Apt. 11D

Carrie Nation Week

Jonah came home with a red ribbon last week. "What's this for, Jonah?" "You tie it on your tree and it stops drugs." "What?" "A policeman did drugs and died, but he actually saved lives, because people told his story and stopped doing drugs." "Ah."

My 7 year old kid learned about drugs at school last week. Well, he mostly learned that mommy was going to die, because she pops open a beer at dinner time. So, we had to counteract the hysterics by teaching him about moderation. We talked about how one glass of wine a day has actually been shown to be good for your heart.

When Steve came home, I told him how he was going to get sick and die from his glass of microbrew. He said that Carrie Nation week was a one way ticket to binge drinking at 14.

When I was a kid, my Italian grandfather would give me a glass of water tinted red with wine at dinner time. That's what his family did back in Abruzzi. On the other hand, Papa didn't have a firm grasp of the whole moderation thing, so perhaps he isn't the best role model. Still, I think that moderation isn't such a tough concept, and it's one that more American kids should learn at an earlier age, rather than face down in a toilet freshman year in college.

UPDATE: More from Allison Kaplan Sommer and Jane Galt.

Blog Time Off

I need a little break. I'm taking a short blog break until next Monday. See you all then. Laura

Midweek Journal

It's been a weird week with my usual routine interrupted by Parent Observation Day at the kids' schools and yet another planning board meeting. I'm terrible at compartmentalizing so various issues distracted me and kept me up at night. Long term projects were put on hold as I obsessed about past missteps and planned future moves. It will be good to be back in the classroom, when the urgency of a class lecture forces me to prioritize.

At Jonah's school, I was amazed by how much time was spent just getting 20 kids to follow directions and to simultaneously concentrate on the lesson at hand. What I could have done in five minutes with Jonah one on one, took 40 minutes in the classroom. The teacher was great and her lesson was interesting, but it took a long time to get 20 kids through the material.

It's getting colder around here. My new parka from Lands' End arrived. It's the get-the-kids-to-school jacket. Warm, but too bulky around the arms to be terribly cute. I have to inspect the kids' coats in storage, because they're going to need them soon. Ian needs more long sleeve shirts. Both need new underwear and socks. Actually, I need new socks, too. I've been wearing my husband's gold-toed work socks, because mine are too holey. Socks are one of those annoying things to buy. I have twenty sweaters, but five pairs of good socks. Who wants to spend money on black things that go on your feet, when there's a really excellent skirt to buy?

I'm knee-deep in all sorts of chores, so I need to make some lists and get organized. Better post later tonight.

How To Choose A Good School

Amy asked me to post an open thread on how parents can choose a good school for their kids.

It's mildly amusing that strong voucher opponents argue against the notion of choice in schools, because truthfully the middle class and wealthy already have that choice. They choose their schools every time they decide which community to live in. The more money you have, the more choice you have. The wealthiest can even choose to send their child to a private school.

When we were deciding which Jersey suburb to move to, we took into account two variables -- commute time into New York City and the quality of the schools. In fact, I even made a chart with one column with the time spent on a bus and the other with percentage of high school students who went on to four year colleges. Certain towns were eliminated, because we couldn't afford the homes there. We went to the town that was at the top of the chart and put a bid on a home immediately.

So, now that Amy is shopping around for towns and schools, what variables should she examine? I just went with the four year college statistic. All that information is available online. But what other factors should she check out? Since there is such a strong correlation between SES and schools, should she just buy a home in the wealthiest town that she can afford?

More on Education

There's been some excellent commentary about education in the blogosphere in the past week. Harry writes about the problems with parent-teacher homework agreements. Lisa follows up on our discussion and writes about methods for parents to become more involved in their school, with a comment from me. BitchPhD writes that her son's teacher steps over the line and involves herself in family business. The comments on her post were also interesting as some felt that school wasn't challenging enough and others thought there was too much pressure on kids. Tim Burke sees an underlying political agenda in the debates about homework. And Professing Mama found her parent-teacher conference a wonderful experience.

With Jonah is now in 2nd grade, I've had three years of experiencing public schools from a parent perspective. After years of analyzing abstract studies and debating political theory around education, here I am in the middle of it as a participant. Rude awakening.

Two separate issues keep coming up around here: challenging kids and involving parents.

The Niche Bloggers v. The Generalists

I was just watching Ann Althouse and Dan Drezner talk about Steven Bainbridge's decision to stop blogging about general interest punditry and set up a blog that focuses on his academic specialty of business law. Ann and Dan thought that this was a bad move. They felt that most bloggers don't want to read about the same old thing every day and instead prefer to read about a variety of topics and to get to know the quirks and personality of the blogger.

