Here’s a composite email, representing a kind of question that the office gets frequently–and which generally gets passed on to me.

Dear Dr. Bauer,

My high school junior is applying to colleges. He’s a strong reader and an excellent writer, and he’d like to study literature or possibly philosophy at a good school.

Could you help me identify some universities that aren’t completely dominated by liberal faculty and their agendas? We would like him to be in a department that emphasizes reading and writing and discussion but that doesn’t take a politically correct/feminist/postmodernist approach.

We are heartened to see that you are teaching at William & Mary. Would that be a good place for him to apply? Thank you for any help you can offer.

Sincerely,

Worried Parent

I dread these emails, because I can’t really answer the question that’s being asked.

I should say right off that I’m sympathetic to the underlying concern, which is: I don’t want to send my child off to a place where he will be mocked and made fun of for beliefs which may be out of step with those of the majority of his classmates. I’m getting ready to pack my oldest off to college this fall. I too have parental worries.

But this particular way of expressing that concern has three major problems with it that I’d like to point out.

1. Failure to understand the nature of academic departments.

Academic departments, particularly in the humanities, are hardly ever homogeneous. (I’m talking here about medium to large departments at secular, or for-all-practical-purposes secular, schools; the most homogeneous departments around are those at smaller religious schools that require adherence to a confession or creed, but those aren’t generally the schools I’m being asked about.)

Your typical good-sized department will probably contain one or two observant Catholics, two or three observant Episcopalians, a handful of nominal Presbyterians and Baptists who are for all practical purposes secularists, a couple of militant left-wingers out to make converts, one or two ex-hippies, the odd evangelical, and an array of folks who have never had a religious thought in their lives. In any university, you’re likely to find sympathetic faculty and hostile faculty, Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians, gay faculty and straight faculty, faculty with kids and faculty without kids. Universities are kind of like real life in that way (if in very few others). There will be many different voices and many chances to hear them.

2. Failure to understand the terms.

What does “liberal” mean? Votes Democrat? Has different views on sexual morality? Doesn’t go to church? Will advise your child to ignore his parents from here on out?

These terms (liberal/ politically correct/ feminist/ postmodernist) tend to be used as general scare-words, not as representations of particular points of view. “Liberal” and “conservative” are almost empty terms at this point; they’ve got to be defined. Particularly in certain homeschooling circles, “feminist” FAR too often means “Everything that’s wrong with the twenty-first century in my opinion.”

(Hint, people: that’s not what the word means.)

Perhaps you have a particularly definition in mind. You may indeed find it worrisome that your child will be taught by Democrats. (See Point #3.) Fine; you’re entitled to your worries. Just be sure that you define those terms clearly for yourself if you’re going to throw them around.

3. Failure to understand the purpose of higher education.

Eighteen and nineteen-year-olds should be mature enough to take classes from faculty they disagree with–or else they’re not mature enough to be at university.

Higher education isn’t just about absorbing information; it’s also about learning how to listen to someone with whom you largely disagree, pick out what’s valuable, and figure out how to respond to the rest. It is also –and this is even more important–about allowing yourself to be challenged. If you go into university unwilling to even listen to opposing perspectives, you’re not likely to benefit a great deal. You’ll be so busy defending yourself that you won’t be able to entertain the possibility that, in some areas, you might be wrong.

I myself have had a very frustrating time teaching students who come into William & Mary primed to resist the lies of “liberal faculty.” (That includes a lot of home educated students, who register for for my classes because they think I’m safe.) Every time I say something that strikes them as possibly “liberal,” all of their defenses go up and they tune me out. I can’t play devil’s advocate or dialogue with them–they immediately put me on the list of untrustworthy professors and stop listening.

And at that point they become unteachable.

I’m often asked how home educated students stack up against others in my classes. My overwhelming impression is that they’re more fragile. They’ve got little resilience; I can’t push at their presuppositions even a little bit. Maybe they’re afraid those presuppositions will shatter.

See why I can’t answer the questions in those emails?

What should these parents be asking instead? How about: How can my student find a group of likeminded peers, a religious community, a church, to support them as they study? In my opinion, that’s far more important than finding faculty that agree with you. How can I find a Dean of Students office that thinks parents should be partners in education, rather than telling them to bug off and leave eighteen-year-olds to their own devices? I think the most destructive attitude to encounter in university staff and faculty is the one that says: They’re grown-ups. Pay your tuition and get out of their lives. Do you know of a faculty member in literature/philosophy/biology/history who is thoughtful and trustworthy and willing to mentor? One or two close relationships are important; a whole faculty that agrees with your entire belief system is not.

