bearing blog

The costs of graduate school -- even in the sciences.

Great post with a lively comment thread at Chemjobber here:

http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-jon-bardins-misses-costs-of.html

I am not sure to what extent the general public thinks that advanced degrees in STEM fields are guaranteed to get the holders a good job at the end. I fear it is a prevalent belief, fed by politicians' pronouncements and editorials demanding a fix to America's shortage of scientists. Will a degree in science or technology or engineering get you a good job? It depends -- what field exactly? And when? Some fields have a huge excess of graduates compared to the number of jobs available; others really do suffer a shortage. (Possibly a more alarming shortage for the nation, though, is the shortage of skilled laborers. If a "good job" is a young person's goal, maybe an easier route is to pursue training in, say, welding -- http://www.weldingandgasestoday.org/blogs/Devin-OToole/index.php/tag/welder-shortage/ Which is, the last time I checked, a genuine "technology.")

Chemjobber's main point is that graduate school has an opportunity cost: you could have spent those 4-7 years doing something else, and maybe that "something else" would actually have created more value for you. A commenter on the thread named Janet makes a point that I rather like:

"...the very best reason to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry is because you want to learn what it is like to build new knowledge in chemistry in an academic setting... since [getting a job] is a crapshoot... If you don't want to learn about this knowledge-building process -- and want it enough to put up with long hours, unrewarding pay... and the like... then possibly a Ph.D. is not the best way to spend 5+ years of your life."

A couple people on the thread referred to this philosophy as "education for its own sake," but what it really is is placing another necessary condition on pursuing a particular degree. It should build value for you, and (considering the costs) you should want it for its own sake, too. If you don't really want to learn the material and the process -- if the only thing driving you forward is the hope for prestige or money or some intangible reward attached to the job you hope to get -- what kind of a chemist are you going to be, anyway? Assuming you do get a job.

As for me, I got my engineering Ph.D. entirely on the taxpayer's dime (though not without opportunity cost, which falls somewhere on the spectrum between death and taxes), and despite having no job at all I persist in the hope that when it is all said and done it will have been an experience that added value to me, in the "liberal arts tradition" -- the experience made me a more well-rounded person and equipped me with a number of skills that I appreciate. I certainly gained some tangential benefits that I could not have expected, through the personal connections and friendships I made during those years. At the very least I learned at the visceral level that what I really wanted to do during my thirties was stay home and care for my children.

(Whether it was a good deal for the taxpayers is up for debate, but I didn't sign any papers that said "thou shalt repay the NSF by valuing your career over your sanity and your family's comfort and ease" so I figure it was their fault for not spelling that out when they offered me the fellowship.)

There are more good insights over there, so I recommend the article and the comment thread especially to my readers who've done time in graduate school or considered doing it, as well as anyone interested in educational philosophy.

Imagining your opponents to be idiots.

At the VC, David Bernstein appraises the work of U. S. Solicitor General Verrilli (the "SG") in the oral arguments before the Supreme Court today:

http://volokh.com/2012/03/28/sg-verrilli-relies-on-the-the-constitutions-preamble

This strikes me as part of a pattern I detect throughout this litigation and especially in the SG’s oral argument: the government’s lawyers seem to have no idea how conservative jurists typically think about the Constitution. Instead, they make arguments that would get almost unanimous nods of approval in the Harvard (or Columbia, the SG’s alma mater) Law School faculty lounge, but are not remotely persuasive to the other side.

 I noticed that too -- that the SG seemed unable or unwilling to answer direct questions about limitation of government powers, in particular. The truly cynical view would be that he wasn't able to answer because there are no answers; the government doesn't take the position that there are any limits on the Commerce power.

  Maybe that is so, but I think it is much more likely that he didn't answer in any terms that conservative jurists are going to appreciate because what Bernstein suggests seems to be true really is true: "the government lawyers... have no idea how conservative jurists typically think about the Constitution." 

