Citing the need to “prepare children for college and career,” the interim principal of Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, NY has canceled the 2014 kindergarten end-of-year school play. Here’s the text of the letter parents received, as published in the Washington Post. It was signed by the principal and all four of the school’s kindergarten teachers:

April 25, 2014

Dear Kindergarten Parents and Guardians,
We hope this letter serves to help you better understand how the demands of the 21st century are changing schools, and, more specifically, to clarify, misperceptions about the Kindergarten show. It is most important to keep in mind is [sic] that this issue is not unique to Elwood. Although the movement toward more rigorous learning standards has been in the national news for more than a decade, the changing face of education is beginning to feel unsettling for some people. What and how we teach is changing to meet the demands of a changing world.
The reason for eliminating the Kindergarten show is simple. We are responsible for preparing children for college and career with valuable lifelong skills and know that we can best do that by having them become strong readers, writers, coworkers and problem solvers. Please do not fault us for making professional decisions that we know will never be able to please everyone. But know that we are making these decisions with the interests of all children in mind.

Did anyone bother to notice that these are five-year-old children? What happened here: Did the children not perform well on a standardized test, and this is their punishment? Did some administrator decide that dressing up as a flower, singing a springtime song, and/or learning a little dance might not look good on a five-year-old’s college resume and could prevent her from getting into the Ivy League? Do the school and parents really believe that a few more hours of rote memorization and test prep will make a difference in these children’s lives? This kind of thinking is the height of absurdity. But, unfortunately, it’s just an extreme example of the way thing seem to be going in what passes for education in 21st century America.

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Some call them the princess wars. I prefer calling them the pink wars.

Princess or pink.  Does it matter? When you’re blessed with giving birth to a baby girl, you know you’re going to have to decide eventually which side you’re on. Mothers, you know what I’m talking about. This isn’t a war of choice. It’s a war that’s thrust upon us. Some of us choose to fight. A lot more choose appeasement.

Let’s not fool ourselves. If we choose to engage, the pink wars are nothing less than a fight for the hearts and minds of our daughters. The battlefield is made up of one uncomfortable confrontation after another, staged mostly in the privacy of our homes. (Although skirmishes often erupt during shopping expeditions that place us in discomforting proximity to the pink aisles in stores, supermarkets, and pharmacies.)

This is a fight that takes commitment and stamina. It takes uncompromising stubbornness. It’s a war waged on a psychological battlefront that demands a battery of strategies. Most of all, it’s a war that demands that we steel our hearts and resist the tears and the pleading and the anger.

I can imagine some of you reading this and thinking, isn’t this war-metaphor thing a bit overstated? Unfortunately, it’s not.

At the center of every battle in this never-ending war is saying “no” to pinkishness. It’s learning to say “no” to toys, clothing, and school supplies designed as sugary, girly confections and marketed as essential accessories to those who are willing to pay the price to allow their daughters to live inside the princess bubble. Don’t forget that these objects of desire are honed to perfection by designers, marketers, and psychologists employed by an industry that earns more than $4 billion a year. And the goal? Of course, the goal is to exploit for financial gain our girls’ fragile longings for belonging—for their need to fit in. By the time most American girls reach the age of five, most families have thrown in the towel and become active enablers of their daughters’ addiction to princess and pink.

Believe me.  Resisting the seductions of the pink-princess industry can be the most challenging part of a parent’s job. When my daughter was at the exploitable age, this meant saying “no” to Barbie. “No” to Spice Girls. “No” to Disney princesses and the whole Disney empire. (If I were asked to nominate a single entity for committing heinous psychological crimes against the humanity of girls, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to point the finger at the Disney Corporation.) I said “no” so many times that, at a certain point, my daughter surrendered the fight and the pleading stopped.

Did my daughter satisfy her cravings in other people’s homes? Probably. But in our home the lines were drawn. My husband and I erected a wall between our family and the battery of stereotyped images and objects thrown at us. Our Pink Curtain held back a marketing juggernaut that most families seemed to ignore.

My daughter didn’t know it at the time, but I saw myself as a sentinel standing guard, protecting her from forces intent on trivializing her childhood. My daughter didn’t know it then, but she and I were actually in the fight together. We were comrades in arms staving off a cultural and marketing tsunami that could have overwhelmed us—but didn’t.

