Tricotomania and more

Warning. Rant ahead.

This morning on the radio, there was a story about some proposal the provincial conservatives are making (I hope I’ve got this right. John Tory is a conservative, isn’t he? I mean the name…) that might involve providing public funding for faith based schools. They interviewed the principle of a Toronto faith-based school who seemed to be in favour of this. One reason was that the state funds Catholic schools so it is unfair not to fund schools of other faiths. And then there was something much less persuasive about the importance of faith to education.

I accept the discrimination point. However, it is a historical anomaly that we have public funding of Catholic schools and the best way to sort out that particular brand of discrimination is to stop funding them, not to start funding even more. The point of public funding of education is to ensure that everyone has access to a basic level of education. It is funded from taxes because we all benefit from folks being educated not just the individuals who actually attend. Having publicly funded schools that don’t accept some kids (on the basis of their religion) or some teachers (on the same basis) is just wrong. Just because we have been doing it for years doesn’t make it any less wrong. Independent faith based schools are just fine. And people who want to attend them should be prepared to pay or raise money for them.

But I take the point about faith being important for some people. And I think the problem is that school has started to colonise too much of kids’ lives. When I was a kid, we went to school from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with 1.5 hours for lunch. That is 5 hours for school per day. We didn’t do homework when we were in elementary school. There was plenty of time to do other things. Nowadays, it seems that schools are being expected to do everything. If it is important it needs to be in the curriculum. Kids need to spend time outside school working on school work. There is handwringing about the length of vacations and the learning lost.

We need to just STOP. School is not the be all and end all of life for kids. If school was only  5 hours a day with no homework until high school (and then set at reasonable levels), there would be plenty of time for families to engage in activities and learning important to them. If you think daily bible study is important you could do it before or after school. If you think music is important you could add on extra lessons or other opportunities. There would be plenty of time for kids to run around and generally get some exercise, whether informally or through organized sports.

And while we’re at it we could scrap the curriculum guidelines and get back to teaching kids instead of curriculum. Sure, set out some broad subject areas. But let teachers teach the kids they have in front of them. Stop trying to make every generation of kids learn things earlier than the previous generation and ending up with college level math being taught in high school. Accept that there is considerable variation around the average age at which kids will learn particular skills. Don’t give up on either the ones who haven’t got there yet, or the ones who are ahead. Teach the kids. Develop them. Move them on. From where they are when they arrive to somewhere else.

But that is just some fantasy of mine, obviously. We are too invested in control. We can’t trust that teachers might be able to make judgements about what these particular kids need. And we certainly couldn’t trust parents to raise their kids. No, much better to make sure that all the important stuff is done in school or sent home from school leaving no space for parents to make their own decisions. Much better to straightjacket the teachers so that all those with any natural ability and love of children leave the system. And then solve the problems by throwing more detailed guidelines and spreading the public money even thinner.

Of course a lot of the people demanding homework and the school takeover of everything deemed important for kids to know (including religion) are parents themselves. People like John Holt and John Taylor Gatto make a lot of sense when they talk about how the school system makes people incapable of thinking for themselves and just trains them to think someone else must be better at this than they are. I really want people to have more faith in themselves. But that is probably another fantasy.

I’ll stop ranting now.

Warning. Rant ahead.

This morning on the radio, there was a story about some proposal the provincial conservatives are making (I hope I’ve got this right. John Tory is a conservative, isn’t he? I mean the name…) that might involve providing public funding for faith based schools. They interviewed the principle of a Toronto faith-based school who seemed to be in favour of this. One reason was that the state funds Catholic schools so it is unfair not to fund schools of other faiths. And then there was something much less persuasive about the importance of faith to education.

I accept the discrimination point. However, it is a historical anomaly that we have public funding of Catholic schools and the best way to sort out that particular brand of discrimination is to stop funding them, not to start funding even more. The point of public funding of education is to ensure that everyone has access to a basic level of education. It is funded from taxes because we all benefit from folks being educated not just the individuals who actually attend. Having publicly funded schools that don’t accept some kids (on the basis of their religion) or some teachers (on the same basis) is just wrong. Just because we have been doing it for years doesn’t make it any less wrong. Independent faith based schools are just fine. And people who want to attend them should be prepared to pay or raise money for them.