As always, thoughts and comments are welcome.

My oldest son, Christopher, came back from his gap year trip a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him to put down a few thoughts on the experience. He’ll be entering UVA as a freshman this fall.

My first idea was that I was going to take an entire year between high school and college, go live in in Australia, and work. Through a serious of both fortunate and unfortunate events, that original idea mutated into me visiting five different countries for five and a half months. Just as an overview, I spent four weeks in South Africa working to rehabilitate Vervet monkeys, a week in Egypt visiting friends, eight weeks in India doing teaching/community work, six weeks in China learning martial arts, and then four weeks in Australia working at a zoo. It was all volunteer work, which is code for “you’re working as hard as anyone with a regular job but instead of getting paid, you’re paying to do it.”

It probably goes without saying that I had an amazing time. I also feel like the trip prepared me for real life a little more than I would have been otherwise, and it has definitely given me a clear idea of what I want to do with myself for, well, the rest of my life. So if you’re looking for something to think about, work experience, maturity, and an idea of what direction you want to head with your life in general, I can’t recommend enough taking time to travel. What follows here are my tips for those of you who have decided you want to take a gap year.

TIP NO. 1: Be Aware of How Much Everything Costs
I used a company called Realgap to do all my travels, and in retrospect I could have done a lot better. I’m not criticizing them per se, but they did cost a *lot* more than I would have paid if I had booked through someone else or even just booked the projects directly. If you want to do a project in a foreign country, search around before you decide whether you want to go by yourself–or, if you’re going with a travel company, which travel company to go with. Play the field a little and see what you can find.

Also, look for reviews posted by people who have already used the company. Again, in my opinion, Realgap isn’t terrible. They did help me out some, and it was nice to know I had some support, but they didn’t really do that much for me that I couldn’t have done through the projects directly. Realgap also has a lot of bad reviews online, although if you ask them about this you’ll get an email that says something along the lines of “Grumble…mutter…trolls….troublemakers…mutter mutter…..”

Had I booked directly through the projects I could have saved a few thousand dollars, possibly as much as $5,000. Realgap takes a lot off the top. One thing you can do is look at the programs they offer, then search the internet for the names of those projects and see if there’s anywhere else you can book them through–or if you can book them direct. My first project, for example, was Riverside Rehabilitation Center in South Africa. Had I searched their name, I would have found their website, on which they have an application form.

If you want to use a travel company, again, search the internet! One of the girls who was in South Africa used a company called Bush Direct that I believe does several other Africa programs as well as the one I was on…the woman who runs the company actually came out and checked on the girl. It’s small, but it won’t charge you much more than you would pay to book the program yourself. And don’t make the same mistake I did; read reviews of the travel company before you book with it.

If you want to get some basic ideas of what it would be like to travel in certain countries, what companies to use, and the experiences of those who have gone before, check out http://www.travellersconnected.com/.

TIP NO. 2: Decide Whether to Go Alone or Not

I went traveling by myself, and I did projects, so in essence I had stuff to do and people to do it with in every country. I have a feeling that if I had traveled by myself and just done touristy things I would have been driven completely insane by boredom. So to sum up; if you want to travel by yourself, you should sign up for programs. If you want to travel with a friend, it’s still a fine idea for both of you to sign up for projects and programs, but it’s easier to just travel around without stopping in any one place too long if you have a friend to keep you from going nuts.

If you want to find good projects and programs, google is your best friend. Get an idea of what kind of thing you might want to do and search for it. If you don’t know, you can always go look at Realgap’s websites for ideas, and then try to find a cheaper alternative to using them. But let me just say again, they’re not the worst company you could use, just expensive.

TIP NO. 3: Be Careful

Aside from the obvious rules (don’t go to dangerous looking places, avoid social faux pas, don’t get in the unmarked white van with “Free Candy” written on the side in Hindi), watch out for friendly people who come up and start talking to you. They will rarely get to the point right away, but the point is almost always….no, in fact, there’s no “almost” about it….that they want your money and will go to almost any lengths to get it.

If you’re going to be a world traveler, especially in third world countries, you have to learn to be firm with people, and sometimes just downright rude. If you’re basically a nice person this can be a little jarring, but it’s a vital survival skill.

A good rule of thumb is this; if the person you’re talking to is (beyond a shadow of a doubt) another traveler, all is well. If the person is from the country you’re in, be very, very careful, especially if you’re an obvious tourist in a third world country. No matter how friendly they seem, do not agree to go anywhere or do anything with them, unless you’re specifically told it’s alright by your guide if you have one.