Admit it, you see it in your friends' Facebook posts, you see it in newspaper editorials, you see it in comments on news stories, you heard it in your college classes, you see it at work: people everywhere, increasingly even the most educated people, never bother to grasp the reasoning and ideas in their opponents' minds. Instead they dismiss them as evil or stupid, or set up a humorous straw man to poke fun at. The attempt to really understand what your opponent is thinking has gone by the wayside.

I know people, educated, many academic degrees, my age and older, who regularly post comments and statuses along the lines of "No thinking person would ever vote Republican." i see approving comments on caricatures of conservatives as backwoods racist rednecks or exploiting fat cats in suits -- take your pick -- and comments disparaging persons who belong to minority groups and yet -- inexplicably, apparently! -- have the temerity to hold conservative views. Sure, they might be joking. Some probably are, and if you cornered them they might admit that probably there are ideological conservatives who have reasons for holding the opinions they do, and those reasons are even reasonable, though disliked. I am coming to think, in some of the cases, the writer actually believes his own stereotypes. If these intelligent individuals can be snookered in that way, I don't see why a government lawyer should be exempt.

This is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to liberals, by the way. It seems pretty universal. Conservatives do it too.  

Doubtless it is entertaining to think of your opponents as yokels, and maybe it is motivating to think of them as evildoers (and yourself, fighting them, as on the side of unvarnished good). But doesn't it strike anyone as rather foolish? Isn't underestimating your opponent kind of a classic blunder, the sort of thing that high school debate teams understand? Would it not make more sense to anticipate your opponents' arguments by thoroughly understanding their positions on their own terms? 

But I guess it just isn't as satisfying.

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Asking for forgiveness.

When I was a kid, I got into trouble for ordinary kid-sort of things.  Not cleaning my room, backtalking (usually I didn't mean to backtalk, but somehow, I was told, things came out sounding that way), staying out too late, lying about where I'd been.

I often got myself into worse trouble for refusing to say "I'm sorry."  I was one of those people who reasoned, "I don't really feel sorry -- so it would be lying to say so.  I don't really think I was wrong -- no way am I going to 'admit' that I was wrong, since I wasn't."  

(I had not yet learned the fine art of the fake apology, so well practiced by public figures, the "I'm sorry that you were offended," or the "I'm sorry that you had to see this," much of which boils down to "I'm sorry that you got caught.")

After a while I figured out that it was sometimes in my best interest to apologize, and I did understand that.  I learned to say "I'm sorry" when I didn't mean it.  I learned that this sometimes made things better.

But as I grew to young adulthood, married and had a child of my own, I also remembered being a child, and I remembered the peculiar humiliation of being "made to say sorry" when I was utterly convinced I had done nothing wrong or even negligent.  It does happen, you know: just as happens to adults sometimes, children get misunderstood, misconstrued, wrongly judged.   And I grappled for a long time with the question:  what, after all, is the point of saying "I'm sorry?"  What is so important about it that adults teach children that they must say it to someone who feels they have been hurt, even if it is not a true statement?   What good does a "sorry" really do?  Is the pretense just social lubrication, like pretending you care about the weather or  the local sports team during obligatory small talk?  Or is there some meaning?  

Perhaps I was overthinking it, but I felt that it mattered.  I was a young adult on the verge of having to teach a child of my own.  I have never been satisfied with repeating the lessons that were drilled into me, at least not without understanding them.  I wanted to teach my child something I believed.

My first child was a toddler learning to speak and interact with others before I figured it out, in a sudden insight:  I saw the framework -- maybe just "a" framework -- in which an "I'm sorry" made sense.    

What I realized is this:  The purpose of an apology is to invite forgiveness.

Let's say that Billy believes Alex has harmed him, and is angry.  It may be that Alex intentionally hurt Billy, or it may be that Alex negligently hurt Billy, or it may be that Alex did nothing at all and Billy's made a mistake.  It may be that Alex ought to be punished for what he did, it may be that Alex owes Billy restitution, it may be that someone else deserves to pay, or it may be that no one is at fault at all.  

