What are some curriculum trends you’ve noticed over the years?

[lewelma]

Just now, Ellie said:

Oh, unschoolers use textbooks if necessary. 🙂

Oh, I know, but my unschooly friends struggled to come to terms with my older. He was just not a nature type. But they understood. I'm not sure, however, that the unschoolers of the current crop would. There seems to be a lot more dogma now than back then. 

[lewelma]

3 minutes ago, Clarita said:

What were some differences between the first version and subsequent versions? I only have the 4th edition.

The first edition was less about curriculum and more about doing it yourself. 

[HomeAgain]

4 hours ago, lewelma said:

What about the first edition of WTM?  Many people for a long time preferred the first version to all future versions. I still have mine some 20 years later, even after reading and giving away the 2nd and 3rd editions. 

Same.  Actually, I had to buy mine again, since my original one got damaged in a move.  The 4th edition was out by that time, I think, and the lady selling it to me was perplexed as to why I even wanted it.  I gave away the subsequent edition I had bought.  The first was what we started with, and I loved the simplicity of the layout and enabling me to create what I needed to for a course.  When we began homeschooling, I started off armed with Saxon and outlines for the other subjects.  Saxon didn't work out, but the other subjects did.

[HomeAgain]

4 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

Helen McHenry science units. Are they still popular? 
I could never use them but they were on everybody’s top list. 

Ellen McHenry seems to have dropped slightly, but we still enjoyed her chem units this year.

[Eilonwy]

9 hours ago, lewelma said:

My older boy read through every classic fiction I could find. But I came to believe, mostly based on Bill's opinion, that a diet of only classic literature would leave a child with a distorted attitude towards women and Jews and 'natives'. They were very negatively portrayed in the literature of the era. So I embarked on a serious discussion for every book that my older son read, but I worried that my 1 or 2 hours of deep discussion would be overlaid with 15 hours that it took to read the book. I worried. But I will say, that my discussion won out with both my boys. 

I am concerned about this too, so I’m glad to hear that the discussions were more powerful than the negative portrayals in the books.

[Carol in Cal.]

9 hours ago, lewelma said:

The first edition was less about curriculum and more about doing it yourself. 

Right.  It was much more empowering.  

[stripe]

11 hours ago, WTM said:

I tried AO (modified)  for a year or two. It was indeed a rich feast but I actually felt burned out afterwards. Granted, I was also working more at the time. I know I could not maintain that pace again unless I had a housekeeper or a nanny, which was likely what many of CM’s original families had.

And in advanced years, it was the professional tutor or teacher who ran the education. And certainly the mother was not burdened with laundry and cooking. That may be my favorite part of Swallows and Amazons -- that the mom is on vacation with Baby and Nanny. Snort.

[stripe]

11 hours ago, lewelma said:

My older boy read through every classic fiction I could find. But I came to believe, mostly based on Bill's opinion, that a diet of only classic literature would leave a child with a distorted attitude towards women and Jews and 'natives'. They were very negatively portrayed in the literature of the era. So I embarked on a serious discussion for every book that my older son read, but I worried that my 1 or 2 hours of deep discussion would be overlaid with 15 hours that it took to read the book. I worried. But I will say, that my discussion won out with both my boys. 

I got tired of the old books. I read the aforementioned Swallows and Amazons once, grimacing through the grunting "natives" stuff. I didn't make it through a second time. I've been shocked at the reach of colonialist attitudes into children's books, from the descriptions of India in The Secret Garden, to the wonders inside the original, pre-censored edition of Dr. Dolittle that I got at the library book sale (and a copy of Agatha Christie's Ten Little N***s -- not "Indians" -- that I bought specifically because of it). The Italian stereotypes in Roller Skates. There's another one, whose name I forgot, where the grumpy girl doesn't want to touch the adult neighbor's black skin. I still haven't decided what I think about Paddington's "darkest Peru." 