Did my daughter like what I was doing at the time? You bet she didn’t. The price she paid was isolation. She didn’t know how to talk pink. She wasn’t allowed to dress pink. Her behavior was never pink enough to gain entry into the pink crowd. But because of all of that, she was—and now is—her own person, fashioned by her own choices, unique personality, and quirky upbringing.

Yes, for a while she paid the price. For a time, she became an outsider, just like I was when I was growing up. But what can I tell you? I survived. My daughter survived and thrived. She found good friends and a community of like-minded women. She is now a confident, smart, self-possessed, freethinking, creative woman. Did she become who she is today because of our family’s commitment to our own brand of anti-pink/anti-princess politics? Not entirely. But, yes, partly.

Our family’s battle was fought in the 1990s. To this day I believe we may have been the only Barbie/Spice Girls/Disney–free zone in our Brooklyn neighborhood. Now that my daughter’s in her twenties, she’s declared her intention to become a proud veteran (and victor) of the pink wars herself—when and if she’s lucky enough one day to experience the joys of having her own daughter.

Now that we’re in a new century, haven’t things changed? You must be kidding.  In the 90s, I thought we’d fought the pink war to end all pink wars. What a fool I was. Did I think it would end there?

In fact, the war goes on and gets ever more insidious all the time. The pink-girly-toy complex has joined forces with powerful media outlets spewing out nonstop girly garbage. Marketing of children’s play is more gender segregated than ever before. If you can stand it, stroll through the aisles of any big-box store and take a close look at what populates the pink aisle. It’s enough to give a twentieth-century feminist a case of the hives.

And what about Barbie? Shouldn’t she have disappeared into obscurity by now? Sadly, Barbie is still the most potent symbol of how corporations make money by convincing our daughters that their destiny is to mold themselves to fit into a big-boobed, narrow-wasted fantasy box. Mattel’s new #unapologetic Barbie marketing campaign, launched on the swimsuit-issue cover of Sports Illustrated, says it all, doesn’t it?

And why am I thinking about this all these years later? It’s because I stumbled upon a new company founded by a young woman who trained as an engineer at Stanford University and became interested in designing a new line of toys for girls. Debbie Sterling founded Goldie Blox, a company manufacturing and selling interactive toys for what Sterling refers to as female innovators of the future. Sterling hopes her toys will engage a skill set that will inspire girls and give them the confidence to become scientists and engineers.

Unfortunately, all is not perfect in Goldie Blox land. For whatever reason, Sterling decided to embellish her innovative toys with girly colors and frill. (Go figure.) Still, take a look at Goldie Blox’s clever and funny video that shows girls how they can rise up and ditch their sparkle toys and become something more than just pink.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZVCC83cDch0

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Recently the American people were treated to a moment of sweet absurdity on the floor of the United States Senate.  You know what I’m talking about.  It was that historic moment at 8:06 pm on September 24, 2013, that will live forever in our collective imagination. It was a moment that will prompt Americans in years to come to ask one another, “Where were you when . . .?”

It was a time when Americans across the continent rushed to pick up their remotes to change the channel, asking themselves, “ Is this C-SPAN or Comedy Central?”

How can any of us ever forget those precious, never-to-be-forgotten moments when Senator Ted Cruz went all squishy as he interrupted his non-filibuster filibuster of the healthcare law to read a bedtime story to his daughters? (Will any parent who witnessed Cruz’s stunt ever be able to read “Green Eggs and Ham” with a straight face again?)

In the interest of extending such delicious farce a little longer, here is a list of children’s books that might interest other politicians who might wake up one morning, look in the bathroom mirror, and think to themselves, “Gee, maybe it’s my turn to debase the serious work of the government.  Why should Teddy be allowed to play all by himself?” So, here are suggestions for some of our favorite and not-so-favorite politicians because, who knows, Teddy might have started a trend.

Mitch McConnell.  Start rehearsing “Yurtle the Turtle.”

Rand Paul. “Chicken Little” clucking “the sky is falling” will supply you with a new delusion after you’ve run out of your own.

John Boehner. Sorry, just take a glance in the mirror and then pick up “Color Me Orange.”

