When I was a child, one of the memorable trips we took was to Nova Scotia. On the way there, my parents took me to a restaurant called The Gloucester House in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They wanted to have seafood, and they wanted their children to experience it, too. They thought of this experience as something…
As a child, I never liked feeling as if I had to be the best at whatever I was doing. So as a parent and a teacher, I always did my best to decrease pressure on children by telling them that they didn’t have to win or get an A; I just expected them to…
Today I heard that the crime rate in a newly liberated country has risen since people have gotten more rights. It has raised an issue that we’re used to in the United States: aren’t those laws that protect everyone’s rights protecting the guilty as well as the innocent? (The mirror image of that question would…
I’m sometimes bothered by the careless way people use the word “careless.” People sometimes make mistakes because they don’t care about what they’re doing, but those mistakes are not the only ones labelled “careless.” I remember caring very much about avoiding the errors my teachers labelled “careless,” and having a lot of trouble avoiding them….
There was a list of required and suggested books for introductory education courses at Beloit College when I started taking such courses. Heading the list were such titles as How Children Fail (by John Holt), Crisis in the Classroom (by Charles Silverman), and Death at an Early Age (by Jonathan Kozol). These titles alone were…
Sometimes it’s hard for me to imagine how someone could not want to sing. To me, singing is so much a part of being alive that not being able to sing or at least hear other people sing would be truly sad. So when I hear that someone doesn’t like singing, I feel as if…
It’s nice when you can do what you’re trying to do. Sometimes it’s so easy that you don’t even think about it, but sometimes it takes a lot of effort, and when you succeed, you get a really good feeling inside. Maybe other people notice your success, and congratulate you, maybe not. For some people,…
As adults, some of us develop a pretty good idea of the politics of permission. Once, for example, a fellow teacher asked for my advice about whether to ask a supervisor for permission to take a day off. I said no. I said calling in sick would be both more expedient and more polite. It…
Adults sometimes disagree with each other about how to raise children. If they don’t have the same children, their disagreements don’t have to cause problems. Or if they’re good at communicating, they can usually work it out. It’s a good idea for two adults to come to some understanding before starting to raise children together,…
I know people who are crazy about babies, and I also know people who aren’t. I’m one of the ones who aren’t. I’m glad there are babies; if it weren’t for babies, there wouldn’t be children. So to me, babies are definitely people to be welcomed, supported, respected, etc., and when I’m with babies, I…