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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Eric and the prior home school fan are afraid of subjecting their children to their "disgusting peer group."
I guess they would be talking about my child?
One of the primary responsibilities I feel as a parent is to teach my child how to live in the world with others. It's not always pretty, but there are a million life lessons that children and parents can learn when coming to terms with those who think and live differently. Where I live, that means learning to live with religious fundamentalists, bullies, and several kids with aspergers syndrome and other learning and behavioral difficulties. My son has done a wonderful job of relating to and understanding all these children. I think those skills are going to be incredibly essential in our polarized society.
Can Eric replicate those lessons with his children in the home school environment? Not if he views the other kids as "disgusting." That just makes me sorry for everyone involved.
As a mom, I'm the primary breadwinner for my family. Since the birth of our son, my husband has at various time worked full-time at an office, worked part-time from home, and been a full-time stay-at home dad. I find it unfortunate that the work vs. home debate always gets framed as the "Mommy Wars" (or as a catfight), as if there is no questioning or judgment about these choices among the dads of America. When my husband was staying at home, there were far too many instances where other working dads expressly or impliedly questioned his priorities, his ability as a provider, even his manhood. In turn, many of his fellow stay-at-home dads questioned the commitment to parenting being shown by the "weekend" dads who worked full-time.
Obviously at this juncture the work/home debate among women is more prominent because women's choices are more evenly split. But, please, let's not get trapped into framing this as a gender-specific issue. What we all need are more choices and more ability to find peace with our own choices. What we don't need is more denigration of the choices made by others with respect to working or staying at home.
Of Caitlin Flanagan. She's a great writer with very little to say. Is there anyone left who doesn't see through her schtick?
I always wonder why female social critics/feminists always feel they have to address every traditionalist assault.
I have read Flanagan on and off in the same magazines as the author and I always finished up the articles thinking, " Yup , this woman is still full of BS," and dismissed it all.
Flanagan isn't "middle class" she is rich. None of my middle class
"working mom" friends have half the help she does and truthfully neither do any of my "stay at home mom" friends. Flanagan exists in some alternative universe and assumes all other women have the same luxuries she does. This is a popular universe for traditionalists to float around in while they try to make other women feeel like crap for the choices they made while engaging in boring self promotion about how wonerful they are.
Flanagan other than suffering from cancer has never har a "real dilemma" in her life: do I call into work sick because my child is sick and risk losing my job because it has been a bad year, do I work overtime to pay for private school but then spend less time with my kid, do I stay at hom and then let my kid know that there won't be any college on one income, do I exhaust myself at work and at home and not spend any actual time with anybody but have a clean home and a functioning one, ect ect ect. Women calculate these options all the time and I don't know one single person who sulks about whether the nanny has a closer relationship with the kids or whether I should pay the house keeper more because I don't know any of those people. My general feeling is if you can really afford to hire somebody else to do any of this stuff common sense says you should pay them decently.
Flanagan doesn't irritate me with her pronouncements she irritates me because she acts as though class standing does not have an impact on the choices women make or the ones she promotes.
Paula Langley
Being forced into a "diverse environment" in no way makes people more tolerant. In fact, it usually has the opposite effect.
As a little innocent kid entering kindergarten for the first time, I had no stereotypes at all. My parents are tolerant, nice people who taught me to respect everyone --- it wasn't until I was forced to attend unleveled classes with violent inner-city black kids that I developed a single idea about race at all. Since I was in a suburb of a big city they had to bus in some blacks for diversity purposes, and I was beaten up repeatedly for no reason (other than raising my hand with correct answers in class)---- then I witnessed teacher after teacher ignoring my complaints and refusing to discipline any black students even while punishing me for fighting back to DEFEND myself.
Only then did I realize that "diversity" is a complete scam, and one that education professionals care about more than actually teaching kids anything useful.
I had no prejudices against disabled people until I realized that my wealthy high school had no honors program, but a multi-million dollar budget with useless special ed teachers lavished on a small group of retards incapable of learning anything useful. Before that, when "mainstreaming" was becoming fashionable, I had to endure constant interruptions and slowed-down lessons when they put several really "challenged" kids in my elementary classes.
I entered public school with unformed ideas about the world, and left it completely disgusted with the poor quality of education that happens when you cram 30 kids, of all different intelligence levels, into one room and expect one dimwitted cow of a teacher to show them how to read. Homeschooling is a fantastic alternative, because then your kids won't resent other races and minority groups for holding them back. They also will know how to deal with bullies the old-fashioned way: by beating the shit out of anyone who tries to physically harm you, instead of being suspended by hysterical zero-tolerance morons for taking care of the problem. Subjecting your kid to 12 years of substandard education for the wonderful benefit of exposing them to different racial goups is the height of folly.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