TIP NO. 4: Take Every Available Opportunity

Taking a gap year is an opportunity for personal growth and amazing experiences, but you’re not going to experience any if you spend it doing the same thing you would be doing at home in foreign countries. Take every opportunity, even if it seems scary or costs extra money. You won’t ever regret it.

Despite being a little low on money, I paid extra in Africa to take a trip to Kruger National Park, and I would have been a real moron not to. I also took some time off my project in China and went, by myself, on a 26 hour train ride to Beijing, where I hiked the Great Wall and saw Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Doing things like that–taking a week’s trip with no kind of backup–helped me develop more of a sense of how to cope with difficulties, although I did in that week develop the concept of something which I call a “Chinese Morning” which is when you set out with the specific goal of doing something and are foiled at every turn until you’re ready to become a hermit and live alone in the Alps for the rest of your life by about noon.

TIP NO. 5: You Are An American…..I Assume….

If you’re American, you’re going to get even more attention from locals of developing/third world countries than people from other first world countries would. It may also mean that you’re going to be considered a little slow on the uptake or arrogant before people even get to know you. Don’t take it personally, just do your best to show them it’s not the case. Unless you are stupid or arrogant, in which case you’re just out of luck.

And to all you Canadians reading this…..go away.

Just kidding. Everybody likes Canadians.

So those are my top five tips for travelers. And I’ll say it again; I had an amazing trip and would recommend the experience to anybody. Get out there. Have some real life before college.

Good luck on your travels.

…both from home schooling and from blogging about it. In the meantime, if you haven’t already seen them, check out our new YouTube question-and-answer sessions about dictation and vocabulary.

In the meantime, just for entertainment: here’s a sentence I ran across at the beginning of a review of the Canadian film Growing Op:

Home-schooling and homegrown marijuana are two fertile areas to spawn youth-oriented comedy…

That is seriously the first time I have seen THAT particular pairing.

Regular posts will resume shortly…

I was driving my sixteen-year-old son into Williamsburg tonight (actually, being driven by him, a different and altogether more terrifying experience) when I heard this story on Marketplace:

KAI RYSSDAL: Last year, we reported, along with ProPublica, on some of the high-pressure recruiting tactics that are being used at for-profit colleges, like at the biggest one, the University of Phoenix.

BRANDON BURKE: One thing we would be told to do is call up a student who was on the fence and say, “All right, I’ve only got one seat left. I need to know right now if you need me to save this for you.” Well, that wasn’t true.

It turns out the federal government been looking into recruiting and student debt loads at some of those for-profit schools as well.

Oddly enough, I had just spent a frustrating hour on the University of Phoenix website, trying to figure out how to garner a little more information on its offerings without actually registering for a “Would you like more information?” sales pitch. (More on that shortly.) I’d also paid virtual visits to Kaplan University, Ashford University, Westwood University, FloridaTechOnline, and a handful of others.

There were two reasons for this–I was looking for a meteorology course for my thirteen-year-old and was striking out on the high school level, so I thought I’d try introductory college courses instead. (Not much luck, incidentally, so if you have suggestions, please post them.) Also, I’d just the previous week given my Preparing for College workshop in Richmond–and had fielded a bunch of inquiries later about online college. Wasn’t this a great option for home educators? Isn’t it a natural extension of the home education experience?

I’m not anti-technology in the slightest. I am the proud owner of four websites, three Macs, two blogs, and a Kindle. But I’m not a fan of the online college option. There are six pieces of advice I’d give to anyone considering online higher education, and if you take them I think you’re likely to decide against this option for your high school senior.

1. Look for accreditation.

Any online school that takes tuition in exchange for college credit should be accredited through Middle States, the Southern Association, the Western Association, or another of the six regional accreditation associations.

Not all bricks-and-mortar schools that recruit home schoolers are accredited either, but I’d make this an absolute non-negotiable if I were picking a school for my kid.

Why does accreditation matter? aren’t we educational rebels, after all?

Not when I’m writing a check for $10,000+, I’m not. I’m sure great education can happen in unaccredited classrooms, but if I’m shelling out that amount of tuition, I want my kid to have a fighting chance of transferring those credits or attending grad school–and that’s not going to happen with an unaccredited transcript.

2. Distinguish for-profit schools from online branches of established universities.

For-profit schools such as Kaplan, Phoenix, DeVry and others were founded for the sole purpose of earning money. That doesn’t mean the education is automatically worse–but it does mean that its representatives are far more likely to be overselling the quality that’s present. A for-profit school doesn’t turn down unqualified students; it collects their tuition. Classes full of unqualified students tend towards the mean. I speak as an instructor: when you have a higher percentage of unprepared student, the intellectual level of the entire class drops.

