly more than any other system we have (except, maybe, the Republicans), the education system believes in doing the same thing over and over again (only harder and faster) while it waits for a better result -- but this post has gone on long enough, and I'm going to leave all of that for some other time. But expect something about math soon, because math is stupid (with respects to Tina Downey). Okay, not all math... You'll just have to wait for me to explain.
Friday, October 10, 2014
When Perfect Isn't Good Enough
It's probably an odd thing to say on a blog from a writer, a blog that often deals with writing, and from someone who teaches creative writing, but I was a math person when I was a kid. Technically, I suppose I still am, but I loved math when I was a kid. I did math for fun when I was a kid. Seriously. I loved math and I loved to read; I suppose that was an odd combination. People seem to think so, anyway. At any rate, I gave up on math a long time ago. It all started with geometry.
Don't get me wrong, I was good at geometry, excellent, actually, but I'll get to that in a moment. I was good at it; I just hated it. To be fair to Geometry, it wasn't Geometry's fault that I hated it. No, that honor goes to the teacher who made us memorize all the theorems and postulates by chapter notation. So, on a test, if we had to do a proof (and you always had to do proofs, because that's what geometry is), and we needed to use a particular theorem, we had to know it as, for instance, Theorem 16.2 and, then, quote the theorem. But the 16.2 part was completely arbitrary based on the book we were using, and it kind of pissed me off that we had to know that when it was completely not useful once we were out of the class.
Also, I hated doing problems that could potentially take up an entire sheet of paper.
But I was good at it. As in, I had the highest grade in the class good at it, and I didn't even pay attention. Reading was strictly forbidden during my geometry class. The teacher routinely had a stack of books she'd taken away from students for reading during class, but she let me read. I suppose when you have a student whose carrying 106% that it might be safer just to let him read. Did I mention that this was honors geometry? Yeah, it was.
There are two things you need to know:
1. Every test had a couple of bonus problems on it. [Yes, I always did the bonus problems. Not because I wanted the points, but because I couldn't make myself leave the problems blank.]
2. Along with the grade for the specific test, when we got the tests back, our overall grade was also on the test. Actually, it was our grade before the test and after the test so that we could see how the test had affected our grades.
I say every test had bonus problems, but there was one that didn't. I didn't think it was significant at the time. Not while I was taking the test, at any rate. However, I didn't feel that way about it when I got the test back. See, the 100% I'd made on the test had lowered my grade in the class. Yeah, you heard me; the perfect score lowered my grade. I sat there and stared at that for a while being kind of weirded out by it. Then, I did the math. You know, just to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing even though I knew that I was. Yes, the 100% lowered my grade.
There's just something inherently not right about that. It didn't matter from any kind of practical standpoint, but my sense of justice was... It wasn't happy with the situation. My teacher thought it was funny. And it is funny, but, as you can see, it made an impression on me. And it's a bit of a life lesson: There are times when you can do everything right, do a perfect job, and it will hurt your score. So to speak. You did all you could do, and it was all the right stuff to do, but it still has a negative impact.
I suppose the way to look at that is this:
Suppose you had done nothing. Or that you had done the wrong thing. The negative impact would have been so much greater. So it becomes all about doing the most you can to keep the negative results at a minimum. I guess, in some situations, that's the best you can hope for.
The thing that has me thinking about this is that my daughter is going through the same sort of thing right now in Spanish. She has something like 110% in the class (or 112% (something ridiculous, at any rate)) and, recently, she turned something in on which she only got 105%. Yes, it brought her grade down. She was very upset. There were a lot of "It's not fair!"s thrown around. I did explain it to her and told her my geometry story (which made her feel slightly better since it had happened to someone else), but it didn't really keep her from seething about it for a while. It just made her more determined to get her grade back up to where it was.
She has a good attitude about those things. I mean, she has the right attitude in how to deal with them. Instead of getting depressed or saying "what's the point," she's using it as motivation. That's how you respond to the inequities in life, let them inspire you to rise higher.