My kids never made it through a bunch of these. Or really had the whole experience colored by the sudden appearance of random racism, e.g. in Frankenstein. My daughter in particular absolutely has no patience for insulting, racist/misogynistic/jingoistic books that are personally insulting.....Or people who do the same, for that matter. And they're harder to avoid. 

[Not_a_Number]

27 minutes ago, stripe said:

I got tired of the old books. I read the aforementioned Swallows and Amazons once, grimacing through the grunting "natives" stuff. I didn't make it through a second time. I've been shocked at the reach of colonialist attitudes into children's books, from the descriptions of India in The Secret Garden, to the wonders inside the original, pre-censored edition of Dr. Dolittle that I got at the library book sale (and a copy of Agatha Christie's Ten Little N***s -- not "Indians" -- that I bought specifically because of it). The Italian stereotypes in Roller Skates. There's another one, whose name I forgot, where the grumpy girl doesn't want to touch the adult neighbor's black skin. I still haven't decided what I think about Paddington's "darkest Peru." 

My kids never made it through a bunch of these. Or really had the whole experience colored by the sudden appearance of random racism, e.g. in Frankenstein. My daughter in particular absolutely has no patience for insulting, racist/misogynistic/jingoistic books that are personally insulting.....Or people who do the same, for that matter. And they're harder to avoid. 

I guess I think it's useful to expose kids to what humans are like in all their ugliness. The thing about the prejudices of the past is that they stand out. They are like weird clothes from old photographs -- you can immediately see what might make them impractical. But you don't think nearly as much about the things that might make current fashions silly or impractical or unreasonable, because you're in the midst of it all. 

When you read books with prejudices that are jarring and obvious, you can talk about the fact that ridiculous prejudices are natural to the human condition. And that just because you can't see yours right now, that doesn't mean they aren't there -- it's just that you don't have the distance to see it. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Eilonwy]

20 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I guess I think it's useful to expose kids to what humans are like in all their ugliness. The thing about the prejudices of the past is that they stand out. They are like weird clothes from old photographs -- you can immediately see what might make them impractical. But you don't think about it nearly as much about the things that might make current fashions silly or impractical or unreasonable, because you're in the midst of it all. 

Agreed in moderation, but if every book on your booklist has elements of offensiveness, the book choices may be less than ideal, or at the least, a lot of “remedial” discussion is needed.
 

This is quite relevant to whether curricula have held up over time: some parts of them simply haven’t, and new or modified elements may need to be mixed in, even where the person who developed it was ahead of their time and very perceptive of the situation at that time.

It’s a good point, though, about our own blind spots which are inevitably there.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Eilonwy

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, Eilonwy said:

Agreed in moderation, but if every book on your booklist has elements of offensiveness, the book choices may be less than ideal, or at the least, a lot of “remedial” discussion is needed.

This is quite relevant to whether curricula have held up over time: some parts of them simply haven’t, and new or modified elements may need to be mixed in, even where the person who developed it was ahead of their time and very perceptive of the situation at that time.

I guess I don't think of it as remedial discussion, per se 🙂 . Just as discussion. But then we have a very discussion-based homeschool around here. Right now, I'm trying to grudgingly figure out how to decrease the amount of discussion (DD8 is still having trouble being compliant and the discussions get frustrating quickly), and it definitely goes against the grain. 

[Not_a_Number]

4 minutes ago, Eilonwy said:

Agreed in moderation, but if every book on your booklist has elements of offensiveness, the book choices may be less than ideal, or at the least, a lot of “remedial” discussion is needed.

I do agree that one shouldn't JUST read from those books, though. 

[Eilonwy]

22 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I guess I don't think of it as remedial discussion, per se 🙂 . Just as discussion. But then we have a very discussion-based homeschool around here. Right now, I'm trying to grudgingly figure out how to decrease the amount of discussion (DD8 is still having trouble being compliant and the discussions get frustrating quickly), and it definitely goes against the grain. 

