The Common Sense
Posted by mjl in Vaccine awareness, science on January 27, 2010
The Common Sense – Pseudo Science & the Vaccine
Debate
by Michael Leppert
Today, we toss around the term “common sense” quite a bit, assured that we and a few friends are possessed of it; equally certain that most others are not. However, most of us do not know what this elusive quality is – but we know it when we see it – and usually it means something like one who agrees with our point of view. If pressed to give a definition, most of us would say something like: “A sense of propriety or sensible behavior common to most men.” In law, there is the concept of what a reasonable person would think or do, etc., given a certain situation or set of circumstances.
In fact, the common sense was originally (long, long ago) considered to be the sense that was common to the other five senses and tied them all together – integrated the information obtained and learned from one sense to the others. In other words, one who possessed common sense did not have to re-learn a lesson over and over. Once learned, his common sense relayed the “information” to his entire consciousness and voila! The entire being became wiser. This might explain why some people learn from their mistakes – possessors of common sense — while others, lacking common sense, continue to repeat their errors over and over throughout life.
The significance of common sense – its possession or lack – can be seen in the case of vaccine “safety”. The “scientific” evidence that vaccines are safe or that there is no connection between the mercury level found in vaccines and autism offers a parallel to the “scientific” evidence that tobacco companies paraded in front of the public for nearly four decades of litigation and/or investigation. Through the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, Big Tobacco swore that it had mounds of research showing that cigarette smoking was not connected to cancer. Then, when that angle no longer worked, throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Big Tobacco swore that it did not intentionally alter the level of nicotine in order to affect the addictive strength of cigarettes, despite a large amount of non-scientific “evidence” to the contrary. Of course, finally – miraculously – the forces of righteousness somehow managed to cut through the Gordian Knot that is our present legal system, and cast a hot spotlight on Big T’s lies, false science and dark manipulations of information to show the truth to all: Of course, Big Tobacco knowingly altered the nicotine levels in cigarettes, thereby making its product more addictive at times.
In the mist-enshrouded beginnings of Big Tobacco’s policy of falsehood, pseudo scientists — who work purely for pay (as opposed to true scientists, who work for Truth) — were employed by Big Tobacco to perform “research” studies that would produce Big T’s desired findings and results – that cigs were harmless and non-addictive or bore no link to cancer or whatever blabber Big T wanted to disseminate.
Now, for the past 20-plus years, we have been seeing the same pseudo-scientific nonsense being employed by Big Pharmacy – the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture vaccines. Anyone who has read “DPT — A Shot In the Dark” already knows that Big Pharm has learned its lessons from Big Tobacco. [For instance, a recent “study” done in Belgium and publicized on the Internet, was funded by a European Big Pharmacy company. Just as in the days of Big Tobacco, the pharmaceutical company must have rounded up a bunch of pretend scientists – all possessing impressive credentials – and paid them a living to arrive at the conclusions the company sought: ”Vaccine theory is sound science; vaccines are not dangerous; vaccines contain high levels of mercury but that has no connection to the drastic increase of autism worldwide.” (This all in the face of other scientists in other fields who have found that high levels of mercury in fish makes it advisable for young children to avoid the amount of fish they consume. ??!!) All of these “findings” are scientifically false. Here is the Truth: (A) The vaccine theory has never been “proven”– presently, it is little more than a superstition – but a very profitable one, eh? (B) Vaccines are conclusively quite dangerous to many types of people – possibly to all people — once the very long-range damage is assessed. (C) The levels of mercury in vaccines is stupendously dangerous and many true scientists believe there is a direct link between this mercury poisoning and autism. However, since these scientists are the real thing, they will not say such a link is “proven” until it is. Their view is that it is prudent to avoid using such a deadly substance for no pressing reason – just as a sensible person would not take a deadly poison in the hopes of avoiding the common cold. Ah, there we have that word “sensible”. Our common sense tells those of us who possess it, to learn and remember the Big Tobacco lesson: Large corporations do lie, quite habitually, when their money is at stake. These large corporations will enlist the aid of false scientists – who are legion — to protect their money. There are lots of false scientists out there waiting to be enlisted for such pretend scientific work and therefore, do not be fooled by all of the “research finding” claptrap . . . if you want to know the truth of such findings, just ‘follow the money.’
