I'd give Mr. McGuinty a D on his report.

Dalton McGuinty, Ontario's Premier, is obviously dedicated to improving education and enriching the lives of young people. Periodically, the government sends out an email News Communique on these issues, usually trumpeting some program or policy. Very rosy picture, very rosy.

However, I am interested in what these reports don't cover. Often what one doesn't do is more indicative of one's approach than what one does do. So, the news has been riddled with articles on a very basic issue: the amount of homework being sent home with children on a regular basis. For some kids (and at surprisingly early grades), there are, commonly, two or more hours of homework every night.

This fact is a little chilling, considering kids are sitting all day at their desks at school and, then, are expected to sit all night at their kitchen tables. But let's consider this: children are likely to receive approximately two and a half hours instruction a day at school. The rest of the time is lining up or waiting or settling down or lunch or what have you. Two and a half hours.

All right, if children are doing, regularly, over two hours of homework with their parents every night, what the heck are they doing at school? Obviously, the parents are now providing a goodly proportion of the children's insruction.

Now, as a homeschooler, I think this is great. No teacher, not even the best, can out-teach a motivated parent with his or her own child. So maybe these kids are getting the best of both worlds?

Not when you tie in the statistics on obesity. Approximately 25% of children in Ontario between age 5 and 17 are obese. Obese. I am not talking overweight, here, or pudgy just ready to throw on a growth spurt. I am talking obese.

Why? Well, part of the problem might be that the children are forced to sit at desks all day and then forced to sit at kitchen tables all night. Dunno. Might have something to do with it.

I know they say it's diet and computer games. But when I was a kid, there was soda pop and I would drink it any chance I got. And when I was a kid, there was television and I watched a lot when I got home from school. And when I was a kid, there was penny candy, Joe Louis, and Bugles. And I ate them all. In lieu of lunch if I could get away with it. Kids will be kids.

But, when I was a kid, there were playgrounds and we were expected to play. There was snow and we were expected to get into raucous snowball fights that left us breathless. And when I was a kid, there was no homework to speak of at all. After I watched TV when I came home, I went outside and played with my friends until the streetlights came on or until we were called in for dinner. I was not sitting at the kitchen table.

I wish Mr. McGuinty would discuss issues that might be contributing to the overall problems children face in society. This is, in part, his job, I think. Because he does not, I would have to give him a D. I would return it to give him another try, but I am sure he's far too busy for that.

Twice in as many days.

The stories are hard to miss. In one, a messed-up, stressed-out teacher has his students beat up a tardy classmate. In another, a bunch of eight year-olds hatch and almost execute a plot to kill their teacher. Sounds like the schools are going to the dogs. Sounds like our society is no longer supporting and guiding its youth; sounds like we are going to hell in a hand basket and that there is little hope for the next generation.

Well, it is likely that you will hear me espouse these kinds of opinions from time to time. However, today, I am thinking that the schools aren't doing that bad at all. Considering.

Considering all the funding restraints, and the taints of popular culture and not so popular sub-culture riding so strongly on the backs of all this media; considering the limitations of the public school model, itself; and considering the strain of all the people (parents, teachers, and others) involved, schools don't really do that badly. Even if we had a hundred stories for a hundred days, if one considers just how many kids are in school right now in North America, the percentage of scary stories is small. Very small.

I hope that I see no other story tomorrow. Truly I do. However, if I do, I won't be that surprised.

My Feet Hurt.

We gave up the car, and my feet hurt.

In fact, my left foot more closely resembles ground chuck than an appendage of mine. However, I get to bask in the warm glow of feeling a tad superior to the rest of you, yes? Uh. Well, no.

I should do, right? We gave up the car to put our actions where our mouths were for a change. We kept telling our daughter that, if you didn’t need a car, why should you have one? We kept pointing out the inescapable folly of living in the suburbs. We suggested that the car might single-handedly be responsible for all of western societies current ills. Not that we ever exaggerate.

