Some ways in which food is a metaphor for learning

Lately I've been reading a lot of about food and farming. I started an omnibus post about some of my thoughts yesterday, but it was just all too much at once. So I decided to start over with a more limited aspect of the organic/local metaphor for now by comparing it to homeschooling. That was a big part of my original post.

Michael Pollan says:

"...food is a powerful metaphor for a great many of the values to which people feel globalization poses a threat." (p. 255 of The Omnivore's Dilemma*)

I see lots of connections between the writings of small farmers and those of the most thoughtful homeschoolers. The more I read, the more I realize that this isn't just a coincidence. Underneath is a paradigm shift. Especially during the past one hundred years, our society has been rapturous about the benefits of technology, but now we are seeing its limits, and what has been lost in the trade. And some people are looking for ways to get back some of what was lost.

So wise people are asking: To what extent should we employ technology? Can we find a proper balance by way of organizations, or through consumer purchases of goods produced and marketed by others, or does it go deeper than that?

Wendell Berry thinks it goes deeper:

"...the responsible consumer must also be in some way a producer." (p. 24)

One way we can think about homeschooling is that we produce our own learning. You don't have to read the likes of Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, or Gene Lodgson for long to realize that production in the old sense was a cooperative process with nature. And so is homeschooling. And that's the underlying theme beneath all the comparisons that follow. But remember, these metaphors are meant in a spirit of inspiration, not legalism! Take them for what they're worth.

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Real learning isn't so far removed from the concept of real food. A fast food meal now and then won't kill you, nor will cramming for a test, but they are short-term solutions.

KINDLY USE

Teaching a child is a matter of "kindly use," as Wendell Berry puts it.

"Kindly use depends on intimate knowledge, the most sensitive responsiveness and responsibility. As knowledge (hence, use) is generalized, essential values are destroyed. As the householder evolves into a consumer, the farm evolves into a factory--with results that are potentially calamitous for both." (p. 31 of Berry)

Or as Pollan put it:

"The point isn't to get ever more interventionist and efficient about farming, but to become more attuned to its nature. By being sensitive to nature you can take a more subtle and harmonious approach." (p.188 of Pollan)

And:

"Ranching is a very simple business. The really hard part is keeping it simple." (Brad Adams, Florida rancher, also from p. 188 of Pollan.)

"The efficiencies of natural systems flow from complexity and interdependence." (about p. 214 of Pollan)

These are all also true of homeschooling. In our family, our best learning happens when we allow time for ideas and projects to "ferment," when we make connections between subjects, or allow one project to serve in several areas. But most especially, the best learning is a collaboration between the curiosity of the child and the wisdom and experience of the parent. It's best when not overcomplicated by trying to shoehorn a preset curriculum or available class into your present area of readiness. (Sometimes the curriculum or class is a good fit, and that's fine.) These principles hold true, at different levels, during the entire time a child lives at home, and hopefully beyond.

Note that small farming is not without its own sort of efficiency. But it's an efficiency of interdependence, not an efficiency of quantity.

Pollan notes that animals in CAFOs (feedlots) exhibit learned helplessness. Just like some children in poor schools!

CONSUMER SOLUTIONS

The following point could be controversial, but I at least want to put it out there: The homeschooling movement and the organic food movement have been co-opted in similar ways. As homeschooling becomes more popular, we tend to be happy enough with better consumer solutions instead of producing our own. I do shop at Whole Foods sometimes, and I do buy curriculum and participate in outside classes, but I try to ask myself first, "Do we really need this?" and if so,"Is it really a good fit?"

I promise, I do understand why people are so quick to opt for ready-made solutions. Not only is it convenient when we get busy, but we question the wisdom of going off on our own to the point where our children are left alone, even if we don't mind being left alone ourselves. I know; I've done it myself! We crave community, even when it feels more like networking at times. And modern life has so many pressures already. So I'm not advocating a legalistic approach to education or family life. We each have to be convinced in our own mind. (Romans 14) I just happen to be one of those people who finds lots of joy in doing many things myself. And I'm having fun with this metaphor, because I do think it's useful.

Sometimes what we don't do is even more important than what we do. Sometimes we don't buy anything at all. We make it ourselves. One easy thing to make yourself is your own entertainment. Just about anyone can do that, with a little practice. You just have to be willing to stare down your own boredom.