One thing is certain to help and not to hurt:  if Billy forgives Alex.

Christian doctrine requires believers to assert this, but so do many other sources.  Look, even the Mayo Clinic says that forgiveness will help.  

What clicked for me that day is that an apology does not necessarily have to be understood as pretending sincere regret (what if I know I didn't do anything wrong?) or repentance (what if I am still feeling angry and haven't yet received the grace of penitence?).  

This is so even if the words of an apology come out sounding something like "I am sorry, I was wrong."  The words are conventional words, part of an exchange that is ritual and thus has unspoken meaning.  They are an idiom.  They are not meant to benefit the apologizing speaker, by expressing the feelings that are inside him, so that the speaker feels his true feelings has been heard.  Rather, they are meant to produce an effect in the hearer.   

The intended effect?   To make it easier for the angry hearer to let go of his anger, to make it easier to forgive.  An apology is an invitation to forgive.  We say whatever we can say that will produce that effect.  If we cannot bring ourselves to say "I wronged you," perhaps because we know something different has happened, then at the very minimum perhaps we can bring ourselves to say, "Will you forgive me?"

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Getting back to the children.  When I got my head wrapped around the idea that an apology is an invitation to forgive, I no longer fretted about how to teach my children to apologize sincerely.  In this framework, a "sincere apology" means an expression of a sincere desire that the other person forgive you.  Even if it is hard to be sincerely "sorry" sometimes, especially when wrongly accused, it is easy to sincerely ask for forgiveness.  Who would ever wish a grudge on anyone?  

So when my child says, "But it wasn't my fault, so why do I have to say sorry?" that is what I explain:  

You will apologize to her so that it will be easier for her to forgive you.  Jesus says we have to forgive each other, and it is hard to forgive when we are angry, so you will make it easier for her to forgive you by asking for her forgiveness.

I gave them a formula to follow to make it super-easy, so they will never have to search for words.  It goes like this:

"Jane, I'm sorry I stepped on your toy.  Will you forgive me?"

"Drew, I'm sorry I wasn't looking and I ran into you.  Will you forgive me?"

"Sue, I'm sorry I said words that hurt your feelings.  Will you forgive me?"

They have to speak the person's name, they have to look them in the eye, they have to follow the "I'm sorry" with a statement that acknowledges why the person feels hurt, and they have to ask for forgiveness. 

(Furthermore, if the person they hurt is a much smaller child, I require my kids to approach the child's mother or whomever and say, "I'm sorry I hurt your baby.  Will you forgive me?")

And of course, when one of them asks the other for forgiveness, I require them to say "Yes, I forgive you."  As soon as they can.

+ + +

Sometimes the brother and sister, summoned to enact the Apologize So She Can Forgive You script before me, are already smirking at each other as they recite.  I catch the little gleam of "There goes Mom again with her apologizing thing."  I like to see that.  It proves they aren't holding a grudge against each other; it's more fun to share a silent inside joke about their mom.  I hope they are still reciting it to each other and laughing many years from now.

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Of course, there is a drawback to this particular script.

It's the fact that when I correct my children, or shout at them, or say "Argh!  Again?  How many times do I have to tell you?!?"...

...they ask for my forgiveness.

Sometimes many times a day.

My eleven-year-old will stand there listening to me lecture him for a full minute and then when I stop he looks me in the eye and says, completely seriously, "I'm sorry I didn't finish unloading the dishwasher, Mom.  Will you forgive me?"

My five-year-old will look up at me through her tears and say "Mom, I'm sorry I crumpled up my math sheet.  Will you forgive me?"

My eight-year-old will glance shifty-eyed at me and say "Mom, I'm sorry I woke up my little brother.  Will you forgive me?"

And that is when I discover how hard it can be to say "Yes."  

There is such a temptation to turn it into a "Yes, but...."  which, basically, is not a "Yes" at all.  

