Of Cleaning Fish and Doing Science

Hi, everyone. Thanks for your posts on cycle three. I enjoyed reading each of them!

These disparate readings, which I wanted us to consider under the heading of the relationship between home and school, led us in lots of different directions. I couldn’t begin to summarize all of those, so I will just pull out a few themes that I think were particularly fruitful for me as I read your work.

Lauren wrote a great post this cycle that talks about the line between the private and public sphere, as represented by the private life of home and the public life of school. Chris elaborated on this, too, when he questioned what secularism has done to education in our society when it put up a seeming wall (however well intentioned) between religion--a matter of private conscious in this country--and state. 

Where is that line between private and public? That is one of the great questions that this country has debated since the founding and continues to play out today. And as Lauren asks in relationship to this dilemma, if schools are being asked to take on so much more of the rearing that used to happen in homes, doesn’t that inevitably mean that our standards for what counts as private, personal and familiar might need to change too? 

Might schools inevitably need to be more invasive if they are to do their jobs today?

As I noted in my response to Lauren, one way to think about this is that compulsory public education is inherently invasive. It requires children to attend school with deep consequences if it doesn't happen. The founders of the system were essentially making a claim over the public lives of all citizens of the republic. The rights of the parent qua parent were put aside in this case. While we have a much stronger homeschooling movement in this country than in others, it hardly offsets the fact--the state is making a strong claim over the lives of all families in this country.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not going on a rant here about compulsory public schooling. I’m not calling for privatization. But, personally, I think the notion of compulsory education does need rethinking. Absent that trend, though, I think the best we can do is realize that state overreach has been an issue for educators since the very inception of the system back in the 1800s. 

The question I would pose, then, is this: How can individual educators and schools best walk this line?

Coleman brought up the example in his post of his childhood northern Michigan school district which recognized the first day of deer hunting season by not holding classes. I personally think it's cool when schools respect the local cultures and willingly give time for students to be away from school to participate in things that are valued, such as religious celebrations, sports and hunting. 

The bigger question for me is whether or not we shouldn't take it further. 

Could we actually view and support hunting as a learning experience? 

When I was in elementary school in small town Minnesota in the 1970s, we actually had gun training in our elementary gym class. We had bb guns, and learned shooting positions (supine, kneeling, standing), gun safety, and the like. (Yes, in case you are curious, Todd Harris once accidently fired the gun off the ceiling and was promptly spanked by Mr. Hansen for doing so. It was strangely awesome for this young child, if you will forgive me for saying this.)

Of course, we didn't learn how to gut a deer. My dad taught me that (or, at least he tried to). But I wonder what would have happened if that had become a science lesson. 

I distinctly remember drawing diagrams of fish in middle school science, and I also remember cleaning fish with my dad, but nobody ever thought of joining those two activities together. 

There are a whole host of reasons why the integration of killing and gutting wild game and science lessons might not go together. One, not everyone hunts and fishes, even in small town areas. Two, not many people probably have all the expertise it takes to do this real well. Third, maybe it is more of a private, recreational, cultural thing and therefore something the school should stay out of--just let parents and kids have their time alone and realize that not all learning needs to happen with a curriculum in schools.

I find this a fascinating question--the boundary between school learning and home cultures. Full integration seems the ideal but I wonder if the school can be trusted to do those things well or if they wouldn't take all the fun and interest out of them for kids? 

Still, shooting a gun in school was pretty cool. No one can believe we used to do that. For sure, those days are long gone.