Large Print Edition of my blog …

 … courtesy of Daisy. >^..^< (She stepped on something behind the monitor.)

Left Behind?

I have been exceedingly disappointed with the Obama Administration's stance on education. Rather than reaffirming support for public education, this president -- with former "CEO" of Chicago schools Arne Duncan at his side -- has been pushing harder for so-called "school choice" and reinforcing the more punitive pieces of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, formerly No Child Left Behind.) As an educator this upsets me so much, but it is difficult to articulate all of the ways in which I find it abhorrent.

I subscribe to a listserv called Public Education Network (PEN) but I rarely make the time to look at it. Sneaking a peek this morning, I was reminded why I should be paying attention. There was a link to the Washington Post's education column "The Answer Sheet", with the headline Christian Churches Oppose Race To The Top, Obama Blueprint: 

Here is an extraordinary letter that should erase any doubt that opposition to the Obama administration's $4 billion Race to the Top is wide and deep.

Sent recently to President Obama and U.S. lawmakers by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, a community of 36 communions with a combined membership of 45 million people, this letter expresses deep concern about the education priorities of Race to the Top and of Obama's “blueprint” for education reform.

It criticizes the administration's effort to push states to increase the number of charter schools, its plan to turn some of the federal money used to help poor children into competitive grants, its punitive approach to dealing with low-performing schools, and the "ugly" demonization of public school teachers.

This Pastoral Letter is so absolutely spot-on, I wanted to stand up and cheer. I urge you to read it in its entirety. The thing is though, it came out on May 18, and this is the first I have seen it. Its content needs to be shouted from rooftops. Members of Congress need to read it. Dismantling public schools not only undermines our alleged democracy, but Obama's blueprint for education hurts the very children that everyone claims to care the most about.

Book Review: Ash

Ash by Malinda Lo is a novel-length retelling of Cinderella for young adult readers. Many of the elements of the plot will be recognizable: Aisling (nicknamed Ash) loses her beloved mother, her father remarries a proud woman with two daughters of her own, her father dies leaving her at the mercy of the stepmother. There are differences as well, including a subtext about conflict between the old ways still practiced among the people of the North where Aisling has grown up and the "modern" thinking in the more developed cities of the South. While some people choose to dismiss it as superstition, in Aisling's world the lines between waking and dreaming, real world and the fairy realm, are very much blurred. The magic isn't identified as good or bad, it is simply there. There are also some significant differences from Cinderella which I will not disclose here.

It took me a little while to get into Ash, and there were times when I bogged down in Lo's descriptive text. Now that I have finished it and am reflecting on it as a whole, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is very well written. Retellings of fairy tales are a genre of fantasy unto themselves. If you enjoy reading them, you will probably like Ash.


Recommended for young teens and up. There is some sexual innuendo, but nothing explicit.

Angst

I am struggling with something. It has to do with money, and I have a very complicated and angst-ridden relationship with money (and those whom I perceive to have money.) My 14-year old daughter worked for 2 weeks at a summer camp which she has attended before as a camper. Later in the summer they will have a program for teen campers. Tuition is out of our price range: close to $2000. Last week when I picked our daughter up for a night off, she mentioned that there was still space in the teen camp, that she really wanted to go, and that the directors had told her that there was scholarship money available; we had only to apply.

This week I received an email, and then a phone call, from a camp board member -- who handles much of the registrar duties -- asking whether we had given any more thought to our daughter's attendance at the camp and how much money we thought we could contribute toward her tuition. Here is my struggle: We really hadn't planned for her to attend camp, she hadn't shown much of an interest earlier in the spring, and in no way had we budgeted for it (not that we are particularly good at budgeting anyway.) I feel that this opportunity should not have been offered to her -- with the implied promise of scholarship money -- without including us in the conversation, if there was going to be an expectation of a monetary contribution on our part. It puts us in the position of being the bad guys to our daughter -- having to say no, we can't afford it.

Now, nobody has said that we can't apply for a full scholarship. However, just the fact that the question was raised of us making a contribution tells me that there is an expectation, spoken or not. And what that does is put me in a place of feeling ashamed.

Having to ask for help with money makes me feel ashamed. It is a gut-level, emotional response on my part that I haven't really been able to cleanse myself of, even after years of therapy. It touches on all kinds of things: the thought that I haven't gone on in higher education so that I can make more money, questions about how we choose to spend any extra money we might have, the thought that maybe if we were "better" with our money we wouldn't need scholarships, etc. etc. etc. There's room there for a lot of self-recrimination, and I go there very easily.

Yet I have a big problem with "strings attached" scholarships. People for whom money is not an issue do not understand that it can be an emotional and psychological burden, as well as a financial burden on a family or individual. Even if the strings are just asking one to justify their request for financial help. It is putting up one more roadblock for people who already have a lot of roadblocks to get over.

I'm not saying all of this to elicit sympathy for poor me and my economic plight. Our finances aren't great, but we're okay for now, and a hell of a lot better off than some others. I know that. We probably could come up with a token contribution of $100, and forgo something else, and ultimately not really notice too much. But if it is hard for me, what is it like for other people, for whom there is little flexibility?

Individuals -- even very decent, well-meaning, generous individuals -- who operate from a place of privilege don't, or maybe can't, understand what it feels like.