I am still the parent and "forgiveness" does not mean nobody experiences any consequences or pays restitution.  I find, though, that the tone is altered:   I cannot, with a straight face, say "Yes, I forgive you" and then go back to shouting about a punishment.  It comes out, a little awkwardly, with some explanation:  "You're going to have to do two math sheets now, to remind you that you mustn't crumple up your math sheet just because you don't want to do it."  "You're going to have to finish sweeping the floor for me, because now I have to get your brother back to sleep."

And after it's been one of those days, sometimes I think:  Damn it, why did I teach them to ask me for forgiveness?  How many times do I have to forgive?

How many times, indeed?  

A pleasant, non-threatening homeschool blog for you.

I have mentioned before that a steady diet of homeschooling blogs gives me indigestion.

I don't mean "bloggers who homeschool," of course -- I enjoy plenty of those, because homeschooling parents and their kids are interesting people with interesting things to say. But I try to limit my exposure to blogs whose raison d'être is homeschooling, unless I am actually searching for new ideas and inspiration. Too many virtual new ideas and inspiration all the time ---> a feeling that the real house, schoolroom, and maybe even the children around me are scruffy, worn, old, beat-up, uninspiring, and in need of replacement.

I got a link to Steady Mom some time ago, though, and I have found her posts to be a nice counterpoint: the "inspirational" homeschool blog that doesn't make me feel uninspired by comparison. Today's post seems like a nice introduction to her, so I am sending you over.

http://www.steadymom.com/2012/03/life-as-an-interracial-family.html

Cellular- level genetic analysis of a cancer.

I thought this was an interesting note from the field of cancer research: genetic analysis of renal cancer cells in the same patient, including metastasized cells, shows a great deal of variation pointing to rapid mutation and even what you could call rapid evolution of the cells to adapt to their environments, i.e., various sites in the body.

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/03/20/personalized_medicine_for_cancer_try_every_cell.php

Derek Lowe, the blogger who pointed to the paper, comments:

"Not only is cancer not a single disease, and not only is a single type of cancer not a single type of cancer, but individual patients contain a multitude of different cancerous cell lines, which vary by location."


Interesting. The more we find out, it seems, the more we begin to grasp why cancers are so mind-bogglingly difficult to treat.

Quiet reconstructions.

(This post was updated  at 5:10 pm to add links to the artwork mentioned)

 

Mark is off on his annual ski trip, leaving the children and me home for a rare weekend without him. We are quite used to being on our own on weekdays and weekday nights, because his job takes him out of town frequently, but weekend trips are unusual. We shook it up a little: I took the kids to Saturday evening Mass, so that there would not be a morning rush, and (here is a first for me) hired a babysitter for Sunday afternoon so I could slip out and get a little breathing space.

With no one to tell me to turn off the light, and no place to go early in the morning, I stayed up late Saturday reading. Long after the two-year-old had nursed to sleep, his jaws going slack and releasing me, I glanced at the clock and put my book aside, and then slid carefully out of bed, thirsty. The light from the bedroom cast my shadow on the stairwell wall as I descended to the kitchen in my pajamas and bare feet.

I had left a dim light on -- I always do when Mark is gone -- so I could see for the trip to the faucet with my glass. After I drank a long draught and set the empty glass on the counter, I paused to look around me. I had swept the kitchen thoroughly and wiped the counters before herding the children up to bed, and though the floor was probably not very clean, in the dim light no smudges were visible and the dark wood gleamed softly. The books were put away and the area rug was swept. The dishwasher hummed and swished. My rocking chair by the bookshelf looked suddenly inviting, and instead of climbing back up the stairs I went over and sat down, drawing my legs up under myself in the perch to which I, whose feet rarely extend to the floor from an easy chair, am accustomed.

Everyone else was asleep or absent. I looked around me and felt a sudden welling-up of pleasure in the ownership of my home. It is funny, of course I own this home with Mark -- we literally "made" this home together, designed it for our family. I rarely think of the "mine-ness" of it. Being home in it is so ordinary, and it is usually the source of so many things I must get and do and fix and clean and prepare -- I do not often stop and center myself in it. And yet, here it is, always all around me, sheltering us all together.