If vaccines work, your unvaccinated child will not cause an epidemic of a disease – the rest of the population is safe, for having been vaccinated, right? Or, maybe the truth is that vaccines do not work. ML
Foreign Language Learning Considerations
Posted by mjl in Relaxed Homeschooling on December 21, 2009
By Dr. Mary Hood
There are a number of factors to consider when contemplating studying a foreign language. I was raised in a German environment. My grandfather lived at a German old-age home, and my mother frequently spoke German around the house. I never really “studied” the language, except for a one-year stint in high school, when I had little motivation for learning any academic subjects. To this day, although I really am not capable of reading, speaking, or writing German, I can understand most of what people are saying when I’m confronted with German speakers, either in person or on the television. Clearly, early learning is very potent. The little bit of German I do know is very second-nature to me and doesn’t even feel like a foreign language. However, I believe that the fact it was a natural part of my environment, rather than a “learning experience” made the learning stick more than it would have if it had been part of a “unit study in German”.
When my own children were young, I introduced them to the sounds of many languages. The only time we ever looked a bit like a school was at the breakfast table. I figured I had them all there anyway, so we might as well do something! We read “The Story Bible” by Pearl Buck over and over for years and the kids did their own artwork to illustrate the stories from the Old and New Testaments. Afterwards, we always did one other “subject.” A good deal of the time, that subject was a foreign language. We studied French, Spanish, German, and a little bit of Russian. (Actually, I was the one who wanted to learn the Russian, and I backed off after it became obvious that I was the ONLY one who wanted to learn the Russian!)
One of the reasons I did this was to train their ears to hear the sounds of other languages. Obviously, to accomplish that, it was important that I was pretty good at pronunciation myself, or I would have had to use other resources. At that point, we certainly weren’t striving for fluency. I also tried to tie in information about other cultures, religions, and peoples. I believe that these early experiences laid the foundation for later work in foreign languages.
When learning a foreign language, self-motivation is extremely important. Right now, I’m trying to increase my own fluency in Spanish and learn Korean on an intermediate level. My motivation for learning Spanish is to communicate with the many Hispanics in our area, and to be able to help Hispanic mothers consider the possibility of homeschooling their children. I’m learning Korean because one of my own kids lives in Korea and two of my books, “The Relaxed Home School”, and “The Joyful Home Schooler” are being translated and published in Korea sometime soon. Those are powerful motivators. Back when I was trying to learn Russian, the only real “reason” I had is that I thought it sounded cool. That wasn’t nearly enough motivation to persevere when things got tough, so I wound up giving up after awhile.
When trying to learn a foreign language, it also helps if you have people or situations in which to practice. In many areas of the United States, Spanish is best for this purpose, because you have your choice of watching Spanish television, listening to Spanish radio shows, or going out and finding real Hispanics with which to converse. It is usually tougher finding similar opportunities to practice other languages.
That being said, however, I believe in allowing children to study any foreign language which they would like to learn, since internal motivation is so important. However, don’t feel like YOU have to learn the language they want if you’d rather learn another one! The challenge, of course, will be to find the people, experiences, etc., which will help them to learn, especially if you don’t want to put in the time to learn the same language yourself.
I have personally made the most headway through using audio programs in my car. Getting into some kind of a habit where the study of a foreign language is a normal part of your daily routine is critical. I’ve set tons of goals in the past few years that never happened. My goals for foreign language study have been met because EVERY time I go out in the car, I turn on a tape. I also try hard to either watch a few minutes of Spanish television at night (I prefer the news or weather, because I recognize more words in those situations), and I spend a little bit of time reading in Spanish each day, especially the local Hispanic newspaper. Another thing I’ve done is to get several books in both Spanish and English, such as Joel Osteen’s “Your Best Life Today/Su Mejor Vida Ahora”, and read them one paragraph at a time, first in Spanish and then in English.
I believe that learning at least one foreign language makes a person more well-rounded. The only better thing is to travel abroad. My trip to Africa was a life-changing event, and I hope to continue growing as I begin doing more speaking outside the U.S., now that my own children are grown.
Finally, as a “relaxed homeschooler”, I never really worked with my kids on English grammar when they were young, preferring to emphasize reading and writing in a natural manner. When they began studying foreign languages, often at the middle school level, it provided a perfect opportunity to learn some things about English grammar that they had never learned before. For example, when they started learning how to conjugate verbs, they realized that English has a “hole” in the language, because we have no second person plural pronoun. That’s why each area makes up its own…y’all, youse guys, yo’uns, etc. To me, that was a more interesting way to learn grammar, when comparing one language with another.
