The answer is not simple and I warn you now – it will probably offend a few people and step on some toes. But please read on, this is something I’ve come to feel quite strongly about.

The first reason we are hesitant about school is that if all goes well I will graduate from my professional program in 3 years at which point Evelyn will be 7 years old. If she’s started school at 6 then we’d be moving away after only one year of school which I think would be quite disruptive for her. I have no idea where we will end up – BC? Alberta? Montreal? France? (please yes!) and have no idea what kind of educational options will be available. So if we did decide to homeschool her after a year of public school the transition would probably be hard for both her and us. So we feel like our nomadic situation makes homeschooling a more stable choice.

The other reasons deal more with the school system itself. I’ve watched Evelyn as she has grown up from a baby who cried all the time to an amazing child. I’ve watched her stack towers of blocks, all arranged in the same orientation at 1 year old, learn her alphabet by the same age, talk like a grown up at age 2, teach herself how to write letters and now she’s starting to learn spelling and phonics (mostly by her own motivation with a help from us) at age 4. Did I ever sit down and drill her? Occasionally, with disastrous results! When we let her take the lead and when we take advantage of her questions to teach her things, she does it on her own. Amazing! Do I have the smartest kid in the world? No! Am I an excellent teacher? No! ALL kids learn like this. Unfortunately, it’s getting hard to allow children the opportunities to learn on their own. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this and I have no wish to list them all here, but two examples would be these: 1) our societal push for early literacy … preschoolers are now expected to know the alphabet and write, which was not the case when I was a child, and 2) our preoccupation with getting kids into organized activities (which themselves can be great) … but the problem comes with too many activities. Think of the “Tiger Mom” book – Mrs. Chua had her daughters so scheduled they were never able to spend half a day with their grandmother. Their grandmother constantly expressed a wish to spend a few hours with them and never had that wish fulfilled because the girls were going from one lesson to another every day of the year. To me, that’s a great tragedy. Anyway, I digress. We DO NOT ALLOW for free time, for creative exploration or self learning. Children who are not able to sit and learn are labelled as “problems” or maybe even diagnosed with a learning disorder or ADHD.

I struggled enormously with Evelyn as a baby and as a child. She seeks out patterns, loves to organize things, hates to stop an activity unless she was ready and likes to do things her own way. We had a LOT of conflicts over daily tasks (just ask me about brushing her teeth sometime). I have to tell you that at one point I honestly thought she might have autism. I got a referral and had Evelyn assessed. No, she does not have autism. This is who she is and how she learns. Now that she’s mature enough to understand that she’s not the centre of the universe and understand her situation in our family, things have improved quite a bit. But my experiences with Evelyn made me realise she’s not the kind of person who will easily conform to the will of others, follow what others are doing or do things without asking herself “why should I?” first. She’d definitely be the “difficult” child in daycare. I can only imagine the conversations I would have had if she were in daycare as a young child.

Our interest in education has had deep roots. My education and Dan’s education were shockingly different and deeply influential on both of us. I attended elementary school in a wealthy suburb and had, for the most part, good teachers who loved their job, truly wanted us to learn and in some cases truly loved the subject they taught. My PE teacher loved sports and my art teacher was an artist herself. I was lucky enough to get into an advanced program in high school which probably saved me from making choices based on my financial situation rather than my dreams. Dan’s schooling on the other hand was far from positive (one teacher told him he’d never make it past grade 9). It’s not my place to discuss details of it here, but you can take my word that school was not a positive environment for him. Dan has frequently expressed his anger and the feeling that he was “cheated out of a better future”.

Another source of interest for us was a book one of our housemates read (we shared a living space with two other people for a few years which was both challenging and rewarding and it was an experience from which I learned a lot). The book was called “Why Gender matters” which addresses some great concerns over how boys are treated and taught in today’s society. We saw another book by the same author (Boys Adrift) in a local bookshop and picked it up. It opened our eyes to some of the shortcomings of our education system. If you want the gist of the book, visit http://www.boysadrift.com/. At this point I was thinking more of Oscar than Evelyn but it planted a seed of doubt in my mind about turning my kids over to the education system.