I kind of like it empty and clean-looking. I don't get to see it that way very often. That pleasure would not be so potent if I did not get to enjoy it noisy, full, and messy almost every day, I suppose.

I am not home now. I am at a local modern art museum (the Walker, for those who know Minneapolis). The kids are home with the babysitter. I will have to get up and go back in just a few minutes.

One of the exhibits that is here right now is called "Lifelike." It is a collection of pieces that look like ordinary objects, or really are ordinary objects. Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes are there, and Chuck Close's "Big Self-Portrait", as well as some photorealist paintings, and a charming painted wooden sculpture called "Weeds" of lifelike little plants that appear to be growing from the crack between wall and floor. There was a short film which at first glance appeared to be images of New York City street scenes, dumpsters and signage and the like, but on closer examination had been shot on a working sound stage that is used for city street scenes in movies. Things like that: either the truly ordinary brought into close focus, or illusions of ordinariness. One of the installations that attracted me most was "Bremen Towne," a room that had been carefully assembled to be an exact replica of the kitchen of the artist's midcentury childhood home. That artist, Keith Edmier, had obtained the correct model of refrigerator, vintage cabinetry, and so on. Where he could not obtain the right type of item, he had manufactured them: the linoleum tiles had been laser-etched using a single original tile as a pattern, and the dinette set had been sculpted.

I could not help but feel a certain link between the gleaming vintage kitchen and dinette, nostalgia for the past executed in Formica and harvest-gold Amana finish, and my feeling of nostalgia-for-the-present-moment of being in my own quiet kitchen late at night. The artist had created a clean, perfect kitchen after his own memories, and it was pleasant to stand in the cheery, midcentury (so retro!) space. His memories, though, must contain more noise and mess than this, just as my life usually does. At the same time, there is something real and really peaceful, not artificial, about the quiet of my late-night kitchen. The children are real, and really sleeping upstairs. Maybe it is just a little message to myself that I need to take the time to enjoy the space I live in on my own terms, a little more often than I do.

The difference between faith and belief.

"I do believe; help my unbelief!" -- Mark 9:24

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Darwin excerpts a cordial discussion between some theists and some atheists about the meaning of the word "faith."

 It's worth reading on its own, and I am not going to respond to the entire excerpt, but just make my own comment and expand on it here.

Some proposed definitions from the excerpt:

• "Faith is knowing by testimony rather than by experience. I believe that the Earth orbits the Sun, because the scientists tell me so, and I believe them. "
• "[F]aith is what fills in the gaps of the probabilities. If, say there is a 70 % probability something is the case then to conclude more than that 70% probability is faith..."

Darwin chimes in to make two points.  First, what "faith" originally means:  

The old Catholic Encyclopedia in its article on faith describes the Old Testament use of the term to be essentially "trustfulness" or "steadfastness".... This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Second, 

faith is an act of the will.

Darwin's points are both correct, but he does not go as far as I do.  He classifies "faith" as being an act, and this is correct; but it seems that he identifies it too much with "belief," or with being convinced "enough" of something.  Here is the statement of Darwin's that I disagree with:

This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Obviously, in this sense one can have faith in any number of things or people, and as it notes, faith in this sense necessarily presupposes belief. I can hardly have faith in my wife's love (as in, trust in its existence and steadfastness) if I don't really believe that I have a wife or don't really believe that she loves me. When Christians talk about "having faith" however, they're pretty specifically talking about "having faith in God" -- that combination of believing in God's existence and of trusting in God to remain steadfast and trustworthy in His love for us.

Darwin is failing -- at least clearly -- to make a distinction between "I am faithful to my wife" and "I have faith in my wife."

The first is concrete.  The second is the metaphor.