 

Maybe remedial isn’t the right word, but I was thinking that the parent is trying to actively contradict the portrayals & attitudes in the books, in some cases.  If the child is already largely in agreement, and observing the same types of issues,  then they would be just discussions. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Eilonwy

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Eilonwy said:

Maybe remedial isn’t the right word, but I was thinking that the parent is trying to actively contradict the portrayals & attitudes in the books, in some cases.  If the child is already largely in agreement, and observing the same types of issues,  then they would be just discussions. 

I think a lot of the time, kids just skip over that stuff as uninteresting until there's a conversation about it. You could argue that if that was all they saw, they'd get indoctrinated, but I'd guess that their real-life environment is much more indoctrinating than a book. 

[HomeAgain]

34 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Honestly, I think that we need to acknowledge that much of the "love" for these old books is because of the racism, misogyny, [fill in the blank], not in spite of them, at least in some homeschooling circles.

 

Fair point.  It reminds me of when the Elsie Dinsmore books became popular again.  I ended up reading all of them on Project Gutenberg, half because each one was more horrifying than the last and half because I was hoping they'd redeem themselves.

But they were popular, and for many of the reasons I disliked them: a focus on obedience, God, arranged courtship/marriage, with a bonus side of pro-slavery thrown in, which backed up some of the very Christian history programs' way of teaching American history (like Bob Jones).

 

I think one of the reasons so many programs did use the "classics", though, is because they were in the public domain.  You don't have to worry about copyright if a program can source free material.

[Not_a_Number]

43 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Honestly, I think that we need to acknowledge that much of the "love" for these old books is because of the racism, misogyny, [fill in the blank], not in spite of them, at least in some homeschooling circles.

I guess that could be true for SOME people, but that seems like a bit of a stretch. I've loved lots of books with problematic themes, and I can assure you that it wasn't because they were racist and misogynist. Like, Chesterton has gorgeous prose, but the racial characterizations in his stuff is appalling... but I don't read it for the racism, lol. 

 

43 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I agree that many older books have more complex language but I think that newer books can have more complex emotions.

I'm not willing to characterize it like that. I've read new books with complicated emotions and old books with complicated emotions; ditto for new and old books in which characters seem to be so emotionally flat as to seem like cardboard cut-outs. I adore Middlemarch for its characterizations, for example, and that's emphatically an old book. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

Fair point.  It reminds me of when the Elsie Dinsmore books became popular again.  I ended up reading all of them on Project Gutenberg, half because each one was more horrifying than the last and half because I was hoping they'd redeem themselves.

But they were popular, and for many of the reasons I disliked them: a focus on obedience, God, arranged courtship/marriage, with a bonus side of pro-slavery thrown in, which backed up some of the very Christian history programs' way of teaching American history (like Bob Jones).

Whoa. I'll have to take back my skepticism, I guess. That sounds awful. 

[Eilonwy]

58 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Honestly, I think that we need to acknowledge that much of the "love" for these old books is because of the racism, misogyny, [fill in the blank], not in spite of them, at least in some homeschooling circles.

I expect there is an element of this, in some circles (probably the Elsie Dinsmore-loving circles) but the attitude I hear more often is that the antiquated attitudes don’t hurt/didn’t make me a racist/misogynist etc.  That is, they don’t support the misogyny, but the frame it as something not that problematic, and therefore it can be ignored. 

[Not_a_Number]

5 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I'm discussing books assigned by homeschoolers because they are on the HSing book lists. Some of these books have no redeeming literary qualities, e.g. The Five Little Peppers. They are assigned because they are old, contain "traditional" gender roles, and are "Christian." 

Oh, I see. I never look at homeschooling book lists, I guess 😛 . DH does most of the shopping for books, because he's far more aware of standard children's literature in English than I am. 

In terms of kids' literature, we do more modern stuff than not, I believe. 

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Here's a link to the "Good Books" list. There are some strange books on this list, IMHO. 

Huh. Yes, kind of a weird list! We have some of those but not others. Some of those are genuinely good, some I remember finding boring as a kid, and some I've just never heard of... 