An article which also fueled our thoughts in this area was an essay called “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto. Someone gave a copy to Dan while we were living in Montreal. We both read it and found it challenging, interesting and flagged it for future investigation. You can read it here http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm.

Our decision to put Evelyn in preschool has also become part of our journey on education. We decided Evelyn really needed to be around other children, as we had only rare contact with family or friends that have children Evelyn’s age after our move to Edmonton. We felt that if she did have something like autism, being around other children might help her to be more social, learn interactions and social norms and maybe even help her to eat new foods (peer pressure!). We investigated the local Waldorf school on the recommendation of a friend and fell in love after our 30 minute visit to the preschool class. We enrolled Evelyn the same week and she’s going to start her second year in a few days. Do you see the irony that I’m writing “against” school here and yet Evelyn is in preschool?

Being in a Waldorf community provides a breath of fresh air. I feel like the environment and philosophy of the school matches with our values well. This is not about becoming a close follower of the founder of Waldorf or anything of the sort, but more about the value the program places on teaching children to respect one another, respect nature, valuing their personal creativity, and providing them a mixture of structure and free time. It’s also about encouraging children to take responsibility for their actions, creating an environment with only natural materials (which urban children have little contact with these days), a commercial free environment (no clothing with logos or cartoon characters is allowed and children are encouraged to not watch television before coming to class). If I were to dream up a preschool I would not come up with one better than this.

Part of the Waldorf philosophy is a great emphasis on play. Dan recently took several books out of the library including 1) “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul” by Stuart L Brown 2) “The case for make believe: Saving Play in A Commercialized World” by Susan Linn 3) “Einstein never used flash cards: How Our Children Really Learn–and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less” by Kathy Hirsch-Pasek 4) “The Unprocessed Child: living without school” by Valerie Fitzenreiter and 5) Gatto’s “Weapons of Mass instruction” (see http://johntaylorgatto.com/). I felt like I gained quite a bit of insight (and hopefully more patience with my kids) from reading these and I’d encourage everyone to read them at some point as well. Even if you’re just out of school yourself and kids may or may not be part of your future. This is information that is critical to our understanding of how children think and also what they need to be moulded into caring, thoughtful, intelligent and creative adults.

For a 20 minute summary of some of the points from this book, this TED talk does an excellent job http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html. The film “Waiting for Superman” also addresses some of the shocking conditions in the US school system. I also highly recommend anyone to watch this film.

So what finally spurred me into writing this blog was an article posted by one of my high school friends who is an elementary teacher. Please read it as well: http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/06/living/teachers-want-to-tell-parents/index.html

I read this article just as I finished reading “Weapons of Mass Instruction” and could not help but feel greatly disappointed and saddened that we have come to the situation where parents and teachers are actually fighting against each other (just read a few of the comments on this article, you will see what I mean). For whatever reason, whether it is by design or accident or maybe a bit of both, we seem to have created a situation where parents mistrust teachers and teachers despise parents – and I expect the kids are paying the price for this. I don’t think either party is at fault, although I do believe there are areas where both have made mistakes. Parents: I agree with the author of this article that you have to stop making excuses for your kids. Hold them to high standards and let them face the consequences of their actions and mistakes. Don’t be so quick to blame the teacher. Teaching is a very demanding job and they’re doing what was traditionally OUR jobs FOR us. Be respectful. Teachers: don’t be so quick to label children as “having a behaviour problem”. Children are individuals as much as adults and need a safe environment in which to express themselves, understand the world and find meaning. Additionally, using language like that naturally invokes a defensive response, as it is an aggressive statement. Maybe it’s time that teacher education include some basics on how to handle conflict and deal with situations assertively. Even in Pharmacy school we had a few lectures on that and I’d fail a clinical lab if I used that kind of phrasing. Making enemies out of parents is not the way to solve this problem. I digress. I think it’s the problem lies in the way the system is set up. We’re factory farming our kids and children do not all conform to this system. Some kids DO. I did. But that does not mean it works for the rest of them. I truly believe for many kids their “problems” arise more from their distaste of always being told what to do, trained to memorize and regurgitate, the social context of their schoolmates, and natural desire to get up and use their bodies more.