The faith that Christians are supposed to have is not the same thing as trust that God's love exists and is steadfast to us.  The faith that we are supposed to have, I am certain, is faithfulness *to* God -- fidelity to the laws and precepts that He sets out for us insofar as we are aware of them.  When we are told to have faith,  this is not at all a command to believe something.  (How can you be commanded to be convinced of a truth?) It is a command to do  something:  to live your life, in your body, in your mind, in accord with the will of a God.

Faith is not trust in God's steadfastness; it is a firm determination to remain steadfast to God.  It is as the original Hebrew meant.

And the point that I want to make, the point where I disagree with Darwin, is that faith understood in this way does not presuppose belief.  

Faith understood the way (I think) Darwin is trying to understand this would presuppose belief, because he is identifying faith with belief.  "I can hardly have faith in my wife's love if I don't really believe that she loves me."  Well, of course, if "faith in my wife's love" == "belief that my wife loves me."  

But my understanding of faith does not presuppose belief.  Darwin could choose to remain faithful to his wife -- by which I mean nothing more nor less than the earthy sort of "faithful," i.e., he could remain sexually faithful to his wife, forsaking all others, and not abandoning her or their children -- even if he lost all confidence in her love for him.  Indeed, he could (and should) choose to remain sexually faithful if Darwin became thoroughly convinced that MrsDarwin did not love him at all.

And what if he did not believe that he even had a wife?  Well, millions of still-single people find themselves in that situation every day, not having promised marriage to anyone, and yet they can still be "faithful" to the future spouse they might or might not have by living a chaste life.  Such is faith:  steadfastness.

One may be "faithful" while having severely impaired belief, even no belief at all. (Which raises the question:  Why would someone who did not believe in God ever strive to live according to God's laws?  I will not answer the question here, and maybe will bat that question back to Darwin, but I will simply note that it is not logically impossible to be faithful in this way without belief; whereas if faith == belief, it does become logically impossible to have faith without belief.)

The idea of "faith" as a purely mental or spiritual assent to a theological statement is, I suspect, a highly Protestant innovation.  Because if you understand "faith" to mean "faithfulness" or "fidelity," then there is no distinction, none at all, between faith and works.  The whole concept of "faith vs. works" presupposes that it is even possible to segregate a thing called "faith" away from the daily acts of living and interacting with other human beings and with our God.  I say, it is not possible.

Here is the second chapter of James:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?ⁱ 15If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?^j 17So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. 19You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. 20Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? 21Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?^k 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. 23Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.”^l 24See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?^m 26For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

 

The Greek word for "faith" in James 2 (the faith and works discourse) is the same Greek word (pistis) translated as "belief" in the passage from Mark that I quoted above.   Does pistis mean "steadfastness" in any way?  Or does it only mean an intellectual assent?  It goes on to use pisteuis in the next verse to mean "believe" as in "You believe that God is one" and then "pisteuousin" in "Even the demons believe, and shudder."   The "faith" mentioned in James is then the same as the "belief" which even demons can have.  

I don't really think of demons as "steadfast."

Anyway, as I said in my comment to Darwin's post, the image of a faithful spouse is apt.  Faith in, and faithfulness to, a spouse are very precisely designed to be an image of faith in, and faithfulness to, God. They are so bound up in each other as to not be separable; but at the same time, it is possible to "be faithful," to "do faithfulness," even in times of doubt or -- God forbid -- abandonment.  

This is what I would like to get across to anyone who says they wishes they could have faith but that it has never come to them. Anyone can, without committing a single act of intellectual dishonesty. It is simply a matter of becoming a faithful servant, or spouse, or child of God. To act faithfully -- the precise nature of the "acts of faith" depends on our state in life and our circumstances -- is to have faith. The ability to act faithfully, the possession of faith, both come from grace, the only thing by which we are saved.

"Colored Me."

A fascinating story that begins with a curious anecdote of family genealogy and leads to a discussion of the history of eugenics and racial classifications in midcentury Virginia.