These schools have also been garning a reputation as ruthless marketers. Another Marketplace piece highlighted the problem, quoting a few prospective students:

KATHERINE CLARK: They were very persistent.

TERESA BARRON: She called me every day.

DANIEL RAY: I legitimately got three or four calls a day for about two weeks until I finally talked to him.

Katherine Clark, Teresa Barron, and Daniel Ray are just three of the many students around the country who tell a similar story. They’ve been hounded by enrollment counselors from for-profit colleges. Anyone familiar with the sales profession will recognize some of their hard-sell tactics.

That’s the experience I had; last year, I filled out “more information” cards for several for-profit online schools, just trying to find out what the process was like since I’d gotten inquiries from parents of home-educated teens. They emailed, wrote, and called at night, on Sunday morning, during dinner. I seriously thought I was going to have to change my phone number. Or enter the Witness Protection Program.

3. Remember that online schools are cash cows for the established universities as well.

While established universities aren’t nearly as bad about hunting down possible enrollees, they still don’t apply the same standards to online students as to regular on-campus students. My cautions about the level of difficulty are the same.

4. Realize that most online schools are professional colleges, not liberal arts institutions.

Marketplace calls these schools “career colleges,” and it’s a good name; they offer very specific, limited narrow training in particular skills. There’s a place for that sort of education, of course, but I think it is better suited to older students who need a degree to progress further in the career they’ve already chosen–or older students who’ve already had life and work experience and know what they want to do. Younger students should be given the opportunity to take a wider spectrum of classes and spend more time in exploration and discover.

5. Consider the value of an intellectual community.

I’ve always thought college-at-home was a poor option for one major reason: you don’t develop an intellectual community. Much of the value of a college education comes as you interact with the ideas and experiences of others–both your peers and your professors. A college education is intended to introduce you to a whole new world. When you stay at home, you may glance through the window at a whole new world, but you don’t ever join it.

Which is related to my last point…

6. Don’t overprotect.

At-home and online college education is an extension of the home education experience…but home education should also come to a natural end. Isn’t our goal to raise adults who will leave that experience and strike out on their own?

Experiences or thoughts to share? Please do.

I’ve been saying this in my lectures about college admissions for the last five years. Read the entire article here. WELL worth your time.

“Placing the Blame as Students Are Buried in Debt”
By Ron Lieber

Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it….Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she’s been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.

This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.

Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday — just like the mortgage lenders who didn’t ask borrowers to verify their incomes…..

It is utterly depressing that there are so many people like her facing decades of payments, limited capacity to buy a home and a debt burden that can repel potential life partners. For starters, it’s a shared failure of parenting and loan underwriting.

But perhaps the biggest share lies with colleges and universities because they have the most knowledge of the financial aid process….

Ms. Munna started college at age 17 and borrowed as much money as she could under the federal loan program. To make up the difference between her grants and work study money and the total cost of attending, her mother co-signed two private loans with Sallie Mae totaling about $20,000.

When they applied for a third loan, however, Sallie Mae rejected the application….So before Cortney’s junior year, N.Y.U. recommended that she apply for a private student loan on her own with Citibank.

Over the course of the next two years, starting when she was still a teenager, she borrowed about $40,000 from Citibank without thinking much about how she would pay it back. How could her mother have let her run up that debt, and why didn’t she try to make her daughter transfer to, say, the best school in the much cheaper state university system in New York? “All I could see was college, and a good college and how proud I was of her,” [her mother] Cathryn said. “All we needed to do was get this education and get the good job. This is the thing that eats away at me, the naïveté on my part.”

Pause for one minute while I insert my own opinion. Maybe–possibly–it was worth going into debt for an Ivy League (or equivalent) college thirty or forty years ago, when such an education actually did make you a member of an old-boys’ network that would provide you with contacts and the inside track towards an enormously profitable career; maybe, thirty or forty years ago, the investment had a chance of paying off.

If that was ever true, it isn’t now.

…[W]hat was Citi thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures?

Er, interest???

….Today, someone like Ms. Munna might not qualify for the $40,000 she borrowed. But as the economy rebounds, there is little doubt that plenty of lenders will step forward to roll the dice on desperate students, especially because the students generally can’t get rid of the debt in bankruptcy court.

The financial aid office often has the best picture of what students like Ms. Munna are up against, because they see their families’ financial situation splayed out on the federal financial aid form. So why didn’t N.Y.U. tell Ms. Munna that she simply did not belong there once she’d passed, say, $60,000 in total debt?