I disagree. Niche bloggers are operating very successfully within the blogosphere along side the generalists, though in completely different circles. The specialists have gathered good sized audiences. A few of them have readership that rivals Dan and Ann. Because reporters are always looking for expert sources to comment on stories, these niche bloggers have also been widely quoted in the mainstream press. Specialization with real knowledge and skills to back up their posts have given them a great deal of credibility. With the enormous competition among the generalist bloggers who know something about Project Runway (Laura should have won), these specialists have a real edge.

In fact, I wrote a whole paper on Policy Bloggers for the recent American Political Science Association Conference.

Excellent examples of niche bloggers include the bloggers who so graciously helped me with my paper:

Elizabeth at A Half Changed World
PZ Myers at Pharyngula
Prof. Goose at The Oil Drum
Brad Wilcox at Family Scholars Blog
Jeff McIntire-Strasburg at Sustainablog
Andrew Rotherham at Eduwonk
Matthew Holt at The Health Care Blog
David Hardy at Arms and the Law
Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy

UPDATE: Links fixed.

Weekend Journal

As part of our efforts to find parity in leisure time, Steve kicked me out of the door on Saturday to play with two buddies in the city for the day. Margie had a full weekend of leisure time. Her husband got her a hotel room to herself, because Margie had a particularly tough month. We did what usually do, which is to wander around, window shop, and then settle in for long talking and eating sessions.

Spreadin' Love

Sam Crane points to an article in the Washington Post about childcare in France and a TPM post on the state of childcare in the U.S.

I'm with James Wolcott on this one: "But it was a satisfying season overall, with Laura, in her pride, composure, classiness, and tough candor, leaving the most original, forceful impression."

I'm spending a fair amount of time reading the political blogs today, because Iraq is such a freakin' mess that even Bush is comparing it to Vietnam. Ugh. I'm not reading any post that talks about why this war was a bad idea and that the blogger knew it all along. Yeah, I wasn't in favor of this war either, but now we're here, and we have to figure out a way to get out with condemning villages of Iraqis to firing squads when we walk out the door. How do we leave without making life worse for the Iraqi people? Some like McCain are arguing for more troops. Others are debating reducing our goals and merely securing portions of the country. I don't know. I don't have a military background, so I'm open minded about the different solutions and am surfing around those blogs today.

(more later)

Equity After the Kids

Before I got derailed talking about webcams in the classroom, we were talking about equity in marriage after children. How do you make sure that you don't stuck with the lion share of thankless drudgery after the kids come around?

Some say the solution is to work full time, that way the guy is forced to pick up his dry cleaning himself, and other tasks are outsourced to nannies and maids. You have to making serious cash to afford all that help. Most women have their kids in daycare and still have to do the cleaning themselves. Even with nannies or daycare, there is still much shuffling that has to be done. Many of the full time paid labor moms still do a majority of the work at home. They race around all weekend taking the kids to soccer, arranging the parties, buying the clothes. Remember Arlie Hochschild's book, The Second Shift, was about women who worked full time who came home to the second job doing the childcare and housework? And the ones who make less money then their husband might as well not even have a job, since their job is considered expendable. A full time job is no guarantee to equity.

Many women stay home with the kids full or part time for a variety of reasons -- the expense of childcare combined with a low paying profession, a strong vocation to be with children, boring paid work, the lack of job flexibility, whatever. How do you prevent becoming the doormat if you stay home with the kids?

I guess there's no one right path. These are just some suggestions that I've accumulated.

UPDATE: Thanks to Pajamas Media and to Blogher for the links (Thanks Allison and Mary!). Nice commentary at Blogher.

The Best Blog Tool Is...

Bloglines. I've had an account for awhile, but hadn't really used it properly. I hadn't plugged in many of my favorite blogs and didn't check it daily. All the folders built up with way too much stuff, since I didn't use it regularly. Instead, I preferred going through the blogroll on my blog. But then I found I wasn't checking in enough on the bloggers who don't post daily. I was also getting annoyed at the slow pace of loading the blogs.

The downside of using bloglines is that the blogger has no record that you were there. They don't get that click in their sitemeter, so blog readership numbers may be under estimated. And the blogger doesn't see your referrer to remind them that you are around.

It's slightly interesting to compare the numbers of subscribers to the various blogs. Another way to measure blog popularity.