This [photo] is the mar­riage license of my great-great grand­fa­ther,  born in Ire­land in 1854 and mar­ried to a Vir­ginia native in 1884. His race, you’ll notice, is given as “col­ored.” Since when are Irish­men colored?

My father found this when he started doing fam­ily his­tory after he retired. We mostly laughed, a lot, when he revealed it at a fam­ily Christ­mas party: that year he sent us all Kwanza cards as a joke.

But being a his­to­rian I couldn’t help but be fas­ci­nated.... I thought the “Irish were not white” bit was wildly overstated.

I was clearly wrong, and look­ing into it a lit­tle more resulted in a whole class les­son around the image of the Irish in the 19th cen­tury and the range of anti-Irish nativism. It focused on the mal­leabil­ity of stereo­types, and how what seems “nat­ural” and obvi­ous in one era seems odd in the next.

But still how to explain this doc­u­ment? It was his mar­riage cer­tifi­cate: surely even the green­est Irish immi­grant knew enough to avoid being classed as “colored.”

If you take a close look at it, it gets more and more interesting....

Read the whole thing.  

(h/t commenter HCCarey in this really interesting comment thread on Ta-Nehisi Coates's Atlantic blog about mutual cultural understanding, or the lack thereof, between American Jews and African-Americans.)

Perceived deficits in the homeschool.

There are some good conversations going on in the comments on the recent post about the "one-room" schooling techniques and in the post about deficits in the homeschool.

I want to talk a little bit about perceived deficits in the homeschool.

What are you comparing your homeschool to, anyway?

If you think you are comparing it to an institutional school, do you have a realistic idea of what goes on in your average institutional school?  Sure, many high school students have access to excellent teachers and a great peer group, but even in the good schools there are often mediocre teachers and bad classes.  I went to a pretty good high school, and I encountered some really excellent teachers there -- my French teacher was absolutely top-of-the-line, my English literature teacher was memorable and engaging, my chemistry teacher could have taught Bill Nye how not to bore people.  I learned a lot in those classes.  But I also had some really bad teachers -- substandard ones, or mean ones, or incompetent ones, or lazy ones, or possibly-mentally-ill ones -- whose classes were a waste of time or worse.  A lot of it is hit-or-miss.  Few schools of any kind excel at everything.

Is the problem that you cannot give enough one-on-one time to each student?  How much one-on-one time do you think students get in an institutional school?  It is not the equivalent of a full-time tutor every day of the week.  

Certainly there are efficiencies in an institutional school that a large-family homeschool cannot match.  When one teacher teaches all the English classes and the curriculum is always the same, he just does not have to spend as much time on preparing and planning as we parents do when we are designing our curriculum and schedule to fit a family which forms a new configuration basically every year.   When there is a fully stocked chemistry lab available all the time, laboratory prep time is minimized.  It's easy to put together group learning experiences, like discussing literature or putting on plays or holding debates or setting up games, when there are many other students at the same level.  

But there are different kinds of institutional schools with different strengths -- set up purposely! -- and that's often something we celebrate.  Magnet schools!  There's a performing-arts K-8 public school up the street from me, and within close walking distance is a small public high school specially organized for students who speak Spanish in their homes.  There are language immersion schools and schools designed as interventions for students at risk of dropping out.  There are vocational schools which specialize in turning out students who are already prepared to enter the skilled-labor workforce at age eighteen.  And yes, there are college-preparatory schools.   They all serve different purposes, promise a different educational experience, and turn out young people who are prepared for life in different ways.  Even within those broad categories there are wide variations in style.

And this is a good thing.   People don't typically complain that their child graduated from a college-prep program without also learning in school how to rebuild an engine (though maybe they ought to).  It's not the college placement rate, but the job placement rate and job performance, that we're interested in when we measure whether a vocational-technical high school program is adequately preparing its students.  

The homeschool, too, has its own essence, its own reason for being, its own niche in the educational ecosystem.