So one day, Brenda said to me: “Mummy, why do we need a car? We don’t need a car, do we?” Well, she was right. We didn’t. And she and I spent about six or eight months acclimating ourselves to the TTC, rarely taking out the car, walking everywhere. The car sat, unloved in front of our house. I didn’t even wash the thing. It was run occasionally by John – maybe twice a week. (For those of you who don’t know, we work from home.) For a total of eight to ten times a month. John did a little nifty math and determined that the car was costing us $100 every time we started the darn thing. Sheesh. Even he was happy to give it up.

So, if we are being really honest, we gave it up because it was stupid to run it. We gave it up because it was a lot cheaper to do so and we might be able to afford to go to Australia more if we don’t have a car. Or buy that boat we’re thinking about.

We are simply telling everyone it’s about the environment. Because my feet hurt. And I need to feel superior.

Get Fagin, not Oliver.

In a Globe and Mail poll today, an overwhelming majority of decent, fair Canadians voted that teenagers should be tried as adults where gun offenses are concerned.

Let’s put aside all the research that suggest that youths are not truly capable of full, ethical choices until around twenty-one and let’s consider them, instead, as merely naïve adults. Almost be definition, a teenager is a naïve adult. He or she only developed higher reasoning around twelve or thirteen. Up until that time, he or she did not truly understand cause and effect and, regularly, would kick the stair for tripping him or her. But with higher reasoning comes the ability to understand the world around you. Now, whether we accept the ethical debate or not, one assumes it would take a person a few years to learn HOW to use higher reasoning. That’s why we call them teenagers.

A teenager’s lack of experience often leads him or her to unwise choices. Choices that endanger not only themselves but others. We lose them, don’t we? To gangs, to violence, to prostitution, to cults of many kinds. To drug addiction. To drunk driving. To death at precious ages.

But still, we all cry, look at who is committing these senseless gun crimes. He or she is usually young, sometimes alarmingly so.

But ask me who should be treated like an adult? The teenager or the adult who supplied the teenager the gun? (Or the drugs? Or the purple kool-aid?)

Canadians, by and large, don’t believe in guns. We don’t believe that we should have them in our homes or on the streets. A proliferation of guns creates a problem – dead people. We just don’t think this is smart. However, there is a proliferation of guns on our streets and the resulting senseless shootings that go with them: the four-year-old dead in Ottawa, the teenage girl dead in Toronto. You want to blame the faces you see on the television: the young, doe-eyed youths.

But, make no mistake, folks. Guns are supplied for money and, like any illicit drug or illicit idea, guns are peddled for profit by people much more sophisticated than your average sixteen year old. This is done by adults. There is at least one Fagin for every hundred Artful Dodgers, every otherwise innocent Olivers.

Try the children. Certainly. Remove them from society to save society and to teach them a lesson. Absolutely. Don't let them out until they understand what they have done and feel remose for their actions.

But if you are going to be Draconian, do so with the people who supply firearms to teenagers. These people pray not only on our naive youth, but through them, on us. Lock the peddlers in jail and throw away the key. Start doing that now.

My Waistline, Your Schoolyard (no jokes, please

Contemplating one’s waistline seems to come with the growing territory, so to speak, when one is over forty. And, as with just about everything else, society has something to say about one’s waistline. One’s waistline, says the world at large, should be smaller. In the paper, on the television, in print ads everywhere are plastered those slim chickies who never gain an ounce regardless of how old they get or how many babies they’ve had. Blah, blah.

So, suitably – society would say – motivated, off I go to invest in some dieting plan or other, some book, some fitness club membership, some ridiculously expensive food plan. Funny how it all seems to come down to consumerism. And I become inspired by the latest dieting crazes, reading websites, books, newspapers, reports.

My latest kick was this low carb diet plan that, of course, I couldn’t stick to. Luckily for me, I have absolutely no willpower.

Because the research is in. As opposed to being a counter-intuitive, perfectly healthy choice (the Atkins mantra), the diet plan turns out to be just plain bad for you, turning mildly pudgy, but quite healthy, folks into candidates for the big HA. That’s Heart Attack for those of you not approaching fifty. One poor soul remarked that he’d traded in his good health for a 33-inch waistline.