If you have one student who has no internal motivation to learn a language, and you are simply doing it to get it on a high school transcript, I recommend doing it the last two years of high school, because they may have to pass a placement test, and if they have zero motivation, they won’t remember it for long. However, if they are motivated at any age, the learning should be much better and longer lasting.
Hasta luego…and with apologies to any real Korean speakers, Anyoungeegesayo!
Please visit Mary’s website, www.archersforthelord.org, to learn about relaxed homeschooling. Copyright 2009 by The Link Homeschool Magazine. All rights reserved.
Do Smart People Play Chess or Does Playing Chess Make People Smart
Posted by mjl in Homeschooling with Games on December 21, 2009
With all the technology out there, it is a bit ironic that Chess, arguably one of the oldest games in the world, is still leaps and bounds ahead of today’s electronic games in helping youth improve their cognitive skills and learn real lessons about life, according to Lyndia Graham, manager of Wholesale Chess.
“Chess not only teaches children critical analytical skills, but it teaches them about choices–that each action is followed by a natural—but very real–consequence and that each of those choices must be carefully considered” she said. “Chess can help the IQ, memory, pattern recognition, analytical skills, overall comprehension, as well as develop patience.”
“It is an ideal game to use in a homeschool setting because the implications of choice and consequence can be casually discussed and reinforced in a positive, but fun setting,” she said. “Bad choices — or chess moves — have immediate consequences and will impact the rest of your game — or the rest of your life. There are rules of play that must be followed, or the end result is not what you want. It’s an age-old lesson as relevant today as when chess first began.”
Nobody really knows just how old the game of chess is. However, Mrs. Graham said, some experts claim that chess is more than 2,000 years old. Some evidence suggests that chess, in its earliest form, was played in India in the 6th century AD and from there spread around the world. Of course, over the years, the pieces and rules changed somewhat. In the 15th century, chess began to more closely resemble the game we now play, she added. But chess really started taking off in the 1800’s when tournaments, chess clocks, championships, and titles like Grandmaster were introduced.
Chess is now the most popular game in the world and growing especially fast among children, as schools and parents recognize the social and intellectual benefits associated with the game. There are hundreds of millions of players in thousands of clubs around the planet. Women and girls are learning chess in record numbers. Younger and younger players are achieving Grandmaster status and a few are not even teenagers yet, she said.
The overall skill level of chess players is also increasing because of the Internet and computers. Players are able to play a game at any time online and can use computers to help them train and learn. There are huge numbers of software programs, some that even pit a player against famous grandmaster games. There are also many hand-held computer games for chess that give those die-hard electronic users a chance to have chess on–the-go without the need of a partner.
If you see the benefits of chess and want to teach them to a child you don’t have to be afraid of not knowing what to do or how to play, Graham said. There are plenty of resources to help you.
“Remember that you are passing on a wonderful gift to them,” Mrs. Graham said. “Learn or renew your skills right along with them. Make sure you use care, patience and respect while teaching. Also, try to be interesting! Use humor, funny voices, cartwheels — whatever it takes to make your chess students pay attention and have a good time.”
Mrs. Graham suggests each child have their own chess set. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. Most students use a roll-up vinyl board, plastic pieces, either weighted or not, and an inexpensive bag for pieces to be carried in.
“Wholesale Chess has a very basic chess curriculum that we recommend to work with beginners,” she said. The suggested curriculum is as follows. Only move to the next step when you know your child has a real understanding of what you have already taught.
- How the pieces move and how to setup the board
- How to capture pieces (its ok to capture the King before you learn checkmate!)
- Check and checkmate
- More advanced rules of castling, en passant, and pawn promotion
- The values of the pieces and making good captures and trades
- Developing your pieces and controlling the center
- Using multiple pieces to attack and defend
- Basic tactics – forks and pins
- Basic strategies – controlling squares, diagonals, and files
- Basic opening principles – control key squares, activate your pieces, get your king to safety
To be a good chess parent or teacher you must be sure to get plenty of feedback from the student, Mrs. Graham said. “Make sure you know how your children feel about chess. If they are feeling burned out, then pressuring them may just turn them off more. If they are hungry for chess and you are not feeding that, they may become frustrated.