But I take the point about faith being important for some people. And I think the problem is that school has started to colonise too much of kids’ lives. When I was a kid, we went to school from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with 1.5 hours for lunch. That is 5 hours for school per day. We didn’t do homework when we were in elementary school. There was plenty of time to do other things. Nowadays, it seems that schools are being expected to do everything. If it is important it needs to be in the curriculum. Kids need to spend time outside school working on school work. There is handwringing about the length of vacations and the learning lost.

We need to just STOP. School is not the be all and end all of life for kids. If school was only  5 hours a day with no homework until high school (and then set at reasonable levels), there would be plenty of time for families to engage in activities and learning important to them. If you think daily bible study is important you could do it before or after school. If you think music is important you could add on extra lessons or other opportunities. There would be plenty of time for kids to run around and generally get some exercise, whether informally or through organized sports.

And while we’re at it we could scrap the curriculum guidelines and get back to teaching kids instead of curriculum. Sure, set out some broad subject areas. But let teachers teach the kids they have in front of them. Stop trying to make every generation of kids learn things earlier than the previous generation and ending up with college level math being taught in high school. Accept that there is considerable variation around the average age at which kids will learn particular skills. Don’t give up on either the ones who haven’t got there yet, or the ones who are ahead. Teach the kids. Develop them. Move them on. From where they are when they arrive to somewhere else.

But that is just some fantasy of mine, obviously. We are too invested in control. We can’t trust that teachers might be able to make judgements about what these particular kids need. And we certainly couldn’t trust parents to raise their kids. No, much better to make sure that all the important stuff is done in school or sent home from school leaving no space for parents to make their own decisions. Much better to straightjacket the teachers so that all those with any natural ability and love of children leave the system. And then solve the problems by throwing more detailed guidelines and spreading the public money even thinner.

Of course a lot of the people demanding homework and the school takeover of everything deemed important for kids to know (including religion) are parents themselves. People like John Holt and John Taylor Gatto make a lot of sense when they talk about how the school system makes people incapable of thinking for themselves and just trains them to think someone else must be better at this than they are. I really want people to have more faith in themselves. But that is probably another fantasy.

I’ll stop ranting now.

While Tigger was away we have been taking the opportunity to do some stuff around the house. We’ve done a bit of painting which brings my kitchen that much closer to being completely in the new colour scheme (last installment was about a year ago. there are two walls to go, both with big windows in them). We also painted the basement bathroom which I figured needed doing if we are going to rent that room this year. And an electrician came and took a look at the stuff we wanted doing to make it possible for the lodger to cook basic stuff themselves down there.

But the big job we started was insulating the basement. This was recommended by our energy audit as the single most effective thing we could do to make our house more energy efficient. We’ve only done this corner so far and, as you can see, it isn’t finished. We want to electrician to put a plug socket there because the workbench is going to go there when it’s done.

As per the instructions we were given, we have 1.5" rigid foam insulation right against the concrete walls (it also acts as a vapour barrier). then we’ve framed up a stud wall and will put that pink fibreglass stuff in there. It needs to be covered with drywall for fire safety purposes but we’re not finishing that more than necessary for that purpose. The ceiling is less than 7′ so it really isn’t suitable for a finished basement room or anything. There are also some supporting beams and ductwork that make parts of it even lower.

The finished part of our basement (which we plan to rent this year) is part of an extension built in the mid-’80s so it has a lower floor and thus higher ceiling. The part we are insulating is under the original house (a 23′ square box with a triangle roof, just like little kids draw) and is used mainly for storage. The furnace is sort of behind and to the left of the photographer in that picture above.

So once the electrician comes and does what needs doing, we’ll finish this and then put the workbench and some storage for wood and stuff in that corner. Then we can repurpose the corner where that stuff currently is and maybe insulate that wall (though maybe not this summer, we’ll see). The idea is that if we do it one section at a time, we can move all the stuff out of the way. The logistics of doing the whole job at once are just too awful to contemplate.

If you want a good alternative to the usual doom and gloom response to attempted bombings, check out this week’s edition of The Now Show. This is only available to listen to for 1 week so listen before Friday 13th when the next one comes out.

