We’ve all heard them, those ads for charitable organizations that want us all to dig into our pockets and sponsor a child in a developing country - or abused animals, or political prisoners, or, or, or……

It’s a good marketing strategy. Show footage of little kids in a state that makes us feel uncomfortable - digging in garbage heaps or wearing rags, not even bothering to brush off the flies that land on them. Then tell us how lucky we are, and how we can change these children’s lives, for only a few dollars a month. The whole effect is wrapped up by then showing us the same little ones, in tidy school uniforms or colourful play clothes. They are smiling, reading, playing. We’re told that they’ll get clean water, food, medical care, an education, and that their whole family or village will benefit too. How could we withhold these things from such precious children? It’s less than the cost of a daily cup of coffee (or is that an insurance ad, now? Hmmm, perhaps the similarity is not accidental…..)

The thing is, I think we want to do good. We want to reach out and make someone’s life better. We’re even happier when we get patted on the back for it, when we get letters and photos that prove we’re making a change for someone halfway around the world, when we’re told what a great difference we’re making in that person’s life.

But should we need all that attention to do good? Do we only choose to help if there’s a tangible, immediate & continued reward in it for us? How about just pleasing ourselves? How about just being able to smile to ourselves and know that we helped someone? How about just being happy that we’ve made someone else happy?

Some of you may remember a TV ad campaign from back in the 1970’s, where ordinary people were shown doing nice things like helping to carry groceries. The message of those ads was that there are opportunities all around you to help others: you don’t need to sign up for a monthly financial commitment, or to volunteer regularly at the local hospital/school/library/food bank to do good. If these things truly call to you, by all means, do them! But they aren’t the only way for us to “do good,” to live a life that includes some service.

Those of you who know me well, will know that I devoted a significant portion of my time to community service, from my very early teens until after the birth of my second child. I was proud to be a volunteer, and I’m still proud to know that I did good. I grew concerned, though, when the term “volunteerism” began to be tossed about.

How did we get from simply doing good, to an organized movement? How did we go from people simply feeling good about helping, to the point where companies were sending out donation forms in employee pay packets, all filled in with the “appropriate” level of contribution and lacking only the employee’s signature to make them legal?

Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, so to speak. There’s a lot more than stinks about volunteerism too, but I’ll leave that for another post - perhaps in another forum.

I don’t want to discourage those of you who volunteer each week for the local animal shelter, or who raise funds for medical research. I’d be the last one to say you’re not needed. But for a moment I’d like to invite you to give some consideration to the simple act of doing good. You don’t need to read a book about it, watch a movie, or put up a video on YouTube to publicize your efforts. You don’t need Oprah to feature you on her show, nor do you need to join an email loop for the specific purpose of discussing your random acts of kindness. And if you decide to keep a journal of all the good you do, I hope it’s a private thing, just for yourself. I hope you also write in it the good things that others do for you.

A dear friend of mine sings the praises of just about every person she’s ever met. Sometimes it seems a little over the top, but I’ve seen people look at each other through new eyes after being introduced by Barbara. Another really cool thing Barbara does is to “catch” people doing good. She hugs them and kisses them, she writes them little notes of thanks. She stops them to say they’ve made a difference in her life. Being fond of the English language and not one to toss all the efforts of my elementary teachers out the window, I rarely use this turn of phrase: but Barbara is one of the “goodest” people I know. The good she does is genuine, and she takes pleasure in doing it - in her own boisterous, chaotic, bordering on obsessive way. On my better days I try to be more like Barbara. On my best days I succeed. (There, I’ve made up for murdering a comparative!)

But let’s get back to that whole $10 a month and one coffee a day theme. Beyond opening doors for each other or helping a friend in need, beyond thanking the bus driver or wishing the shop clerk a good day, there is another way to do good. It’s simple: put your money where your heart is.

What do I mean by that? I mean this: if the TV footage of complete strangers has you digging into your wallet, it should be a more automatic gesture when it comes to folks you do know. Spend locally, support local tradespeople and small businesses. You don’t need to be told where your $10 is going to know your neighbours have rents or mortgages to pay, that they have operating costs and salaries, and families at home depending on them to bring home the bacon. Before the era of the NGO marketing campaigns we just knew these things, we realized them without having to be told, and we did what we could to contribute to the well being of our communities. It wasn’t about tax shelters or guilt, nor about glamour and being patted on the back for our “sacrifice”.