“If you have a child who enjoys learning and playing chess, you should encourage that as much as is healthy,” she said. “Chess has great social and intellectual benefits that can affect other aspects of life, but remember that chess is a part of life, not the purpose of life. I suggest chess parents watch or read Searching for Bobby Fischer with their child. “It is a great story. We also recommend the book, Survival Guide for Chess Parents.
“Another important thing, perhaps the most important, is to always make sure that your child knows how much you love them regardless of whether they are winning or losing their chess games,” she added. “Never show disappointment at their performance — they are most likely frustrated enough on their own!”
“Chess will certainly grow in the future,” she said. “Players will have to be more accurate in play, as computer training becomes more available. But most of us hope that the essence and fun of the game doesn’t change at all!” Please visit Wholesale Chess’ website, www.wholesalechess.com ♦ Copyright, 2009 by The Link Homeschool Publications. All rights reserved.
Teaching Basic Economics to Fifth Graders (10 to 11-year-olds)
Posted by mjl in Econ for Homeschoolers on December 21, 2009
[Reprinted from the Mises Institute website, http://www.mises.org. Copyright, 2006 by Mises Institute. All rights reserved. Used by permission.]
_____________
“But when are you going to get to the economics?”
It was the end of my first day volunteering to teach “basic economics” to a group of fifth graders. The teacher looked bemused as she asked the question. “That’s what I’m doing,” I whispered a little curtly in reply. Realizing her offense, she quickly explained her meaning: “You know, with all the graphs and big words and stuff.”
I realized this teacher was under the common misperception (perpetuated by most economics professors) that economics is about math, models, and strange lands where a complete lack of real competition is called “perfect competition” and it is possible to visualize (and measure) human happiness using “utility curves.”
But I had no intention of subjecting these students to economics of this sort. My goal was far more ambitious. I wanted to show them that economics stems from ordinary human behavior in the real world we face every day. So here is what we did.
My approach was painfully modest. I simply introduced the students to one economic concept per week.
Lesson 1: “Trade”
The first week’s “word for the day” was trade. To illustrate trade, I gave each student a very small, inexpensive gift I had purchased at a Dollar General nearby. I distributed the gifts randomly, then told the students they could trade their gifts (if they wanted to) with their immediate neighbors. Some did. Then I opened the class up to unrestricted trade and said they could trade with anyone in the whole classroom. Many more now traded. When they were finished I asked how many of them had traded because they believed by trading they would be better off. All said they had.
Once they settled down again, we talked about the concept of trade in general. I was impressed with how well they already understood this concept; they seemed to clearly understand that exchange involves giving up something you value less for something you value more and finding someone else with opposite valuations. For good measure, I ended the day by snatching away the gifts of two students and forcing a trade where none had been performed. One student was happy with the exchange, the other unhappy. This allowed us to discuss the idea of a “fair” trade — which I defined as a trade where both parties voluntarily take part. Again, I was impressed with how easily they seemed to grasp this idea as I replaced the items I had snatched away for my “forced” trade.[1]
Lesson 2: “Money”
The second week our economic concept was money — something all of the students had a keen awareness — if only a shadowy understanding — of. To illustrate the nature of money I wrote a short play and gave the students different roles. (There was no shortage of volunteers.)
The play was the story, familiar to students of Austrian School economics, of a long-ago egg farmer who had plenty of eggs but desired shoes. Unfortunately, the shoemaker in his town did not like eggs, but often wanted wheat. Fortunately, there was a wheat farmer nearby who wanted eggs and was willing to exchange wheat for eggs, which he did. This gave the egg farmer a supply of wheat that he did not wish to consume but rather to employ as a “medium of exchange” to allow him to obtain shoes. In other words, he used wheat as a form of money.
Of course the play was embellished with some (attempted) humor and silly characters, but the story was basically quite simple and the students seemed to understand its meaning well.
We then talked about what makes some goods better suited as money than others. For instance, wheat is better than eggs or fish because it lasts longer and is more easily divisible into units of equal quality. We then discussed things even better suited as money, such as gold or silver.
