Not masculine but very male

I've not made "Oi Thou!" listed yet because i'm not particularly happy with the quality, which in a way is what it's about.  Anyway, here's today's:

This is another thing that really bothers me:  Why aren't more men involved in home ed?  When Liz and i planned our parenting, we decided to do it equally, and i can't believe it's just us, so i can only assume that it's to do with practical difficulties in managing to do it 50/50, because, for example, of the need to earn some money, or as a result of commitments which arose before having children.  However, to be honest i'm just puzzled by it and want to know why.

This also forms part of a pattern in my life where for some reason i often do the stereotypically girly thing without consciously choosing to, which is particularly weird because i see myself not as traditionally masculine but definitely as very male.  For instance, transsexualism is much more common in men, so my gender dysphoria fits in there, and i am rather too into high-tech gadgets.  However, on the other side of things, i did girls' A-levels (RE, Biology and English), became a herbalist (90% female) and have only rarely worked outside the home, have never had a full-time job and am very fixated on clothes, which again get perceived as feminine.

However, this shouldn't be about me, so i return to the original point:  where are all the fathers?  Why is it all women involved in home ed?  Is it a good or bad thing?  Why?  Should something be done about it and if so what?

Bilingualism

Shortly after our daughter was conceived, i decided to experiment with bilingualism.  Since at the time i was using both German and English every day, it made a lot of sense to me at the time to raise her speaking both.  At first, things went fine and in fact her first word was Tuer - "door".  However, it was soon to founder on the fact that so far as the offspring was concerned, German was just this weird noise her dad made and Castilian, English, French and so on were real languages which other people also spoke.  Consequently, her German-speaking abilities stayed embryonic, and to some extent the experiment was a failure.  Here's an interview between us on the issue:

However, in a sense no experiment is a failure - it's just that some of them yield negative results.  Some interesting positives to have come out of this for this formidable example of Homo sapiens before us here is that she is utterly unintimidated by the idea of acquiring a second language and is perfectly willing so to do when she perceives a need and is motivated. Moreover, she is fine with the more opaque vocabulary of the intellectual elite - to her, it is not an anti-language.  Finally, like myself, she talks German in her sleep!  I have no idea what significance, if any, this has, but find it intriguing.

Another interesting aspect of this is the fact that she really does seem to find the sound of German harsher and more intimidating than the Romance languages she prefers (though Arabic with its plethora of pharyngeal consonants is apparently OK with her).  This is from her position as a non-language user, since she was introduced to German, Castilian and English more or less simultaneously.  Therefore, that impression seems not to be pure prejudice and it seems probable that German really is a harsher-sounding language.  It's not to do with prejudice.

I'm not serious about saying nobody should try bilingualism as an experiment, but i do think it's only likely to succeed if you have access to a linguistic community in both languages.  Otherwise, there will be advantages, which our daughter clearly has, but you won't get to easy code-switching between the two languages.  That needn't matter, but if your aim is to ensure they are open to two cultures, you have to go the whole hog and involve yourself fully in both, which is not always possible.

The Village That Raised Our Children

More splurging today i'm afraid, due to starting this post on the mini-tablet, which rather unhelpfully just saved this locally and i'm now copying.  At least that means this had a first draft for once.

Yesterday i briefly mentioned my slight unease at continuing to see myself as part of the home ed community now that the children are both at college, because now i no longer home educate in the commonly understood sense, although of course i still home educate because everyone does and it isn't even home education and so on, blah blah, you know the spiel.  One possible danger of course is that i could lose touch, to the extent that i was ever in touch in the first place, with approaches apt to appeal to children.  There are, however, a couple of reasons why that might not be so.

One of these is that i may only ever have been in limited touch with the needs of children anyway, and in fact due to my moderate but not total commitment to autonomous education, this could be said to be unnecessary in any case, though a varied life wherein one is able and willing to include children is probably important.  Against this might be set the fact that many children with this way of life spend so little time actually at home as opposed to hanging out or sleeping over at other children's homes or doing other stuff with them that their inclusion in the lives of other children and adults might make this less important.  We have a village which raises children in this community, both physically and virtually present, and we are not just families doing things in isolation unless it either suits us to do so, we are unlucky or we have been artificially isolated by a hostile social climate as engendered by, for example, local authorities scaring people into hiding or insufficient publicity regarding the reality of this approach to parenting.

One of the failures of school is that it severs the connection between adults and children and segregates them.  Part of that severance involves teachers being in loco parentis while being relatively unable to establish a natural rapport with the children, often through no fault of their own.  Now, i of course do offer science, maths and other workshops for children who are not mine, and this is potentially questionable.  It can lead to problems and is in danger of drifting towards schooling, something against which i strive.  However, it differs in various ways from teaching.  I am not waylaid by red tape and bureaucracy, by syllabi or curricula or by fear of bullying from the children.  However, i see this as being part of the village.  I must remain vigilant not to become "teachery", which is a risk in this situation.

One way in which i'm now trying to sidestep this issue is by attempting to participate in education in other ways.  To this end, i am embarking on a concerted effort to make a series of educational YouTube videos.  This project is still in its early stages and i am still learning how to put good videos together, and it is of course "no substitute for hands on" but they will improve and i also plan to link them, for people who are interested, to topic areas in the National Curriculum - it is a fact that some people do pay attention to that and i don't judge them for that although i had little interest in it myself.  For those who are interested, here are the links to the two i've made so far which have not been deleted, both about soap making:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEUmX7UpZ9w&list=UUa-j3lgC_ThPt9Ggov0yIyA&index=2&feature=plcp

and the second, which is more about the science (and how cheaply soap can be made!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1QAgdZ01lo&feature=BFa&list=UUa-j3lgC_ThPt9Ggov0yIyA

The other way in which i'm pursuing education, of course, is through writing books.  I have plans for a number of these.  So far, i've published one:  'You Could've Thought Of That', whose children's edition will soon be available from lulu.com (where the adult edition is already available here:  http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-a-ure/you-couldve-thought-of-that-a-compendium-of-ideas-which-havent-been-thought-of-yet/paperback/product-20266026.html).  The second one is of course 'Here Be Dragons', a bestiary and atlas which aims both to entertain and inform.  Also, of course i plan to continue the science and maths sessions, and if possible start new ones on other subjects such as classical languages and philosophy if the interest is there, for as long as at least one child wants me to do so.

So what am i saying?  I suppose that you can all rest assured that i will try to make sure i stay in touch with the needs of children, and that i hope you still see me as part of your village