Paul Ryan. If being the empty vessel of the 2012 election wasn’t enough for you,  why not just remind us again and read “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?

Michele Bachmann. Just give it your best witch impression and lash into “Hansel and Gretel.”

Sarah Palin.  Please, spare us our national embarrassment. Stay home. Stand in front of your full-length mirror, gaze adoringly at yourself, and read “Gertrude McFuzz” to the image in the glass.

Elizabeth Warren. Let those financial bigwigs know that you’ll never give up just like the brave and plucky character in “Brave Irene.”

Bernie Sanders. How about castigating those who play the discrimination game and insist they sit through “The Sneetches” from first page to last?

Nancy Pelosi. Blast those Republicans out of the chamber with “Horton Hatches the Egg.”  They’ll know what you’re talking about when you get to the part where Horton declares, “I meant what I said and I said what I meant, And an elephant’s (editor’s note: donkey’s) faithful, one hundred percent!”

Barack Obama. Why should Congress have all the fun? Leave the teleprompter in the White House. Then pick up a copy of the story of the wily and intelligent dentist of “Doctor De Soto” and his nemesis, the hungry fox. (No secret code here. We all know which party wants to swallow you whole!)

The post Read me another: Children’s literature for politicians appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The massacre in Aurora, CO stands alone as the largest act of domestic violence in the history of the United States. It took a day, but the debate and dialogue about guns finally was initiated. We once again are discussing how to identify and then control individuals who are mentally and emotionally unstable and pose threats to engage in horrific acts of violence.

Many journalists have suggested that we pay less attention to the perpetrators of these crimes because they are not deserving of the publicity that they often seek. Rather these journalists suggest and have been engaged in focusing on the victims in Aurora and elsewhere.

The families of many of those who were killed in Aurora have been interviewed. Dozens of others who were wounded have also been queried. One theme that continues to be present is how many of those who went to see the midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” is how many individuals and families who went to the midnight showing brought along infants, toddlers, and other young children. Dozens of adults who have been interviewed have talked about how their first actions were to protect their children, and fortunately most of them were successful in doing so.

However, a lingering question is why did so many parents bring their young children to a midnight showing of such a movie? Unless the children are in the habit of staying up after midnight on a regular basis, bringing them to a 12:00 AM show clearly upsets their sleep cycle. This can take days to remedy and clearly diminishes the alertness and calmness of the children the next day.

“The Dark Knight Rises” can be a haunting movie. It is loud; visually it paints a dark image of life, and there is considerable violence. Early childhood experiences become indelibly imprinted in the memories, perspectives, and values of children. Do we want our children to literally and figuratively see the sordid side of life? Don’t we want them to have as long a period of innocence as possible? Don’t we want them to look at electronic media as a means of learning basic fundamentals about language and positive human relations? If so, then it would be far more productive for the children to be watching PBS and viewed selected DVDs rather than going to midnight movies that can be frightening and certainly do not emphasize skill building.

While it is doubtful that any scientific studies have been done about who brings children to midnight and other late night movies, it is likely that it is individuals and families that financially struggle. They simply cannot afford baby-sitters, at least on a regular basis. If a baby-sitter charges $7.50 an hour, what would they charge for their services from midnight to 3:00 AM? It would be reasonable to double their fees. For a family desperately trying to make ends meet, $45.00 for a baby-sitter for one night would in all likelihood be prohibitive.

So what alternatives are there, particularly for those who really want to see a particular movie? First, they need not go to the midnight showing. The next evening it will be showing at 7:00 PM and the baby-sitting cost will be cut in half. There are some afternoon showings so that parents can easily take their children. While this does not address the substance of what the movie might be doing to the children, it eliminates the cost of a baby-sitter.

Our population is such that there will be millions who want to see movies like “The Dark Knight Rises.” So the option of diminishing the demand by the public for such movies is not feasible. We have to live with the reality that many in our population like those films that are dark and violent.

Another option, one that will drive conservatives nuts, would be for the government to provide free or inexpensive day care for children whose parent(s) who go these movies at reasonable hours. It would cost all of us as taxpayers, but perhaps save us money in the long-run because children would be less jaded and perhaps better educated. It might also spare us another perpetrator so that there are not more victims twenty years hence.