Interestingly enough, another study has suggested the following about a woman’s physique, a fact that is cross-cultural: A woman who is happy and well cared for will, as she ages, gain some weight. So, no crime, just natural. Hmmmmm….

What’s at fault here, I think, is the assumption that thinner is better. It is society-wide and, despite a great deal of information that suggests the contrary, pervasive in the psyche of most people, regardless of age.

And yet, here we are, my daughter and I, nibbling on homemade chocolate chip cookies, a ‘guilty’ pleasure that makes us happy and, in moderation, can’t hurt. I am comforted by the idea that I’m supposed to be a bit wide and that my daughter thinks I am a comfy pillow.

As often happens, I look at one area of my life and draw parallels to other life choices I am making. One big life choice is home-schooling and, regarding education, I would like to discuss the latest craze: Group-schooling (institutionalized education models). In the history of man, society-wide group-schooling, as practiced currently by most developed countries, is a very recent blip in a great field of learning. Humans have employed various methods over the ages including home-schooling, private tutoring, apprenticeship choices, and, on a small scale, some group schooling – only in religious and military sections of society, areas in which participants needed to conform completely in order to survive, let alone thrive.

Right now, society says that all children need to be educated at a group-school (conform completely to survive?). Most people agree this is the best thing for a child. And to all outward appearances (the waistline), things look pretty good. Kids are busy for the bulk of the weekday in an ordered and regulated environment. They are supposedly getting the basic skills they need to thrive. They’re not off exploring dangerous things or people that might hurt or kill them. Both mum and dad can go to work and ravage corporate boardrooms for the cash their families need and deserve. Everybody’s happy.

Now, most folks who know me will tell you that I, personally, am very competitive. I wouldn’t mind ravaging a boardroom or two, myself. But, lucky for us, I’m not a morning person. I don’t like to be anywhere for nine a.m.

Because the research is in. A committed parent will always out-teach a teacher. Even against a parent without any training or background in education, a teacher doesn’t stand a chance. Children who are home-schooled (with some exceptions) are extremely well socialized individuals with an unabashed love for learning. Universities are actively seeking them out.

And the group-schools are failing. They are having trouble producing kids who are merely fluent in even the most basic skills. Worse yet, kids in group-schools are often victims – of bullying, drug dealing, gang violence. Not to mention victims of the current love affair with flagrant mediocrity. So, unfortunately, the waistline isn’t really that trim.

What is a fault here? The assumption that group-schooling is better for the child. It is society-wide and, despite a great deal of information that suggests the contrary, pervasive in the psyche of most parents, regardless of background.

Today, I sit at my kitchen table and do more bookwork with my daughter, at her request, on a Saturday morning. She is clever and I am tickled with her progress. We will have a great day together full of questions and answers, curiosity and discovery, maybe a bit of a tantrum (who knows? she’s five years old), and quite a few laughs. No drugs, no bullies, no boredom.

So, instead of contemplating my waistline, I would rather contemplate another chocolate chip cookie for my daughter and me. What could it hurt?

On the Edge -- Homeschooling in a Corporatized World

Some folks say that homeschooling is like jumping off a cliff without a parachute, but I don’t agree. Homeschooling is more like skirting the edge of a cliff and trying not to fall off. The cliff is society; the abyss is, well, no society. No community, no support.

I have a friend who is going through a very rough time. I won’t share names, but I will share the story. She has split with her husband and the husband is sick of paying support and is claiming she is a bad parent because she is homeschooling. She has been sent to countless examinations by psychiatrists and educational experts. The child is a genius, they say; the mother unstable. Clearly, she is not capable of handling the daunting task of raising such a bright boy.

Oh, and he is bright. He is a bright, beautiful boy with great, big eyes and a strong, almost defiant stare; he has a good sense of fun; he’s very inquisitive. Sometimes he’s a pain in the butt. He’s a kid.

I’ve heard their whole story as it has unfolded over the last few months. I have little experience, but I’ve tried to help. I’ve tried to get folks involved. I’ve referred the mother to various organizations. Nothing has worked. The husband has a lot of money. His lawyers do too. Their psychological and educational experts likewise. But I am only getting her side. It’s weird that nothing seems to be working. Perhaps she is unstable? Who knows?