The end result of all this is that we’re very heavily leaning toward homeschooling and/or unschooling Oscar and Evelyn. This is not to say that structured education has no value. Not at all. People don’t become scientists or athletes or dancers without training. Intensive training is needed to accomplish these things. We need a system of instruction and mentorship. But as one Gatto put it, do we need to enact the farce of re-teaching our children colours, days of the week and the alphabet in elementary when they’ve already learned it? Do we need to put our children under tremendous pressure to “get into the right schools” and pass standardized tests? Do we need to teach them to conform to authority by putting them through 12 years of schooling? Please struggle with these questions as you look at your own education or think about how you might educate your real or hypothetical children.

We’re fortunate to be in the situation where we’ve been given opportunity to do so. Our situation arose out of circumstances beyond our control (and not without a price to pay; my mother’s preventable death from lower esophageal cancer lead us to where we are now). Most families don’t have a choice, either due to time or financial constraints or family situations and it’s for this reason I really desire to see a change in how we address children’s education as a society, as parents and as teachers. In the meantime I hope this blog post has planted some seeds for though for you and that we can all make informed decisions about the value of education and what we want our kids to learn.

For the past 2 days Evelyn has totally refused rice cereal again (for a short while I was able to actually put a spoon to her mouth and she would try to push out the cereal with her tongue, which I would call a successful feeding), making me think that she will probably never really get into it. I can put an empty spoon to her lips (not in her mouth) but if she sees food forget it. She still will not self-feed if I put some cereal on her hands or the table, which means that she will have to continue to rely exclusively on milk for a while yet. I was really hoping the solids could give her something for the daytime.

Therefore, the need to find a way to give her liquids becomes even more acute. I have now purchased three different types of sippy cups and she hates all of them. First I got a dish set that had a cup with a removable spout. Evelyn does not understand that the spout should go in her mouth and has a fit if I try to put it there. The cup has handles but the lid comes off easily and the flow is very fast, so we have wasted a lot of precious milk that way (Evelyn likes to throw the cups on the ground or turn them upside down). Next I tried a Nalgele sip cup which she did not mind too much since she could gum the spout but it is too large for her to grab and most of the time she still refuses it when I hold it. If she moves around a lot she cam bump herself against the spout and has hurt herself a few times. Today I bought another one with a secured lid and handles for her to grab and she still does not get it. Maybe with time, but unfortunately I can not wait 2 months for her to learn how to use a cup with the possibility that she will not drink out of it. And just to top it off I just found out about concerns over BPAs in polycarbonate bottles. Two of the cups I bought are polycarbonate, so I guess I should stop using them just in case.

So Evelyn is going to have to rely on bottles again. My first attempts to reintroduce the bottles this week have been less than successful but I think we might have made a bit of progress today. First, I bought two different types of nipples – rubber ones which she did not like and Nuk brand orthotic ones, which seem to have worked. I bought them because they kind of resembled the shape of the pacifier (which is the only thing she will allow me to put in her mouth). She would not take it from myself or Dan either at the table or being held, but I was able to get it in her mouth if I put her in the stroller and distracted her (either with a toy that made sound or by putting the stroller in front of the mirror. She chewed the nipple for most of the feeding rather than sucking it, but the volume actually went down in the bottle. So I count that as success.

The next thing is to eliminate her need to fall asleep nursing during the day. I wait until she shows signs of sleepiness, give her the pacifier and rock her gently while singing the song I sing at night. When she is very sleepy I put her down with a blanket and she falls asleep. Note that she is way too restless for a blanket at night but during the day I am always checking on her and she doesn’t seem to move much.