[Porridge]

3 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I guess I think it's useful to expose kids to what humans are like in all their ugliness. The thing about the prejudices of the past is that they stand out. They are like weird clothes from old photographs -- you can immediately see what might make them impractical. But you don't think nearly as much about the things that might make current fashions silly or impractical or unreasonable, because you're in the midst of it all. 

When you read books with prejudices that are jarring and obvious, you can talk about the fact that ridiculous prejudices are natural to the human condition. And that just because you can't see yours right now, that doesn't mean they aren't there -- it's just that you don't have the distance to see it. 

 

[lewelma]

9 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I also wonder about the effects of internalized misogyny

This is what I worried about, but it just did not come to pass. I think that discussing these issues led to a more nuanced understanding of human nature, which led to good conversations even with younger kids. They did NOT internalize these types of attitudes.

However, there were some books like Tarzan, that my dh read out loud that he simply changed on the fly.  All people were either Europeans or Africans, and not whatever horrible words they were called in the novel. Then as he read, he also discussed stereotypes, colonialism, etc. It was a good read aloud because it was both exciting to keep their interest and shocking enough that the historical lessons were obvious and easy to discuss and understand. He did this with many many classic novels over the years. Then with this knowledge in hand, I would ask my kids to tell me about the racist and colonial attitudes in the books they were reading independently. What did they notice? How is it different than today? I got them reading through different lenses as young children, not just reading these classic children's books for pleasure only. 

 

[Eilonwy]

6 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Yes, I've heard that claim too but I have to wonder why they are willing to ignore the perspective of those who find these books offensive. ISTM that there is an element of racism involved when people are so quick to ignore the concerns about old books. 

I also wonder about the effects of internalized misogyny when ignoring misogyny in old books. 

Yes, I think this could well be the case, that people have more racist/misogynistic attitudes than they realize or would care to admit.  But perhaps open acknowledgment and discussion can counter these hidden tendencies as well. At least I hope so.  

[lewelma]

1 minute ago, Eilonwy said:

Yes, I think this could well be the case, that people have more racist/misogynistic attitudes than they realize or would care to admit.  But perhaps open acknowledgment and discussion can counter these hidden tendencies as well. At least I hope so.  

As I stated above, we did more than just discuss. Once they understood these attitudes, we made it like a treasure hunt in their books. They looked for them, called them out, and could explain to me not only why they were wrong, but perhaps even explain why they existed at the time. So not just a lecture or a discussion, but rather a independent assignment to report back on. I think this made them feel empowered and ensured that they did not internalize this type of thinking.

[HomeAgain]

17 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Here's a link to the "Good Books" list. There are some strange books on this list, IMHO. 

Oh.  My.

I can say this, my youngest was not ready for Pinocchio before age 8 and it's listed as a 2-7yo book.  Vividly reading the chapter where he killed Jiminy Cricket about threw him over the edge.  It's a rough read for a child who only knows the kinder, gentler story.

I have many more thoughts about the others, some of which my kids have read, some I have not bought.

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

I have many more thoughts about the others, some of which my kids have read, some I have not bought.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, actually. Although perhaps we need a spin-off thread? 

[stripe]

3 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I guess I think it's useful to expose kids to what humans are like in all their ugliness.

We’ve got this covered in real life. Lesson learned long ago. I don’t need every blasted kids’ book to contain books about savages and natives, stupid n****s, and ugly and lascivious black men, blah blah blah. When people already talk this way, in school, homeschool, and on the playground, whether about my own kids or in general, there comes a time when you just need a break, not a chapter of a book called “Ten Little N***s” (about ten piglets....apparently this chapter is now renamed...Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street)  or a description of something as “n*** brown” ....I’m just going to say, a firm NO.