In a day in which Republicans oppose Head Start, school lunches, etc., this idea is extremely unrealistic. However, progressives need to continue to think creatively about what can best serve our society, particularly those who can least help themselves such as infants and toddlers. Violent movies will be around; there will be demand to see them; and parents will feel that there is nothing wrong with taking them to such movies. We need new ideas to overcome the outcome of this formula. Again, it is up to progressives to think creatively.

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America has one of the highest rates of incarceration for juveniles in the world – as of 2008, the US rate was five times that of South Africa, which ranks second. This is an expensive policy: Illinois’ annual cost of juvenile incarceration jumped from $71,000 per child to $92,000 per child over the last few years. At Murphysboro, the cost soars to $147,000 per child because the  facility currently runs at less than 50% occupancy.

Those imprisoned are frequently jailed inappropriately:  Up to 70% of children imprisoned in Illinois have a mental illness diagnosis. This fact is particularly disturbing given the possibility of suicides among juvenile offenders, when combined with jailer-to- inmate ratios as high as 60 to 1, instead of the recommended 10 to 1.

The high cost of incarcerating young offenders is aggravated by the “get tough” policy of throwing any and all offenders into prison for as long as possible. This has led to the construction of more facilities, which in turn has led to officials leaning on incarceration as a primary policy strategy, because “that is what we’ve got.”

This policy works poorly for the offenders and for the general public, because imprisoning a juvenile is associated with higher chances of reoffending. It is important to remember that children who are incarcerated for offense that are sometimes not offenses for adults (known as a status offense), will be returning to their communities sooner or later, usually sooner.

Illinois separated the adult and juvenile portions of the justice system in an attempt to deal with the high recidivism rate among juvenile offenders, along with the high costs of incarceration. This separation has not included the probation officers, meaning that officers who mainly deal with adult offenders also work with young offenders with an entirely separate set of needs. Many youths in the system do not have basic life skills that are taken for granted in adult populations and non-offending youth populations.

The juvenile detention system of Illinois is accused of being particularly filthy and dangerous for the youth detained in it. Cook County’s juvenile detention facility has had lawsuits, due to violent behavior of staff towards inmates, as well as violence between inmates. Children do not have access to clean clothing and are frequently exposed to rodents and insects. The American Civil Liberties Union attributes conditions to the use of the facility as a form of patronage, with little interest in correcting management issues. The ACLU is pursuing lawsuits aimed at conditions in the juvenile justice system in an attempt to force corrections to the issues.

There are good models for reducing recidivism , costs and actually offering assistance to youth in trouble. Simply assessing children who are being placed on probation for mental illness has been shown to reduce recidivism. This saves society money, reduces crime and benefits the children and families who receive the resources needed to relieve the worst effects of mental illness. Redeploy Illinois also attempts to interrupt the patterns of incarceration for at-risk youth by connecting children in the system with the resources they need to succeed and avoid incarceration.

Avoiding the incarceration of juveniles has the potential to save states billions of dollars, at a time when budgets are straining to provide essential services to citizens. The attitude of “lock them up and throw away the key” has led to unsafe facilities that do not prepare youth for their eventual release, meaning higher crime rates for the community. Unsafe and filthy facilities have resulted in lawsuits that will cost the citizens of Illinois, and other states, millions more in costs. There are better alternatives available, but there seems to be little political will to do what is necessary to fix a broken system.

The post Kids in prison: Illinois’ expensive, dangerous and failed policy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

When you’re a parent, there is plenty to feel guilty about.  My kids don’t eat enough vegetables, I don’t always  keep my cool during temper tantrums (I’m pretty sure there is surveillance footage from the parking lot of Shop N Save to verify this), and there will never be enough money in their college fund to ensure they don’t graduate with a mountain of debt.  But one item on my own parental guilt list that I’ve been dwelling on lately is that we haven’t done a particularly good job introducing our daughters to current events.  When I was growing up, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was on our breakfast table every morning, and Tom Brokaw was on our television every night at 5:30.  It wasn’t the New York Times or the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, but it was enough to, almost by osmosis, make me think from a very young age about what was going on in the world outside my neighborhood.  One of my first vivid memories was watching the American hostages being released from Iran on TV.  I was five.

