jason

FT.com / UK - My new sense of guilt as a selfish working mother

On Monday The Children’s Society published a report based on interviews with 35,000 people in Britain that concluded children such as mine may not be as happy as they should be.

The main risk for British children, it said, was that their selfish parents were too busy chasing their own success. The culture of individual fulfilment for adults was making the lot of children much less happy than a generation or two ago.

The report caused a storm in the British media last week - just as one would have expected. Social conservatives crowed in agreement: we should roll the clocks back to the 1950s, they said, when everyone lived in nuclear families and women baked cakes and everyone was happy. The social liberals, meanwhile, flew into a rage - female columnists protested that our children are happy (my old argument), and tried to rip the report apart, closing their ears to what they claimed was preachy nonsense.

I have no opinion in this matter, to any great degree for a variety of reasons. Oh, I do have opinions! I don’t have children, and I’d prefer to focus on my own life and that of my long suffering partner (who sent me this). I’m professionally dedicated to children, but not on my spare time. And most important to me, my colleagues are predominately female and I shudder at the thought of having to work in a male dominated workforce. I also think that women who are active professionals are making major impacts in the lives of their children because of their careers. I could go on and on. What I DO think is the problem is the intersection of the nuclear family and two parents working. If two parents are working, who stays with the children? Well, if we got rid of the problem of nuclear families, then the issue becomes a lot more diverse and complex. It is not natural to force families into this nuclear mode. It is unnatural for people to have to work 9-5 all at the same time. What IS natural is for people to work at something they love and find meaningful to the best of their ability. I can tell you that if I’d had kids I’d have fought to be the homemaker, and I’d be there with the other moms and dads… but ideally, our family would also be situated in a larger extended family structure where children were collectively nurtured and supported, and no child would have to depend on a single parent as caregiver. It takes a community to raise a child… no one or two people should feel guilty for having to do it alone. IMHO of course.

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

There has been a lot of discussion on a discussion list I belong to about this article: Science in retreat : Article : Nature

Canada has been scientifically healthy. Not so its government.

Comparisons of nations scientific outputs over the years have shown that Canadas researchers have plenty to be proud of, consistently maintaining their countrys position among the worlds top ten see, for example, Nature 430, 311–316; 2004. Alas, their governments track record is dismal by comparison.

When the Canadian government announced earlier this year that it was closing the office of the national science adviser, few in the countrys science community were surprised. Science has long faced an uphill battle for recognition in Canada, but the slope became steeper when the Conservative government was elected in 2006.

I don’t want to go into any of the issues discussed because it is a closed list, but I did want to post my response to a general sense of comments that we have to do more to teach science. And I really thing we need to do less. Less programming of our lives, more… well read on.

I teach “Concept Development in Science” in the School of Early Childhood Education. I think the problem is deeper and more profound. There’s a lack of autonomous spaces and opportunities for unstructured play for children. Children are over-programmed and over-stimulated. They never know what it means to spend a bored summer running wild through back alleys and fields. They are out of touch with the curiosity that comes from just being bored with nothing to entertain them. They don’t know how to invent their own diversions and explore, get lost and find their way home, experience the ’safe’ fears of realizing they are alone in a forest and learning to listen to the world around them. If children don’t have opportunities to develop intrinsic interests and lack the time to explore and finally complete something of interest to them, I wonder if they’ll ever develop what is for me the hallmark of an independent learner: the intentionality required to choose to learn something and the task dedication to complete something. That is, intrinsic motivation. And this is an issue in the humanities as much as it is in science.

We all, parents, educators, creators of technologies, are responsible for what are being called the millenials (think of Greg Inwood’s post on rfanet last month). Every time we, as educators, do not challenge our students to learn how to think, we are encouraging the reproduction of a cultural situation that we then complain about.

I’m finding that I need to spend as much time trying to find ways to get students enthusiastic about science as I need to spend helping students learn how to help children develop science concepts. Many of them don’t like it, and there are questions as to why I focus on the students’ curiosity and interest when I should focus on age-appropriate science. I’m not sure if we can do anything to help children until we address the systemic social issues that create adults who are too busy trying to make their way in the world to recognize the world around them, so accessorized with technologies and stimulated with entertainments to generate anything of their own, and so lacking with authentic unmediated contact with the world around them that the sky, clouds, trees, water go unnoticed, and any deeper awareness or inquiry is just lost in the buzz. And who are also willing to bring children up with all the diversions that sap them of the kind of curiosity and desire that motivates them to become autonomous self-motivated learners.

Science is not about training or rigor, it is about wonder, curiosity, inquiry and the desire to see what’s going on out there.

IMHO, of course.

Jason

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

I just got the info regarding my talk on Learning Inquiry at AERA in March:

61.013. Journal Talks: Session 3. AERA Sessions
Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, Metropolitan
Ballroom, Metropolitan East, 2nd Floor
4:05 pm to 5:35 pm

If you’re at the conference, drop by!