Because, that’s what the experts are saying. The stress of the break up, the stress of the case, the stress of the enquiry, the intrusion of the examinations aside, the woman is unstable, don’t-cha-know. She can’t handle such a bright boy. We’ve analysed her methods and they are unsuitable for such a gifted child. The child should definitely be placed in the father’s care. Oh. And sent to an appropriate school right away. She is unfit to raise this child.

According to my friend, very soon, it is likely, she will lose custody of her boy.

We don’t jump off a cliff when we decide to homeschool. We fall off the cliff when we are pushed. And we are only pushed because someone believes we will fall.

But if we can imagine ourselves, all of us, on the edge of that same cliff, holding hands in a great long line – or holding a common rope, say – as a vouchsafe against catastrophe, it becomes plain that we need, as a group, to become more active, more vocal, more eloquent, more emphatic, more powerful. We need to come together.

We are so independent as a people, so fractious, so capable. From what I can see, this independent streak is the only thing that binds us. And I have never been more proud to number myself amongst a group in my life. We can, all of us, do this thing – educating our children – or do anything on our own. We are nobody’s fool. And our belief in ourselves and in our own ability is what drives us. We instill that belief in our children. I hope (I even pray to a god I don’t believe in) that my child will, in turn, believe in herself, make her own choices, learn how to learn, stay informed.

But this rampant capability is deceiving, because we believe ourselves strong. I wonder, however, if we are merely lucky. In actual fact, all of us – all of us – are weak on our own. We are weak because we are small beside the great institutions and groups that run our current society, especially when they decide to push. All of us could be this woman I know. All of us could easily suffer at the hands of the ignorant, the suspicious, or the frugal, as in the case of this woman’s husband. All of us are prone, alone, a target. I talk to this woman and I am appalled. I read horror stories about the Children's Aid Society dealing with homeschoolers and I am frightened.

Who will save my family if we are pushed off the cliff?

Good morning -- Waking up to Blogging.

Motivated by all the press coverage of bloggers ripping to shreds a publication ban in Canada, and motivated by my ignorance on the subject in question and the blogging world in general, I started reading. And I was pleasantly surprised.

There are opinions being expressed. Some worth reading and, perhaps, others not so much. But one thing became obvious as I clicked from site to site and post to post, around and around and back once more: The world has changed. Again. And overnight. Good morning.

I am reminded of the music industry. The impact of music sharing has, by necessity, required that music marketers change the way they do business. The jury is still out but these changes may result in more people having more access (i.e. cheaper access) to more music than ever before. It's a good thing. Or maybe not; only time will tell. But the truth of the matter is this change was brought about by average people actively exercising their right to be civilly disobedient.

We don't much like to be disobedient in Canada. It leaves a bad taste. We don't sleep nights and one thing we all really need is a good night's sleep. However...

The jury is still in in the Gomery enquiry and folks are feeling that the ban laid down was a political trick to keep the Canadian public ignorant and content with their government. Whatever the motivation, the key point here is that any publication ban will no longer work as long as the Internet is left on its own. Period. No wonder the Chinese are so scared of it.

And even the reason for being civilly disobedient is a null issue. Some folks believe that there are political motivations for ignoring the ban and publishing information on the Gomery Enquiry and, I admit, some of the sites that are posting this information are a little on the conservative side. Okay, some are downright scary. But political affiliations aside, it would only take one person, as it did in this case, to stand up and want to be heard. Any affiliation will do in a pinch.

Though in some cases, I disagree vehemently with the sentiments being expressed, I am stunned by the opportunity offered by the Internet in general and blogging in particular to get your ideas heard. There are, at least for now, no filters. It's a good thing as long as it's allowed to continue. Canadian or not, if we have to be civilly disobedient to be heard, so be it.

I have no idea where this server is or who might read this post -- if anyone does! -- but I will include the following link so that you might start on the journey I did:

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/

One other thing I am noticing about blogging. It makes you lose sleep.

But I think I will wake up feeling good tomorrow -- or should I say this -- morning.