wathe
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Posts posted by wathe
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NYT article on influence of western vaccine "pauses" on vaccine hesitancy in the rest of the world. Makes me want to cry.
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An interesting article on CBC about risks of the AZ vaccine vs risks of covid, and how we communicate relative risks.
It links to this Cambridge paper about communicating AZ vaccine risk.
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Maybe I should call myself an "independent private homeschooler".
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On 4/12/2021 at 9:31 PM, caffeineandbooks said:
I definitely agree with you and am concerned about this - though to be fair, it has always been my experience that non-homeschoolers have weird mental models of what we do 🙂 The difference the covid "crisis education" experience might make is that the general population will now think they have "tried" homeschooling and can express those opinions from a place of authority and experience, not conjecture.
I think this is true.
Most of my acquaintances have no idea what I do. They all seem to think that I am required to follow the provincial public school curriculum, and that I'm provided by the province with the books/on-line resources to do so, and that we're somehow evaluated and kept in line by the province. All are surprised to hear that I am completely independent, provided with nothing, not beholden to the provincial public school curriculum, not evaluated by the province, and free to teach anything I like. I am required, as per the provincial education act, to provide a "satisfactory education", and there isn't actually a clear definition of what that means, so I get to decide. They really have no idea.
Many of my acquaintances who done public school on-line when schools were shut down, and know that I've homeschooled all along, want to commiserate with me about how hard it is to get kids to pay attention on zoom, how stupid the online classes are etc. They call it homeschooling, and they really believe that what they've been doing is homeschooling. I gently educate, one at a time, that what they've been doing is nothing like what I do. There is no Zoom in my school, not much of online anything actually, we learn what choose and we choose how to learn it. There is no stupid work or stupid classes, because we don't choose to do stupid stuff. And I have great empathy for them; online schooling with disengaged kids while trying to work full-time sounds absolutely miserable.
I've started to call myself an "independent homeschooler" when the topic of schooling comes up. Otherwise people assume that homeschooling means public school online at home.
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We've planned a few summer family camping trips in nearby provincial parks. I hope they will be open by then - they've all closed for camping now due to the third wave that's hitting us hard.
We'll probably meet with friends for outdoor days at the beach or hikes. Assuming our third wave settles down. Our stay-at-home order expires in early May, but who know if it will be extended. Cases are still rising sharply, so I'm actually not hopeful.
The kids' usual summer camp is cancelled again this year. Which is just as well. It's very unlikely that my kids will be eligible to be vaxxed in time, so I wouldn't have sent them anyway.
No indoor anything.
We're lucky to be walking distance to our nearby lake for swimming, so that's nice even if we're still shut down.
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We have municipal composting here, with curbside pick-up on garbage day. I think it's province-wide.
So I have 2 compost pails on my counter: one for my own garden compost, which takes veggie scraps, eggshells, teabags and coffee grounds, and a second pail for municipal compost, which takes cooked food, meat scraps, bacon grease, and even soiled paper food packaging (like paper coffee cups). It's great.
1 hour ago, MEmama said:I wouldn’t try composting meat at home, personally. But I guess one would on farms?
1 hour ago, Amethyst said:A service! I love it! I’ve never heard of such a thing. See, this is why I love this forum - I always learn so much!
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31 minutes ago, Emily ZL said:
It's definitely complicated, and I don't have experience with each place. But I can ask: is there regular rioting in those places when one side doesn't win an election? Are there groups in these places that call for the police to be defunded and believe the system is in all ways stacked against them? If someone in power talks about "our culture" or "our society" is there a sense among many that that phrase is embarrassing or offensive? So yes, I don't know why this is more of a factor in some places and not in others.
Again, I think this sort of thing is at least partly about tribalism. When *your* people are in power and doing what you think they should, it is easy to feel good about Big Government. I'm not saying anything about you personally (I don't know you, I'm sure you're a lovely person), but I DO think a lot of this is tribalism. When the people in power are "like you" you will like that, and when they aren't, you won't. If suddenly the culture of the people at the top in Canada looked more like, say, Mississippi or Alaska, you would be less likely to trust them, and when they made some decisions you didn't like, you would start changing how you felt about the power of government. It's akin to "I like when people who are like me make decisions for everyone." In the US, there's a lot of distrust because we don't think the people who disagree with us have our best interests in mind. And there's lots of evidence of that now in Canada, with the supreme court and the laws that are basically criminalizing lots of religious beliefs and telling people they don't have freedom of speech for certain subjects, and just in the last few years the "trust in institutions" score in Canada, once very high, is dropping quickly. These actions by the Canadian government are incredibly concerning -- unless you happen to hold the exact same beliefs as the government does. But again, that's no different from saying "Speech controls and criminalizing beliefs are terrible if they were directed at me, because I believe correct things, but great when directed at others I think are wrong."
