Parenting Beyond Belief now in Apache
My mother’s book has been translated into Apache. Apache, Helen! Not even Shakespeare or Dickens has been translated into Apache!
T.S. Garp, in The World According to Garp
Okay, PBB has not been translated into Apache. But that line from The World According to Garp was the first thing that popped into my head when I learned yesterday that Parenting Beyond Belief has appeared in its first translated edition — and at first blush, it’s hardly less surprising than Apache.
PBB is now available in Polish.
We’ve been hoping for two years to secure a contract for a French edition, especially given fascinating cultural changes underway in Québec, about which I posted in late 2007:
So why the sudden interest among the Québécois about parents non-croyants? It’s a fascinating story.
Québec has historically been the most religious of the Canadian provinces. Over 83 percent of the population is Catholic — hardly surprising, since the French permitted only Catholics to settle what was New France back in the day. But now Québec is considered the least religious province by a considerable margin — and without losing a single Catholic.
Non-religious Catholics, you say? Oui! French Canadians are eager to maintain their unique identity in the midst of the English Protestant neighborhood — and “French” goes with “Catholic” in Canada even more than it does with “fries” in the U.S. Yet educated Catholics — I’ve discussed this elsewhere — are the most likely of all religious identities to leave religious faith entirely. There is, by all accounts, a very short step from educated Catholic to religious nonbeliever.
Poland shares that tight equation between Catholicism and national identity. Fully 89 percent of Poles self-identify as Catholics. The church is considered by many, even some nontheistic Poles, to be a bulwark against the countless threats to Polish identity that pepper the nation’s history (though it was of little use to the three million Polish Jews murdered in WWII). The papacy of John Paul II and the end of Soviet influence in Poland combined to produce a renewed affection for the Catholic church.
So what does all this have to do with a book on raising children without religion? It’s simple. As in Québec, Catholic identity in Poland is high, but observance is fairly low, with Mass attendance at 40.4 percent in 2008. Poland is also a highly educated and literate country, and (as noted above) educated Catholics are the most likely of all religious identities to leave religious faith entirely. So there is a large and probably growing community of Polish parents trying to raise their children without the undue influence of that looming institution.
I’m happy to help.
Thinking selectively
When I (ever) get around to shooting the sixth YouTube video in the Parenting Beyond Belief series, it’ll be about teaching elementary age kids about evolution.
My advice in a nutshell? Don’t. (That’s why I don’t usually put my advice in nutshells.) [Added: Please note that this is a joke, apparently too subtle. The next sentence reverses it. See? All is well.]
What I mean, of course, is DO teach them about it — but do it in the same way you might teach an eight-year-old about a Shakespeare sonnet or a Bartok string quartet. I wouldn’t sit my second grader down in front of Bartok’s Fifth Quartet and expect her to plead, please oh please Daddy, for the Sixth. The trick is to lay a groundwork by exposing her to music of a hundred kinds, so that later, when she encounters Bartok, she’ll have the experience and the conceptual grounding to make her own informed judgment about it.
Appreciating Shakespeare starts with exposure not to Sonnet 138, but Green Eggs and Ham. (Or maybe a marriage of the two.) Get them savoring meter and wit itself, then they’ll step up into more and more subtle examples of it very naturally as their palate matures. To understand why Bartok and Shakespeare are so friggin’ incredible, it helps to have come across a thousand other examples of their arts to get a sense of what’s possible and what’s been tried. Then you can really savor what they achieved.
Evolution is another thing that’s best approached in sensible steps. It’s an immense, complex and subtle thing that takes place in achingly slow increments as random variation is acted upon by decidedly non-random selective pressures. It’s directional in the short term and directionless in the long term. It is heartless and wasteful and elegant all at once.
In my early teens, I had a very basic grasp of evolution — condensable I’m sure to 50 words or less, half of which were “very.” I majored in physical anthropology in college because I knew juuuust enough to know how much I didn’t know — and how very much I wanted to know it.
I was nineteen before I had a solid grasp of evolution, its evidence, its mechanism, and its astonishing implications.
Since my kids are on track to beat me in everything else — looks, personality, sports, general maturity and fashion sense — I figure I’ll do what I can to help them grasp the greatest realization in human history a lot earlier than I did. The key is to focus not on evolution first, but on natural selection, the much more graspable process that drives evolution.
I addressed this in Raising Freethinkers (pp 17-18):
Q: My six-year-old is fascinated by the natural world. I’ve tried to introduce her to the idea of evolution, but when I say, “A long time ago, apes turned into humans,” she squinches her face—and I know she’s picturing something pretty funny. How can I help her understand the long, slow, fascinating process of evolution?
