So here I am, starting my brand new blog on this, International Women's Day! I am not making this public yet, but if you happen to stumble on it, I'd love to hear from you.
I am doing this so that I have at least an imaginary audience for the book that I am working on. It seems to help with my writing when I am writing for someone, and out there in the blogosphere exist unknown readers who are faceless, and therefore non-intimidating and infinitely accepting. The ideal reader is someone who is as passionate about education as I am, and who values the unexpected, seizes the teachable moment, and understands the messiness and joy of young children's learning. S/he will appreciate the absurdities and complexities of structuring learning experiences for children without hemming them in needlessly with restrictions, boring them with repetition or holding them to expectations geared towards some imaginary middle.
So, ideal reader, although I have given you infinite understanding, it doesn't mean that I am adverse to constructive criticism or helpful comments. I crave debate about some of these ideas, and it may be that in these pages I will present more than one point of view, as I seek to test my ideas while working out my philosophy.
Being I.W.D., I have to comment on something that I saw in the Globe and Mail today that makes me despair a little over what has happened to feminism. There was a lovely article about Max, a Downs syndrome young man whom I have known since his birth, and his passion for exercise. The reporter interviewed his mother, who was reflexively given the same last name as Max, even though she had never taken her husband's name. Did the reporter not ask her name (one of the first rules of interviewing as my young journalists at school are taught)? Why, after 40 years of feminism, do young people who must know many women who keep their own names, still assume otherwise? I know there is a trend backwards in that respect - most of the young teachers at my school who have married have taken their husband's names, but surely we could at least expect people to check! Oh well, perhaps, Audrey did change her name after 30 some years of marriage, and 15 years of widowhood - after all I haven't seen her for some time.
I am doing this so that I have at least an imaginary audience for the book that I am working on. It seems to help with my writing when I am writing for someone, and out there in the blogosphere exist unknown readers who are faceless, and therefore non-intimidating and infinitely accepting. The ideal reader is someone who is as passionate about education as I am, and who values the unexpected, seizes the teachable moment, and understands the messiness and joy of young children's learning. S/he will appreciate the absurdities and complexities of structuring learning experiences for children without hemming them in needlessly with restrictions, boring them with repetition or holding them to expectations geared towards some imaginary middle.
So, ideal reader, although I have given you infinite understanding, it doesn't mean that I am adverse to constructive criticism or helpful comments. I crave debate about some of these ideas, and it may be that in these pages I will present more than one point of view, as I seek to test my ideas while working out my philosophy.
Being I.W.D., I have to comment on something that I saw in the Globe and Mail today that makes me despair a little over what has happened to feminism. There was a lovely article about Max, a Downs syndrome young man whom I have known since his birth, and his passion for exercise. The reporter interviewed his mother, who was reflexively given the same last name as Max, even though she had never taken her husband's name. Did the reporter not ask her name (one of the first rules of interviewing as my young journalists at school are taught)? Why, after 40 years of feminism, do young people who must know many women who keep their own names, still assume otherwise? I know there is a trend backwards in that respect - most of the young teachers at my school who have married have taken their husband's names, but surely we could at least expect people to check! Oh well, perhaps, Audrey did change her name after 30 some years of marriage, and 15 years of widowhood - after all I haven't seen her for some time.
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