“What is feminist homeschooling?

Feminist homeschooling is educating your children with the understanding that feminism is as much a lifestyle as it is a movement. It teaches that women and men are of equal value, neither being better or more worthy than the other.

Feminist homeschooling recognizes that history isn’t just about which great men fought which great wars. It is also about family life throughout the centuries. It is about women and their agency and how they have changed and what women today have earned from that change. It knows that history is written by the winners and that we have to dig a little deeper to get the full picture, a picture which shows us that women were always present and always contributing to change.

Feminist homeschooling recognizes that women have always been scientists and inventors and writers. Patriarchal law often prevented women from publishing or patenting or recieving any recognition for their work. We will recognize it here.

Our feminist homeschool will be heavily woman-centric. Not because men are not worth studying! Rather, it acts as a counterbalance to our male-centered culture. This is fair.

The history of economics and home economics are of equal value. Women’s contributions to dietetics aren’t very different from men’s contributions to biochemistry. We value both.

Welcome.”
http://feministhomeschool.wordpress.com/

It shows that there are many streams of feminism.

I don’t feel the need to embrace an “-ism”. But I do think some aspects of the women’s rights movement have brought positive changes e.g. women being freed to vote, girls being liberated to read and write, women being allowed to patent their inventions, women being encouraged to speak up against issues like domestic abuse, female circumcision, honour killings.

I draw my compass from the gospels, from the way Jesus treated women. He gave room for women disciples among his band, validated Mary’s offering in front of the Jewish teachers (perfume on his feet episode), broke barriers by speaking to the Samaritan woman, expressed his love for his mother while dying on the cross by committing her into John’s care, opened up spaces for mothers and children to him, etc. How wonderful our saviour!

I thought the blog was interesting , at least the introduction.I have not read the rest of it, but I think there will be some stuff that I will object to, as well as agree with.

I also came across this report about feminism and homeschooling. Here’s part of the article for rumination:

“One of the few feminist critiques of homeschooling available is titled “Is Homeschooling Sexist?” by Laurae Lyster-Mensh, a self-declared feminist. The author is clearly sympathetic to the basic concept of homeschooling as demonstrated by her being a mother-educator herself. But her article revolves around what she calls “an elephant in the room”: namely, the question that constitutes its title.3

Lyster-Mensh asks other homeschooling moms what messages about gender are being sent to their children. When she assures her daughter that she can achieve anything in life, Lyster-Mensh wonders, “Am I telling her she can strive toward being a homeschooling mother? Am I telling her not to?” And what of sons? “They cannot fail to notice that the ones doing the homeschooling are the mothers. We have to ask ourselves what expectations this will leave them with for themselves and for their future spouses. In the workplace, will they be able to treat female co-workers as seriously as the men?”

Lyster-Mensh raises some valid questions about gender and homeschooling families. For example, what impact does the “man as sole breadwinner” have on the decision-making process in the family? She freely admits that such issues may not pose a problem for many homeschooling families. But she raises an intriguing possibility. She speculates that, because homeschoolers feel under attack from “liberals” and pro-public-school organizations such as the National Education Association, they tend to band together and present “a united front to the world.” Divisive issues, such as the role of women in the home and society, are not discussed as openly as they might otherwise be. Of course, it is impossible to test this theory until the political opposition to homeschooling ceases to be a threat.

One main complaint of mother-educators is that feminists (outsiders) often display a dismissive or insulting attitude toward their lifestyle. In short, feminists look down on them as less liberated than working women. They see stay-at-home moms as part of the patriarchal structure (the nuclear family with traditional values) that is the wellspring of gender oppression.

The Feminine Mystique described the suburban household with its traditional domestic arrangements as a “concentration camp.” Friedan claimed decades later that the wholesale rejection of domesticity that her book inspired in young women was a misinterpretation of its meaning. Nevertheless, it was a reading that caught on: liberated women are the ones who pursue careers and who are financially independent and guided by their own needs. According to this interpretation, not all choices a woman can make are politically or culturally equal. Women who choose to become housewives, to be financially dependent on a man, and to give priority to the needs of their families are unliberated.

In her article “Motherhood Gets a Face-Lift,” the homeschooling Isabel Lyman asks herself a question that must have occurred to many mother-educators, especially those who willingly gave up careers and financial independence. She wonders whether a woman who “commits herself so wholeheartedly to her children and their education” represents a “giant step backward” for women? Or is she a pioneer who defies categorization?