A: By teaching it the same way evolution happens—in small steps over many years:
1. Draw her attention to adaptations. If I’m out on a walk in the woods with my own daughter and we see a deer with protective coloration, I’ll often say, “Look—you can barely see it! What if I was an animal trying to find a deer to eat? That one wouldn’t be very easy to find. And its babies would have the same coloring, so I’ll bet they’d be hard to find, too.”
2. Imagine a poor adaptation. “Hey, what if it was bright pink? I think I’d have a pink one for supper every night, they’d be so easy to catch.” I step on a twig and the deer bolts away. “Ooh, fast too! I’ll bet I’d have to eat slow pink ones every night. Soon there wouldn’t be any slow pink ones left because I’d have eaten them all!”
3. Move to natural selection, using a non-human example and a shortened timescale. Evolution itself requires thousands of generations and a massive timescale, so above the microbial level we can’t see it in action. But we can study natural selection, the mechanism by which evolution occurs. Once natural selection is understood, evolution is an inevitable consequence of the passage of time. And one creature in particular is just waiting in the wings, so to speak, to explain natural selection to our kids: the peppered moth. [See the Activities section in RF Chapter 1.]
4. Use analogy to teach the otherwise unimaginable timescale. Analogies can be difficult for very young kids, but once your child is able to handle that level of abstraction, there’s no better way to render the inconceivable conceivable. Saying a million Earths would fit inside the Sun is fine, but saying “If the Sun were a soccer ball, Earth would be a peppercorn”—now I get it. Same goes for time. Use either Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar or Dawkin’s armspan analogy.
That’s been our approach, and once in a while, I get a hint that it’s working. Two weeks ago during the Christmas break, Connor (14) was sitting bored, looking out our back window. Suddenly he said, “Dad! Plants don’t feel pain.”
We had a conversation long ago about the many remaining open questions — like whether dolphins are actually smarter than we are, to what extent other animals communicate with each other — and whether plants feel pain.
“How do you know they don’t?” I asked.
“There’d be no reason for them to evolve that,” he said. “Pain is a warning so you can get away from something like a predator, or take your hand out of the fire. But plants can’t move anyway, so pain wouldn’t be an advantage. It wouldn’t help one plant survive to reproduce more than another one. It would just…hurt.”
I reel a bit in moments like these. Never mind whether he’s right — I have no idea myself. The wonderful thing is that he’s thinking creatively and in the right terms. In this case, that means thinking “selectively.” With that grounding, once he encounters evolution in greater depth, it’ll slip on like a glove.
Raising Free-linkers
Raising Freethinkers is chock-full of resources, including several bazillion URLs. Most are manageable, but some are just unforgivably long. Even as we prepared the manuscript, I wondered just how many people would really have the fortitude to type out strings like www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=246.
Now Colin T at Science-Based Parenting has prevented an epidemic of carpal tunnel syndrome among secular parents by putting every URL from Raising Freethinkers online. He has even linked to the Amazon page for every recommended book.
I’m speechless.
This was something I had originally considered myself, but the enormity of the task kept it safely on the back burner. I am very grateful to Colin for taking this on.
Links to resources in Raising Freethinkers, Ch. 1-3
Links to resources in Raising Freethinkers, Ch. 4-6
Links to resources in Raising Freethinkers, Ch. 7-9
Full launch at last
Foundation Beyond Belief — a non-profit charitable and educational organization created to focus, encourage and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists and to provide a comprehensive education and support program for nontheistic parents — is alive.
Foundation membership is now open, and our first slate of beneficiaries is in place.
And what a slate it is. There’s an organization of scientists committed to biodiversity, another providing health care to marginalized communities on five continents, and a secular alternative for addiction recovery. There’s a non-profit bringing safe drinking water to five countries in desperate need, an advocacy group for refugees fleeing war, and an advocacy group for asylum seekers fleeing torture. There’s a scholarship fund for GLBT students who have been disowned by their families, an organization protecting children in war zones, and another protecting the environment by working toward “greener” buildings and cities.
Selecting these has been a challenging and powerful experience. In the end, we chose a wide range of organizations in size, budget, mission, and scope. Members will now in turn choose which of these organizations they will support with a percentage of their monthly donations—which in turn will inform our future selections.
It’s a chance to watch the evolution of humanist philanthropy.
No more words. Time for pictures:
Now go. Join up.
UPDATE: As is to be expected with a site and project as complex as FBB, we’ve had some technical hiccups. If you’re having any trouble signing up, give it a couple of days and our brilliant webster Airan will have it all ironed out.
The Passion of the Frost
Move while you still see me
You’ll be lost, you’ll be so sorry, when I’m gone.
Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ SuperstarSo he said, “Let’s run and we’ll have some fun
now before I melt away.”
Frosty the Snowman
Last time I drew a parallel between God and Santa. This time we unveil an even more shocking truth: that Frosty the Snowman and Jesus the Christ are one and the same.
Oh you heard me.
Jesus was born improbably (via virgin), loved everyone unconditionally, then saved humanity by sacrificing himself on the cross as Mary wept. He was resurrected and joined God in Heaven.
Frosty was born improbably (via magic hat), loved everyone unconditionally, then saved a little girl by sacrificing himself in a greenhouse. Karen wept over the puddle he had become, then he was resurrected and flew to the “North Pole” with (ahem) “Santa.”
The corker? They both promise a Second Coming:
Do not let your hearts be troubled…I will come back.
Jesus (John 14:1-3)Don’t you cry, I’ll be back again someday.
Frosty
Why, it’s practically Narnia in top hat and carrot.
Santa Claus – The Ultimate Dry Run
Time once again for the annual reposting of my take on Santa, which first appeared in Parenting Beyond Belief. A lovely symmetry this year: My youngest is now eight, the age my oldest was when his Kringledoubt finally overflowed (see below). And sure enough, Delaney is currently on that same fascinating cusp between wanting to preserve belief and wanting to know.
IT’S HARD TO even consider the possibility that Santa isn’t real. Everyone seems to believe he is. As a kid, I heard his name in songs and stories and saw him in movies with very high production values. My mom and dad seemed to believe, batted down my doubts, told me he wanted me to be good and that he always knew if I wasn’t. And what wonderful gifts I received! Except when they were crappy, which I always figured was my fault somehow. All in all, despite the multiple incredible improbabilities involved in believing he was real, I believed – until the day I decided I cared enough about the truth to ask serious questions, at which point the whole façade fell to pieces. Fortunately the good things I had credited him with kept coming, but now I knew they came from the people around me, whom I could now properly thank.
Now go back and read that paragraph again, changing the ninth word from Santa to God.
Santa Claus, my secular friends, is the greatest gift a rational worldview ever had. Our culture has constructed a silly and temporary myth parallel to its silly and permanent one. They share a striking number of characteristics, yet the one is cast aside halfway through childhood. And a good thing, too: A middle-aged father looking mournfully up the chimbly along with his sobbing children on yet another giftless Christmas morning would be a sure candidate for a very soft room. This culturally pervasive myth is meant to be figured out, designed with an expiration date, after which consumption is universally frowned upon.
I’ll admit to having stumbled backward into the issue as a parent. My wife and I defaulted into raising our kids with the same myth we’d been raised in (I know, I know), considering it ever-so-harmless and fun. Neither of us had experienced the least trauma as kids when the jig was up. To the contrary: we both recall the heady feeling of at last being in on the secret to which so many others, including our younger siblings, were still oblivious. Ahh, the sweet, smug smell of superiority.
But as our son Connor began to exhibit the incipient inklings of Kringledoubt, it occurred to me that something powerful was going on. I began to see the Santa paradigm as an unmissable opportunity – the ultimate dry run for a developing inquiring mind.
My boy was eight years old when he started in with the classic interrogation: How does Santa get to all those houses in one night? How does he get in when we don’t have a chimney and all the windows are locked and the alarm system is on? Why does he use the same wrapping paper as Mom? All those cookies in one night – his LDL cholesterol must be through the roof!
This is the moment, at the threshold of the question, that the natural inquiry of a child can be primed or choked off. With questions of belief, you have three choices: feed the child a confirmation, feed the child a disconfirmation – or teach the child to fish.
The “Yes, Virginia” crowd will heap implausible nonsense on the poor child, dismissing her doubts with invocations of magic or mystery or the willful suspension of physical law. Only slightly less problematic is the second choice, the debunker who simply informs the child that, yes, Santa is a big fat fraud.
“Gee,” the child can say to either of them. “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need any more authoritative pronouncements.”
I for one chose door number three.
“Some people believe the sleigh is magic,” I said. “Does that sound right to you?” Initially, boy howdy, did it ever. He wanted to believe, and so was willing to swallow any explanation, no matter how implausible or how tentatively offered. “Some people say it isn’t literally a single night,” I once said, naughtily priming the pump for later inquiries. But little by little, the questions got tougher, and he started to answer that second part – Does that sound right to you? – a bit more agnostically.
I avoided both lying and setting myself up as a godlike authority, determined as I was to let him sort this one out himself. And when at last, at the age of nine, in the snowy parking lot of the Target store, to the sound of a Salvation Army bellringer, he asked me point blank if Santa was real – I demurred, just a bit, one last time.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Well…I think all the moms and dads are Santa.” He smiled at me. “Am I right?”