Sorry, this is getting off track. But it is at the heart of regulations - who decides? And what if they aren't like you at all?
Right - Canada is super complex and very diverse, with lots of interesting politics and hot political issues. The core difference is that, despite enormous cultural diversity, there is general acceptance of relatively more government involvement (higher taxes, socialized medicine, social programs) in citizens' lives than in the USA, which, I think, leads to more social and community stability, which makes functional public schools possible. And I think that's generalizable to all the countries you hear about with functional public school systems (NZ, Singapore in this thread, and others not mentioned), and where USA is a outlier.
Whether or not big government is the best kind of government in general is a entirely different topic altogether.
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2 hours ago, Emily ZL said:
See, this sort of thing really gets me. I'm going to try hard not to get on my soapbox too much, but every time someone talks about "In country x, this is much better than in the US" I get all crazy pants and my head explodes, because it's almost always true that country x has 1) a much smaller population, 2) a more culturally homogeneous population, 3) high levels of interpersonal and institutional trust (in the government ministers, in the police, etc.), 4) fewer immigrants and refugees and language learners, 5) a much simpler history not involving continuing conflicts between its groups (I suspect this also helps with trust, as certain groups did not have 100-400 years of discrimination, forced relocation, etc.), 6) a lower poverty rate and more homogeneous standard of living among its groups.
My metro area of Houston from Sugarland to the Woodlands has over 7 million people, with 1.8 million kids, while as you noted, NZ has 1.1 million kids and less than 5 million people. NZ has very high levels of trust.
The key problem is that statements like "the American educational system" are not really helpful, because it differs so much across states, districts, groups, etc. In this huge and diverse place, which is all locally governed (which is what it is - other countries that are centrally governed may think that's crazy, but that is our system. I don't know who I'd want at headquarters with clipboards deciding things for everyone -- the Californians? The Texans? New Yorkers? Alabama folks?) The system is not always broken -- look at Utah. It has a fairly homogeneous population of perhaps more stable than average families due to the LDS influence, and they get fairly good value with good results for spending something like the lowest amount per pupil among the states (4 or 5k?). If you look at stable families, if you take away the poor kids and kids in the middle of the aftermath of recent divorce, if you take away the new English learners and new immigrants, American kids do pretty well. If you look at the school systems in places with higher earners with higher educations and more stable marriages, almost all the kids do very well, including minority kids. So what's going on is not that the "American school system" is always terrible. It's that there's a TON going on that impedes learning in all these incredibly different places and cultures and families that are struggling. Our middle class and affluent kids are doing well. But you can't regulate that people not be in poor and unstable conditions, and you can't even hike up spending and get magically better results. My husband volunteered for a time in NYC schools (per pupil spending: 28k) in places called things like "Soaring Eagle Academy of Excellence" etc. and the kids had no paper, pencils, or books, and the teacher had totally given up trying to teach, and there was violence everywhere. What does Sweden or Japan or New Zealand do differently that can help THESE kids? How do you import a country's culture in only ONE way, without sharing all the history and all the circumstances that continually create and sustain that culture?
I've heard this and similar arguments before.
I think the key difference is institutional trust and tolerance for government involvement in general and less of a culture of individualism (things like socialized medicine, more government support for marginalized people, higher taxes). Which directly affects poverty and wealth gaps and standard of living, and population health, and both directly and indirectly supports successful education systems.
It's also true that the US is more populous that just about everywhere else, but I'm not sure that's as relevant.
I don't buy the homogeneity vs diversity argument or simple history argument. I think that other countries are more racially and culturally diverse than most American realize - NZ is about 70% white (with, like USA, minorities concentrated in the cities, and whiter in rural areas), for example, and Singapore is also a multiracial society, about 70% ethnic Chinese. Both also have complex colonial histories and complex immigration histories. Their histories are objectively not simpler.