Don't get me wrong, I was good at geometry, excellent, actually, but I'll get to that in a moment. I was good at it; I just hated it. To be fair to Geometry, it wasn't Geometry's fault that I hated it. No, that honor goes to the teacher who made us memorize all the theorems and postulates by chapter notation. So, on a test, if we had to do a proof (and you always had to do proofs, because that's what geometry is), and we needed to use a particular theorem, we had to know it as, for instance, Theorem 16.2 and, then, quote the theorem. But the 16.2 part was completely arbitrary based on the book we were using, and it kind of pissed me off that we had to know that when it was completely not useful once we were out of the class.
Also, I hated doing problems that could potentially take up an entire sheet of paper.
But I was good at it. As in, I had the highest grade in the class good at it, and I didn't even pay attention. Reading was strictly forbidden during my geometry class. The teacher routinely had a stack of books she'd taken away from students for reading during class, but she let me read. I suppose when you have a student whose carrying 106% that it might be safer just to let him read. Did I mention that this was honors geometry? Yeah, it was.
There are two things you need to know:
1. Every test had a couple of bonus problems on it. [Yes, I always did the bonus problems. Not because I wanted the points, but because I couldn't make myself leave the problems blank.]
2. Along with the grade for the specific test, when we got the tests back, our overall grade was also on the test. Actually, it was our grade before the test and after the test so that we could see how the test had affected our grades.
I say every test had bonus problems, but there was one that didn't. I didn't think it was significant at the time. Not while I was taking the test, at any rate. However, I didn't feel that way about it when I got the test back. See, the 100% I'd made on the test had lowered my grade in the class. Yeah, you heard me; the perfect score lowered my grade. I sat there and stared at that for a while being kind of weirded out by it. Then, I did the math. You know, just to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing even though I knew that I was. Yes, the 100% lowered my grade.
There's just something inherently not right about that. It didn't matter from any kind of practical standpoint, but my sense of justice was... It wasn't happy with the situation. My teacher thought it was funny. And it is funny, but, as you can see, it made an impression on me. And it's a bit of a life lesson: There are times when you can do everything right, do a perfect job, and it will hurt your score. So to speak. You did all you could do, and it was all the right stuff to do, but it still has a negative impact.
I suppose the way to look at that is this:
Suppose you had done nothing. Or that you had done the wrong thing. The negative impact would have been so much greater. So it becomes all about doing the most you can to keep the negative results at a minimum. I guess, in some situations, that's the best you can hope for.
The thing that has me thinking about this is that my daughter is going through the same sort of thing right now in Spanish. She has something like 110% in the class (or 112% (something ridiculous, at any rate)) and, recently, she turned something in on which she only got 105%. Yes, it brought her grade down. She was very upset. There were a lot of "It's not fair!"s thrown around. I did explain it to her and told her my geometry story (which made her feel slightly better since it had happened to someone else), but it didn't really keep her from seething about it for a while. It just made her more determined to get her grade back up to where it was.
She has a good attitude about those things. I mean, she has the right attitude in how to deal with them. Instead of getting depressed or saying "what's the point," she's using it as motivation. That's how you respond to the inequities in life, let them inspire you to rise higher.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
What Your Blog Says About You: Part Four -- Presentation
This post is coming out of the original idea (almost two years ago) that spawned this series in the first place: presentation. Now, when I say presentation, I do not mean of the actual blog itself; I mean the posts. The look of the blog, the decoration, is a completely separate issue and one that I don't feel qualified to speak about as I barely pay attention to what a blog looks like. Maybe some people do, but that's not me. In the same way, I try, at this point in my life, to pay as little attention to the cover of a book as I can (but that's a post for another day (and something I've talked about before (somewhere))).
For most people, the number one thing that will affect whether someone will give your blog the time of day is post length. And, if you've been around my blog for longer than, oh, a couple of seconds, you'll see that this is something I completely disregard, but, in that, I'm in the minority. Most people want short posts. Short posts with, maybe, a list involved and, even better, pictures. And, if you really want to grab people's attention, it should be a picture of a cat being weird or spazzing out. But the real thing is length. People want to glance at your blog and think, "Oh, I have time to read that." If there is anything to make them think that they will have to come back later, most of them won't bother. So, yes, if you're really trying to bring in followers, I think it's good advice to keep your posts between 400 and 600 words.