I smiled back. It was the first time he’d asked me directly, and I told him he was right.
“So,” I asked, “how do you feel about that?”
He shrugged. “That’s fine. Actually, it’s good. The world kind of… I don’t know…makes sense again.”
That’s my boy. He wasn’t betrayed, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t bereft of hope. He was relieved. It reminded me of the feeling I had when at last I realized God was fictional. The world actually made sense again.
And when Connor started asking skeptical questions about God, I didn’t debunk it for him by fiat. I told him what various people believe and asked if that sounded right to him. It all rang a bell, of course. He’d been through the ultimate dry run.
By allowing our children to participate in the Santa myth and find their own way out of it through skeptical inquiry, we give them a priceless opportunity to see a mass cultural illusion first from the inside, then from the outside. A very casual line of post-Santa questioning can lead kids to recognize how completely we all can snow ourselves if the enticements are attractive enough. Such a lesson, viewed from the top of the hill after exiting a belief system under their own power, can gird kids against the best efforts of the evangelists – and far better than secondhand knowledge could ever hope to do.
_______________________
A related post from Krismas 2007
For Tom Flynn’s counterpoint to this position, see pp. 85-87 of Parenting Beyond Belief.
A Hall of Fame reply…maybe
Had a lovely visit last month with the Freethinkers of East Cobb, a secular parenting group here in the Atlanta burbs. One of the group members named Kirstin left me a great gift — the cleverest reply I’ve ever heard to one of the most common questions nonreligious parents get.
She and her husband cross paths with the occasional evangelical Christian homeschooling parent in the neighborhood. At some point, by Georgia law, the Christian parent will ask where they go to church. Kristin told me
“Whenever we get that question, we just say, ‘Oh, we homechurch.’”
The more I think about it, the better this answer gets. You would NOT want to use this to hide your beliefs, but the inevitable follow-up question will give you the opportunity to go there. It ends up being a gentle and interesting sidestep into, rather than around, the larger question.
According to the Googlemind, the coinage “homechurch” is rare but not unheard of.* It’s apparently used most often by Christians who are “between churches” for one reason or another. But it also works for a secular parent who is making an effort to raise religiously literate kids (and selves) without the shortcomings and single note of the traditional church.
I’ve written at length about what I think is the ideal approach to religious literacy, which boils down to several thousand little conversations, connections, observations and experiences woven into the daily fabric of family life for 18 years. Described that way, it’s more similar to “unschooling.” But saying “We unchurch” would be immediately misunderstood — an experience unschoolers are surely familiar with.
So my vote is unchanged. “We homechurch” goes straight to the Secular Parenting Hall of Fame. Use it responsibly, and send Kirstin a nickel every time you do.
____________
*UPDATE: Or not. If you search with a space (“home church”), you uncover a whole movement of believers who “home church” because actual churches have gone too liberal on them. I avoid church (in part) because the perspective is too narrow and exclusive for me. They avoid it because the perspective is too broad and inclusive for them. Oy! (Thanks to several commenters for pointing out that dark reflection.)
Hey bloggers, we need ya!
We’re getting ready for a big blog bonanza to announce the full launch of Foundation Beyond Belief on January 1.
An estimated 1.4 zillion bloggers will receive the text and video for the announcement on December 29 to be posted on New Year’s Day.
If you’d like to help make the big cyber-yawp that announces the Foundation to the world, go here to give us your contact information and we’ll send you the post on the 29th.
Thanks!
In the Name of the Big Guy
- December 10, 2009
- By Dale McGowan
- In humor, My kids, schools
8
Went to a classroom play of sorts at Erin’s middle school — a mostly unscripted mock trial. The teacher is innovative and fun, and Erin adores her, so I wasn’t surprised to see that she’d come up with this clever little exercise.
The kids were assigned roles — prosecution and defense teams, jury, witnesses, and so on. On trial was an alligator, accused of eating the witch in the Rapunzel story (a wrinkle I’d never heard before).
Various other fairy-tale characters testified — again, unscriptedly, so they had to think on their feet. It mostly went as you’d expect of sixth graders asked to improvise.
Erin was the bailiff. As the first witness approached — the prince, I believe — Erin instructed him to raise his right hand and place the other hand on a fairy-tale book she held out. (Had myself a nice internal chuckle at the parallel.)
It occurred to me casually — I’ve come ever so far — that the name of the Creator was about to be invoked. Sure enough, Erin looked the prince in the eye and said
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Grimm?