The bit at the end about global warming and some folks responses to such.

One of the things I took from Barbara Kingsolver’s book was the idea that when things are in season locally they are usually cheaper (and get a bit cheaper as the season progresses). So, in addition to saving all those food miles shipping stuff from South American and wherever in the winter, preserving seasonal produce makes good sense. Hence the canning.

Now I really like strawberries. We grow some in our garden and while they are producing we have them a couple of times a day. We don’t produce enough to preserve but there are plenty of local producers around. In fact there is one within the city limits that sells from a stall less than a mile from our house. My problem is that we don’t eat a lot of jam. None, actually. I made jam many years ago, putting it in baby food jars because I knew that once opened it would take ages to get through it and it might go off. And some of those jars sat in the cupboard for years and eventually went moldy. But what else can you do with strawberries?

I give you Exhibit A. We bought a food dehydrator. And I’ve been drying strawberries to mix in with granola in the winter. (Which I eat with yogurt. I’ve now had some success in making that, too.)

Of course, that made me decide that it was time to make my own granola. So I e-mailed a friend on the GLBT knitting list who I knew made granola and asked for her recipe. I don’t know if she reads here but if she does, I apologize, because I’m pretty sure what I do will be unrecognizable to her. But it was very helpful to have some idea of the basic principles. For anyone interested this is what I do:

Heat 6 cups of rolled oats (I used large flake oats) for 10 minutes in the oven at 350F. (I put them in a 9"x13" baking pan.)

Add 1/2 cup brown sugar, about a cup of crushed nuts (I used almonds), about 1/2 cup flax seed, about 1/2 to 3/4 cup sesame seeds, around a cup of wheat germ. Mix it all up.

Pour over 1/2 cup oil (I use sunflower) and 1/3 cup honey. (If you use the same measuring cup, the honey slides out more easily.) Mix well.

Put the whole business back in the oven for another 10 minutes, stirring half-way through. Cool. Put in a container.

At this time of year, I am adding fresh fruit when I eat it. In the winter, I plan to add dried fruit while I’m making it. I also plan to experiment to see if maple syrup can be substituted for the honey. I used less honey the last time I made it because it was the end of the tin (we had greek honey in a tin that was a gift from a student of Mat’s; excellent stuff but we’re picking up some local on our way to pick up Tigger tomorrow). It didn’t matter too much. I would really like to find a source of local oats. To be fair, I haven’t really tried very hard yet.

I plan to dry some raspberries to use in granola, too. So we had a discussion about a realistic amount of dried fruit for the winter. And we figure we don’t need that much. We have more drying as I type (a 4 litre basket will fill 5 shelves of the dehydrator and give approximately what is pictured above). Maybe we’ll do another batch in a couple of days.

So we discussed jam/preserves. I have recently purchased Keeping Food Fresh. It is translations of French recipes with the names of the contributors on each recipe. I really like it, partly because it goes for the minimum you need to do to prevent spoilage and nasty microbes without killing a lot of flavour and nutrition. One chapter actually has a warning at the beginning:

"The USDA and the FDA recommend that all fermented foods should also be canned in a hot water bath to protect against botulism. However, traditional lacto-fermentation methods such as those described here seem to effectively prevent botulism by creating a sufficiently acidic environment. there is good reason to think these recipes are safe without canning. Readers should of course use their best judgment."

So I’m investigating a few. Starting with a whole fruit jam with no added sugar using some local strawberries. This requires cooking "over a very low heat for a very long time".

You can click to make it bigger. We did clean the stove today. It doesn’t always look that pristine (and that corner might be the most pristine).

Despite our track record with jam, we decided to try this version because it might be less sweet. We don’t care if it doesn’t gel because we are more likely to put it on ice-cream than toast (possiblly reheating it with a bit of water to make a syrup). It could also be used to flavour yogurt if anyone wants to eat fruit yogurt. We’ll see. We’ve only done 2.5 litres of berries and I’m not sure how much jam that will make.

