57 Days: Looks like the introduction will be done today--maybe, maybe...
Got an hour of writing in last night and have the congregations (American and American Jewish) done (except for the part I'm going back to revise after thinking about it while falling asleep). What's left? A description of Bay Area Judaism, a description of what I did and why (no more than 1000 words on that or Claude will shoot me), and a summary of the results. This is eminently doable for today, I think. For the most part, this business of rewriting moves much faster than writing the first time. I hope that continues. But I really do feel like I know what I'm doing...
Reading the NY Times today, Christina Hoff Sommers has a piece on how education fails boys. To give her credit, she explicitly focuses on policies, not on whether those policies benefit boys or girls. The comments, almost uniformly, support her--full of people giving their (anecdotal) evidence for why what schools require turned their kids (boys) off of learning. I'm not arguing with that--watching Miranda's love of learning vanish in first grade was why we pulled her from the public schools and ultimately homeschooled. But what is disturbing about the whole discussion is how little the difference between male and female status figures into it. I think it was mentioned once in the comments and not at all in the essay. Yet this, not changing school policies that favor girls' achievement (and I suspect the policies haven't changed all that much--the routinization inherent in mass education results in policies that reward compliance and always have). What has changed is the attitude toward girls--that they are competent and can succeed in this venue, including (albeit still to a lesser degree) in STEM fields. What is well documented is that when girls/women enter and succeed in a given field, it becomes less attractive to men. The way we know that will have changed is when boys are as willing to imagine themselves as girls as girls are to imagine themselves as boys. Or when boys wear girls' clothing without it being a matter of comment, let alone concern. Or when boys are named without regard to whether the names are becoming feminized (yup, you know who I'm talking about here). The reason it matters is that without dealing with that status issue (and honestly, I have no idea how to do that), many boys and men will be left with fewer (apparent) options--and that's not healthy for society. So figuring out a solution would be a good thing. Blaming school (which, god knows, takes enough deserved and undeserved blame already) isn't helpful.
Reading the NY Times today, Christina Hoff Sommers has a piece on how education fails boys. To give her credit, she explicitly focuses on policies, not on whether those policies benefit boys or girls. The comments, almost uniformly, support her--full of people giving their (anecdotal) evidence for why what schools require turned their kids (boys) off of learning. I'm not arguing with that--watching Miranda's love of learning vanish in first grade was why we pulled her from the public schools and ultimately homeschooled. But what is disturbing about the whole discussion is how little the difference between male and female status figures into it. I think it was mentioned once in the comments and not at all in the essay. Yet this, not changing school policies that favor girls' achievement (and I suspect the policies haven't changed all that much--the routinization inherent in mass education results in policies that reward compliance and always have). What has changed is the attitude toward girls--that they are competent and can succeed in this venue, including (albeit still to a lesser degree) in STEM fields. What is well documented is that when girls/women enter and succeed in a given field, it becomes less attractive to men. The way we know that will have changed is when boys are as willing to imagine themselves as girls as girls are to imagine themselves as boys. Or when boys wear girls' clothing without it being a matter of comment, let alone concern. Or when boys are named without regard to whether the names are becoming feminized (yup, you know who I'm talking about here). The reason it matters is that without dealing with that status issue (and honestly, I have no idea how to do that), many boys and men will be left with fewer (apparent) options--and that's not healthy for society. So figuring out a solution would be a good thing. Blaming school (which, god knows, takes enough deserved and undeserved blame already) isn't helpful.