Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean the UN Isn't Out To Get You

At the end of the semester, I have to write a 4000-word paper for my Childhood Theory class. I must choose something related to children's lives and analyze it using two theoretical perspectives. If that sounds vague to you, I agree. But that is the UK way, and actually I love it, because I get to write about whatever I feel like! So I've been trying to decide what to write about, because 4000 words is a lot of words. Right now I'm really focused on the It Gets Better Project and the related Make It Better Project. How can I pass up the chance to write an academic paper about Dan Savage? Love that guy.


[Nerd Alert] Since I would be analyzing these two projects from a theoretical viewpoint, but only have half a semester's knowledge about how to do that, I spent today browsing journal articles to see how other people do it. At one point I thought, "Hey! Maybe I can use the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to analyze them!" (This was a stupid idea, because the UNCRC is not a theory, and a good example of why I need to not leave this paper until the last minute.)

Even if that hadn't been a stupid idea because the UNCRC is not theory, it was a stupid idea because the US has never ratified the CRC. Of course Dan Savage's work is not federal policy (oh, the possibilities!). It would still be tricky to analyze his projects, which base their activism on US anti-discrimination law, in terms of a UN policy document that the US doesn't recognize. [End Nerd Alert]

I decided to procrastinate by Googling "UNCRC America" to find out why we haven't ratified this document. The only other country that hasn't is Somalia. Apologies to Somali pirates, but do we really want that company?

Here are some of the links that popped up:

Say Goodbye to Your Children America...the anti-family UNCRC!
Fight the UNCRC-Stand Up For Family Rights
Teaching Children that Authority Doesn't Matter: UNCRC Article 12
UNCRC Assault on Parental Rights to Be Expedited
Somalia to join child rights pact (Uh oh!)

Based on the scientific method called "clicking around" it would appear that the big issue here is parental rights vs. child rights and the ideological difficulty of making friends with the UN. Also homeschooling, with a dash of paranoia.

As the last link points out, not signing the CRC does not mean that the US is somehow violating children's rights, or that states can't be in line with the CRC in many ways without having the document officially ratified. I just think it's a neat little illustration of US attitudes toward the rest of the world.

Women's Work

I think I introduced myself to more people during the first few weeks of this program than I have in my entire life. When you are sitting in a giant lecture hall full of strangers, it's easy to insert yourself into someone else's conversation. Tip #1: it helps if you have acquired New York City social skills, meaning you don't have boundaries and expect the same of others. Tip #2: this behavior goes over well with strangers in a lecture hall and less well with Scottish people at the bus stop.

"I'm doing a PhD in Comparative European politics with a focus on the implications of Stalinist Russia as applied to recruitment methods used by the KGB. You?"

I encountered one person who was familiar with Childhood Studies. Everyone else nodded vaguely and moved on to the next person who needed introducing. Ah, Childhood Studies...ah, women's work.

My favorite moment of academic swagger happened in a class called "Analysing Development Aid". The room was packed--there is a new program for African Studies and because of the way the University handles admissions and attendance, I don't think they knew exactly how many people were going to show up on the first day. The answer: everyone. Everyone showed up.

The professor knew that the university wouldn't let everyone take the class. She nicely pointed out that people who weren't in the African Studies program should probably leave because "I don't want to waste your time." Nobody moved. Rumblings of outrage started. Finally after ten minutes of awkward waffling, she ordered them to get out, saying, "Welcome to international development!" Ouch.

I'd say a large part of my work around children is to advocate for their humanity--their validity as current beings rather than as cute little partially formed grownups. This is a hard thing to do. But at least my field isn't based on to-the-death competition. Nobody ever slapped me in the face and said, "Welcome to child policy work." Not yet, anyway.

Oh Small Citizens, What Is Your Future?

When I started the blog over the summer, I was intending to kill time writing funny anecdotes about working with children before I went off to grad school. Then of course, I would be immersed in study and generate all kinds of insightful musings on the place of children in society.

The first part has come true. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how interesting theories of childhood are to outside readers, although of course I think everyone should care about this. I’ve been putting off writing on the blog since I started school because I didn’t know if I would have enough to write about to make it worth keeping.

However! One reason I started this was to force myself to practice writing, no matter who was actually reading it. Writing will hopefully be a major part of my future endeavors and I keep hearing that the only way to become a good writer is to…write. So Small Citizens gets a stay of execution, and anyone who feels like reading is welcome along for the (non-rollercoastery) ride.

This Is Not Really About Children So Much

Having a themed blog is tricky. Sometimes I want to write about stuff that is not really related to children. This post is slightly related to children in only the most teeny tiny way. Enjoy.

"...we wanted to affirm the idea that media is something you can choose and control, not a collective demonic unconscious that fills up your imagination and swallows all your spare time."

The quote comes from a series on homeschooling on Salon:
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2010/08/29/homeschooling_dora_the_explorer/index.html

I often contemplate my media intake. I love the internet because it answers all of my questions in an instant. The bad side is that I often find myself mindlessly surfing Huffington Post rather than doing important tasks like tracking down my missing 401 (k) plan from 2005. In general, though, I'm pretty in control of what I'm listening to and reading. For example, I know that I love reading about national and international events, but I hate watching local newscasts. I despise sitting there and watching other people's personal tragedies played out for dramatic effect. I don't like feeling threatened by my household objects or the weather or bedbugs. There is nothing good about local news. My solution is to refuse to watch it*.