I'm most familiar with Canada, of course. We have enormous numbers of immigrants and refugees, and a complex immigration history. We have an ugly colonial history, that included slavery. We are racially and culturally diverse. Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world. Schools are run by the provinces, (similar to in the US, education is a provincial responsibility, not a national one). We have a functional public school system. Imperfect, of course, but nothing like the mess I hear about south of the border.
But, we also have Big Government (and the high taxes that go along with that) = well-funded schools, well-paid teachers, socialized medicine, loads of other social supports, and, heck, the current government even has a universal basic income on its agenda.
Of course, I know that this would never fly in the USA.
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On 4/11/2021 at 9:29 PM, MomN said:
So, this post has really helped me identify my main goals in history. I want my kids to enjoy it, even if this means I ditch the SOTW AG 3 guide I just bought new 😐 I might try out SOTW 3 in the car to see if it's a hit for us. I think my "history" time at home will consist of reading fun books for now. What these are I don't really know but books other than the Time Traveller series suggested above (these look awesome!). I want to try this for a year. Any more "fun" history books you can suggest?
My kids really liked historical architectural books for kids:
David Macaulay's Castle, Pyramid, City, Cathedral
Stephen Biesty cross-section books. Man of War is wonderful (HMS Victory)
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Canadian Math Kangaroo ran about a month ago. Both kids participated (this is their 3rd year). We don't get results until May, I think. No T-shirts here.
It's a nice, low-key, mathy fun thing to do.
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52 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:
This is not a selfish American cast-offs story.
As a non-american, I can tell you that outsiders see it differently. It literally is a cast-offs story.
35 minutes ago, QueenCat said:I do get a little tired of being told Americans are selfish. We share quite a bit with the world. Via our govt, private organizations, and individuals. We are not selfish.
I can appreciate that. Selfish is an ugly word (and it's your word, not mine)
In this particular instance, though, the vaccine strategy/export ban is literally called "America First". USA's domestic vaccine supply is relatively abundant, and most of the rest of the world's isn't. People will apply value judgements to those facts.
(I do think it's objectively true that self-interest is baked into the American Way; compared to other countries there is more focus on individualism, personal liberty, individual rights, personal responsibility, pull yourself up by your own proverbial bootstraps. I think sometimes that cultural difference can, to outsiders, look or seem like selfishness.)
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OP, sorry to have derailed the thread. Canada is not a developing nation or underprivileged, obviously.
(I've spent some time examining my own sense of entitlement here; why am I so mad about paying for other countries' cast-offs? Developing nations are forced into this position all the time.) Though, I suppose, there is some value in pointing out that even G8 countries are really struggling with vaccine supply.
Edited: Thread, not threat,
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29 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:
I'm assuming that when AZ is approved in the US (If AZ ever applies for approval), it will be used in the US. I don't think it was ever intended to be the garbage vaccine manufactured for other countries that we're "too good" to use ourselves. Our FDA can be notoriously slow to approve drugs and it's not unusual for other countries to have access to certain drugs long before we do because their drug approval systems are just different. Initially, we weren't using J&J either and it wasn't because we were exporting it as garbage; it just wasn't approved yet.
I know where I live, you scramble to sign up for an appointment and you get what you get. I also don't see vaccine hesitancy slowing things down at this point because right now the hold up is still the supply. People who want the vaccine still can't get it. I went through a Mass Vax site last week. The delivery machine is a work of art. It's insanely efficient, but they simply don't have the doses. They're opening several more in my state this month and hopefully every manufacturer will figure out how to scale up their operation.
You CAN sort of pick your vaccine by picking a specific mass vax site, and age restrictions will limit some people to only one choice, but really people are mostly taking any appointment and vaccine they can get. Often you schedule it the night before so the whole process does your head in a bit.
Re the bolded: I agree that that probably wasn't the intention, but it was the effect. The US has a de facto export ban on covid vaccines; "America First" order signed Trump and kept in place by Biden. The AZ that got exported to Canada and the Mexico was not manufactured with the intent for export; it was manufactured with the intent of domestic consumption. An exception was made to the export ban because batches of AZ were literally going to expire in while sitting in US warehouses. Some see it as the US selling to other countries what would literally otherwise have become garbage if it stayed at home, and only because it would have otherwise become garbage if it stayed at home - it feels like profiteering. This vaccine would not have been shared if it were usable at home. Obviously, letting it go to waste would have been worse. But the optics of profiting from what would otherwise be waste, and sharing only because it would otherwise be garbage, aren't great either.