But the way we get news has changed radically since the 1980s.  My husband and I never watch the nightly newscast on NBC, ABC, or CBS, and we stopped having the newspaper delivered a few years back.  We get our news in a very solitary way, reading articles on various websites and then reading longer, more in-depth articles in the New Yorker.  Our daughters (ages 4, 5, and 7) don’t see or read news coverage on a regular basis themselves.  We talk about politics or world events at the dinner table or at family gatherings, but they don’t have daily doses of news in the same way my husband and I did as children.

So, when we had the unusually lucky circumstance last Friday of both my husband being off work and my daughters being off school, we thought it would be a good idea for the girls to see some news firsthand: we headed down to Occupy St. Louis at Kiener Plaza.  My husband and I had followed the spread of the Occupy movement from New York to cities worldwide, and supported the idea of a populist movement from the left.  But we hadn’t seen it for ourselves, so we picked up a case of bottled water and some snacks to donate to the Occupiers and headed down.

On the way, we talked to the girls about what Occupy St. Louis was about and how it was part of a larger movement.  In language we hoped at least our oldest two would understand, we talked about why people would take the time to set up camp in the middle of downtown St. Louis and what exactly it was they were trying to draw attention to.  The girls asked some good questions, “What are taxes?  What do they pay for?” “Who decides how much money people get at their jobs?” and it was humbling to fumble around trying to give clear explanations to them.

Parking was easy, the weather was nice, and when we got down to Kiener Plaza the mood was…serene.  Subdued.  Peaceful.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Occupy St. Louis was a far cry from the angry, smelly mob of loud-mouths that certain parts of the blogosphere had written about.  There were a lot of tents set up, and posters and signs were on just about every available pillar.  Most of the occupiers seemed to be meeting in the center of Kiener Plaza and talking calmly about strategies and ideas; they were holding what they called their General Assembly.  No one rushed over to us to ask us why we were there, but there was a welcome table with a couple brochures explaining what the movement was about.  We brought the water and food we were donating to a tent set up to accept donations, and then we walked slowly around the periphery of the plaza, looking at all the posters.  We got pretty bogged down trying to explain a poster about CEO pay to the girls, but they were definitely interested in what was going on.

The internal organization of Occupy St. Louis was impressive—in addition to a welcome table, there was a kitchen/food area, a media/work area, and (as I mentioned before) a tent set up to accept donated items.  The people who were not participating in the General Assembly sat around enjoying the fall day, said hi as we walked by, and made casual conversation.

Kids being kids, my daughters were drawn to the steps by the fountain at Kiener Plaza and immediately began running up and down them and playing.  While they did this my husband and I had a strange, rambling, but pleasant conversation with a man from Oregon who, like us, seemed to be there just to see what was going on.  After a while, we decided to head back to the car and get some ice cream at Crown Candy before heading home.

There was little doubt in my mind that my daughters would remember the ice cream at Crown Candy more than our relatively brief trip to Occupy St. Louis.   But I was pleased that the girls’ first trip to a demonstration was a positive one.  On the news, demonstrations seem loud and scary, but Occupy St. Louis was a model for “peaceful assembly.”  I hoped the images of people sitting, talking earnestly about issues, saying casual hellos to those walking by would stick with them.

But you never really know what lessons your kids will learn from a particular experience, or if they’ll learn any at all.  I doubt my parents were conscious of the fact that I was riveted by the video of the hostages being released back in 1981—they were too busy taking it in themselves.  And so it is with Occupy St. Louis.  I was gratified, though, when I listened in on a conversation my sister had with my oldest daughter later that night.  She was asking my seven year-old what she had remembered from the visit to Occupy St. Louis, and my daughter said, “I remember a poster of a skinny bald guy that said, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’  That was cool.”   If my seven year-old can retain the spirit of that famous quote from Gandhi, then our little family field trip to Occupy St. Louis was time incredibly well spent.

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I was pretty content in my younger conservative days. I don’t know if that was a reflection of political apathy, ignorance, or naivete on my part; I had an abundance of all the above. I also had religion, a decent education, and a narrow view of the world. When I started adding kids to the mix, everything changed in unexpected ways.