That was as far as we got, but by the end of the hour, I was at least satisfied that my students had a basic understanding of the nature and origin of “money” — something I was fairly certain none of them had heard before nor perhaps would hear again.[2]
Lesson 3: “Savings”
On the third week of my class the economic concept of the day was savings. In this day’s activity we divided the class into two “villages” — one made up of people who “live for the day” (believing with Keynes that, in the long run, we’re all dead) and the other village made up of savers. Every day the kids in both villages went fishing with their bare hands and caught two fish each. In the first village each person would eat both fish at a big party and feast. In the second village, each student just ate one fish and put the second in a small pond located in their village. Soon an intelligent villager came up with the idea for a net to help catch fish. The trouble was the net would take a lot of time and effort to make. Since several days were required, only the kids in the savers’ village had the resources available to abandon daily fishing to devote time to making a net. Once they had a net, fewer “savers” were required to catch fish, freeing up other villagers to make bows and arrows, huts, and so on. The “quality of life” in the savers’ village seemed to take off geometrically while life in the other village remained the same.
Interestingly, while at first many students had said they would prefer living in the “party” village, by the end of the class, most said they would prefer living in the savers village. We ended the class period talking about the role of savings in allowing people to do things aimed at improving their lives: pursuits that also require time, such as attending school or changing jobs.
Lesson 4: “Competition”
During the fourth week’s class the word for the day was competition and we played a game I call the “gas station game.” Several students play the role of commuters and, at first, one student plays the role of a filling station owner. In the first round of the game, the commuters travel from one side of the classroom to the other, but they require gasoline to make the full trip. I allow the gas station owner to buy a supply of gasoline and then sell it at whatever price he wishes. The commuters are free to car pool if they want, but must otherwise purchase some gasoline. During round one, the station owner sold her gasoline for $2 per gallon, giving her a healthy profit of $1 per gallon sold. In round two, I allowed a volunteer from the class to open a second gas station and charge whatever price he wanted. This was repeated a third time until three competing stations were jockeying for the commuters’ dollars and gasoline was selling for an average of $1 per gallon (one student was selling at a loss). When the game was over we talked about what happened to the price of gasoline when competition occurred and even discussed how things would have been different if the “rules of the game” had prevented new competitors from coming along.
Lesson 5: “Price”
At our final meeting, we talked a little about career choices. I had the kids take a career-interest test and then discuss jobs they might want to some day have. We then changed gears completely and discussed the economic concept of price.
To illustrate “prices” we held an auction. Again I brought small gifts to the class and gave the kids pretend money (in exchange for points they earned from the previous weeks’ activities). Some kids had a lot of money; others had less. Still, each item was auctioned off to the highest bidder. Items that had several bidders sold for higher prices than items with few bidders — establishing a role for “demand,” and when only one or two units of a particularly appealing item, such as chewing gum, remained, its price had a tendency to sky-rocket, showing that the physical quantity of a good matters in light of the human demand imposed on that quantity.
After this exhilarating exercise we discussed how what we had just learned about prices for goods might apply to salaries for the different careers they had discussed at the beginning of the hour. We found that the same rules that established prices for the goods in the auction would also establish salaries or wages for different careers.
Demand for a labor service — acting on the available supply of people who can perform that service — will set the “wage” for that service. Thus supply and demand, we found, could explain both the price of goods and the price of the human factors supplying those goods.
Conclusion
My goal with these fifth graders was not just to introduce them to the basics of economic science, but to inoculate them against future attempts to teach them bad economics. By showing them that trade, money, savings, competition, and prices all have distinctly human origins and purposes, I hoped to help them make better sense out of the “economics” they will some day be exposed to.
Indeed, the concepts we discussed can easily be shown to relate quite directly to other economic concepts; for instance, trade is related to opportunity cost as well as profit and loss; money facilitates trade as well as economic calculation, savings is tied to investment, capital, and production, while competition and prices are related to demand, supply, and relative scarcity.
The constant animating force behind all human action, and the creativity it unleashes, cannot be captured in predictive models or in mathematical formulas. It is precisely this fact that precludes employing the methods of the natural sciences to solve problems of human action.[3]
The fifth-grade teacher may have struggled with this understanding of economic science, but fortunately, her students had no trouble with it.
Notes
[1] According to some economists, we could have determined the appropriateness of this “trade” by subtracting the unhappy student’s loss of utility from the happy student’s increase in utility. If we reached a positive number, the forced trade should have been allowed to stand.