The bottles we are currently using are also polycarbonate (great, one more thing to worry about), so I will start using the small bottles from the breast pump which are BPA free. In the meantime I am waiting for the Born Free sippy cups (which are BPA free) to come back in stock in the health food store down the street. Maybe the soft spout will interest her more.

Is it normal for a baby to refuse anything from her mother? I always figured that babies would trust their mothers over everyone else. It is getting a bit tiring and it is really starting to bother me.

The Quebec government seems to be considering some rather disturbing policies with respect to religion. In the same article of a local newspaper I read about two plans (one imminent, one proposed) that seem heavy-handed and pointless. The first policy involves a proposed ban on public employees (such as teachers and doctors) from wearing religious symbols including hijabs and skullcaps. Apparently following in the footsteps of France, this policy is described as addressing a gender issue because such symbols promote female submission which is unacceptable for such public employees. Ridiculous. It’s clearly an infringement on the right to practice one’s religion. The thing about symbols, especially religious ones, is that they often have multiple meanings and many people, Muslims included, wouldn’t reduce the wearing of a hijab as a simple show of female submission. I suppose banning a male headcovering (i.e. a skullcap) prevents the display of male superiority, then? Honestly, some people need to spend their time doing useful things other than garbage like this.

The second thing which is slated to start next fall is a mandatory class on ethics and religion for grades 1 through 11. I find this disturbing because I firmly believe it is the parent’s role to instill ethics and demonstrate their religious beliefs to their children, not a third party. The potential for abuse and misinformation is enormous, considering children are required to take this type of education starting at age 6. As a parent who holds religious beliefs I find this rather ominous. One wonders what the motivation is, who has designed the syllabus and what information will be covered. Having a philosophy/ethics/world religion course in high school, at which age students are (or should be) capable of independent research and having a reasoned discussion is one thing, but 11 years of “Quebec brand ethics” is something else altogether. One wonders what kind of ethical dilemmas these 6 year old children will be discussing. “Don’t hit?” “Share with others?” It’s not necessary to have a class about this. As for the overview of religions, this can be taught to young children through a simple book “This is a Bhuddist monk, here is a Synagogue” etc. Oh, but don’t expect to see “Here is Amil, she wears a hijab” if the Quebec Coalition on the status of Women has their way. Talk about mixed messages.

On the other hand, this whole veil/voting issue is ridiculous to the other extreme. Nobody should be allowed to vote without proper visual identification. If the full face veil issue is as important as it is made out to be, a woman working at the polling station can go behind the voting booth with the voter in question and verify their identity without the voter exposing her face to men. Or introduce the iris recognition technology used for the Canpass Air program. There is simply no need to create an exception to the law over this.

Two governments, two silly policies at opposite ends of the spectrum which are detrimental to all of us.

It’s the third one that’s really starting to bother me. Sometimes it is well meaning and presented in a friendly and helpful way, but usually it is accusatory. There is one person who lives near us that seems to think she has a right to give a running commentary on what we do with Evelyn and from the look on her face I think she hates me (or maybe all of us) with a passion. Ok strangers, guess what. I don’t really care what you think. Unless I am doing something patently dangerous or stupid, please hold your tongue. You have no right to interfere and criticize. And if you do see something that you’re genuinely worried about, don’t be hostile … try starting with #1!

Testing out the car seat…

We got an email from our friend Wentworth (who we know through Lisa, who has since fled to the warmer climes of Vancouver) that there was a public lecture by none other than Dr. Marvin Minksky Thursday. I have prenatal yoga classes on Thursday but finally decided it was better to skip and attend this once-in-a-lifetime lecture. After we met up in the metro we went to the building only to find that the lecture hall had just filled up. But no problem, there was a second room where there would be a video broadcast of the lecture. Even that room filled up very quickly. The first 5 minutes of the lecture went well and then we started having video problems. After 15 minutes, the organizers gave up and everyone left (including, eventually, us). The ironic thing about this was that this lecture was organized and hosted by the computing science and engineering department. Worse, they were running the video off an external web server on a Windows machine. Once the video started to cut out, they were incabable of fixing it. Maybe it’s just me, but I think something like this shouldn’t be happening in this department. Needless to say, we were all disappointed and it was too late to go to my yoga class.