Personally, I prefer longer posts with more substance, and I will keep a post open all day in order to finish it if I need to (as I sometimes do with some of Briane's longer posts). As such, I also prefer to write posts with actual substance rather than talking about talking about that substance as most people do. I'm more of the essay test rather than the multiple choice option. As such, I'm okay with the fact that some people skip over my posts as being too long. But it's something to be aware of in the way that you approach the way you post and has everything to do with the personality of your blog.
The next thing is a big one for me, something I hate and mentioned in part three, and that thing is constantly apologizing for not having posted recently. Seriously, just don't do that. So many people have what amounts to a running blog of apologizing for not having posted and promisings to do better. Especially those people with posted schedules. That's the worst. First, I'd say, just don't post a schedule. Do what you do and let that be it (sort of like letting your yes be yes and no be no without making promises you may break). But, really, I think most of the people that post schedules for what and when they're going to blog do it for themselves--to try and impose it on themselves--rather than to inform the reader of what's going on. At any rate, people with posted schedules seem to be the worst about actually following those schedules or posting in any consistent manner, and, then, every time they post, it's an apology for being behind or having not posted in three weeks or three months or whatever. Honestly, I don't care why you haven't posted. Whatever it was that caused you not to post was something that was more important to you than posting on your blog, and, actually, that's okay. You don't actually owe anyone anything. No one is paying you (probably) to be posting, so don't apologize for not doing it. Because, honestly, I don't care about your apology. And, especially, I don't care about reading an apology from you every few weeks. Tell me something interesting. So, unless there is some really interesting reason as to why you didn't post (other than that "life has just been SO busy!"), just get to the interesting and skip the apologizing. Really, people understand that there is a life outside of blogging (except, maybe, Alex, who I think may actually be a computer program that goes around commenting on blogs).
And, then, here's the thing that started this whole idea: If you are going to have a blog, especially a blog about writing or if you're writer with a blog about something else but as a representation of you're writing, LEARN HOW TO WRITE!
Having said that, I will say this:
If you're not a writer and have no aspirations to being a writer, it's not such a big deal. Which is not to say that you can be all slapdash with it, but I know I'm not very critical about the writing of people that just have a blog for fun-ish type reasons. I mean, most people don't read and write at that high a level (last I checked, it was 4th grade, but it's been a while since I've checked), which takes us back to the math thing: If you're not in a math field, I don't expect that you should be able to do advanced algebra or anything like that. Basic arithmetic, yes, but not the more complicated stuff. English is the same way. So, if you're not a writer and not trying to be a writer, I don't expect more than the basics and am not going to be... distressed... when that's all I see.
However, if you are a writer, learn to do it. Learn how to use proper grammar and punctuation. And practice it on your blog. Your blog should be a reflection of your style, and, if your style is not knowing the difference between "than" and "then" or "accept" and "except" or "site" and "cite," words that have distinct definitions and should not be so easily confused, then I'm not going to have much interest in reading any books that you write. And, well, probably, will not have much interest in following your blog for very long.
Just to be clear: I'm not talking about typos here; I'm talking about consistently using the wrong words. And, maybe, it's elitist, but, if it is, I can't help it. Learn your words. Especially "than" and "then." I hate reading through posts that use "than" every time "then" should be used. It makes me want to pull out my red grading pen, but, well, that doesn't work out so well with my monitor, so I have learned restraint.
And, really, if you're writer and most of your posts have to do with writing, I will have no respect for you if you can't manage to do it correctly while telling everyone else how to do it. The writing, that is.
[As an example, during a-to-z, someone had a post about the proper usage of semi-colons and, then, had a handful of incorrect usages in the post. Yes, I pointed it out only to have my comment deleted. The only thing that upset me about that is that blogger had at the end of the post something about letting her know if she'd gotten anything wrong. All I can say about that is "don't ask if you don't mean it."]
Having said all of that, yes, I do know that I probably have an unfair advantage in the whole grammar department, but I also view it as a writer's job to know, well, how to do the whole grammar thing. Especially the things that have hard and fast rules, like the definitions of words. I'm not necessarily going to get all picky on the commas. Not all of them, anyway, because, sometimes, comma usage is subjective and is dependent upon what the author wants the sentence to say. Sometimes.
So there's my rant. But, seriously, if you're writer, even if it is just a blog, you ought to have your best face on it. Sure, some people can't tell the difference, but is it worth the risk? [I have quit following more blogs because of the bad writing on the blog than for any other reason.]
