Why Can't Boys be Boys?

For my daughter's third Christmas, she received a trunk of Disney princess dress up clothes. She has really enjoyed this present. Interestingly enough, her nearly two-year-old brother enjoys dressing up in the princess outfits as well. We decided, after one too many times spent fastening him into the Snow White outfit, he needed his own, more masculine dress up clothes.

So, I started to look around. While the Disney princess trunk was only about $20, I have been hard pressed to find him a single boy's outfit for less than that. Granted, y daughter's dress up clothes are not the highest quality, but what does it matter? These little outfits get strew all over the room, trampled on and eventually stuffed back into the cardboard trunk. I'm not looking for miniaturized regulation firemen and police uniforms. I'm looking for cheap, fun costumes for my son to play with.

I think the problem here is simple. Our society has spent so much time in the past 40 years making sure girls are secure in their identities and fostering their need for pretend play that we've forgotten all about our little boys. They are getting lost in the shuffle of making sure girls know they are important.

Because the pricing on dress up clothes for boys is so outrageous (I found a boys dress up trunk for $75. The girls trunk of similar items was only $50. Explain that to me.) a lot of parent aren't able to provide more than one costume for their sons. I think the lack of encouragement for male imagination explains the high level of their involvement with video/computer games. And let's be honest, you don't have to actually have an imagination to be good at a video game.

So, your little girl wants to dress up as a princess? No problem. But if your little boy wants to be a soldier, a pirate, a prince...shell out the big bucks. Boys just aren't important enough...and that's pretty sad.

No Lobotomy for My Daughter

On September 8, 2009, BHO will make an address to our nation's students. This address is likely to be shown in every classroom, in every school, in every city, in every state. So far, the reports about the contents of the actual message are sketchy. He may be encouraging the children to do well in school. Or, he may be encouraging children to be good citizens. And that's where I have a problem.

BHO's idea of being a good citizen is in direct opposition to every thing I teach my kids. I teach my kids to work hard for themselves and their families. I teach them to be accountable for their own actions and to understand that an apology will not get you out of serving a punishment. I teach my kids to be respectful of adults and to consider the future implications of their actions today.

BHO says we should pledge to help others and not ourselves (probably because if we don't help ourselves we can always expect someone else to do it). We should not be held accountable for our past actions. Indeed, we can be friends with or students of people with the most vile beliefs, beliefs that are poisonous to the United States of America and that's just fine. BHO says it is not fair if you work hard for yourself and your family if you do not provide for those who are too lazy to educate themselves or provide for their families through gainful employment. He is disrespectful of any person who deigns to disagree with him and he refuses to consider the pending disaster of his "reforms."

When I heard about the impending address to the students, I wondered about the content. It is incumbent that I teach my children to respect the office of the presidency. But I do not have to teach my children to respect the person holding that office. When I heard about the Department of Education's classroom activities for before, during, and after the address, I knew it was extremely important to protect my kindergartner from this type of indoctrination.

She will already be subject to indoctrination on topics like the environment, historical rewriting, and religion. And that will just be in the course of a normal school day. But I absolutely will not tolerate this special sort of brainwashing.

The following was taken from the Department of Education's website:

PreK-6 Menu of Classroom Activities: President Obama’s Address to Students Across America

Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education

September 8, 2009

Before the Speech:

· Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama and motivate students by asking the following questions:

Who is the President of the United States?

What do you think it takes to be President?

To whom do you think the President is going to be speaking?

Why do you think he wants to speak to you?

What do you think he will say to you?

· Teachers can ask students to imagine being the President delivering a speech to all of the students in the United States. What would you tell students? What can students do to help in our schools? Teachers can chart ideas about what they would say.

· Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

During the Speech:

· As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

What is the President trying to tell me?

What is the President asking me to do?

What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

· Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

· Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.

After the Speech:

· Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.

· Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:

What do you think the President wants us to do?

Does the speech make you want to do anything?

Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

What would you like to tell the President?

Extension of the Speech: Teachers can extend learning by having students

· Create posters of their goals. Posters could be formatted in quadrants or puzzle pieces or trails marked with the labels: personal, academic, community, country. Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in those areas. It might make sense to focus on personal and academic so community and country goals come more readily.

· Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.

· Write goals on colored index cards or precut designs to post around the classroom.

· Interview and share about their goals with one another to create a supportive community.

· Participate in School wide incentive programs or contests for students who achieve their goals.

· Write about their goals in a variety of genres, i.e. poems, songs, personal essays.

· Create artistic projects based on the themes of their goals.

· Graph student progress toward goals.

I considered making comments throughout this list in red, but it just wouldn't show up through the red I'm seeing. Probably my number one biggest problem is requiring students to write down how they can support the president and to make them accountable to these things later. If an older student said, "I promise to work hard to educate myself so I can have a good job and support my family in the future so the president will stay out of my business," would that fly? Probably not with many teachers. And that's a problem.

I don't know much about my daughter's teacher. I don't know how she would react to my daughter pointing at the television screen and saying, "I don't like that man," when BHO pops up, the same way she does at home when I'm watching the news. But if her teacher is planning to show the address and use the Department of Education's guidelines, well, there will be at least one student missing from her class that day. And her note, excusing her absence, will say that her parents refuse to allow her to undergo this sort of underhanded politicizing in kindergarten. When she is able to stand up for herself and the values we are instilling in her, we will be proud to have her participate in something like this. And even take a zero when the teacher doesn't approve of her reaction.

So, to BHO and the lousy Department of Education I say, "Get your fingers out of my kids' brains."