Willa has posted some reflections on what she was blogging about this time last year and invited others to do the same. I’ve had a look and it appears that curriculum planning was on my mind. The first of a short series was begun a year ago today. As I recall, I was alone for a couple of weeks. Mat and Tigger were in England. We had just finished our first 6 months of homeschooling and that afforded me some time to reflect and plan a bit for the coming year. And she is away this year, too, though not for as long. This week she is at camp. So again, I have some time to think.

On re-reading that post, it seems that some things haven’t changed much but my attitude and approach to it has changed a lot. I still think she isn’t doing enough math or enough writing but I have been less worried about it this year than I was last. This is probably an advance. As I said then,

I also have had to get used to trusting that she will learn things and
that we don’t have to ‘cover’ certain topics or even a certain amount
of ‘work’ in a particular time period.

I am much more comfortable with this now.

I also realize that I didn’t try many of the things that I thought about. We had a little burst of that living math type material but it didn’t last long, and I find I have been thinking about those resources again recently. I never did listen to those radio programs. We didn’t use the patchwork resources.

And I approached the use of the e-books in the wrong way. I didn’t really let her jump around within the books. I could see that they were carefully constructed to build from one lesson to the next and couldn’t let go of that model of learning. She got frustrated. I now know that she might learn more by jumping around and she certainly stays engaged much longer if she has some control over it.

I also used the Math U See placement test (downloadable from their website) to check where she was with some of the basic math concepts. The test is very short and I told her she only had to do what she could. And then we talked together about which kinds of problems she might like to learn how to do. This led to printing out some relevant pages of the e-books and working through them. As I recall (this was a while ago now), this worked very well.

Later in the year I also discovered some other math resources that she has enjoyed much more. Though not mentioned in that post, she really liked Ed Zaccarro’s Becoming a Problem Solving Genius. I have learned my lesson and I let her jump around in it. She asked for a vacation from math in June which I granted, so we’ll see how we proceed once she gets back from camp.

I noticed that although my post a year ago was all about math, I expressed concern about writing, too. And the next day, I wrote a post about it. We did do the whole first section of Simply Grammar earlier in the year and it seemed quite enjoyable. Maybe the whole book was too ambitious for folks like us and we should just return to it and do the next section at some point this year. (The Emma Serl was put in a cupboard for future use, but I’m pretty sure it forms the basis of the doll’s english lessons.)  I’m not terribly worried about her grammar and I’ve also started trying to incorporate some copywork inspired by Julie Bogart of Brave Writer.

I think Brave Writer was my best find this year. Julie explains the process of learning language and developing writing skills in a way that just clicks with me. Having watched Tigger just start to write (and write voraciously) while we were on holiday in April, I am even more confident that this will develop with only guidance and framing from me. I particularly like Julie’s interpretation of "narration" and have been trying to incorporate more good discussions of things she reads (and that we read together) into our daily interactions. The discussions we’ve had recently have been very interesting and I think that this, more than any other single resource, is going to have a major impact on how we approach quite a few subjects this year.

In fact, we will have an opportunity to test out Julie’s ideas for writing and revising as soon as Tigger returns. The Canadian Association of Girls in Science (CAGIS) provides a science article for New Moon magazine. It is the turn of the Ottawa chapter and Tigger has agreed to write it. We sent of some ideas to the CAGIS coordinator before she left. We’ll start writing when she returns. I was a bit concerned that she is younger than previous authors of this column and that she might not react well to the deadline. But the addition of an external editor (or possibly more, since I suspect someone from New Moon will also provide suggestions at some point in the process) is good. And the possibility of being published is a big motivator for her.

I think, though, that what has really made me relax about this whole journey is coming to realize all the great things Tigger is learning that just aren’t in the standard school curriculum.

She can sew. She has made clothes for herself, for a little friend, and for her dolls (and a friend’s doll). She uses purchased patterns, but she has also made her own doll clothes patterns.

She can cook. Tigger can make a couple of different kinds of cookies on her own. She can make bread (though that is mostly my thing now). She makes a very good cheese sauce. She has prepared dinner (with a little help since she isn’t quite strong enough to lift a pan of water). More importantly, she is confident that she can follow a recipe.