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, stripe said:

We’ve got this covered in real life. Lesson learned long ago. I don’t need every blasted kids’ book to contain books about savages and natives, stupid n****s, and ugly and lascivious black men, blah blah blah. When people already talk this way, in school, homeschool, and on the playground, whether about my own kids or in general, there comes a time when you just need a break, not a chapter of a book called “Ten Little N***s” (about ten piglets....apparently this chapter is now renamed...Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street)  or a description of something as “n*** brown” ....I’m just going to say, a firm NO.

Ugh. Yeah, OK, I see that if you have enough of that ugliness IRL, then you don't want those lessons. We've mercifully largely been spared, so sometimes it feels like my kids are almost too buffered from human evil. So then the books don't seem like a bad addition. But it doesn't sound like you're in that situation 😕 . 

[stripe]

Here are some possibly useful sources about racism in classic children’s novels:

 

Tackling Racism in Classic Children’s Literature

How do we hold fast to intellectual freedom while solidifying our commitment to diversity and inclusiveness?

 

Nashville Public Library spent a year asking that question and the resulting work can be replicated by other libraries seeking to apply an anti-racist lens to their collections. Join us as Klem-Marí Cajigas and Lindsey Patrick-Wright offer insight and suggestions for us to re-evaluate our own collections. This webinar was previously presented as a session at both TLA’s 2019 Annual Conference and at the 2020 PLA Conference, and for the Tennessee State Library & Archives.

https://continuinged.isl.in.gov/tackling-racism-in-classic-childrens-literature-2-leus/

Seuss, Racism, and Resources for Anti-Racist Children’s Literature

Philip Nel

* long list of links

https://philnel.com/2021/03/09/seuss-racism-resources/

[HomeAgain]

4 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I paid more attention to these lists when DD was younger and I knew less than I do now. I realized that DD was incredibly sensitive to violence towards animals. It made me recognize how much casualty cruelty towards animals and children is contained in some of these classic children's books. Why is that? Is it necessary? If you followed these lists slavishly and followed the advice about ignoring modern books, your children will be exposed to a lot of cruelty towards weaker beings. 

DD and I have had good discussions about racist attitudes in books and I think there's merit to knowing what attitudes were in the past. But is there a benefit to exposing children to cruelty towards weaker beings (animals and children)? 

 

 

I ended up writing my thoughts for a librarian who tried a story at our 6-8yo book club that positively didn't interest the younger set.  I realized that all the books we had gravitated to at different ages followed similar storylines:

Age 2-7: talking animals, personified objects, ludicrous situations.  Things where it was easy to tell it was imaginary.

Age 7-10: imaginary worlds, real-but-removed locations.  There was no need to draw a hard line between real people and imaginary situations, but not ready for real life stories yet.

Age 9/10-13: Realistic people in realistic settings.  Things like A View From Saturday, The Great Brain, even the Mysterious Benedict Society - things that could happen, probably won't, but could.

I did my best to focus on these, and then balance out the more well known children's classics by studying the author, the history they were living in, and how it influenced their work.  We just finished Around The World in 80 Days.  I got the Whole Story version, which has lots of annotations, and we used those as spin-offs for how to talk about the characterizations in Verne's work.

[stripe]

4 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

How do you feel about exposing your children to books with anti-semitism?

And how many of us would choose, of all the logic texts in the world, to use Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic, and have our children get busy analyzing arguments with premises like:

No Gentiles have hooked noses

No Jew is ever a bad hand at a bargain

No Gentiles have beards a yard long

No Jews are honest

and, weirdest of all: Every one, who does not object to pork, admires pigsties

 

For those who would like to use his material, I’m going to guess most would skip spending lots of time on the anti-Semitic portions, even if they discussed his views at some point.

[lewelma]

10 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

How do you feel about exposing your children to books with anti-semitism?

We've used it to highlight both how Christians can be cruel, and how Jews have been persecuted for 1000s of years. It is one thing to read about it in a nonfiction way, but it is totally different to see it woven into a story. When in fiction it is way more powerful, which is why it is actually important to read it there. How did people believe this stuff? How did they not see their cruelty? How can we make sure we don't do something similar with the Maori here in NZ.  Nonfiction works and discussion just don't get the point across as well. 