Last weekend I succeeded in buying two nursing bras after much difficulty. I went to the maternity clothing store and tried every type of bra they had. Unfortunately I have always been on the lower edge of available bra sizes (except when I went to France, as I discovered an entire size smaller that is not available in North America!) and aparently, despite the tremendous growth involved in the process of having a child, bra makers have assumed that nobody who is nursing has breasts smaller than a 36C. I tried on the bras there and immediately noticed two major problems. First, at this stage there should be some extra space in the bra since there will be quite a bit of growth during the first few weeks. This itself is fine, but the bra makers decided most of this growth would occur around the nipples. Needless to say, I don’t think this is where the milk will be stored nor do I think an extra couple of inch of textile in that particular spot is useful or becoming. The second problem was that the cups were so huge that they could be seen on my chest sticking out of the top of my shirt. The worst part about this was how frustrating the sales lady was since she insisted this was normal and her attempt to solve the problem was to try and find a shirt with a higher neckline (they were all insufficient in the end, I did try them). Even if they tripled in size it wouldn’t have been enough to pull the cups down to where they should be. Not only was this incredibly ugly, but it was also very uncomfortable. I have never felt like I was being choked by a bra before. Despite the pressure I received, I decided these bras would not be sufficient and decided I would try my luck elsewhere. Next I tried the Bay. The Bay on St. Catherine has 8 floors of merchandise, including an entire floor for women’s pyjamas and underclothing. Eventually I did find what I was looking for and I have to say the ones I bought there were much nicer than the ones at the maternity clothing store too.

We watched Stranger than Fiction last week. It was very good.

Finally this past weekend I didn’t have to go out anywhere and was able to take care of a few important things at home. I even started donig the taxes.

Well Montreal has announced that some houses in our neighbourhood may have lead pipes. Apparently because we live in abuilding that has more than 8 units in it, it probably does not have a lead pipe. Oh, but just to be sure, pregnant women should be drinking filtered water. Thanks for telling me now, you *****rds. How about 8 months ago, or a year ago, or maybe 20 years ago? Actually come to think of it, how the heck did this ever become an issue anyway? Surely the dangers of lead poisoning were known when these building were built. We do have a filter jug at home, but what about water we use for cooking and making juice? I guess I will put everything through the filter from now on. What about eating out at restaurants? Is the water there safe? I will call our landlord next week to see if she has checked out pipe yet. This is so typical of Montreal. The building standards here are so lax it’s amazing some buildings are still holding together. I am sure if inspections were conducted across the city most apartment buildings would fail to meet today’s basic building codes.

Today we have to get on the list of electors to be eligible to vote. I don’t know who I am voting for yet.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/11/21/breastfeeding-protest.html

Yesterday I was really surprised by how busy the metro and bus where and I kept asking myself “Is it always like this?”. I guess 3 weeks in small-city Alberta made me realised how densely populated it is here. I’m a bit worried about the bus sometimes since there is hardly enough space to move and people always push and bump each other. Not a good thing for a mom-to-be. I have to develop a strategy.