I find myself realizing today that I probably don’t do enough to pass this lesson on to my kids. Sure, we patronize the local dépanneur instead of choosing to buy things like milk & bread at the grocery store. Sure, we make choices like joining the small, local dojo instead of finding a bigger martial arts school somewhere else. And we don’t just spend money at these places, we become emotionally involved with them. We make friends of the owners, share job leads with their children, encourage our kids when they want to give them handmade cards and cookies at the holidays. But sometimes I wonder if the girls understand why we do these things. Perhaps it bears some discussion in the coming weeks….

I said yesterday that I want to teach my children to live right, and to help other people. This is part of that lesson in right living: that when a person does something mechanically because of a moment’s guilt or because it it expected of them, and then they forget it, they are just one of the minions of “volunteerism.” When a person makes choices out of kindness, there is no guilt and no need for rewards. There is also no feeling that the giver is superior to the recipient. Everyone benefits, everyone derives happiness from the act. We are part of a living community.

That is service. That is the value I wish for my children to learn and to live. That is what I learned from watching my parents.

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Dojogirl has been bugging us to buy her a cell phone, for going on two years now. Pretty much every adult I know has one of these devices, and a good number of the teens now have one as well. Cell phones have gone from being an expensive item used mostly by adults who needed them for business, to a fairly affordable device without which most people over age 13 won’t leave home.

As cell phones have become more sophisticated we’ve seen increasing costs related to things like text messaging, and there is also the need to replace a phone frequently in order to keep up with the latest technology. Besides the question of whether we want to encourage our children to create this kind of negative environmental impact, there is also the financial burden which is generally borne by parents. Teens can easily fall into expensive usage patterns that they will later be unable to afford, rather than learning moderation with their first phones.

When we started seeing kids bring their phones to school a whole other can of worms: Students using cell phones to cheat during tests. Bullies using picture phones to take inappropriate photos in bathrooms and locker rooms - and subsequently distribute them so as to humiliate other young people. Teachers reporting that cell phone use was distracting their classes.

So it wasn’t surprising when schools banned cell phones. Some schools and districts simply banned their use during class time. But much of the inappropriate use can take place outside of class, and cell phones are now the item most often lost or stolen at school. It doesn’t take a genius to see why some districts have banned bringing cell phones to school altogether.

New York City is one place where all schools have banned cell phones completely. The move was made in 2005, and the issue is still being dragged through the courts. In April 2008 New York Supreme Court Justice Angela Mazzarelli ruled in favour of the ban, but it is likely this decision will be appealed by angry parents who feel their children need the phones with them at all times, in case of emergencies. In the meantime, students are apparently smuggling phones into school or paying bodega (that’s “dépanneur” for my Québecois readers) employees to “babysit” them - a practice which resulted in at least one case where the employee absconded with both the money and the phones…

I tell you, the debate just gives me one more reason to homeschool my kids - right through the high school years! My way of looking at the safety issue is this: if I can’t trust my children’s own behaviour, or if the world has become so unfriendly since I was their age, that I don’t want them to be out unsupervised then the best place for them is with their family. No cell phone is going to take care of them better than their parents can. In fact, that phone might just give us all a false sense of security.

I’d rather my kids were prepared for life in the world by a few more years of spending time with family, and being not only supervised but having the opportunity to discuss potentially risky situations and behaviours as the opportunities arise in daily life. This is something you will never get in a school group, whether private or public, because as soon as you’ve got one adult supervising more than 5 or so kids you’ve become institutionalized and you have to take special precautions to compensate for the fact that one adult really isn’t equipped to watch that many kids.

Schools have buddy systems, name tags or uniforms, younger kids holding onto ropes, checklists and travel by chartered bus, locked schools where kids are kept within the gates and walls, and even a parent with legitimate business must sign in and get a hall pass in order to gain access. While I do not at all deny these measures are important to the safety of such a large group of children in the care of a handful of adults, the fact is that this is not preparation for the real world. It might be preparation to be part of other institutions, but it isn’t going to do an adequate job of teaching anyone’s kids to behave on the street, in the library, at the park or the grocery store or the city hall - well, except in those instances when we need to stand quietly in a line or raise our hands and wait to be called upon before we speak.

Institutions tend to take both choice and responsibility away from anyone, young or old. Be it a school, a long term care hospital, a prison, etc. an institution involves a large group of clients and a significantly smaller group of staff. Routines and regulations are made chiefly with the goal of keeping order, with being fair and giving the same treatment to everyone - rather than with giving each client the things he or she needs. This kind of system can actually encourage abuses such as cheating, because the clients (like high school students) sense its rigidity and frequently feel they do not have a say in making the decisions that affect them on a daily basis. So while on the surface an institution is supposed to promote respect, order and ethical behaviour it is not unknown for it to also teach coping skills like lying, cheating and plagiarism to at least some of its clients - probably a large number if the rules and procedures are perceived as especially unfair.