“Had somebody called me and said, ‘Do you have a clue where this is all headed?’, it would have been a slap in the face, but a slap in the face that I needed,” said Cathryn Munna. “When financial aid told her that they could get her $2,000 more in loans, they should have been saying ‘You are in deep doo-doo, little girl.’ ”

That’s not a role that the university wants to take on, though. “I think that would be completely inappropriate,” said Randall Deike, the vice president of enrollment management for N.Y.U., who oversees admissions and financial aid. “Some families will do whatever it takes for their son or daughter to be not just at N.Y.U., but any first-choice college. I’m not sure that’s always the best decision, but it’s one that they really have to make themselves.”

….Urging students to attend a cheaper college or leave altogether suggests a lack of confidence about the earning potential of alumni. Nobody wants to admit that. And once a university starts encouraging middle-class students to go elsewhere, it must fill its classes with more children of the wealthy and a much smaller number of low-income students to whom it can afford to offer enormous scholarships. That’s hardly an ideal outcome either.

Finally, universities exist to enroll students, not turn them away. “Aid administrators want to keep their jobs,” said Joan H. Crissman, interim president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “If the administration finds out that you’re encouraging students to go to a cheaper school just because you don’t think they can handle the debt load, I don’t think that’s going to mesh very well.”

That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the financial aid office is still in the best position to see trouble coming and do something to stop it. University officials should take on this obligation, even if they aren’t willing to advise students to attend another college.

Amen to that.

…[Ms. Munna] recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies. After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren’t being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over.

She may finally be earning enough to barely scrape by while still making the payments for the first time since she graduated, at least until interest rates rise and the payments on her loans with variable rates spiral up. And while her job requires her to work nights and weekends sometimes, she probably should find a flexible second job to try to bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month.

Ms. Munna understands this tough love, buck up, buckle-down advice. But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back,” she said. “It feels wrong to me.”

I say this to parents all the time, and I’ll say it now: if you’re well-intentioned and conscientious, there aren’t too many things you can do that will permanently damage your child. Kids are resilient. But allowing a child to take on thousands and thousands of dollars in college debt…yep, that will do it.

My husband and I are in our forties (late and early, respectively). We have many, many friends who are still paying off college loans. The need to make those payments has dictated where they live, what they do, and how they spend their time. For the last two decades.

There are many, many good colleges out there–affordable, if non-Ivy League, colleges that will give your child a perfectly good education without saddling them with twenty years’ worth of debt.

It is not worth it.

I only paid for one of my four degrees. None of those are from Ivy League schools. (In at least one case, WAY far from it.) I love what I do, and I have the freedom to do it because I’m not in debt. And never have been.

Will post shortly on our own college decisions once I get permission from my son (currently in transit between China and Australia, so not immediately available.)

In the meantime, read the article.

What Bias?
By Staci Thomas, P.E.

Staci Thomas is a licensed professional engineer who works part time and home educates her four daughters.

Recently, The New York Times ran a story about a report titled “Why So Few?” The report, released by the American Association of University Women, summarized the extensive research on women in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The report indicates that discrimination women encounter is to blame for the low the numbers of women in STEM fields. Lack of mathematical ability for females as compared to their male peers was not the cause of the low numbers. “Why So Few?” goes on to recommend that the solution to increasing the number of women in STEM fields is to provide role models and mentoring programs for young women.

As a woman involved in a STEM field for nearly 20 years, I found the conclusion and the solution of this report surprising.

My parents raised me somewhat unconventionally in that they did not ask the typical “What do you want to be when you grow up?” question. Instead, they told me what I was going to be when I grew up. When I was an aspiring figure skater, oboe player, and pianist, my father would often drive me to lessons. I remember him saying repeatedly during those drives, “You can’t put food on the table playing the oboe, the piano, or ice skating. You should be an engineer.”

The type of engineer was my choice. My father, a health physicist, knew that a Bachelor’s Degree in engineering would provide job security and a nice salary that would put the proverbial food on the table. My mother, who sacrificed a career to stay at home with her children, also had frequent discussions with me about engineering. She talked at length about people we knew who were in STEM fields and she would explain what kind of work those people were doing. She practically memorized the college admission handbooks and their recommendations for quality engineering schools.

Both parents were consistent in reminding me that it did not matter that most of my peers were seeking a liberal arts education. They instilled a confidence that it was just fine to be different. By the time I was in high school, it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to be an engineer. Four years later, my parents repeated this process with my brother.