[Not_a_Number]

38 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

How do you feel about exposing your children to books with anti-semitism? DD and I are slowly making our way through Oliver Twist. I'm reading it aloud so I replaced the word "Jew" with other words. My child is not Jewish so it would not be personally hurtful to her but I still don't want to hear it. It's dehumanizing the way that Dickens discusses Fagin. 

How would you feel about that for your children? 

Pretty darn good. They need to see it. They don't frankly see it enough in real life. 

Does your DD see anti-Semitism IRL? Because if they don't, it's worth showing it to her in Dickens. 

ETA: Whoops, dunno why I said "kids." 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

18 minutes ago, lewelma said:

We've used it to highlight both how Christians can be cruel, and how Jews have been persecuted for 1000s of years. It is one thing to read about it in a nonfiction way, but it is totally different to see it woven into a story. When in fiction it is way more powerful, which is why it is actually important to read it there. How did people believe this stuff? How did they not see their cruelty? How can we make sure we don't do something similar with the Maori here in NZ.  Nonfiction works and discussion just don't get the point across as well. 

 

3 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I understand that but @Not_a_Numberis Jewish so it's personal so I thought her view might be different than mine. 

 

As it turns out, I agree entirely with @lewelma! Not uncommon for the two of us, but interesting on such a touchy and personal topic. 

[Carol in Cal.]

I grew up on older books and being an avid reader I read a ton of them.  I feel that the racism in some of them was good to understand when reading adult older books later on, because I knew what the underlying assumptions were.  I also grew up on the King James Bible and that also was extremely helpful in understanding English literature.

Did this make me racist or sexist?  No, actually the contrary. I was taught at home and at church that being racist or bigoted was flat out wrong, and The Sneetches also taught me how dumb it is.  When I ran across racist stuff in those old books It bugged me.  I did not want to read them out loud or study them in class, particularly in a class where someone might be personally embarrassed by it.

But I grew up in a more polite and more liberal family than some.  I didn’t get it engrained at home.  I never heard anyone say the n word in conversation until I was 20.  I distinctly remember it because it was so shocking.

I used some old books for DD’s homeschooling because:
1.  I wanted her to be able to read and understand complex books with complex sentences.
2.  I like some of the assumed values, although not others.  She was already weird enough to her friends for having to go to church every week without that being unheard of in any of her literature.
3.  A lot of the newer replacements had horrendous grammar problems that I didn’t want her to imitate in her speaking or writing. I figured that a lot of facility at writing comes from exposure to good and correct writing early on.  I was not sorry to read Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler instead of Junie B. Jones.  It was a far better model.
4.  We read so many books about the nobility of Native Americans that I actually realized that I had to find some that conveyed the reasonable fear of them on the part of the settlers.  The Little House books bored me to death and I think I only read her the first and maybe part of the second one, but I hunted up The Matchlock Gun specifically for that reason.  It’s a POV that people should be familiar with to understand a lot of other things, whether they agree with it or not.
5.  There are a lot of older books that have racial mixing, denunciation of racism, and woman heroes.  You don’t have to go new to get there, and so you don’t have to give up grammar and internal considerations of morals and church going necessarily.  Examples include Little Women, An Old Fashioned Girl, The Egypt Game, Blue Willow, The Velvet Room, Jennifer Hecate Macbeth William McKinley and me Elizabeth, Amos Fortune Free Man, and The Changeling, all awesome books.  BTW, these also included social mixing to some extent which was helpful.
6.  It is much harder to avoid sexism in books that racism or classism.  To convey a broad view, I used biographies of women of achievement.  I found Sally Ride Science to be a good modern publisher of books like this in addition to older ones about queens and scientists.  Also, I was glad that there were older books that presented women as SAHMs who were strong, intelligent, and clearly valuable.  That is harder to find in more modern books as well, and I think it’s an important value to convey.  I don’t care to teach a kid to look down on SAHMs as underachievers.  That’s not my view, and it’s very destructive.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Carol in Cal.

