Archive for November, 2011

Left-handed Writers

Posted by mjl in Homeschooling, Left-handed Writers on November 9, 2011

by Nan J. Barchowsky

Is your child left-handed? If he or she is young, hand dominance may not yet be evident. Watch for the hand that reaches for a toy, pushes a door open, or throws a ball. If a child, young or older, changes hands for different tasks, he or she may be ambidextrous. Many teachers, and even pediatric occupational therapists, fret over the establishment of hand dominance. Why? Adults who can work with either hand are blessed.

If you are right-handed, and teaching a left-hander you may feel unsure about how to go about it. It’s far less difficult than you may imagine.

Left-handers who write poorly are often pardoned with, “But he is left-handed.” It is not the fault of handedness. Our Western alphabet favors right-handers, but it need not be difficult for left-handers. Many write as well as right-handers. Both learn best at an early age with a good program. Nevertheless, older kids can resolve legibility and speed issues too.

Posture and paper placement are critical. A hooked wrist is hurtful if a handwriting session is prolonged. Wrists are designed to be straight most of the time. Place the paper to the student’s left and tilt it so the top of the page is tilted to the right. Sit comfortably at a table or desk, and with a straight and relaxed wrist, pull a line down toward the writer’s elbow. If the posture and paper position are good the slant of downstrokes will be forward at about 5°. The exact slant of the letters is of little importance as long as it is consistent, and not so excessive that letters become squashed.

Practice writing downstrokes for a few minutes each day. The downstrokes can join with light, drifting upward strokes. The result should look like twigs that are stuck in the ground and blown by a wind from the northwest (tilting slightly to the right). Add a few letters or words to the daily practice.
Hooked wrists result from placement of paper directly in front of the writer. Left-handers cannot see what is happening on the paper because the hand is in the way unless the wrist is turned. Writing flows from mind to paper. Letters and words, even drawings are made before the eyes see them. Nevertheless, we want to see what we have put on the paper.

Pen hold is the same for both right and left-handers, except that left-handers may place the fingers a little higher on the shaft of the writing tool. The forefinger will be about one inch from the point of a pencil. The tripod hold is the most commonly accepted pen hold. It is efficient, as it allows the most freedom of movement. The forefinger is on top of the pen or pencil with the thumb and third finger below the forefinger to support the tool.

If you, as teacher, are right-handed, it is helpful if you show your left-handed student how to sit and write. You say, “Oh no, I can’t.” Yes you can! No one is more right-handed than I, but I can sit, put the paper in proper position, hold a pencil, and try. The student may giggle or snicker at my wiggly, shaky lines. I just say, “Well, I am right-handed, so if your posture is good, and your paper is in place like this, your letters will look better than mine.” This demonstration is a benefit to the student, while it helps you to better understand the kid’s perspective.

Left-handers have a tendency to make marks from right-to-left. Sometimes this results in mirror writing. The writer can read it, but the reader cannot. Maybe no one dared correct Leonardo da Vinci, who wrote from right-to-left all his life. However, it’s best to redirect the writing so readers do not have to go to the bathroom mirror to read a message. Non-writing exercises help. It can be as simple as standing to point at any object on the left, and move the hand to the right; lower the hand and repeat. All the while the student is saying, “left-to-right, and left-to-right, and….” Do the same using the forefinger to trace patterns on a table; they can be just scribbled, wavy lines. Use the sequential downstrokes described above. Exercises should require no thought of how to form letters; it is all about flowing, directional movement.

Moving on to letters, “t” and “f” are ones to work with near the beginning of instruction. Both have crossbars that the left-hander tends to write from right-to-left. Start with a few joined downstrokes; then write “t” and “f”. Now, add “tie, tub, fine, fur.” With each word, let the crossbar move to the letter that follows and join to it. This is not only good practice for left-to-right directionality; it is the most efficient way for anyone to write “t” and “f”. With long words, one does not need to remember to go back and cross “t” in a word such as tintinnabulation, nor will the crossbar be misplaced.

If the child is young and shows a strong preference for the left-hand, there are a lot of pre-writing exercises that may seem babyish to older kids, but are fun for little ones. Pretend to direct traffic from west-to-east. Make it fun by giving the child a flashlight in a darkened room so he or she can see the pattern of light. Make a paper airplane to hold or fly across a room from left-to-right; let it land down on the right. Scribble from left-to-right in finger-paint, rice, sand or chocolate pudding. With your finger, trace horizontal lines on a child’s back. Often children have great ideas for practice.

Always speak the action. Both parent or teacher, and child should do this to reinforce habits of correct movement. Verbal reinforcement is a major factor in learning to write, and for remediation. It is difficult to move from right-to-left if you are telling yourself “left-to-right.” The sooner a student internalizes the movements for letter formation, the sooner he or she will be writing automatically. The goal is to put messages onto paper that travel from mind to fingers without thought of how to form letters, or numerals.