All of that to say: how you present yourself is important. There are probably other things I could mention here, but I think these are the top three. Which wraps up what your blog says about you... at least for the moment.
For most people, the number one thing that will affect whether someone will give your blog the time of day is post length. And, if you've been around my blog for longer than, oh, a couple of seconds, you'll see that this is something I completely disregard, but, in that, I'm in the minority. Most people want short posts. Short posts with, maybe, a list involved and, even better, pictures. And, if you really want to grab people's attention, it should be a picture of a cat being weird or spazzing out. But the real thing is length. People want to glance at your blog and think, "Oh, I have time to read that." If there is anything to make them think that they will have to come back later, most of them won't bother. So, yes, if you're really trying to bring in followers, I think it's good advice to keep your posts between 400 and 600 words.
Personally, I prefer longer posts with more substance, and I will keep a post open all day in order to finish it if I need to (as I sometimes do with some of Briane's longer posts). As such, I also prefer to write posts with actual substance rather than talking about talking about that substance as most people do. I'm more of the essay test rather than the multiple choice option. As such, I'm okay with the fact that some people skip over my posts as being too long. But it's something to be aware of in the way that you approach the way you post and has everything to do with the personality of your blog.
The next thing is a big one for me, something I hate and mentioned in part three, and that thing is constantly apologizing for not having posted recently. Seriously, just don't do that. So many people have what amounts to a running blog of apologizing for not having posted and promisings to do better. Especially those people with posted schedules. That's the worst. First, I'd say, just don't post a schedule. Do what you do and let that be it (sort of like letting your yes be yes and no be no without making promises you may break). But, really, I think most of the people that post schedules for what and when they're going to blog do it for themselves--to try and impose it on themselves--rather than to inform the reader of what's going on. At any rate, people with posted schedules seem to be the worst about actually following those schedules or posting in any consistent manner, and, then, every time they post, it's an apology for being behind or having not posted in three weeks or three months or whatever. Honestly, I don't care why you haven't posted. Whatever it was that caused you not to post was something that was more important to you than posting on your blog, and, actually, that's okay. You don't actually owe anyone anything. No one is paying you (probably) to be posting, so don't apologize for not doing it. Because, honestly, I don't care about your apology. And, especially, I don't care about reading an apology from you every few weeks. Tell me something interesting. So, unless there is some really interesting reason as to why you didn't post (other than that "life has just been SO busy!"), just get to the interesting and skip the apologizing. Really, people understand that there is a life outside of blogging (except, maybe, Alex, who I think may actually be a computer program that goes around commenting on blogs).
And, then, here's the thing that started this whole idea: If you are going to have a blog, especially a blog about writing or if you're writer with a blog about something else but as a representation of you're writing, LEARN HOW TO WRITE!
Having said that, I will say this:
If you're not a writer and have no aspirations to being a writer, it's not such a big deal. Which is not to say that you can be all slapdash with it, but I know I'm not very critical about the writing of people that just have a blog for fun-ish type reasons. I mean, most people don't read and write at that high a level (last I checked, it was 4th grade, but it's been a while since I've checked), which takes us back to the math thing: If you're not in a math field, I don't expect that you should be able to do advanced algebra or anything like that. Basic arithmetic, yes, but not the more complicated stuff. English is the same way. So, if you're not a writer and not trying to be a writer, I don't expect more than the basics and am not going to be... distressed... when that's all I see.
However, if you are a writer, learn to do it. Learn how to use proper grammar and punctuation. And practice it on your blog. Your blog should be a reflection of your style, and, if your style is not knowing the difference between "than" and "then" or "accept" and "except" or "site" and "cite," words that have distinct definitions and should not be so easily confused, then I'm not going to have much interest in reading any books that you write. And, well, probably, will not have much interest in following your blog for very long.
Just to be clear: I'm not talking about typos here; I'm talking about consistently using the wrong words. And, maybe, it's elitist, but, if it is, I can't help it. Learn your words. Especially "than" and "then." I hate reading through posts that use "than" every time "then" should be used. It makes me want to pull out my red grading pen, but, well, that doesn't work out so well with my monitor, so I have learned restraint.