She has amazing historical knowledge for a kid her age (almost 10). A lot of this comes from reading historical fiction, but I am constantly amazed at what she knows about how people did things in the past. This is incorporated in her imaginative play with friends and also comes up in conversation. With the work we have started to do on historical non-fiction, this can only get stronger. And who knows what the impact of this week at Upper Canada Village will have.

She loves books. And she is genuinely interested in literature and poetry. Combined with her interest in drama, I think this is another area that can only grow.

She is a mean fiddler. Not having grown up in a family with any interest in folk music, I have trouble judging just how good she is. But I’m pretty sure that she is good. And she loves it. She even took her fiddle to camp this week. And last week when we spent the day at a friend’s cottage (for a party that was all adults except for her, albeit incredibly child friendly adults), she took her fiddle down to the dock and played while folks swam in the lake. This isn’t the kind of music that gets valued in traditional curricula. And we all know that music (and the arts generally) is getting pushed out of the curriculum anyway in a misplaced emphasis on reading and arithmetic. But I’m sure that this is a skill (and passion) that will serve her throughout her life, bringing her together with other people and opening doors to many interesting relationships.

She has also taught herself how to play piano. I hesitated about whether I should bold the piano part or the taught herself part. Because knowing that she can teach herself something like that is sure to take her a long way. Though playing piano is also a useful skill.

I’m sure there are lots more, but this post is getting very long. Thanks Willa for suggesting this idea. It has been very interesting to think about where I was at this time last year and reflect on how far we’ve come.

Warning: This post contains a lot of parenthetical comments. Grammar purists enter at your own risk.

As part of our move towards becoming more self-sufficient, caring more about where our food comes from and what goes into it, and living more sustainably, I have decided to can. Actually, I did it for the first time last year when I had the green tomato glut. And it wasn’t too bad, so this year I plan to do more. (It looks like I didn’t blog about what became of those green tomatoes. One recipe of chutney and one recipe of green tomato salsa. Both tasty and only one jar of salsa remains. Must make more this year.)

This gooseberry bush (it is centred in the photo and looks a bit mad; there is a blackcurrant on the right that is going to be moved) has produced 2.7 kg of berries. That’s a lot for one bush. Mat picked them yesterday (Some of those mad branches have also started to root, so we are going to try to propagate a couple of bushes so we can have even more. We might be insane.)

I’m not sure what other people do with gooseberries but we make fool. You want a good English cookbook for this. Perhaps Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat (which is good for lots of things, actually, including sensible ways to lose weight if that is your wont). But it involves cooking the gooseberries down to a pulp with a bit of sugar (gooseberries are very tart) and then mixing them up with a bunch of cream. Traditional English food and "low fat" do not belong in the same sentence. (The linked recipe has custard. This is also traditional. Mat recalls that when he was younger his mom made it with Bird’s custard and thinks that was because it was cheaper. Do it whichever way you like.)

So we looked in the book on canning we have (produced by the folks who make the jars) and it has a method for canning berries which we figured would be fine given we wanted to add a bit of sugar and cook them to death anyway. Basically you mix the washed berries with sugar (1/2 cup per litre of berries; the mixed measuring systems were noted) and let them sit for a couple of hours. They you heat them through, pack them in sterilized jars, and heat process for 15 minutes.

There they are. We could have filled the jars more. We had calculated that we only needed 6 jars and have some left over that we are going to eat tonight but we should really have jammed those hot berries into those hot jars because the contents did settle when being processed. Actually, 2.7 kg will make more than 7 x 500ml jars because we had already set aside enough berries in the fridge to make some fool for us. I guess we are eating a lot of fool in the next couple of days.

For those that are interested, you can see my empty beer bottles in the background where they wait to go back to the beer store. Those are only the partially filled boxes. My brother-out-law has just been here for a week and there were a couple of very hot days so you will have to imagine how many empties are on the floor by the back door. My beer cupboard is looking a bit bare (though not totally empty; that would be bad planning).

The odd looking metal thing is actually an upside down food grinder that Mat found in the thrift store the other day. (I sent him in to look for canning jars.) He plans to grind meat. Possibly other things.

Since my last post, Liz has created a separate blog for One Local Summer. Go subscribe to the feed (or bookmark, or whatever you do) and be inspired with cool recipes, etc. using local food from different regions.