[2] Mainstream economics treats money as a “store of value” and a thing whose quantity can be manipulated by monetary authorities in order to maintain “appropriate” interest rates, full employment, consumer confidence, etc.
[3] Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History (Ludwig von Mises Institute: Auburn, Alabama 1985 [1957]) p. 306.
____________________
Arthur E. Foulkes is a freelance writer and teacher in Indiana. Send him mail c/o Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Ave, Auburn, AL 36832-4528
Copyright, 2009 by The Link Homeschool Publications. All rights reserved.
The Children Are Watching, [Modeling Parent Behavior]
by Dr. Richard J. Prystowsky
“Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” — Robert Fulghum
In The Altruistic Personality, a landmark study of rescuer behavior during the Holocaust, authors Samuel and Pearl Oliner demonstrate that parental modeling of caring behavior was a key differentiating factor between rescuers, on the one hand, and perpetrators and bystanders, on the other. I thought about this observation a number of years ago when I interviewed Irene Opdyke, a Christian rescuer from Poland who saved the lives of Jews during the Holocaust. During this interview, Irene related the story of her mother’s taking into their house and caring for a sick, so-called, Gypsy woman — that is, someone who, according to social custom, should have been avoided. But for Irene’s mother, the sick woman’s heritage was irrelevant; what mattered was that the woman was sick, that she needed help, and that Irene’s mother could help her.
Although I do not want to suggest an easy correlation between the behavior of Irene’s mother and Irene’s behavior during the Holocaust (nor do the Oliners suggest easy correlations in their study), it was clear to me that the caring attitude and behavior that Irene’s mother displayed towards those in need left a deep and lasting impression on Irene. At great risk to herself, Irene actively helped Jews who were in desperate need of assistance. For Irene, the matter was straightforward: she had to help save the lives of these Jews — not because these persons were Jews, but because they were fellow human beings who needed help, who requested her help, and for whom she could provide assistance.
Though most of us will likely never be in a position to help persons in such desperate straits, daily we have opportunities to practice lovingkindness towards others and, in the process, to model for our children the kind of caring behavior that we teach them to value. As Mother Teresa has remarked: “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”
My own mother had learned this lesson from her mother, my grandmother Rachael Poliakoff, a Jew from Russia, who, as a teenager, had left her hostile, anti-semitic homeland to come to the United States so that she could have a more promising life. Shortly after her arrival here, she entered into an arranged marriage with a cousin, also an immigrant from Russia. Sadly, her husband died when my mother (my grandmother’s youngest child) was only two or three years old. A widowed, single mother, living in the deep South during the Depression, my grandmother — a strong, religious woman with more than her share of personal hardships — raised eight children, making ends meet by successfully operating a pawn shop with the help of her older sons.
My mother told the following story: One day, during the Depression, a barefoot man walked into my grandmother’s pawn shop. As he was looking around the store, my grandmother approached him and asked him what size shoe he took. “Oh, Ma’am, I didn’t come here to buy shoes,” the man responded. “I can’t afford to buy a pair of shoes.” My grandmother replied, calmly and without judgment, “I didn’t ask you if you could afford them. I asked you what size you took.” And then she gave him a pair of shoes.
That incident had a profound, lasting effect on my mother, who, throughout her professional life, worked to help persons in need — especially those who were most vulnerable. The only female in her medical school class, my mother became a child psychiatrist (because of strict quotas concerning Jewish admission to her medical school, my mother was one of only three Jews in her class; my father, whom she met in medical school, was one of the other Jews in the class). She was also the director of a child guidance clinic in a socio-economically challenged area and, for a while, taught Head Start teachers. Like my grandmother, my mother had more than her share of personal struggles (she used to tell me about her daily after-school fights with antisemitic children, for instance). Yet, despite her struggles—or perhaps because of them—she championed underdogs and did what she could to help them.
Having suffered a stroke and then having been hit with Parkinson’s Disease, my mother was forced to retire from practice in the 1990s. Tragically, she died in a house fire four years ago. At the gathering following her funeral (which was attended by hundreds of people), person after person told me how grateful they were to my mother for all that she had done to help them or their children. She had saved their lives, they told me, and given them hope. I was moved beyond measure.