CERTIFICATION

Big organic farming (with certification) reminds me of homeschooling under the auspices of the NYCDoE. The paperwork I turn in to the city each quarter bears little relation to what I do everyday, which is much harder. Half the time a regulation is beside the point. Sometimes it's counter productive. At best, the purpose of regulation is to protect people from worst case scenarios. But aren't there better ways to do that? What regulation really does is to obscure via abstraction.

"The law enacted may be a good one, and the enforcers all honest and effective; even so, the consumer will understand that one result of his effort has been to increase the number of people of whom he must beware." (Berry, p. 23)

I like the fact that there's an article called, "Can an Organic Twinkie Be Certified?" (It's by Joan Dye Gussow, 1996.) That encapsulates the paradigm difference quite well!

Organizations work at cross purposes to their stated missions. Wendell Berry says this. John Taylor Gatto says this. John Holt says this. If this many people who regularly challenge my thinking all say the same thing, I should listen.

Berry:

"[Institutions'] solutions necessarily fail to solve the problems to which they are addressed because, by definition, they cannot consider the real causes. The only real, practical, hope-giving way to remedy the fragmentation that is the disease of the modern spirit is a small and humble way..." (p.23)

WISDOM AND CHARACTER

Farming, and homeschooling, are really going to require several generations to regain the wisdom that's been lost.

So homeschooling, as with local food, is a form of individual responsibility that ultimately has the potential to rebuild community. Where to start? As always, with character.

"...these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character." (Berry, p. 19)

And character starts with a deeper faith that is tested in action. And mercy.

*All quotes, unless noted otherwise, are from The Omnivore's Dilemma (in the case of Pollan) orThe Unsettling of America (in the case of Berry).

Missing post

I removed my latest post, due to the fact that it was still half-baked ;-). Hopefully I'll finish it sometime soon.

Snow day

After being slighted by two snowstorms this season, New York City finally got a big snow of its own. This afternoon CZ and I took a long walk through Riverside Park and down by the Hudson to survey our neighborhood transformed:

The usual bedlam on "Death Hill," Riverside Park. (That's not its official name or anything. It's just what our neighbor calls it.)

A Common Merganser on the ice-cold Hudson

Yesterday there was lots of ice on the river, but today the swift current had swept it all away.

Seagulls were using the wind to hover over the river.

Back up into Riverside Park again. On snow days, parks in New York always look like Narnia to me. I think it's the lampposts and the stone walls.

"Death Hill" from another angle. Just before I snapped this picture, I saw a man (far left) almost get hit by a sled going really fast. He jumped several feet into the air, over the laughing sledder (now next to him in the photo), and was met with hoots of approval.

My favorite snow structure of the day, and igloo complete with drawbridge.

Snowboarders had built their own ramp and were doing impressive jumps down the hill. (Unfortunately my hands were too frozen to catch any jumps in motion today.)

Don't you like what happens to snow in the evening light?

Failed frugality, or how a free fish head led to paella

It probably says something about the underlying assumptions and opportunities of life in New York City that what started out as a simple dinner idea on my part ended up somewhere else entirely--Spain, in fact.

CZ and I were trying last week to get back on track after the competition, which means that housework languished a bit as I concentrated on schoolwork, and that I didn't plan meals more than a day ahead. I relied instead on a daily jaunt to the small specialty grocery on the next block.

It was on one such jaunt that I spied a row of salmon heads poking up out of the ice at the fish counter. I'd been reading about sustainability, so I was taking my time and asking about the origins of each fish. That's probably why I made some quip about the heads.

"You want one?" said the fish man.

"Oh, really? You're selling them?" I responded. "How much are they?"

"They're free."

So I took one. I was thinking I'd make some fish broth and somehow combine it with glass noodles that I had in the cabinet, and a few Asian spices, and make an inexpensive soup.

I got home and looked up some fish broth instructions in Essentials of Cooking. Turns out salmon heads aren't suitable for thin Asian soup broths, strictly speaking. They're suitable for a richer condensed broth made with red wine. I just happened to have some syrah in the cabinet, which I'd bought for some future special dinner. After confirming that it would be suitable, I sliced up some carrots and onions and started my broth. It ended up using half the bottle of wine.