I was not a math or science genius. Reading and analyzing literature was my preference, but majoring in English was not an option in my house. Engineering was it, whether I struggled with physics or not. Throughout high school, my parents embraced my academic challenges with constant encouragement and endless help. Together, the three of us worked toward my future with excitement, despite the challenges that my parents always approached positively.

I made it through a challenging Honors College Preparatory High School Program, and while I did teach my incompetent AP Calculus teacher calculus, I certainly did not ace the AP Physics Exam. My SAT’s were not stellar, but sufficient to get me into a several highly ranked engineering schools.

My college engineering classes were tough for me, to say the least. I did not engage in the typical social activities that so many college students do; there was simply too much studying to do. And again, while I did not graduate with a 4.0, I graduated in four years with three job offers waiting for me.

During my time at college where most of the engineering faculty was male (I remember only one female professor), I sought the helpful professors for additional assistance. The professors that weren’t very helpful I dismissed as being simply not helpful. It never occurred to me that they might welcome a young man into their office minutes after they had dismissed me. I had a goal and I was going to do everything I could to meet it, despite the people who weren’t willing to help.

This attitude is not a result of my personality; it was ingrained in me at a young age by my parents. If bias was there by instructors or peers, I didn’t see it.

As I went on to the workplace, I found myself in a male dominated field. I barely noticed. Over the course of 17 years, I have worked alongside only a handful of female engineers. One would think that I would have experienced some bias or discrimination, and yet never once did I feel that bias. Did it exist?

“Why So Few?” says it did. I missed it, and I attribute this to the fact that my parents guided and directed me in such a way that it did not matter what any human being – male or female – thought of what I was doing.

The most surprising thing about the “Why So Few?” report is proposed solution to the problem of why more women aren’t in STEM fields. Female mentors and role models are that proposed solution.

It is obvious that my mentors were in my own house. Teachers and professors weren’t necessarily going out of their way to encourage me in my engineering pursuits; that came solely from my parents. It seems obvious that parents would be the first step in encouraging daughters to enter STEM fields.

People often ask me how I became an engineer. When I recount my story, they are usually shocked with my parents’ guidance. Many parents have told me that they wish they had done more of what my parents did. Others ask me how they did it. What follows are some recommendations for encouraging children, both male and female to enter STEM fields:

• Talk about STEM fields with your children. Talk about the careers of the adults they know, especially those in math, science, or engineering fields. Discuss how those careers impact society. As you see the impact of those careers in every day life, point them out to your children. This may involve educating yourself a bit.

• Encourage your children to persevere when math and science seem tough. The “Why So Few?” report showed that math ability might improve with practice. A child struggling with math should not be labeled as “not a math kid”. Parents who are home educating their children can easily combat this attitude with encouragement, practice, and third-party help if necessary. Helping children persevere through challenging academic work will give them the confidence for future academic and life challenges.

• Eliminate gender bias at home. My parents did not assume that my brother was going to be better in math and science because he was a boy. Neither did they assume that I would be a better writer than my brother because I was a girl. While male and female brains are different, academic ability is not solely based on gender. Home educating parents should guard against perpetuating these biases.

• Encourage interests even though they may not lead to a career. Even though my parents were guiding me into engineering, they did not discourage my figure skating and musical pursuits. In fact, they encouraged them, counseling that those things would be something I could do for enjoyment the rest of my life. Their counsel that I was not going to make a decent living skating or playing was correct; I am not an Olympic level figure skater, nor am I a world-class musician. However, I still enjoy those skills today and the time spent learning them was worthwhile.

• Flood your house with math and science materials. Subscribe to science magazines. Point out technology news. Read books about math. If you are a non-STEM parent, don’t avoid math and science books, movies, and magazines. I am a STEM parent and I make an extra effort to talk and learn about history, as it was the weakest component of my education. Don’t avoid what you don’t know. Decide to learn about it with your children.

• Guide your children to dismiss bias they do encounter. If your daughter experiences discrimination, point out the folly of looking to a person’s gender for academic ability.

Even if you think that my parents’ unconventional career counsel of their daughter was a bit extreme, don’t wait for a special female mentor to show up and encourage your daughter to think about a math or science related career. Open the doors of math and science opportunities to your daughters by talking and exposing. Or, you may choose to follow the lead of my father, who now often asks my four daughters what kind of engineer they are going to be when they grow up.

If you’d like to submit a guest post, please email the webmaster at welltrainedmind.com!

Last year, I asked my readers what they’d like to see their local bookstore do for home educators. I got a host of wonderful suggestions. So I’m happy to announce that Peace Hill Press has now published a booklet for bookstore owners and managers. We’re hoping it will help more and more local stores serve the home schooling population.