But I wasn’t surprised, because my mother cared deeply about the persons whom she helped, and they knew it. In fact, she would treat patients in her private practice regardless of whether or not they could afford to pay her. On one occasion, I heard another physician challenge her on this point: “I understand that you treat patients in your office who can’t afford to pay you,” he said, and then asked, “Is that true?” “Yes, that’s true,” my mother replied. “Why do you do that?” her physician colleague asked her. “That’s your private practice,” he continued. “Why don’t you send these patients to the clinic?” Without hesitating, and without a trace of anger or judgment, my mother answered, simply, “Because they’ve come to me for help, and I can help them.”
In that simple, straightforward, genuine, unrehearsed reply, I heard my grandmother in my mother. Indeed, by treating pro bono persons who had come to her for help but who could not afford to pay her, my mother allowed these patients to retain their dignity. By not differentiating these patients from those who could afford to pay her, was my mother not, in her own way, giving pairs of shoes to barefoot persons?
When I think about my own passion for social justice and about my own commitment to help others, I can easily see my parents’ influence on me. As did my mother, my father, a retired pediatrician and still a practicing pediatric cardiologist (he introduced pediatric cardiology to the State of New Jersey in the early 1950s), my father also has worked tirelessly on behalf of children. When I asked him recently which of his professional accomplishments he felt were most significant, he thought for a moment and then replied, “My pro bono work.” Some of this work, indeed, has profoundly affected the lives of thousands of children, such as his efforts to help New Jersey provide catastrophic medical coverage for the state’s many children whose families otherwise might not be able to afford it. But more directly, my father makes kids feel special — one by one, routinely, as a matter of course. He cares deeply about kids, and they know it. When, during his days as a practicing pediatrician, he would visit children who couldn’t leave the hospital for Christmas, for example, my father, part doctor, part Santa, would bring these children cookies and do what he could to lift their spirits. In later years, the bags of cookies gave way to a giant gingerbread house filled with cookies. I remember seeing a photo of my dad at the hospital: he was sitting in front of a giant gingerbread house, his arm around a young, happy, Down’s syndrome child who was sitting on his knee.
As I suggested earlier, one needs to be careful not to infer too hastily or too conclusively that a correlative or causative relationship exists between parental influence and the actions and attitudes of the parents’ children. On the other hand, as the examples above indicate, one ought not to underestimate the deep significance of parental modeling on the actions and attitudes of parents’ children.
And so I ask you, my fellow parent homeschooler, to consider the many opportunities that you have, every day, to show your children how one can engage in small acts of lovingkindness undertaken with great love. As the Oliners found in their study of Holocaust rescuers, rescuers’ parents saw their relationship to those whom they helped not as one predicated upon common national, regional, political, religious, or other such ties, but, rather, as one predicated upon the fact that they were all part of a larger human family. Similarly, our obligation to care for others extends beyond the bounds of family, park day groups, homeschooling organizations, and other such narrowly defined marks of identity. We are all part of the human family. And, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so eloquently writes in his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
It follows, then, that others’ suffering is also our own suffering. As Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches in Peace Is Every Step, “The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves ‘inside the skin’ of the other…. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the object of our observation. When we are in contact with another’s suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, ‘to suffer with.’”
If we are mindful, we will notice that life presents us with many opportunities to practice everyday acts of parental modeling of compassionate, caring behavior. I used to tell the students in my Holocaust Studies seminars that we could gauge how much we’ve truly learned in the course by analyzing the way in which we treat the cashier at the grocery store.
Similarly, we might ask: How do we respond when our child or when someone else’s child at park day is repeatedly struggling to get along with others? Or, to take another example, do we try to help our neighbor whose child is unhappy in school? In these and other such (possible) interactions, what kind of behavior do we model — or fail to model — for our children?
Rabbi Leo Baeck, one of the most important rabbis of the Twentieth Century, has written the following: “It is easy to revel enthusiastically in one’s love of man, but it is more difficult to do good to someone solely because he is a human being.” Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Perhaps we can lessen the difficulty of this task if we remember that homeschooling parents are primary teachers of their children and that, for good or ill, we parents teach our children most profoundly by the ways in which we act or fail to act (failure to act is itself a kind of action). Although we cannot know for sure in what ways our behavior towards others will influence our children, we can be fairly certain that our children watch and learn from us. How do we want to be seen in their eyes? That, perhaps, is fundamentally our most driving question. R.J.P.
Copyright, 2009 by The Link Homeschool Publications. All rights reserved.