Lacunae in The Philosophy

When Sudbury Valley first started people got away with all kinds of discrimination, including but not limited to, the disabled.

I think there is a big gaping hole in the Sudbury philosophy when it comes to special needs kids. I know a couple of people with kids with special needs who would love to send their kids to the school but feel like they would get lost there. I've also had discussions about the possibility of children with disabilities enrolling and having an aide and was kind of shot down and told that it wouldn't work. My issue is that this is not 1968 where you can tell people I'm sorry but this school won't work for you because your child can't get up the stairs. Nowadays the schools need to make reasonable accomodations for the child. I think with proper training an aide could be present if they made it possible for the child to attend. A sticky wicket would be if the child had therapies also. what happens if the kid refuses treatment? Now that I think about it that's their right as a patient no matter where they are.

There would be questions about whether or not the aide could vote in school meeting or write people up or what have you but in my mind it is not an accomodation that would compromise the mission of the school. And it's true that a developmentally disabled child might not particpate fully in things like JC or school meeting but who knows. I think another aspect of democratic society, any society, is that you learn to make provisions for or help in the care of or be a voice for the voiceless. I think to be as inclusive as possible .

Another weird issue that I have, and is that not with Sudbury schools in general but in our school in particular is that people are not very friendly. From the staff down. They aren't mean, but it's hard if you are a new parent in the school. A common complaint of parents is that they walk in and nobody acknowledges their presence. Same with the students. I have a problem with behavior that I think of as indifferent, if not downright rude to be modelled for my kids. Also, if someone they don't know comes into the building the first person who encounters them needs to find out who they are and what they are doing there. I remember saying hi to a mom last year and she said "You know, my son has been here two weeks and you're the first person who has spoken to me." What's up with that?

I always say hello to staff when I encounter them and I don't wait for them to acknowledge me but I haven't been doing that with the students. When you first start at the school they tell you not to interfere or engage or interrupt the students unless they invite you to but I don't think saying hello is so very intrusive. I'm also scared of teenagers so I kind of avoided some of the older students if I was coming into the school. I'm changing because I don't think that I should act in an artificial manner and I think the kids need to learn some common courtesy. When someone comes into your space, your home, your school, your business, the polite thing to do is to greet them.

Hi again

Well I made it back from Texas in one piece. We had a good time. Here's some odds and ends stuff before I get back to "regular" posts.

BSG spoiler- ellen as the fifth? gaeta leading a mutiny? what the frak?!

I finally finished Democracy in America. wow. I'm thinking I want to read parts of it again. I also read The World Without Us. It's made me amp up my green living. It's not preachy but you can't read the whole book and not come away with a sense that we need to change the way we do things. It also appeals to the curious geek in me.

Speaking of the world withou me, my house without me had a leak from the washing machine and I now have a giant hole in my basement ceiling and a smallish hole in my kitchen ceiling. I'm getting a new carpet for the hall and stairs though.

Some funny "you just don't get sudbury, do ya?" moments with my in laws:
Ray's step mom would say after different activities "You can go back and talk about it at school. That was educational." After 4 or 5 times of this the kids told her "Nobody cares. Our school is fun!" She looked at me and I said "It's true. That's not what's most important about the school."
My father in law would give them these little pop quizzes. One time he asked Des how many states there were and Des said something like "You don't know? You're supposed to be a grown up!"

I never noticed how much strangers like to test children until my kids couldn't pass their tests anymore. They don't know how many states there are. They can't read yet. They don't know how to multiply. In fact they can barely add. Sometimes I worry about this. Mostly I don't.

Hmm, what else is new? I guess nothing else. The Alamo is much prettier than I expected. Texans are very tiresome with their love of ugly ass Texas though. I don't even think New Yorkers go on and on about New York the way Texans do. We really don't need to. :)

I'm off to Texas!

Yes, we are off to San Antonio to visit Ray's Dad and Step Mother. I expect at least one or two lively debates between me and my brother in law when I try to explain the merits of a Sudbury style education. They switched their oldest, he's two months younger than Des and Amelia, to a catholic school this year because "he needed more control and discipline". Yep, I'm sure that's what he needed.