You can read the booklet online by clicking here. But if you’d like print copies to hand to your favorite bookstore manager, all you have to do is let us know. Email Jackie (order at welltrainedmind.com) and tell her how many you’d like and where to send them.

I ran across this article in the Technology section of the New York Times and thought some of you might find it a helpful starting place for recommendations. (Experiences with any of these programs? Post a comment.)

Foreign language study at home is always a challenge–we’ve used Rosetta Stone for modern spoken languages with varying degrees of success–so I’m always on the lookout for new resources.

PAY AND LEARN

RosettaStone, the best-known language program, now offers Totale, (rosettastone.com) a $1,000 product that includes RosettaCourse, a traditional lesson-based module; RosettaStudio, a place where a user can talk to a native speaker via video chat; and RosettaWorld, an online community where you can play language-related games.

“We offer modern-day pen pals facilitated with voice over I.P.,” said Tom Adams, the company’s chief executive.

RosettaStone uses things like colorful flash cards to help students first learn basic words, and then connect those words to concepts and sentences. The idea, according to Mr. Adams, is for the user to let go of the adult “technical questions and just get into a comfort zone, learning new sounds and trying to make sense of them.”

One of RosettaStone’s main competitors, TellMeMore (tellmemore.com), believes it has an advantage because its software not only teaches words and phrases, but includes a speech recognition component that analyzes pronunciation, presents a graph of speech, and suggests how to perfect it. Other videos show students how to shape their mouths to create sounds difficult for native English speakers, like the rolling R in Spanish.

With 10 levels of content, a 10,000-word glossary, videos of native speakers and more than 40 practice activities, TellMeMore believes it has enough material to keep a user motivated.

TellMeMore charges $390 for a year’s access to its resources for six languages; those looking for a quick refresher can buy a $10 daily pass. Weekly, monthly and half-year passes are also available.

The company’s product is currently available only on CD-ROM, but online versions for both Mac and Windows that will include real-time coaching are coming later this year.

FREE NOW, PAY LATER

Livemocha (livemocha.com), a two-year-old Web start-up, offers free basic lessons in 30 languages. Users can upgrade to advanced courses with additional features on a monthly or six-month basis.

For $20 a month, students can submit up to eight voice recordings to a native-speaking tutor, who will then review and make recommendations for improvement within 24 hours. For $70 every six months, students can submit up to two examples a lesson.

All students, whether using the pay or free model, can join social networking groups and speak live (using VoIP) to people around the world who are native speakers interested in learning English.

As with all social networking sites, this feature is open to misuse. Within hours of signing up for Livemocha, I received a note from a young woman, ostensibly from Poland, “wanting to meet me.”

The company says it has “the world’s largest community of people learning languages,” with five million registered users in 200 countries.

Financed in part by the European Union, Babbel (babbel.com) offers paid instruction (and a free trial lesson) in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish for $12 a month, or $6.62 a month for a six-month commitment.

In addition to extended grammar and vocabulary, users can communicate with others in their desired language via private or public chats, or arrange to get in touch via voice.

FREE LANGUAGE LEARNING

If money is truly an object, a variety of free language learning is available from a number of sites.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc.com/languages) offers varying levels of instruction for 36 languages, with features including audio and video playback and translation.

Looking to visit Deutschland? The German television network, Deutsche Welle, can help you make yourself understood (bit.ly/ts6×7). And for those who not only want to learn another language but another alphabet as well, try japanese-online.com, or learn-korean.net.

Apps for a smartphone

No program would be complete without an accompanying smartphone app, and many exist for the iPhone and other devices.

Several are simple providers of useful phrases, including the Lonely Planet Phrasebooks ($10 for each of 18 languages), the Oxford Translator Travel Pro ($10 for each of five languages), and World Nomads (free; 23 languages). The Ultralingua Translation Dictionary ($20 a language) offers simultaneous translation of English and six languages.

Both RosettaStone and TellMeMore say that they are developing smartphone apps as supplements to their online programs, but neither has announced a release date.

Livemocha expects to have an app later this year for both the Android and iPhone operating systems. The company plans on integrating text with a native speaker pronouncing the language, and providing the option for voice recording and live video feeds.

Some of my readers might be interested in this relatively new resource for home educators:

The general home-school movement began in earnest over three decades ago, and in the non-Jewish world, conferences, curriculum fairs, cooperative learning and support groups abound. This extensive network of support has been invaluable to many parents, particularly those new to the idea of home education. However, it was not until the recent founding of the Torah Home Education Conference that the unique needs and interests of Orthodox Jewish families have finally found expression in a national venue.