In response to her question, Lyman presents the answers of some other homeschooling moms.

For example, Pam Kelly of California: She was a computer/systems analyst for 18 years before becoming a mother-educator—a job she considers her most challenging and fulfilling one. She calls herself “the epitome” of what feminists say they are for: a woman having and exercising choice. But when she hears the word “feminist,” Pam thinks “dictator, hostile, anti-male and anti-female.”

Cindi Grelen of Oklahoma has a teaching degree, which she uses to homeschool her two daughters. She defines “a feminist” as “an angry person who is self-absorbed and on a desperate search for peace”—the peace that she has found in the politically incorrect process of “losing herself in her children.” Nevertheless, she adds, “I miss out . . . on being recognized as someone who is contributing something worthwhile to society.”

Christine Field of Illinois was a criminal prosecutor who once considered herself to be a “blatant feminist.” No more. Today, she is the author of a book titled Coming Home to Raise Your Children.

The personal stories go on and on. And common themes run through many of them: the parent-educators are intelligent, educated women; they have made a conscious and considered choice to leave the work force; and they view feminism as a rebuke.
The New Women’s Movement

Homeschooling constitutes a revolution in education. But it is also one of the most significant trends to affect women and families in decades, especially since it is led by mother-educators. Homeschooling is part of a social shift by which women are moving back toward traditional family values, not because they have to but because they want to do so.

Analysis of homeschooling has focused on the children—and properly so—but the relationship of mother-educators to feminism deserves investigation in its own right. Homeschooling is a trend that mainstream feminism is resisting because the teaching at-home mom threatens many of the values it espouses, including financial independence.

The tension between homeschooling and feminism arises not from feminism per se, but from the politically correct version that has dominated the movement for over a decade. PC feminism regards the traditional family as a training ground for patriarchy—that is, for the white male culture that oppresses women.

Fortunately, other schools of feminism view staying at home as simply one more choice that a self-respecting, intelligent woman can make or reject, depending on her goals in life. Individualist feminism is one example. For this school of feminism, freedom means having every peaceful choice possible and taking personal responsibility for all your actions. In this framework, one woman’s decision to stay at home is not politically better or worse than another woman’s choice to become a CEO. Both are personal matters. Both express the core of true feminism: choice. ”
http://www.fee.org/Publications/the-Freeman/article.asp?aid=3970

cradled safe by dark deserts where a bush
casts coiled shadows of thorns
burning like manna on
wet gethsemane.

weeping quails soaked
in fresh blood; prints of peace
splashing the midnight blue hills
scarlet white.

flapping Flesh, flayed food for
barren seekers finding
Peace.

I’d read “When Life and beliefs collide” earlier by Carolyn Custis James which looked at women and theology. That book, I would say, is THE book of the year for me, the book that I think every woman ( and man) shold read. It made me want to shout out the good news from the pulpit or street corners, “woman, your name is ezer!” Ezer, writes Carolyn, was the word the God used when He described Eve as a “help meet” and not “help mate” as commonly thought. The word “ezer” is used in the Bible to describe God as “deliverer”, “helper”. It is a word that conjures meanings related to strength, to boldness and to faith. I love the way this definition informs my understanding of submission, homemaking and parenthood. I love the liberation this understanding unleashes upon debates concerning women and work, women and the church, women and influence.

I have yet to finish Lisa G.M.’s book and when I do, I suspect I will want to shout it from the mountaintops too- this is good news!

“My name is Fara. I read about a book titled Mary Bunyan. It’s about Mary, a blind girl, who refuses help from her family and friends. She does not change until she realizes that she gets further and further from God, her creator.

Mary has a hard life. Before her father is taken to Bedford Gaol (Bedford Jail) her father asked Mary to care for the family.

She tires herself out by trying to care for her family.

I like this book because it’s very touching. ”

This is one pessimistic book. Like most pessimistic books, it’s also a thought provoking one.

I read Elkind’s “The Hurried Child” some years ago and it spurred me to make some decisions about the way we’d raise (and not raise) our kids. Writing from the vantage point of a child psychologist, Elkind argues that children are being pushed to grow up, and are suffering for it. He identified the media and the highly competitive trend in education and parenting as the primary culprits of this epidemic. By imposing our expectations on our children too soon, parents set our children on the road to burnout and to a lifelong angst for lost childhoods, lost innocence.