Meanwhile, I read under the serving suggestions that this broth goes well with paella. It was cold out, and the thought of paella laced with little chorizo sausages appealed to me, bringing to mind a cozy Spanish restaurant in the East Village where I'd once eaten dinner with Bob and some of his work friends. Since it was too late in the day by now to make the broth into that night's dinner, I came up with another quicker idea for dinner and started researching paella online.

Finally I ended up combining two recipes, this one and this one. (The most authentic one, apparently, called for a rabbit.) This required, of course, that I go back to the store and buy chorizos, a dozen clams, calasparra rice, and saffron, not to mention a couple of vegetables. Combined with the wine, my formerly almost free, simple meal was now growing quite expensive and not so simple after all.

The resulting paella was, however, delicious, and of course, it went very well with the rest of the wine. I decided that I shouldn't feel too bad about having wandered so far from my original intent, since I had successfully made my first foray into the traditional food of Spain. I figured out what a soffrito was, and I was also delighted to find out that with paella, you're supposed to burn the rice on the bottom of the pan a little. And I have just enough of the imported rice and saffron to make another go at it in a week or two and perfect my technique, since I made a couple of minor mistakes combining the recipes the first time. But that would, of course, require another fish head...

Performance competition

CZ just finished her first performance competition outside of her music school. I thought I'd write a little about what the process was like, because at least one person has asked me to write from time to time about raising a musician counter-culturally. And I know there are a few other musician families out there, too.

We learned a lot by participating in the competition. CZ decided to enter it because some of her home-schooled friends participate in plays sponsored by the same organization, and they told her about it. Her violin teacher had also mentioned she was ready to try a competition or two.

One thing we learned right away from this experience is that there are different kinds of competitions, and this one wasn't typical of the ones violinists usually enter. To begin with, she was competing against various ages and genres of performers--actors, theatrical vocalists, and dancers, as well as various instrumentalists. Also, it was the first time the competition had been held, so there were ad hoc adjustments to the schedule. Since most of the performers had some connection with the theatre company, some of them were coached at the dress rehearsal, and even given special lighting. There was the phenomenon of a dress rehearsal itself--conservatory students don't have them, it was announced after the second round, and it was during CZ's music school day, which required some logistical manipulations of the first order to pull off. And then there was the fact that no one dressed for it, though one of the judges kept telling CZ to wear color (conservatory students always wear black). Needless to say, by the time of Sunday's final round, we were sort of laughing at ourselves for even entering. We seemed to have stepped into a completely different culture that didn't favor classical musicians at all.

But that brings me to the other thing we learned: If you roll with the punches, sometimes surprising and fun things happen! From the beginning, CZ took the whole competition as an occasion to practice stage presence. To fully appreciate her final performance, you'd have to know that CZ is very reserved by natural temperament. But she kept saying, "I'm going out there to make them smile!" And she did! When she couldn't make eye contact with the audience like the other performers did (violinists are taught from the first recital to look at their hands), she still developed a way of communicating visually through movement and subtle facial expression, without compromising her correct position. When one of the girls complained to her about the officially disallowed, but unofficially present, on-the-spot coaching for some of the contestants, CZ replied, "Yeah, but we're just going to be better than they are!"

I wasn't at any of the early rounds, since parents and teachers weren't allowed, so I only saw the "Showcase" at the end. I was really surprised to see the final production. I liked all of the performers, though I didn't really know how to judge the more theatrical ones. I picked the last contestant, a Broadway-style vocalist, for the win. After all, one of the judges was the director of the musical In the Heights. (We didn't know at the time that one of the others was the assistant conductor of the Met Opera. That's probably a good thing!) CZ's performance wasn't perfect, but she did come out there and play loudly and clearly, with expression. Her stage presence was palpable. We had thought that perhaps the piece she was playing, an unaccompanied Bach Partita, might not be theatrical enough next to the other performances. But it rang out very suitably in the uncarpeted hall.

The fifteen minutes for the judges' decision turned into thirty, and then they brought everyone back on stage to announce the runners up and winners, Miss America-style. It was nothing like anything we'd ever seen! But it was delightful to see CZ's expression color when she suddenly realized that she had tied for first place--with an actor. It would have been a valiant effort no matter what, and we would have been proud no matter where she placed. Competitions, by nature, always have more runners up than winners, and she knows enough talented and hard-working musicians not to become overconfident. But it was a nice confidence-builder that she won.

Her prize is that she gets to play one more time, in April. She's hoping to play her concerto this time. And maybe she'll even wear some color.