* The obvious exception to this ban is NY1, because it's so low budget that they just give you the basics, no drama, no creepy co-anchor banter between people who actually hate each other. And Pat Kiernan will read the papers to you. Why can't I get NY1 in NH?

Come away with me, Pat.

Where am I going with this? Good question.

Glenn Beck, you are no Pat Kiernan.

I try to be the boss of my own media consumption, yet somehow I know so much about this scumbag. I've never watched his show. He has invaded the nation's consciousness. Fear of the nebulous, unspecified Other! Mexicans! Muslims! Obama! Kenyans! Commies! Socialists! Nazis! Obama's fake army of middle schoolers! Anchor babies! The Trans Fat Hating Nanny State!

Also...Tea Partiers! They're scary as hell and there's billions of them, or so Glenn Beck and his puppetmasters would like me to think.

This babbling moron gets paid a $32 million dollar salary to scare people into hating each other. I will raise a toast when he departs this earth. Until then, I have been thinking a lot about finding ways to focus my attention on positive things that undermine the culture of fear.

Here's one:
http://www.islamicreliefusa.org/

Here's another one:
http://www.onenationworkingtogether.org/

And another one:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/

Those of us who don't want to live in fear have to make conscious choices and stay smart. I've resolved not to be suckered into hating the Tea Party people I see on the internet (I've actually never met one in person) just as I resolved long ago not to be suckered into hating Muslims.

Glenn, I don't hate you. I nothing you.

Rachel Maddow, call me!

I Will Accept Payment To Re-Sign Boston's Roadways

I've been spending a lot of time in the car with young children this week. I'm babysitting for two delightful kids, and we've been hitting a lot of destinations outside their neighborhood. On Monday we drove to the Children's Museum, and today we went all the way over to East Boston to Piers Park.

On Monday, we weren't in the car five minutes before one of them was asking for music. Um...will Neko Case do? You don't find her combination of bizarre lyrics and unconventional song structure compelling, five year-old child? Nor you, three-year old? I tried the radio--the kids cheered because "We love grown-up music!"--but the first song that came on was Eminem's new ode to domestic violence.


Too grown-up.

Luckily there was a copy of the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? in the car. I would never choose to listen to that on my own. But the oldest child immediately dubbed it, "farm music" and said, "I never heard it before today but I LOVE farm music!" The younger one fell asleep immediately. Farm Music rules.

Today, I was nervous about navigating out to East Boston, so I convinced them to listen to Farm Music rather than their CD of kids' music. In return, I promised to play the kids' one during the ride home. Could anything be worse than missing your exit in Boston, where wrong turns are irrevocable errors that lead to hours of meandering and no, you're not lost, you know exactly where you are, but every street is one-way going the wrong way and you can SEE Storrow Drive, it's right there but there's no sign for how to get there, because if you really BELONGED here, you would already know how to get there, so just GO HOME already, you interloper!

Yes, it could. You could be driving in Boston while listening to this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgx541LvPqg

Dear Pete Seeger, How's Your Banjo? Let Me Know. Thank You.

The kids in my summer group are enchanted by the story Abiyoyo, as read by Pete Seeger. We also have the book in class, but if we try to read it ourselves, they criticize our performance. For example, Pete says that Abiyoyo is coming "nearah, and nearah" and the children require that we do it in the same old-timey accent.

Their favorite part is when Abiyoyo is described as having "stinkin' old feet, 'cause he never washed 'em." Never has a group of shrieking 5 year-olds been so quiet as they are in anticipation of this line.

From what my co-teacher tells me, this group has been in love with Abiyoyo since they were 2 (note: more than half their lives). Many kids I've taught have been afraid of Abiyoyo, so I thought it was pretty awesome that they've enjoyed it since they were so little. I brought in a picture of Pete Seeger to show them and they were floored. It had never occurred to them that an actual person was involved with this song. This CD didn't just fall from the heavens?



Pete (who is 91) was immediately declared "really old", and one boy exclaimed, "Is he ALIVE?" I suggested that we could send him a letter and some drawings of the things they like about Abiyoyo. This is a friendly version of Abiyoyo (from a girl who might be just a little bit scared of him):




Other than this smiling giant, and of course the letter pictured above wondering how Pete's banjo is doing, Mr. Seeger will be receiving a lot of pictures of "stinkin' feet" and questions like, "Do YOU have stinkin' old feet?" I like to think he'll get a kick out of it.

I'm not sure Abiyoyo would appreciate the kids giving out his phone number, though.

Show Me the Evidence! No Wait...Don't.

This week at work, we found out that one of the kids has lice. Cue phantom itching.