Postman’s tome, written in the early-80’s, looks at the same phenomenon of a lost childhood from the perspective of a social critic. In “Disappearance of Childhood”, he deconstructs the idea of childhood as a biological category and traces its development from the Classical World to America in the late 20th century,

Postman sees childhood as a social construct, with it roots (though not necessarily its origin, says he) in Athens, specifically in Athenian schools. The word for school then denoted “leisure” for it was based on the (noble) assumption that leisure time was used for thinking and learning. Schools functioned as ‘keepers’ of childhood in the sense that they reinforced the idea that children inhabited certain ‘worlds’ that were different from that of adults’. The concept of childhood was further developed by the Romans. The barbarian invasion and subsequent collapse of the Roman Empire plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, followed by the Middle Ages. With this gargantuan upheaval, childhood came to an end.

Postman identifies three phenomena in the Middle Ages that led to this decline: the loss of literacy as a culture, the loss of education (formal schooling with literacy as its focus) and the loss of shame. Education was usurped by apprenticeship or “on the job learning” and the emphasis on literacy was replaced by an oralist culture. Children and adults therefore shared the same symbolic worlds and the same physical spaces.

The advent of the printing press again changed the landscape of the continent by consolidating the centrality of literacy as a prerequisite for achieving the status of adulthood. The printing press therefore revived the idea of childhood as a distinct category. Learning became synonymous with “book learning” and knowledge, once openly accessible to children, was now invariably tied to literacy and hence, to the adult world.

Postman traces the development of childhood through the Enlightenment, going into some detail about the philosophical treatises of John Locke, Rousseau and Hume.

The second part of the book focuses solely on America from 1850-1950, with an emphasis on the 50’s.

As technology had , in the guise of the printing press, then ushered in a new age of information, knowledge and ideas of society in the Middle Ages, new communication inventions in the early-mid 20th century– “ the rotary press, the camera, the telephone, the phonograph, the movies, the radio, television”- signaled the beginning of the end of the concept of childhood. Postman pinpoints 1950 – the year when television assumed a central role in American homes- as the year when childhood became “obsolete”. Print culture was replaced by a “graphic revolution “(Postman citing Boorstin) of images and icons.

Postman embarks on a persuasive and lengthy discourse on how, in this ongoing revolution of images, information is undifferentiated, chaotic, depersonalized and decontextualized. The effects of this “free-flow” of information creates similar conditions that precipitated the obliteration of childhood in the Middle Ages: the loss of literacy as central to education, the usurping of literacy by other means of communication –whether oral or visual, and the loss of shame that is caused by the blurring of distinctions between the worlds of the child and the adult.

As in his other books, Postman exposes the role of technology in reconfiguring the way we think about relationships, our identities and the way things should function in society.

While Postman offers his observations, he extends no promising cure for the demise of childhood. This book was written in the early-80’s. Now in the infancy of the 21st century, the tome reads almost like a history book of what has taken place. This book, as I said earlier, is a pessimistic one.

I disagree with some of Postman’s opinions about childhood. Postman authoritatively claims that childhood is a social construct, in the same way, I suspect, that gender is viewed purely as a social construct. If childhood was purely a social construct, then why defend it? A social construct rests on principles of convenience- of its use to the society which builds it, shapes it and redefines it. A social construct is bereft of absolute values and is ever-shifting with the trends and mores of society. Based on this, a social construct cannot be defended purely on the grounds of absolute values. This makes the book therefore, merely a record of observations. Perhaps that is what makes Postman’s book so hopeless in its outlook when compared to Dr. Elkind’s “The Hurried Child”. While he notes the circumstances (and the great ogre-culprit TECHNOLOGY) that propel the disappearance of childhood, he falls short in making a case for preserving it.

This is less a book on parenting and the importance of childhood than a persuasive argument against letting technology have a free hand in shaping society. It is therefore a book that must be read because it makes us more aware about the power that we unwittingly absolve to others within the confines of our homes, in deciding the courses of family, children’s upbringing and thinking.

I trawled several pages of the web and came up with this list of audio books, free and not-free:

Free audio books
www.storynory.com ( for kids, excellent, good English used)
www.librivox ( for everyone, but goodness, you really have to ferret out the good ones. Some of the readings put me to sleep. While others, like one of Beatrix Potter’s “The tailor of Gloucester” , are good.)
www.freeclassicaudiobooks.com ( monotonous, the scene here seems to be dominated by one reader.)
www. booksshouldbefree.com ( the ones here are actually librivox recordings.)