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Just now, Ottakee said:
I have a similar one that I need to learn to use.....peeing standing up is hard.
Mind over matter, for sure. Willing oneself to go while standing and clothed feels a little weird (OK, a lot weird).
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3 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
I think they ought to work well -- it's a very similar format and timing, and the kinds of problems are similar.
Yeah, I wrote them in high school as well, so I'm a bit embarrassed I forgot about them! I was never as good at these as I was at slower contests, though.
I seem to remember that Waterloo tracked results and counted them as part of your application portfolio if you applied to attend university there. I think there may have been scholarships attached to them too?
ETA this was back in the late 80's and very early 90's. I'm sure everything has changed since then.
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4 minutes ago, wathe said:
I remember writing these when I was in high school. They were fun!
I see that homeschools can participate. I think that's newish?
Looks like registration for homeschools is pretty easy. I'm going to sign us up. I'll let you all know how it goes.
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37 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
Ah-ha. The Canadian ones should do very well!
I remember writing these when I was in high school. They were fun!
I see that homeschools can participate. I think that's newish?
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20 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:
Did you get the flexi? Is it working without leakages?
Extreme (the rigid one). No leaks (once I got the knack, it did take a few tries). The rigid plastic makes it easy to worm it into place with minimal need to move clothing. I think the flexi would be harder to use.
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A stand-up-to-pee device. We spend a lot of time in the woods hiking and camping, and I am tired of squatting and getting my butt bitten by mosquitoes. It took a few tries to get the knack of it. It's quite liberating!
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2 hours ago, MeaganS said:
We do it almost exclusively as audio in the car as well. And that's all. I don't do any projects. Sometimes I'll get a library book on a subject we recently listened to, but we don't do any projects. We listen to a few chapters a week and when we finish the series we start over again. They will have listened to the whole series several times before middle school. They enjoy it. I do consider us as more unschooling history though. SOTW is just one resource we use informally.
Same.
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We did SOTW almost entirely on audio in the car. I would check out picture books from the relative time period to look at and read. We didn't do any structured formal activities, but we did do a lot of informal "activities" that we made up as we went along, as our mood suited us: the kids incorporated a lot of history into their free play, we made costumes, ate food from various times and places, baked hard-tack, built a trebuchet to fling apples, duct-tape weapons, etc. It was very organic and somewhat unschooly. They've retained a lot.
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32 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:
I don’t understand why more countries haven’t made the effort to work toward local production capacity - it was obvious that global supply was going to be an issue. In Australia they did but only for Astra Zeneca which now looks like a bad bet.
I think it just takes a long time. Canada has plans for a Novovax plant, but that's at least a year away.
mRNA vaccines are complicated to make. That kind of infrastructure takes years to develop.
We had a conservative government 2006-2015 that defunded government science and research programs. Now we are paying for that.
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1 hour ago, Cnew02 said:
At least Canada will be doing the right thing😥. Although there must be some leeway in that, we sent several million doses of AZ to Mexico a couple of weeks ago.
If we ever get what we've bought.
You are right that we've contracted for 4x as much as we need, and plan to give away the extra. But supply has been a serious issue - we don't actually have very much. We do not have any domestic production. We are at the mercy of export bans, including the US export ban @Lady Florida. posted about upthread. The US did send us a shipment of AstraZeneca (only because it's not approved there and would otherwise go to waste - which touches on @Farrar's point about countries not really feeling super grateful for getting what amounts to other countries garbage. There is some resentment here about that. And it's a loan, not a gift, we will have to pay it back - which would be fine but....having to pay for another countries waste and be thankful about it doesn't popularly appeal.)
My province is only 2% fully vaxed, and 18% have had their first shot. We have the infrastructure in place to mass vaccinate, but we don't have enough vaccine.
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12 minutes ago, melmichigan said:
Your graphs look very similar to ours. It’s hard to ignore the trend we are seeing with B.1.1.7. I’m glad you have stay at home orders. The local health department was able to convince school boards to close our schools, and the governor has asked for voluntary action.
We've kept schools open, for the most part (they are closed in Toronto and a few other hotspot health units). It's actually the best thought-out and sensible shut-down order we've had so far.
Why are my kitchen scissors never in the kitchen?
in The Chat Board
Posted
Because you didn't have the good fortune to bear only left-handed children who struggle with righty scissors and therefore only ever use their own scissors.