The child was treated and allowed back to school after 24 hours, as per school policy. That day, the teachers all watched in horror as the child obsessively scratched at his/her scalp. I gloved up and did a head check..and found nits, nits galore. Like the mature professional that I am, I panicked and called the kid's mom--who told me that she had been informed that school policy said that kids with lice weren't excluded from school, even with live bugs on their heads. Live bugs! And of course, immediately after this phone conversation, I turned around to see this child literally rubbing heads with another kid.

I was pretty shocked about the live bug policy (perhaps readers are familiar with my feelings about bugs in any context). My previous school experience has always been "no nits". My fellow teachers were also displeased, and a revolt started brewing below the surface of our polite preschool. Yesterday we were quietly presented with a scholarly article debunking all of our assumptions about the life cycle, spread, and containment of head lice.

There's a surprising study put out by the University of Michigan regarding "backfire". The data they collected shows that politically misinformed people, when presented with the facts, actually cling harder to their mistaken beliefs. An excerpt from the show "Talk of the Nation" on NPR, hosted by Neal Conan:

CONAN: Well, Brendan Nyhan is a health policy researcher at the University of Michigan. He recently published "When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions." That was in the June issue of the Journal of Political Behavior, and he joins us now from the studios of WUOM, Michigan Radio, our member station in Ann Arbor. Nice to have you with us today.

Mr. BRENDAN NYHAN (Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research, University of Michigan): Thanks for having me.

CONAN: And when facts are readily available, why are they not enough to change people's minds?

Mr. NYHAN: Well, the problem is, you know, as human beings, we want to believe, you know, the things that we already believe. And so when you hear some information that contradicts your pre-existing views, unfortunately, what we tend to do is think of why we believed those things in the first place.

And, you know, so when, you know, we get these corrections, we tend to say I'm right, and I'm going to stick with my view. And the thing that my research, which is with Jason Reifler at Georgia State University, found is that in some cases, that corrective information can actually make the problem worse.

They go on to use the example of "birthers", the fools who refuse to believe that President Obama is an American citizen despite all evidence presented to them. Well, apparently I'd fit right in with the birther crowd, because I had the same kind of foolish reaction to the lice article that they do to the President's birth certificate.

Just call me Orly Taitz from now on. You'll find me in the corner, scratching at imaginary bugs.

Hee Hee

I secretly love parenting articles like this one by Jennifer Senior. I don't have kids! Schadenfreude!

New York Magazine: All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting: http://tiny.cc/nmvkc

Parenting will not make you happier (according to quite a few studies cited by Senior). There's a ton of laundry. Sometimes your kid won't have pants on.

I feel for parents in this NY Magazine demographic, because the obsession with doing it right can be so insidious. These are the people I've been working with for seven years, and I've seen it. If that's your social circle, those are the people you parent with. At the same time, ideas about parenting are shaped by media images, and the reality of actually having a permanent child hits hard. It's a double whammy of unrealistic expectations and a cycle of crazy that's hard to get out of.

However. If you can afford food for your kid, and he has clothes to wear (minus the occasional pants issue), and most importantly you have time to obsess over all this stuff? Have a beer and get a handle on yourself. It's all going to work out ok.

Well, Why Not?

This week I attended the NAREA summer conference in Chicago--NAREA being the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance. When I first started learning about this teaching method, I was totally overwhelmed by the architectural and design elements I saw in Reggio-inspired schools. Honestly, a sleeping loft that's connected to the classroom by a giant slide? That's straight-up fun.

IKEA enjoys quite a bit of business from Reggio-inspired schools in this country, and my experience with the method so far has been in affluent communities. Money does have to be spent, because as a general rule you want to offer the children high-quality stuff (since you view them as high-quality individuals). It's easy for high-quality materials to be conflated with high-quality curriculum--but they are different animals.

The conference included school visits around the city. Let me be clear that these are not fancy neighborhoods. In fact we were discouraged by our guides from taking public transportation home. These schools are Head Starts, subsidized, or public schools, and they are awesome.

In one school (70% native Spanish speakers), children and parents were photographed together and asked, "Why do you speak Spanish?" The photograph and answers (in Spanish and English) are mounted and displayed along the hallway for the year. Imagine how this makes families feel! Particularly those who speak only Spanish and are typically invisible to institutions like public schools. Suddenly they are visible, their words are visible, and in their own language. There's no question that this school is a place specifically for them and their children.

Another school had documented an ongoing learning project about hair. The kids in the class were obsessed with each others hair, so the teachers brought in curlers, straighteners, brushes, ribbons, barrettes, etc. Boys and girls were equally involved--and when you see these girls' hairdos, you can see why. Boys might not get adorned with barrettes in the same way, but they sure watch the women and girls in their lives who do. The teachers had tapped into a major cultural element for these kids, and there are deep social skills to be learned through this relatively simple setup.

On the last morning of the conference, Vanessa Rich delivered the opening remarks. She is the Deputy Commissioner of Family Support Services for the city of Chicago, meaning she is The Woman when it comes to subsidized childcare. She started out by saying that when she first heard of the Reggio method in America, she thought it was for "rich white kids." So did I!

I would like to know more about the transition these schools went through to start using emergent curriculum. I think there must have been some big bureaucratic hurdles. Somebody decided these kids were worth it.

Well, why not?

http://www.chicagocommons.org/