And, really, if you're writer and most of your posts have to do with writing, I will have no respect for you if you can't manage to do it correctly while telling everyone else how to do it. The writing, that is.
[As an example, during a-to-z, someone had a post about the proper usage of semi-colons and, then, had a handful of incorrect usages in the post. Yes, I pointed it out only to have my comment deleted. The only thing that upset me about that is that blogger had at the end of the post something about letting her know if she'd gotten anything wrong. All I can say about that is "don't ask if you don't mean it."]
Having said all of that, yes, I do know that I probably have an unfair advantage in the whole grammar department, but I also view it as a writer's job to know, well, how to do the whole grammar thing. Especially the things that have hard and fast rules, like the definitions of words. I'm not necessarily going to get all picky on the commas. Not all of them, anyway, because, sometimes, comma usage is subjective and is dependent upon what the author wants the sentence to say. Sometimes.
So there's my rant. But, seriously, if you're writer, even if it is just a blog, you ought to have your best face on it. Sure, some people can't tell the difference, but is it worth the risk? [I have quit following more blogs because of the bad writing on the blog than for any other reason.]
All of that to say: how you present yourself is important. There are probably other things I could mention here, but I think these are the top three. Which wraps up what your blog says about you... at least for the moment.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Comic Shop Girls
Way back a long, long time ago, a girl in a comic shop was... I can't even say it was rare, because it just didn't happen. I mean, it was almost the equivalent of a sign of an impending apocalypse. And, if you believe in apocalypses (apocalypsi?) the way Joss Whedon does, maybe they were signs of various impending dooms all headed off by some special group or another. At any rate, it just didn't happen. I didn't know a single girl that read anything beyond Archie comics (or the equivalent) until my mid-twenties, like almost two decades ago.
Let me make it clear that I had had pretty extensive experience in and around the comic's industry by that point. I started collecting comic books during middle school. All the way through the end of high school, I never once saw a girl in the shop I bought comics at except for the one time I took one with me, and, although she agreed to go, it was more out of boredom than anything else, because her other option was to hang out at our church alone (not alone, alone; there were adults there, but there were no other teenagers). During college, I worked in a comic shop, and we had no female customers. At all. Ever. The only girl that ever came in was the girlfriend of one of my friends and only because he always trapped her into it. Then, I had my own comic business and worked in another shop, and neither place had any female customers.
The last shop I worked in in Shreveport (while also running a kind of sub-business under that shop (yeah, it was complicated, but it increased the owner's circulation, so he was good with it)) had a total of two female-type people that came in with any regularity. One of them was a girlfriend of a guy that had been one of my students (this was my last year in Shreveport, and I wasn't teaching at the time), and she always looked like she'd rather be at the dentist, especially since one of the other employees, Mark, would always try to hit on her while her boyfriend was busy talking comics. Yes, I do say that he tried hitting on her, because he never actually quite succeeded. He just made her uncomfortable and followed her around the shop as she tried to avoid him. The other was an "older" woman (to us) around 50(?) that actually played Magic and came in for tournaments. She sort of creeped everyone out, especially since she often "went home" with Boogie (and, yes, he had earned that nickname), and, if you can't figure out that euphemism, there may be no hope for you. That was it...
Until The Day...
It was a Wednesday, and I was shelving the new comics for the week (I was in charge of comics and CCG stuff), and a girl walked in. Alone. Not a mom (okay, she was a mom (of a not-quite toddler), but she wasn't a mom looking for a gift), not a girlfriend, just a girl walking into the comic shop. Alone. I took note of her, but I was busy, and I kept doing what I was doing. However, one-by-one, every other guy that worked in the shop made his way over to her and asked her if she needed any help. Every one of them: Mark, Rick, Scott, Tony. She turned each of them down, browsing through the comics until she made her way over to me and asked me if I could help her. Hmm... and that's a story for another time. Anyway, her ex-boyfriend (the father of her child) had been into comics, and she's picked through them occasionally, so she was looking for some suggestions about comics that she could get into. After listening to the types of she was into, I suggested The Sandman and Strangers in Paradise. She became our first (and only) weekly female customer, coming in to see what new comics were in and trying things out every now and then.