I’ve rambled quite long on this one, but I just wanted to leave my readers with one last thought about school/public safety and cell phones. Many parents who felt that the cell phone ban was unconstitutional remarked that they wanted to know where their children were at all times, and they particularly mentioned concerns over school shootings and terrorist acts. Indeed, in some recent cases it was a call from a cell phone that was the first alert to 911. In the case of an event that knocks out school wide communications this could mean help would reach the school promptly. However, it is important to keep in mind that if every person in a school of 1000+ students got on their cell phone at the same time - whether to report the emergency to authorities, to communicate with parents or check on the safety of friends, or perhaps simply out of boredom during a lock down or evacuation - networks could easily be overwhelmed.

This is what happened after the fall 2006 shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College. I don’t think it made a very big difference to the delivery of emergency services in this case, as police happened to be already on the scene and were able to bring in all the required services by radio rather than cell phone. But I imagine that a number of families were disturbed when they couldn’t reach the students who were evacuated and needing help to get home. If there is one time when I do think we should fall back on institutions, it’s during an emergency. Especially in large cities with so many strangers to coordinate, the best equipped people to deal with communication and logistics are the emergency services providers. It’s something to think about…

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Hubby & I sat down with the girls a few days ago to brainstorm what habits were more important to work on for the moment, and the cards and accompanying sheets got printed out. We set a few goals with the girls, and already Dojogirl is beginning to add things of her own. The Banana asked me this morning if we could add some special “Mama time” to her list of goals. So there’s no lack of motivation for good behaviour!

Yesterday was our first day of using the cards, and we did our tallies this morning after the girls got up. We’ve decided to do it this way so we can count getting to bed on time, as this is a trouble spot in our family. It didn’t make sense to have the girls getting up after they were tucked in, so we evaluate from breakfast time to breakfast time instead of breakfast to bedtime.

Both the girls lost two out of nine cards on our first day. Because the Banana had no points assigned to her cards, that wasn’t too bad for her. Dojogirl’s cards had numeric values attached to them, with the harder things worth more points. Unfortunately, it worked out that she lost two of the more weighty cards, and it caused her to lose 30 out of 100 points. In theory that’s a “failed” day - although it will average out once we look at several days in a row to evaluate a specific goal.

We didn’t put too much emphasis on the failure aspect, but did remind her that she’d hae to be on extra special behaviour to make up for it. Already, the tomato planting for tomorrow is in danger of being postponed….

It’s no miracle overnight cure, but it does seem to be working better than sticker charts ever did. The girls were much more helpful this morning than they’ve been in a while. We’re still working on attentiveness, however!

We may have to re-think the points assigned to Dojogirl’s habits, so as not to set her up for failure. Other than that, the system is working smoothly. Even better, it hardly takes any time at all to implement. That’s a big plus in my book.

Thanks to Debra for sharing her cards!

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Socialization is often trotted out as a reason not to homeschool, especially when it’s obvious that a child’s parents are intelligent and well-equipped, and have done their homework. Unfortunately, socialization is often a worry for homeschooling parents as well. Most of us make the choices we do because we want our kids to have the very best they can. Even though most parents feel the public schools need a good deal of improvement when it comes to their social environment, it’s so easy to feel guilty or think we have to make up for the fact that our kids are not sitting at desks with 30 other same age kids five days a week. It’s hard to shake the common belief that what is average must by default be good or right….

Dana of Principled Discovery has written a very thoughtful response to an argument against homeschooling based on another author’s personal observation that homeschooled children are socially inept. Please wander on over and read “Those ’socially inept’ homeschoolers,” and take time to look through the comments as well. There are some very intelligent remarks made - and a reply from the author of the original article too!

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Just a quick reminder to all Montreal-area homeschoolers that tomorrow is our February meeting for kids activities with the Montreal Homelearners (MHL) group. Please do go to the web site & sign up, if you haven’t already, as we want to be sure we’re not all bringing the same ingredients!

There are a goodly number of upcoming homeschool activities and events of interest to all families in the Montreal area. Sonya is doing a great job of writing everything up at the MHL site, and other things like Montreal Free School are also being updated elsewhere. Since other folks are doing a superb job of writing up activities of interest I will be removing the Montreal Happenings section (upper left sidebar) of my blog, and will instead place links in my blogroll (right sidebar) for folks who want to know what’s happening in & around Montreal. I will still write up individual posts about interesting happenings as often as I can, though. So if you see an event notice, look in the post for the date & time, and for the organizer’s contact info. Thanks!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!