Right-handed teachers are often unnecessarily apprehensive about teaching left-handers. Teaching, learning or remediation is not insurmountable. In fact, with some forethought, it can be nearly as easy as right-handers teaching right-handers. N.J.B.

Nan Jay Barchowsky is the owner of Swansbury, Inc., POB 117, Aberdeen, MD 21001, USA, 410-272-0836; http://www.BFHhandwriting.com

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Transforming Mush Into Mush

Posted by mjl in Education, Homeschooling on November 4, 2011

By Pat Farenga

Talk about straight shooting – or putting your foot in your mouth – I’m not sure how to categorize this story.

The University of Richmond, VA, is one of the nation’s costliest schools, but a few years ago, its president did not hesitate to chasten the poor quality of its graduates. According to Zinie Chen Sampson of the Associated Press, William E. Cooper said the following during a past “state of the university speech:”

“The entering quality of our student body needs to be much higher if we are going to transform bright minds into great achievers, instead of transforming mush into mush, and I mean it…”.

He later apologized for his remarks and said they were misinterpreted . . . At a home basketball game shortly after his speech, some Richmond fans wore buttons proclaiming, “Mushheads Unite.”

The president’s remarks are really nothing new: Educators from Ancient Greece to modern America have always complained about the poor state of its current students and schools. After all, this complaint is good for business – “Keep them coming to school; they’re so hard to educate that they need school now more than ever!” It’s good for educators’ self-esteem: “Those kids just aren’t making the effort they need to learn what I’m teaching them.” And, complaining about students is much safer than complaining about poor teachers, teaching methods, or other school conditions because students don’t vote or pay salaries. So I’m not surprised at the president’s bold comments about his alumni.

What I find amazing is how people in politics and education continue to make this argument decade after decade, in effect failing students rather than failing schools, and why students and their families continue to accept the blame. Related to this is an important educational issue that almost never gets explored: Are schools really powerful institutions that transform “bright minds into great achievers?” Why can schools get credit for turning already smart kids into “great achievers” but they blame the student when school’s alchemy doesn’t transform the leaden student into the golden student?

John Amos Comenius (1592 – 1670) is often referred to as “the father of modern education.” According to the New Standard Encyclopedia, “He was a pioneer in improving teaching methods by the use of vivid, interesting materials. He broke with the custom of teaching in Latin, using instead his students’ native language. Comenius added courses in singing, arts and handicrafts, science and social studies to the school curriculum.” I also found in this entry that “In 1642 Comenius went to Sweden to reform that nation’s school system…” Isn’t it amazing how schools are always being reformed throughout history, yet educationists insist that today’s students aren’t as smart as previous generations?

I also learned, from Ivan Illich’s work, that Comenius had a motto: “To teach everybody everything perfectly.” Knowing from my experience how hard it can be to teach a child math, or to help an elderly person learn to use a computer, I think Comenius is, at the least, overly-enthusiastic with this claim. However, when I learned from Illich that Comenius was also an alchemist, one who believed in and sought the secret – referred to as “The Philosopher’s Stone” – that would transform lead into gold, I gained an understanding into why his motto underlies his work and most modern theory and practice of education. Comenius’ claim that everyone can be taught perfectly suits the model of schooling as a factory that transforms the raw power of human beings into knowledge commodities that in turn drive our national economy. But, as the second part of the president of the University of Richmond’s statement makes clear, what if schooling is just a matter of “garbage in, garbage out?” What if the educational alchemy of schooling is no more than empty rituals?

Opening that discussion makes everyone uncomfortable, not the least reason for this discomfort being that millions of jobs and billions of dollars hinge on making sure education is provided to the masses, so why rock that boat? However, the mere act of homeschooling opens up a dialog about what it means to learn in a society that considers education to primarily be a commodity purchased from experts. Every homeschooling parent is open proof that one need not be high priest of educational alchemy to help children learn, and the educational alchemists are nervous about this.

Rather than give up the search for the Philosopher’s Stone though, educationists continue to seek the one best way to educate children in school. Using pharmaceuticals, computers, brain scans, behavior modification, legal action, and massive media campaigns, the education alchemists insist that more and more years of schooling, more and more tests, more and more personality and psychological profiles, will enable them to turn all children into good citizens (the legal rationale for compulsory education) or, in the code of today’s consumer mentality, “great achievers.”

Homeschooling parents, some with no more than a high school degree, help their children find work worth doing, get into college and university, and find their place as good citizens and great achievers in today’s world. Homeschoolers don’t use the same curricula and methods as one another, let alone the schools, yet they have proven success. An entire generation has been homeschooled by now, and homeschooling continues to grow in popularity because it works, not because it is supported by educators, political parties, or big businesses.