This maybe the subject of another blog post, but it's uncomfortable and painful, so I'd better spill it out here while I'm on a roll. I run into this a lot among Quakers, my spiritual community. There is a saying that Quakers came to the so-called new world to do good, and did very well indeed. That is to say, that on the whole, Friends tend to be quite comfortably well off. There is an expectation that Friends will practice "right giving" with their money, and indeed Friends are very generous. For example, if the children are selling cookies at the rise of Meeting to raise money for earthquake relief in Haiti, it is not unusual for them to raise $500 very quickly. Friends in my Meeting have also been very quick to respond when it comes to hooking up someone in need with an agency that can help. And even to make private, personal financial donations.

However during the 2 years that my husband was unemployed, when we came close to losing our house (and I know we're lucky to own a house,) again and again I ran up against individuals that simply didn't get that when I said we didn't have extra money, we didn't have extra money. And when it came to making a financial contribution to Camp Woodbrooke for appearance's sake because I was on the board and we were fundraising, or when as a congregation we are asked to increase our individual donations to the Meeting, I feel angry and ashamed at the same time: ashamed for the reasons discussed above, and angry that when all is said and done, my "in kind" contributions really don't carry the same weight as a monetary contribution.

I suspect this will continue to cause me angst, and I just have to deal with it. But it is tormenting me right now, and I really needed to unload. No response necessary, but as always I do welcome your thoughts.

Book Review: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

My carefree days of summer reading were short-lived. Next week I begin a class for my school library media specialist certification, called "Trends in K-12 Literature." The reading list is extensive, and I've tried to get a head start on it. (Thank heavens, no boy wizards on the list.) I've seen The Invention of Hugo Cabret around, but I probably wouldn't have gravitated toward it if it wasn't required reading. At approximately 525 pages the book looks like a tome, but it is really more of an extended picture book with pages and pages of illustrations that are reminiscent of an old movie, interspersed with Hugo Cabret's story. (Indeed, it won the Caldecott medal -- given for best illustrations in a picture book -- in 2007.)

Hugo Cabret is an orphan who, due to tragic circumstances, lives by himself in a Paris train station. His most treasured possessions are a notebook of drawings from his deceased father and a rusty automaton from the attic of a museum. His path crosses that of an old toymaker and his young god-daughter, and there is a mystery that Hugo must solve. (I don't want to say much more because it might spoil the magic of this book.)

Author Brian Selznick says that he was inspired by real events that were recounted in the book Edison's Eve: a Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. I found the format hard to get into at first, although veteran readers of comic books and graphic novels won't be disturbed by it at all. As an adult reader, I thought that the story moved a little too quickly and was tied up a little too neatly at the end. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and would have loved it when I was about 10. Judging by the number of copies of this book in my summer school library, it is a popular book with middle grade readers.

If you like reading kids' books, if you like old movies, or if you're looking for a fun book for a 9-12 year old reader, I recommend this book.

The Book Thief

I just finished The Book Thief for the second time, sitting on the back porch with tears running down my face. Once again I am absolutely stunned by the terrible beauty of this book. How anyone could read it, and still believe that war belongs in this world, is beyond me. Narrated by Death, it tells the story of a young German girl, Liesel Meminger, sent to live with foster parents in a suburb of Munich at the outset of WWII. The Book Thief is about the power of words to bring about both evil and good in the world, and how ultimately, decency and love can transcend the daily brutality of war.

The Book Thief makes me wonder -- Do ideas and words ever just find an author for themselves? I don't mean to discredit Markus Zusak in any way. I am in awe of his writing. It's only that The Book Thief stands out from all but a handful of books that I have read, and gives the impression of a story that demanded to be told in just the way that Zusak told it. (If that makes any sense.)

At any rate, if you have not read The Book Thief, please do. Yes, it is sad and brutal at times. It makes the reader step up and look into the abyss of war. And then, in spite of everything, it sings. A beautiful, beautiful book.

Irony

Lost

I have a recurring dream where I look at one of my rings and realize that a gemstone has fallen out. I think it is a cousin of the teeth-falling-out dream. But I was dismayed last night to realize that I had indeed lost the diamond from my engagement/wedding set. What is strange is that the stone didn't just fall out. The entire setting broke off of the ring! You would have thought that I would be aware of it catching on something for that to happen.

I am not a woman who pines for fancy jewelry. In fact, I know enough about the exploitation of workers and the environment in pursuit of the Earth's treasures, that I hesitate to buy any precious metals or gems new (as opposed to pre-owned) these days. When we had our wedding rings made, we found a goldsmith who was willing to use a combination of old rings and dental gold from both of our grandparents. My diamond was from a ring that had belonged to Ed's great aunt Mandy. I wanted to cry when I discovered that it was gone.

Then I started telling myself that it's just a diamond, expensive to replace, yes, but a small thing in light of so many other things in the world. It has no bearing on our marriage, which is strong and loving. Yeah, well … I'm still sad.

Our 23rd wedding anniversary is this Sunday. Ed's wedding band hasn't fit him for several years; perhaps my loss is the kick in the butt needed to rectify that situation. Most goldsmiths seem unwilling to make rings out of old gold that may contain impurities (or so I've been told,) but I wonder if someone would be willing to remake our old bands into two new bands for us.

My hand feels naked without it.