 The essence of homeschooling is not academic excellence (although homeschools can provide that).  The essence of homeschooling is not preparation for a job (although homeschools can provide that).  The essence of homeschooling is not "special" education for students with particular challenges that make institutional schools a poor fit or a toxic environment (although homeschools can provide that).  The essence of homeschooling is not that it can set its own schedule rather than being tied to external ones (although homeschools can provide that).  The essence of homeschooling is not its freedom from externally imposed ideological structures (although homeschools can provide that).

The essence of homeschooling is simply that it happens within the family.

That schooling happens as an outgrowth of family life and family work.  

That the young person is surrounded by people with whom he has meaningful and permanent relationships:  parents, siblings, perhaps grandparents and cousins, friends who are connected to him through a web of relationships between families rather than a single point.  

That the "curriculum" and schoolday is designed neither exactly to suit him as an individual with the perfect environment for his own personal success, nor to shove him along in a faceless crowd that on average receives an education adequate enough to keep trouble away... but for the best interests of the family as a whole, the innate natural grouping of the human organism, the grouping in which we can truly be known as human persons and in which we can learn the art of balancing needs and wants of the self and others.

That is the essence of homeschooling.  That is its specialty.  That is where it shines.

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H. said to me yesterday, "My standard answer, when someone asks me, 'So, how is the homeschooling going for you?' is "Great.  I love having my kids with me all day.'  It's true, and it's the reason I do it."  Even though H. is confident that she is providing a really excellent education to her three children, she said, it isn't the academic excellence that she chooses to emphasize.  Because that isn't the primary reason she does it.

I laughed and said, "I could never get away with saying that I love having my kids with me all day.   Especially if it had been one of those days.  You know I have no poker face."  But I went on:  "My standard answer doesn't have anything to do with academics either.  I mean, if they press me I say so, and sometimes I tell them  that I enjoy the work of planning the curriculum and things, which is true.  

"But most of the time I tell people, 'What I really love about homeschooling is that my children spend all day surrounded by their siblings, and that they have wonderful relationships with each other.'  Which is also true.

"Sometimes I get the response, 'Oh, my kids drive each other crazy if they have to spend ten minutes in the same room.'  But it isn't hard for people to understand that if their kids spent lots of time together, they would probably understand each other better.  Most people get that."

+ + +

Why do homeschoolers judge themselves so poorly, so often?  I really think it's because we are constantly  judging ourselves based on external standards, sometimes imaginary ones, and often ones in which the homeschooling paradigm doesn't make sense.  

We shouldn't judge ourselves against the standards of the urban vo-tech high school, or against the wonderful parish school, or the impressive classical charter school out in the suburbs, or the neighborhood public school.  

We definitely shouldn't judge our homeschools against the imaginary standard of an imaginary school that somehow provides the best of all those worlds:  immersion in a foreign language, and valuable real-world hands-on job skills, and a broad liberal-arts education, and time to go deep into the subjects that are most loved, and an opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument, and connections with other young people who live in the same neighborhood, and education centered within the family's own system of values and philosophies, and preparation for the best colleges, all at once.  

Nor should we judge our homeschools against the imaginary standard made up of all the best things we read on the blogs of other homeschools, and none of their drawbacks, because who wants to write at length about those?  (Face it, homeschoolbloggers, we like to brag about our good ideas, not our bad ones, unless we can do it while sounding really Witty and Gritty and Real.)  So, please, let's not fret because we are not able to keep nature notebooks from age four through eighteen, and have all of our children in Suzuki lessons, and have a working wood shop, and collect and use all the official Montessori-method practical-life learning materials, and read the entire Ambleside book lists to the children, and co-school twice a week with another family, and have a field trip three times a month to a local museum/theater/zoo, and operate a working family business wherein the children will learn the Real Meaning of Money, and send them all to the National Spelling Bee...  because nobody else is doing all that either.  We can pick one or two things and do them really well and create massively cool experiences out of them.  We can't do it with everything.

We are families.  Families!  As different as families can be.  

We need to set our own standards for ourselves, and meet those.

That's all.