This is the complaint educationists often make against homeschoolers: That we don’t know what we’re doing because we don’t have all the training and facilities that conventional teachers have. However, we’re not teaching 15 – 30 kids in a classroom, under pressure to complete units or lessons by certain dates regardless of how many children actually understand what is being taught. Homeschoolers do not need the same skills and materials as classroom teachers because our functions are so much different from classroom teachers. We are living and learning with our children and can be parents first and foremost, not instructors trying to keep a job for next year. We can shift gears and focus on new interests; we can act as facilitators and hire instructors or purchase courses when and if we need them. Many homeschoolers do use conventional school techniques and materials when they begin homeschooling, because we all tend to teach the way we were taught. If conventional school methods work for you in your home and your family is happy with them, there’s no problem. But if school methods prove to be boring or unworkable in your home situation, you are free to do what classroom teachers can not do: You can easily and readily find other ways and schedules to accomplish those goals, you can switch or drop those goals, or you can just go for a walk with your kids and talk about what you want to do together. There is no evidence that people who are homeschooled are more behind or more disadvantaged than people who attend conventional school.

Indeed, in the same month that president Cooper noted that his school was merely “transforming mush into mush” two studies appeared about declines in college graduates’ literacy. After more than a decade of national and state standardized education reforms, the only things that have improved appear to be the profit margins of educational testing companies. One study, conducted by the American Institutes for Research and reported by Ben Feller for the Associated Press, says that “…50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees, or summarize the results of a survey about parental involvement in school…The students did the worst on matter involving math, according to the study.”

The other study, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, reported by Lois Romano of The Washington Post notes: “…The reading proficiency of college graduates has declined in the past decade . . . While more Americans are graduating from college, and more than ever are applying for admission, far fewer are leaving higher education with the skills needed to comprehend routine data . . . The declining impact of education on the adult population was the biggest surprise for us, and we just don’t have a good explanation,” said Mark S. Schneider, commissioner of education statistics . . . What’s disturbing is that the assessment is not designed to test your understanding of Proust, but to test your ability to read labels,” he added.

After years of standardizing education in the name of high expectations, making college the ultimate goal for children, and viewing our children as resources to be developed for our economy, like oil and gold, we are still left with the fact that most children and teenagers do not respond well to this treatment. Test scores have risen, diplomas are granted, more people than ever are applying for college admission, yet the evidence is still there: We aren’t much smarter for all these expensive efforts.

Why do we blame ourselves instead of our ideas about schooling for these failures? Indeed, as these studies suggest, the treatment our schools proffer – more intensive schooling — might even be counter-productive! As homeschooling shows, we can conceptualize the field of education as akin to anthropology or gardening instead of a knowledge factory or alchemy. Mushheads unite! P.F. ■

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Since the early 1980s, Patrick Farenga has been one of the foremost modern proponents of homeschooling, having homeschooled his three children with wife, Day, and having worked with John Holt, pioneer advocate of unschooling and publisher of Growing Without Schooling, one of the field’s first nationwide publications. After Mr. Holt’s death, Patrick took over GWS until it ceased publishing in 2001. Patrick continues to write and speak extensively on alternative education and homeschooling. For more of Mr. Farenga’s insight, please visit his website, http://www.patfarenga.com/.

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Berkshares – A Revolutionary Economic Response from the Cradle of the Revolution!

Posted by mjl in American, economy on November 4, 2011

By Emerson Sandow

It does not surprise one that a revolutionary idea in dealing with a sagging economy comes out of the Berkshire region of Western Massachusetts. This land of beautiful rolling hills and quiet valleys lies between Boston and Albany, NY, and saw much secret activity during the pre-Revolutionary period of America. Many of the Founders traveled through – and stayed overnight – in the Berkshires’ many inns and no doubt plans were whispered that ultimately gave us our United States.

Now, a group of businessmen have devised a brilliant but simple plan to stimulate and protect the commerce of local merchants and services: BerkShares! Berkshares keep the “money” in the local pockets and provide a slight discount to users over US dollars. For instance, a $1 coffee costs 1 Berkshare, even though the Berkshare is valued at $.90. Of course, this is hardly felt, and the important factor is that the value of Berkshares can be controlled by the people of the region, while Washington and the Federal Reserve control the value of US dollars.

The organizers of Berkshares are contemplating an expansion – they have five local banks already partnering with them and they envision checking accounts, ATMs, electronic transfers of funds and even loan programs to fund local businesses’ creating the products that are used locally. In keeping the flavor of locality, each of the five denomination of Berkshares bear the likeness of a local “hero”: Illustrator, Norman Rockwell; “Moby Dick” author, Herman Melville; the Berkshire Mohicans (an Algonquin nation that was prominent in the area of the upper Hudson); African-American intellectual leader, W.E.B. DuBois and the late Robyn Van En, widely acknowledged as the first person to create a community supported agriculture (CSA) project in North America, beginning in 1985.

Around the country there are other local groups with similar programs, such as California, Kansas, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin. One of the oldest of these is Ithaca Hours, which went into circulation in 1991 in Ithaca , New York .

Let Berkshares inspire you to create a local currency or barter system for your community by visiting www.berkshares.org and seeing what these hearty descendants of the Revolutionaries are up to! E.S.