[Not_a_Number]

The idea of editing out all the bad attitudes from old stories (or forgoing those stories entirely) has been bugging me, and I've been trying to put my finger on why... and I think I've figured it out. 

I think it's like saying you don't see race -- you just see different people. It's lovely if you're in the kind of privileged position where you can shield your kids from the evil stuff of this world, and it's tempting to do it. But what that doesn't take into account is that all of us have the seeds of the same kind of evil in our souls. Pointing out that we all do see races, and that perhaps you might be tempted to generalize by race (as it turns out, kids do this naturally!), and that people have done this from time immemorial, and that this is the WRONG thing to do is a much better safeguard then not talking about this stuff because it's not "nice." 

I think it's the same thing with old books. It's great if you can spend time reading books that look forward, not back. But sometimes, the way to make it clear to kids WHY we're moving forward is to make it clear what we're moving away from... 

Mind you, this doesn't apply in situations where you're already in situations where you're exposed to far too much inequity to being with. That's just not our personal situation, and I'm mostly musing about that. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[stripe]

In case it wasn’t clear, we have read plenty of those old books. We’ve discussed. We would just like to have other books too, including books with a diverse range of main characters, not just priggish white girls like Mary in A Secret Garden with their nasty racism that likely isn’t magically fixed by her garden. We continue to see examples of stupidity in everyday life. We discuss some more. I am glad they can see it and point it out. But we need positive examples too.

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, stripe said:

In case it wasn’t clear, we have read plenty of those old books. We’ve discussed. We would just like to have other books too, including books with a diverse range of main characters, not just priggish white girls like Mary in A Secret Garden with their nasty racism that likely isn’t magically fixed by her garden. We continue to see examples of stupidity in everyday life. We discuss some more. I am glad they can see it and point it out. But we need positive examples too.

I would agree with that 100% 🙂 . I would never want to ONLY read the old books. 

[stripe]

7 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Actually I don't think my daughter has ever met a Jewish person. 

Wow!

ETA I don’t mean that in a rude way!

Edited May 23, 2021 by stripe

[Not_a_Number]

5 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

Actually I don't think my daughter has ever met a Jewish person. I knew some Jewish children when I was growing up and one of my mother's closest friends was Jewish. But I can't think of any time that my daughter has met a Jewish person, adult or child. 

DD has probably heard things that I would consider anti-semitic although she's been exposed to a hard-core anti-semite. I've assigned books about Jewish children like All of a Kind Family and books about the Holocaust. We've discussed anti-semitism. When we visited Venice a few years ago, we talked about the ghetto and how Jews have been persecuted by Christians. There are many children's books about the Holocaust and I try to fit them into the larger history. 

I probably don't do enough. I intended to visit different religious services with DD as part our homeschooling but that was interrupted by the pandemic. We would have visited a synagogue. 

Interesting. So then it's all pretty theoretical for her, one way or another... 

My kids have friends from a wide range of cultures but no Black friends. They've had Black classmates and acquaintances, but that's not the same thing... And I do worry that it makes some topics seem far too academic 😕 . 

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, stripe said:

Wow!

ETA I don’t mean that in a rude way!

I did kind of have the same reaction!! It'd be hard for me to name a large category of people that DD8 has never met! 

[Not_a_Number]

5 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I see your point. I recognize that the way I approach is very "white liberal-ish," if you know what I mean. Part of it is that I personally struggle with articulating some of these words by reading them out loud. For example, I read Little House on the Prairie to DD and skipped over the, "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" sentence. 

We've never avoided books about difficult subjects. Last year we studied Native American history primarily through fiction. I was very selective about what we read and chose books written by Native American authors instead of white authors. Many of the books we read discussed racism and genocide. 

This year, we studied African American history. We read Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry as well as other books. Roll of Thunder makes it very clear why we're moving forward and it's not racist. 