Flash forward to last week. I was sitting in the local comic shop (editing and reading) waiting for a Magic tournament to start up. At one point, I glanced around the room and noted the number of -- hmm... my wife doesn't like it when I call them "girls," although I'm certain some of them must have still been in high school -- young ladies that were hanging out in the store. I mean, hanging out on their own because they wanted to be there. There was one that was definitely a girlfriend, but the other more-than-half-dozen were obviously there because they wanted to be there. Some were playing Magic, one was browsing the comics, there was even grandmotherly type that was obviously looking at things for herself rather than looking for a gift (yeah, you can tell the difference when you've been in the environment). I was struck by the difference a couple of decades had made. Sure, it was still 80-90% guys, but, two decades ago, it would have been 100% guys.
I mentioned it to my wife, and she noted to me that there are a lot of guys that are against girls being in this kind of environment. It's like some group of 10-year-olds with a clubhouse and big "no girls allowed" signs stuck all over it. No girls in comics. No girls in gaming. Of any kind. Evidently, girls shouldn't play Magic and the certainly shouldn't play video games. According to these guys.
Which brought up the whole SFWA thing that happened a couple of weeks ago where a group of male sci-fi writers was proclaiming how writing science fiction is no place for women.
And I just don't get it. I mean, I really don't get it.
Maybe, this is me thinking as a retailer (from back when I did that), but the goal, then, was always to try and figure out how to open the doors of comic books to girls. It was an ongoing thing with Marvel (and other companies, but Marvel talked about it the most) in the late 80s through the mid-90s: How do we get girls interested in comics? And I was all for that, because, well, more business. So this idea that girls don't belong there is really puzzling to me.
And, well, my favorite sci-fi book was written by a woman: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. And you can't discount The Doomsday Book, a more than excellent sci-fi novel also written by a woman: Connie Willis. I'm sure I could go on, but I don't think there's a need.
At any rate, the idea that some of these things are "boys' clubs" just doesn't make sense to me. Why would that be so? I never had a "no girls allowed" clubhouse as a boy; maybe, that's because one of my main playmates as a kid was a female cousin; I don't know. One of my best friends was also a girl; we started kindergarten together and went all the way through to the end of high school, the only person I did that with, and we're still friends, today (well, you know, the kind of friend that only speak to each other every few years, because you don't live anywhere near the other person, but, still...).
And, well, despite the fact that I did a lot of what were pretty exclusively "guy" things when I was younger (like comic books and gaming), I would never have even thought that girls shouldn't be there, because, hello, I spent most of time hanging out with guys, and having some girls around would have meant, well, having some girls around.
So I don't get the attitude that women shouldn't be involved in gaming or comic books or science fiction. Or politics or science or math. Or whatever. I'm glad to see that there are girls hanging out in the comic store, and, after my wife told me about all of the hate that women get online about that kind of stuff, I'm glad to see that the dudes in the store seemed totally at ease with the fact that there were girls. I mean, there weren't lines of guys trying to hit on them or pick them up. They were just part of the environment, like everyone else. Maybe, there is some hope for the future.
I hope...
Let me make it clear that I had had pretty extensive experience in and around the comic's industry by that point. I started collecting comic books during middle school. All the way through the end of high school, I never once saw a girl in the shop I bought comics at except for the one time I took one with me, and, although she agreed to go, it was more out of boredom than anything else, because her other option was to hang out at our church alone (not alone, alone; there were adults there, but there were no other teenagers). During college, I worked in a comic shop, and we had no female customers. At all. Ever. The only girl that ever came in was the girlfriend of one of my friends and only because he always trapped her into it. Then, I had my own comic business and worked in another shop, and neither place had any female customers.
The last shop I worked in in Shreveport (while also running a kind of sub-business under that shop (yeah, it was complicated, but it increased the owner's circulation, so he was good with it)) had a total of two female-type people that came in with any regularity. One of them was a girlfriend of a guy that had been one of my students (this was my last year in Shreveport, and I wasn't teaching at the time), and she always looked like she'd rather be at the dentist, especially since one of the other employees, Mark, would always try to hit on her while her boyfriend was busy talking comics. Yes, I do say that he tried hitting on her, because he never actually quite succeeded. He just made her uncomfortable and followed her around the shop as she tried to avoid him. The other was an "older" woman (to us) around 50(?) that actually played Magic and came in for tournaments. She sort of creeped everyone out, especially since she often "went home" with Boogie (and, yes, he had earned that nickname), and, if you can't figure out that euphemism, there may be no hope for you. That was it...