I made a bit mistake when I opened my “caisse pop” account (I don’t want to say the name of the bank in case of trouble but let’s say it’s Quebec’s version of the Credit Union). I did it two years ago and was in a rush, but I really should have taken more time to choose another bank. Here are some of the stupid things they have done to annoy me. 1. It took me three tries to change my address. I faxed them and then had to call twice before they changed it. 2. When called to open my account I was told the bank was open late Wendesday night and I asked if I could come in after 5 to open an account and they told me I could. Not true – I had to come back another night as only the receptionist was working. 3. They changed the service changes without telling me and I am still not clear on what I am paying or what it is for. 4. I have to pay 50 cents for each cheque (just to get them printed, the transaction fee is on top of that). 5. I went at 8:30 today to pick up some cheques and at 8:35 the employees were still walking in the door and turning their computers on. I waited until 8:40, still nothing, so I asked the receptionist (who was still wearing her jacket) if I could get the cheques soon since I had to be downtown at 9 AM and she gave me the excuse that “the machine was still being started”. Ok, well when I used to work in retail or service, I was ready to serve customers when the store opened. That meant I came in before the stated opening time to get things ready. Apparently not a priority here. I’m waiting for an interest payment in December and then that’s it. Good thing I have an account elsewhere for day-to-day banking.

Also, I took some pictures of the apartment when they were finishing the drywalling so they are now posted here.

On the theme of bad writing I just watched the worst made for TV movie ever. It was on NBC and I was channel surfing, and well, I just couldn’t look away. It was a story about a massive earthquake that created a giant fault line from Hudson’s bay to the Gulf of Mexico (well at least I think it was an earthquake, I missed the first hour). Oh yes, and apparently there is lava 5 km under the earth’s surface. The fault split the ground open and we could see it! I’m guessing either the writers were idiots, they take their audience for idiots, or nobody had any idea how big a kilometer is. This 10.5 richter scale quake didn’t seem to do much other damage that making a building in Las Vegas collapse and swallowing up a few farmhouses on the way (maybe more happened in the first hour). Until, that is, it was about to run straight through a … nuclear power plant!!. So some oddball geologist gets rescued from the same collapsed building in Vegas and devises a scheme to divert the fault … by blowing up some natural gas wells that just happen to be right next to the nuclear power plant. Well if I were looking for a spot to build one and store tonnes of radioactive material that would kill 1/4 of the country, I have to say I’d try to find somewhere a little less risky than adjacent to a natural gas well. So anyway their ridiculous plan works but the fault keeps pushing out to the gulf and – oh no! Houston is in the way!! So Houston gets destroyed. Almost everyone somehow miraculously evacuates safely though, even though they only had a few hours. I guess the earthquake isn’t the only made-up thing in this show. Oh and also the President was crying. Apparently bits of it were shot in Montreal!

Stop the madness! This obsession with the Da Vinci Code is driving me up the wall.

Before I say any more, I’ll be the first to admit that I am an avid reader of escape fiction. After a long day at work reading scientific papers, my mind wants a break. So, for the most part, I read books that have interesting storylines with relatively straightfoward point. Bring on the Neal Stephenson or les bandes desinées. The most complex I get is Philip K. Dick. So I don’t have anything against the Da Vinci Code for being escape fiction. I read it several years ago and yes, the storyline was interesting. But I am not a fan of this book for two reasons. First, I don’t appreciate fiction that demonizes a particular group of people in order to drive the plot. This treatment of any group (religious, racial or otherwise) is very one-dimensional, insulting, and frankly, immature. The whole point of the book is to ‘uncover the hidden truth that the Church wants to keep a secret else all chaos break loose’ and there is no shortage of evil, perverted members of a certain denomination to chase the main characters and move the plot along. Second, this book is far more popular than it deserves to be. Every day I see at least 3 people reading this book on the bus/metro and there is so much hype about it that people are acting like this is really a historical account. Da Vinci tours of the Louvre etc. Real history is a lot more interesting and it’s sad to see people obsess over the details taken from the book and ignore anything else.

On the other hand, I just finished reading through a very funny critique of the Left Behind series, which is just as poorly written but from the other end of the spectrum. Same idea, different bad guys.

And by the way, who is dumb enough to use the fibonacci numbers for their swiss bank account? Just about as dumb as phoning your family if you’re trying to go incognito after an atempt on your life. Sheesh!

…or does everyone in these photos look demented or weird with the exception of Layton? Honestly, I don’t know mow Martin, Harper and Duceppe can make those faces so many times on film! (top image from here).