I also expect at least one or two shouting matches between me and my father in law because he can be something of a blockhead. Also, we are both just loud talkers so our spirited conversations are sometimes mistaken for arguments. But we'll make up so we can gang up on Ray for being a republican.

I hope I don't come home with any bald spots after a 7 hour trip with one plane change, four kids and no hubby. (Ray is flying home a week earlier.)

R.I.F.

These are some of the topics that come up again with Sudbury parents, including yours truly:
Screens/video games/computers
will they get into college
reading

Des and Amelia are sort of starting to read. Amelia makes a project out of it about once a week. She sits down with Frog and Toad and slogs through it. Des spells out signs to me and asks what they say. He also reads signs and menus when we're out, or he tries to sound them out.

English a tricky language. It's a cluster fuck of borrowed words and latin grammar superimposed(arbitrarily) on a germanic language. It's also extremely difficult to learn to read english because it is not purely phonetic in its spelling like most languages. That being said it's mutability is ultimately a strength because it is so expressive and allows for a great deal of nuance in communication.

Back to reading, when it comes to learning or teaching someone to read I am strictly on the side of phonics. The greeks came up with such an elegant solution to recording speech by transcribing sounds instead of whole words or ideas. The flexibility is amazing. One of the first things linguists do when they discover a new language is assign it an alphabet. Not a set of pictograms but phonemes. Why? Because all languages have a finite number of sounds that they form but a much larger set of words, ideas, etc. that are conveyed by these sounds in different combinations.

So that's my biased view. I had to rethink reading when the kids were first interested in it because I have read thousands of books. I don't read the same way they do. I am a fluent reader in English. I don't have to sound out the word "can" every time I see it because I have probably seen it a hundred thousand times. I recognize it and I only have to focus on its context. So the first part of reading is decoding, matching the letters with the sounds and the second part is context, understanding the place and definition of a word in relation to other words. It takes some serious thinking at the beginning. Many of us, without realizing it, read on autopilot. The way you drive to the grocery store and have no recollection of how you got there because you've gone so many times you don't really have to think about. You can focus on yelling at your kids to cut it out already.

So here's an experiment inspired by a set of christmas ornaments I have.
Read this word:
POSTOB
What does it mean? How do you pronounce it? POST-ob? Wrong! Po-STOB? Guess again.
Here's a hint: It's the name of a city.
Still can't get it? Well, I'm being a jerk here, I'm using the Cyrillic alphabet.
In the Cyrillic alphabet P makes the sound of the latin R and B makes the sound of the latin V.
Now try-
Yay! You did it!
A small city on the Don river in southern Russia. The word is at the bottom.

The ornaments are painted to look like Matrushka's with the name of a different russian city inscribed at the bottom of each. My dad brought them back for me from Russia. I studied Russian for about two years. I actually went there about ten years ago. Can't speak a word of it but I sort of remembered the alphabet so I was able to sound out, slowly, the names of the cities( Yaroslava was by far the toughest). You had to figure it out with no background info. What assumptions did you make? That it was an English word or an american city? Why did you do that? Because this is a blog written in English by an American. When I was trying to read it I had a different set of facts but it still took me some time because the material is so unfamiliar. New readers are reading with much more of a blank slate than us. That's one of the reasons why they struggle.

Hmm, what's my point here. I guess my point is that reading is difficult for anybody if it is unfamiliar material. We all go through the same process but our experience let's us move faster.
So I don't worry about my kids learning to read or being fluent readers eventually. I respect their process. People worry so much about the decoding part of it when they could help their kids ultimately more by just talking to them more and introducing them to as many unfamiliar words and ideas as possible. This way when they come across something in their own reading they won't be flying blind.

Rostov.

Happy New Year!

I know it's just another day but doesn't the idea of starting over seem so promising? Clean slate and all that. I wish I lived in a warmer climate though. I think the New Year would have more oomf in a warmer climate.

The kids were exhausted and strung out today. Too many late nights and parties. Back to school on monday. I hate the morning rush but I love the bus!