It's not a matter of avoiding unpleasant books but choosing better books that address our unpleasant past. 

But you see, the problem with that approach is that you get to feel that the racists... the sexists... the bad people... they are all comfortably far away. They are very much the "other." 

I far prefer the genres that make you feel complicit. If you were a non-Jew living in Nazi Germany, you may very well have been a Nazi supporter. It's being aware of THAT queasy little fact that to me sets us on the road to being better humans. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

4 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

That's okay. I understand the reaction. 

In thinking about this again, DD probably met some Jewish children when we lived in Chicago but she was pretty young then. But I can't think of a single one in the 6 years we've lived in Arizona. DD attended Catholic school but I doubt there were many Jewish children in the local public schools either. 

DD's classes were more diverse than mine. She's attended school with Hispanic, Indian (I mean from India), Native American, and Asian children. Her classes were probably about half white and the classes I attended were about 90% white. 

She has attended day camp with a few African American children. 

And these kinds of statistics were why we moved away from Texas, lol. Everyone was perfectly nice, but it was just odd being one of the few Jews around (unless we were at the university, of course, but we didn't want to live in a university bubble.) No one was impolite or anything, but it made us feel conspicuous. 

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I'm not sure about books that require that kind of moral ambiguity for children. Children tend to see the world in black and white. I'd rather be clear and about right and wrong at DD's age. 

I spend a lot of time talking about ways that all humans (including myself, my kids, and all their relatives) are fallible and prejudiced, I guess. I make it clear that it's not because they are BAD, but because that's just a natural human state. I hope it gets through.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

21 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

DD corrected me. She has one Jewish kid. He was in her hybrid homeschool co-op last year. 

Your sentence badly needs the word "met" 😉. 

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

On 5/14/2021 at 4:47 PM, daijobu said:

When I started homeschooling about 10-15 years ago, all anyone would write about was BFSU, MCT and Singapore Math.  People still use Singapore Math, but I'm sad to see people seem to have given up on the others. 

We adore MCT! I sing it’s praises to anyone who’ll listen. It can be overwhelming though, & is quite pricy so not many are willing to just jump in & take the risk. 

I still see EESE or Scientific Connections through Inquiry referenced fairly regularly; both are essentially frameworks designed to make BFSU more “user friendly”. 

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I did kind of have the same reaction!! It'd be hard for me to name a large category of people that DD8 has never met! 

I just asked my younger ds if he had ever met an African. He responded with his cousin's wife (she is African American).  So I asked if he has ever met another African or African American, and he said 'I feel like I have, but I can't remember when.'

NZ has a LOT of diversity, but not people from Africa. We are more connected to Asia here.

Edited May 23, 2021 by lewelma

[HeartString]

2 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I did kind of have the same reaction!! It'd be hard for me to name a large category of people that DD8 has never met! 

I worry about this sometime. My kids don’t know many people of other races well. It’s not a purposeful thing.  We just lived for most of their childhood in the same town I grew up in.  A town that was almost all white.  (Less than 10 black children in my high school class of almost 400, none that were ever in any of my classes). Add in homeschooling, which is majority white and you have almost no racial diversity.  But what to do about it?  Where do you meet a racially diverse population when you live in the South in a town that had been vast majority white since my great grandparents lived there? 
 

(It’s not zero, but much less than I would like.  A few of which we were very close with)

Edited May 23, 2021 by HeartString

[stripe]

3 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I did kind of have the same reaction!! It'd be hard for me to name a large category of people that DD8 has never met! 

I am not sure my kids have met Native American / First Nations people much less an Aboriginal Australian....My husband has a Maori coworker, but I don’t think my kids have met her. No one comes to mind, anyway.

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, stripe said:

I am not sure my kids have met Native American / First Nations people much less an Aboriginal Australian....My husband has a Maori coworker, but I don’t think my kids have met her. No one comes to mind, anyway.

You know, you're right. Same for us. That was ridiculous of me not to think of.