Until The Day...
It was a Wednesday, and I was shelving the new comics for the week (I was in charge of comics and CCG stuff), and a girl walked in. Alone. Not a mom (okay, she was a mom (of a not-quite toddler), but she wasn't a mom looking for a gift), not a girlfriend, just a girl walking into the comic shop. Alone. I took note of her, but I was busy, and I kept doing what I was doing. However, one-by-one, every other guy that worked in the shop made his way over to her and asked her if she needed any help. Every one of them: Mark, Rick, Scott, Tony. She turned each of them down, browsing through the comics until she made her way over to me and asked me if I could help her. Hmm... and that's a story for another time. Anyway, her ex-boyfriend (the father of her child) had been into comics, and she's picked through them occasionally, so she was looking for some suggestions about comics that she could get into. After listening to the types of she was into, I suggested The Sandman and Strangers in Paradise. She became our first (and only) weekly female customer, coming in to see what new comics were in and trying things out every now and then.
Flash forward to last week. I was sitting in the local comic shop (editing and reading) waiting for a Magic tournament to start up. At one point, I glanced around the room and noted the number of -- hmm... my wife doesn't like it when I call them "girls," although I'm certain some of them must have still been in high school -- young ladies that were hanging out in the store. I mean, hanging out on their own because they wanted to be there. There was one that was definitely a girlfriend, but the other more-than-half-dozen were obviously there because they wanted to be there. Some were playing Magic, one was browsing the comics, there was even grandmotherly type that was obviously looking at things for herself rather than looking for a gift (yeah, you can tell the difference when you've been in the environment). I was struck by the difference a couple of decades had made. Sure, it was still 80-90% guys, but, two decades ago, it would have been 100% guys.
I mentioned it to my wife, and she noted to me that there are a lot of guys that are against girls being in this kind of environment. It's like some group of 10-year-olds with a clubhouse and big "no girls allowed" signs stuck all over it. No girls in comics. No girls in gaming. Of any kind. Evidently, girls shouldn't play Magic and the certainly shouldn't play video games. According to these guys.
Which brought up the whole SFWA thing that happened a couple of weeks ago where a group of male sci-fi writers was proclaiming how writing science fiction is no place for women.
And I just don't get it. I mean, I really don't get it.
Maybe, this is me thinking as a retailer (from back when I did that), but the goal, then, was always to try and figure out how to open the doors of comic books to girls. It was an ongoing thing with Marvel (and other companies, but Marvel talked about it the most) in the late 80s through the mid-90s: How do we get girls interested in comics? And I was all for that, because, well, more business. So this idea that girls don't belong there is really puzzling to me.
And, well, my favorite sci-fi book was written by a woman: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. And you can't discount The Doomsday Book, a more than excellent sci-fi novel also written by a woman: Connie Willis. I'm sure I could go on, but I don't think there's a need.
At any rate, the idea that some of these things are "boys' clubs" just doesn't make sense to me. Why would that be so? I never had a "no girls allowed" clubhouse as a boy; maybe, that's because one of my main playmates as a kid was a female cousin; I don't know. One of my best friends was also a girl; we started kindergarten together and went all the way through to the end of high school, the only person I did that with, and we're still friends, today (well, you know, the kind of friend that only speak to each other every few years, because you don't live anywhere near the other person, but, still...).
And, well, despite the fact that I did a lot of what were pretty exclusively "guy" things when I was younger (like comic books and gaming), I would never have even thought that girls shouldn't be there, because, hello, I spent most of time hanging out with guys, and having some girls around would have meant, well, having some girls around.
So I don't get the attitude that women shouldn't be involved in gaming or comic books or science fiction. Or politics or science or math. Or whatever. I'm glad to see that there are girls hanging out in the comic store, and, after my wife told me about all of the hate that women get online about that kind of stuff, I'm glad to see that the dudes in the store seemed totally at ease with the fact that there were girls. I mean, there weren't lines of guys trying to hit on them or pick them up. They were just part of the environment, like everyone else. Maybe, there is some hope for the future.
I hope...
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