Being from a conservative, politically mixed family in small town Missouri meant that “family values” were most often associated with religious Republican families. It was with some trepidation that I evolved into the liberal stay-at-home suburban St. Louis mom I am now. I was a pro-death penalty, pro-guns, anti-gay marriage, pro-life, church-going conservative Democrat. It sounds unbelievable, even to me.  I hold the complete opposite viewpoints 15 years later.

What some of my liberal peers don’t always understand is that being conservative doesn’t necessarily mean emotional detachment or uncaring. I cared as much then as I do now. Shortly before getting married, my then-boyfriend and I once took in a perfect stranger who lost her apartment when her roommates suddenly moved out. She stayed with us a few weeks until she was on her feet and was unwittingly an accomplice to losing my religion, but that is another story.

We gave rides to homeless hitchhikers, gave our meager spare dollars to charitable causes, volunteered time, and stopped to help stranded motorists. Not much has changed in that respect. Then, as now, we couldn’t look desperation in the face and keep walking.

The pivotal moment in personal politics

For a time after our first baby joined the family, we closed ranks. As a new parent, my priorities changed abruptly; most of them becoming centered on someone other than myself. I started to think more about the political and global issues that affected my daughter, the choices she would have, the legacy my generation would leave for our children’s children. Having children gave me a sense of responsibility for others, which is different than simply caring and in many ways a lot tougher.

When our second child was not yet two years old, terrorists attacked and towers were toppled. Terrified and heartbroken, we lived through the horror of the attacks and weeks following shell-shocked and out of sorts. It wasn’t until President Bush announced we were going to war that the fog began to lift.

I started thinking, “It could have been my husband or my children who were victims of the attacks.” Or it could be my children going off to war. It wasn’t. They were others’ husbands, wives, daughters, and sons. That too horrified me and filled me with apprehension about the wars.

The “war on terror” stopped making any sense to me around the time I became more fearful for the children of Iraq and Afghanistan than for my own. It occurred to me that we might seem like terrorists to them with our tanks and missiles, night raids, and mortar shells. Could it be possible that everything those children knew and trusted and took for granted was suddenly and irrevocably shattered? Were their parents distraught with helplessness and loss? I knew the feeling.

As my awareness grew and my perceptions of the world changed, so did the way I interacted with the world. One of my favorite sayings is “think globally, act locally”. That used to be a foreign concept to me. I was thinking locally, acting locally, and primarily helping those in my direct line of sight. That was fine for the smaller community we were part of, but what of the rest of the world? If I cared and felt responsible for everyone, I needed to think globally while acting locally.

What being a Liberal is to me

Enter the pigeon-holed liberal values of environmentalism, peace, human rights, and freedom. These are things I not only care about but issues that affect everyone. Certainly these are things I want my children to be aware of. Not that family values, tradition, and community service are bad, but they stopped being enough for me. Some of these values weren’t a good fit for a conservative like me. Not many of my former conservative peers were on board with women’s reproductive choices and LGBT equality, for example. Who else cared and wanted to do something about it?

I began to see that conservative ideology tends to be expressed in ways that are exclusive, not inclusive, and thus of the localized variety. Others’ idea of what family values meant no longer meshed with the things my family values, such as tolerance.

People who knew us pre-parenthood thought we were naïve and idealistic. Funny so many of the same people still think that way, though their reasoning has changed. They don’t seem to understand that being liberal doesn’t mean I gave up on family values and lost my sense of community. My family and community expanded to include several billion more people, so if anything those things became much more important.

We still care about tradition, which is why we’ve started so many new ones. We still help the local community through volunteering and donating. And a few times, buying that homeless guy lunch. Who said there’s no such thing as a free lunch? (Disclaimer: I plead ignorance of any past, present, or future ordinances against feeding the homeless in public)

The process of going from point A on the political spectrum to point Liberal was completely natural. Because evolution is a slow but steady process, my opinions and beliefs are always changing with new input. And new kids; we have four now. I’m always going to be grateful to them for rocking my political world.

An aside for the Todd Akin’s of the world: liberalism is first and foremost a compassionate ideology, not dogma. Like it or not, government is the means through which ideologies of all types are shared and spread. And whether I like it or not, that includes some ideologies with narrow and limited scope. We all have an opportunity and a duty to promote tolerance and unity. As a public servant, you can do that simply by hearing what all of your constituents have to say. What have you got to lose?

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