Not-free audio books
www.blackstone.com ( expensive, looks interesting)
www.talking-book-store-com (excellent recordings, excellent readings, moderately priced)
www.audible.com ( excellent recordings, a range of prices )
www.audiobookscorner.com (good , a range of prices )

Now, to sit back , relax and let the words flow over me…hah, easier said than done with two lively kids!

We’ll be doing this activity this week as we learn about how people in the past and in different cultures dye fabric and make paint.

Last month we made Sumerian clay tablets from dough. The four of us trudged to the pond near nearby where there are reeds a plenty. We pulled some reeds, cut them and the kids did some cuneiform writing on the tablets. Then we baked them in the oven.

There are about 10 kids in all, ranging from 3 to 13. We, mum, take turns to run each session, doing two- three subjects per session. We do a local foreign language each time we meet. The mom who is taking this session has been experimenting with various learning activities, from drills to songs. Another one does History and Science, another mom does Crafts and I do Geography and Books.

Geography and Books.. come to think of it, I don’t know why I came up with that.Hmm…

Well, it’s my turn next week and I’ve assigned everyone to draw maps of imaginary lands. Each map should include a cartouche ( something akin to a decorated panel containing the title of the map), a key, details concerning terrain and ta daaah…invented languages ( runes. cuneiform.etc). The kids have to present their maps , dressed up in the native clothes of these lands and cook up some adventure. I’m thinking of gallant rescues ( by princesses of course!), bungling crooks and adventure. My kids are thinking of princesses and clothes and swordfights and puppies…Nevermind, we’ll manage somehow…

Oh dear me, Joy has discovered something gooey on the dinner table and it has a greenish-grey hue and it’s the consistency of ( what kids?!)oh, glue. Yikes.

Some party games we will be having:
1. Fox and chicken: One child volunteers ( or is appointed) to be the wily Fox. One child becomes the leader- the mother hen. Everyone else is a chick and queues up – holding the waist of the child in front- behind the mother hen. The Fox has to try to tag a chick. The mother hen has to protect her brood. Once a chick is tagged, the chick becomes the Fox’s dinner and has to stand in a designated corner. The Fox has to ‘tag’ the other chicks, who by this time , should be screaming the roost down. This sound like one mean game, but there is a BRIGHT side to it! All is not lost when a chick gets tagged. The chick can actually rejoin the brood IF another chick ( one still in the ‘line’) manages to free him from the fox by touching him.

2. When the sea comes in: I got this game from a book of party games. All the kids form a circle around one child in the middle. The child in the middle is the ‘sea’. When she says , “The sea is calm”, the children walk , clockwise, calmly around her. When she says, “ The sea is stormy”, the kids run madly, clockwise, around her. When she says , “ The winds are blowing wildly”, the children wave their hands and run at top speed , clockwise , round her. I think you get the meaning. BUT when she says, “The sea is coming in !” All the children must run to the sides of the room ( if you are playing indoors) , and the sea must try to ‘tag’ a child. The one who gets tagged becomes part of the sea.

3. Passing the parcel : Need I explain ?

4. Brown and black bear: I got this game from the same party game book. One child is a brown bear, the rest are (ta daaa!) black bears. When the music plays, all these cute bears move around the room ( Please remind your children not to bite anyone. The last time I was at a friend’s house , a boy, imitating a dog, plunged his pearly whites into my jeans. ). When the music stops, all the black bears will have to flee from the rampaging brown bear. They must climb up their trees , which are actually chairs. The brown bear must try to tag a black bear before he manages to reach his tree.

Tomorrow should be loads of fun. I love those games when the kids get wet and messy such throwing water-filled balloons. But I think I don’t think I can cope with all that cleaning up right now ! I hope the food’s okay too; I’m much better at games than food prep ( thank God for bakeries and the confectioner’s !)

My kids have now taken the flu bug off me and are hosting it. I hope it clears before Joy takes her ballet exam next week.

I will be uploading the templates soon (Actually, it’s Abel who does that part. I just write.)

I have been reading some fascinating books by Francis Schaeffer, Neil Postman, Susan Wise Bauer and that wonderful woman, Jane Austen (rereading). I don’t have time to write about them now. Later, then.

So, keep a look out for the templates.