“When Reason Leaves the Building”

6 02 2007

From earlier Snook blogging:

re: “Sacred Value Conflict Resolution – When Reason Leaves the Building”

Sacred education values are not limited to Christians or the extreme right. Teacher unions have all sorts of hallowed ground to protect but so do some “secular” homeschool leaders and so-called “support.” And I learned the hard way that some supposedly liberal and libertarian homeschoolers have staked out some of that ground too. . .

You mean to be REALLY independent in your home-education affiliations? Then choose your friends and frame your own principles even more carefully than you choose your enemies and targets. . .I wish someone had given me that advice before I had to learn it the hard way, but OTOH maybe that’s the only way to learn anything that matters, which brings me full-circle to why I see unschooling our own thinking as indivisible from successfully unschooling with children . . .

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6 responses

6 02 2007
freerangelife (21:45:10) :

Read this yet?

Julia Steiny: However tempting, you can’t just skip middle school (projo.com):
http://tinyurl.com/2hoj28

“[Pubescents (yes, she uses it as a noun)] need to be free to venture into that dangerous world of peer interactions, so they learn to negotiate for themselves. But that means they’ll need trusted adults to talk to about that world, perhaps older students, but not the dorky parents whose IQs have dropped like a stone and who never registered on the cool meter in the first place….

“In short, what they really need is a terrific school.”

7 02 2007
misedjj (00:33:24) :

That link wouldn’t work for me so I went to projo.com, registered and finally got to this — it may not work without registering though . . .

Julia Steiny has made me gnash my teeth and rend my garments for years (ask Nance and the other PDE regulars) and then gradually just gave up on making her make sense. Even though she almost seems to say the right things, the meaning is completely twisted! I can agree with one part verbatim from this column, buit I don’t think she’d agree with why I agree with it. :)

” . . .it does mean you’d better be very careful about what you try to teach them and how. There’s an enormous amount already on their minds. They’re working frantically to sort out the confusions and feelings. We could help them. . . ”

Yes, Julia, we’ll call when we need you.

7 02 2007
Deanne (11:27:04) :

OMG! (And being a Catholic, I don’t throw that around lightly.) That quote by Julia Steiny has to be the biggest pile of garbage I’ve seen in a long time. Almost every phrase of each sentence is a piece of trash that needs to be ripped up or burned before anyone else accidentally reads it and agrees with it.

“…the dangerous world of peer interactions…” How about the fact that they’ve been with their peers all along, if they’ve been in school. How about addressing and removing the “dangers” instead of just “dealing” with them? How recognizing that as fellow human beings, these “students” could very well be peers with with ANY other age humans, not just “middle-school kids”?

“…they’ll need trusted adults to talk to…” Puuuhleeeaze!!!! Haven’t there been enough news stories about teachers in the news for us all to know they don’t deserve our, or our children’s, unquestioning trust. And how many teens do you know seek out their teachers as confindants? If they have been in school all along, most kids are going to trust their “dangerous” peers more than the teachers who “lord it over” all of them.

“…but not the dorky parents whose IQs have dropped like a stone and who never registered on the cool meter in the first place.” Well, isn’t this a slap in the face?! Parents are stupid and uncool, at least that’s how teens must see us all, and teachers are somehow immune to this view? Here’s a clue for you Ms. Steiny, anyone who is not a teen, but thinks they are “cool” enough for teens is chasing the wrong bus.

You can’t skip middle school, huh? What rock does this woman live under?

I can see how this woman would make you gnash your teeth, and I can’t believe you actually were able to read more of her drivel. Thanks for getting my heart rate up this morning anyway! LOL

7 02 2007
NanceConfer (11:40:12) :

Steiny is amazing, isn’t she? She gets so close sometimes and then she seems to slip back under that rock you noticed, Deanne.

One reason, though, that I continue to check her out is that I feel she is actually trying to be on the kids’ and families’ side. Imagine what the rest of the administrators et al think about us and our kids!

Nance

7 02 2007
misedjj (12:42:12) :

I know, that’s exactly it. She can’t think in new ways because the old ways are IN the way. They have become the structure not just of schooling but of her own thinking.
This is straight from the edge.org piece:

“. . .policy is a product of the way government is structured. If policy making bodies don’t have people who are as familiar with new ways of thinking as with old, nothing new can be done.

And that’s why I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to directly address policymakers — not to tell policymakers what they should do (they, and not researchers like me, are elected by the people or appointed by elected officials to make policy), but to inform about what is newly possible and plausible within the moral limits I have chosen.

Increasingly across the world, political conflict is a moral clash between different sets of sacred values, which communities, cultures or civilizations treat as possessing transcendental significance that precludes comparisons or tradeoffs with material values of realpolitik or the marketplace.

Although the field of judgment and decision-making has made enormous progress, especially through the Nobel Prize winning work of Danny Kahneman (and the late Amos Tversky), much more is known about economic decision making than about morally-motivated behavior.

There is relatively little knowledge, study or theoretical discussion of sacred values, which differ from material or instrumental values by incorporating moral (including religious) beliefs that may drive action independently of its prospect of success.”

11 02 2007
HUA! Julia Steiny Heard Homeschoolers Huff « Cocking A Snook! (14:13:34) :

[...] February 11th, 2007 This is for Deanne and Nance, for “freerangelife” and all of us driven crazy by former school board member Julia Steiny’s school-centric view of kids and families over the years, unfortunately right up to and including her column last week as discussed here at Snook. [...]

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