The conference will take place on June 13, 2010 on the second floor of the Park Heights JCC, 5700 Park Heights Ave., Baltimore, from 9 am – 5 pm. The workshop schedule is filled with thought-provoking lectures; keynote speaker for the event will be Rabbi Daniel Lapin, best-selling author and sought after radio and television guest. Child care is available. For more information or to register, visit www.jewishhomeschooling.wordpress.com, call Alissa at 410-963-2977, or email srayvy@yahoo.com.

Full information can be found at the website.

This is the final post in Karen Hollis’s three-part series; be sure to read Parts One and Two as well.

But what about writing itself? How do you go about improving the handwriting, much less the drafting of paragraphs and essays, of a dysgraphic child?

One of your early goals will be to develop physical writing fluency and stamina. In many dysgraphic kids it will be years before the process of letter formation becomes automatic; they tend to have to think through how to “draw” a letter’s shape each time. Needless to say, this slows them down and frustrates them tremendously. Trying to combine other intellectual, visual, or motor tasks with simple letter retrieval can be overwhelming. For a long time they are not going to write what we think of as “proper” writing: formal sentences with proper punctuation and grammar, paragraphs, essays. Even handwriting practice it itself can become a source of frustration and despair if a child feels perpetually stuck in the land of shaping letters rather than doing something meaningful with writing.

So what you need to do is harness basic letter formation practice to something they find compelling, in a format or genre that doesn’t take too much work. For example, take the humble list. The List was my daughter’s main genre for years on end. Make lists with your child (do not give a list as an assignment to do in solitude): lists of favorite books, Lego transformers, wish-lists, cartoon superheroes, friends’ and relatives’ birthdays, planets and stars and solar systems, requested desserts, types of dinosaurs or monsters, anything and everything that piques their interest yet is utterly familiar to them. This way they can concentrate on the physical process writing, acquiring fluency without an additional task to complicate things.

Don’t forget that kids of all ages, including even junior high, often like to experiment with letter shapes and forms: curlicue letters, science-fiction-y fonts, decorated initials, etc. This can become a really fun family project in which you collect examples of fonts, watch the PBS documentary “Helvetica,” look up pictures of old manuscripts and early printed books, design your own illuminated letters, write your name in Viking runes, etc. My daughter is taken at the moment with looking at translations of various things into Klingon. An interest in shape and form, the material basis of writing, is an important part of the larger world of writing. Don’t be quick to dismiss it as fluff. Looking closely at other fonts or alphabets, even pictographs, is a step toward internalizing what is unique about our own alphabet and letter shapes.

List-making and letter play are the first steps toward gradually – VERY gradually – longer pieces of writing, still interest-related. The next step involves phrases or single sentences. Again, this is ideally done in the form of a game, a social activity, or a project that takes the stress of performance anxiety out of the picture. Peggy Kaye’s Games For Writing is treasure trove of ideas about how to turn the practice of various aspects of the writing process into socially reciprocal games. There are hundreds of further ideas in If You’re Trying to Teach Kids How to Write, You’ve Got to Have This Book, by Marjorie Frank; and Families Writing, by Peter Stillman. Don’t grade anything; don’t correct it for grammar or spelling, however hard it may be to rein in your inner grammar freak. At this point writing for fluency should be separate from work on mechanics. Practice or activities should also occur in several short sessions of five- to ten-minute sessions a day rather than in a single, longer lump.

Most dysgraphic kids have spelling problems as well. These problems can stem from so many different kinds of processing deficits that you will need long-term, formal spelling work. But your child may learn visually; he or she may learn phonetically; or you might have a child who uses both approaches. My daughter began to memorize the spelling of each individual word that gave her trouble by making up a phrase or story about the order of the letters: “You can have an apple, OR you can have AN orange” was her way to remember the first four letters of the word orange. She memorized “heir” from the Harry Potter books, and made up some kind of story I no longer remember about the word “heir” being inside “their.” This wasn’t going to work as a full-scale spelling strategy, clearly. But it took both of us a long time to figure out how she best learned (she’s a combo kid).

There are any number of methodical spelling programs out there, many of which seem perfectly fine to me. I’m not wedded to what worked for us as the single program that will help. But as far as lightening the written load again: work alternately in oral and written spelling. Allow your child to spell with Scrabble or other letter tiles. Play spelling games: Wheel of Fortune is a grand spelling game in disguise, and there any number of others marketed by educational companies: my daughter likes WordFlip, which is very similar to Wheel of Fortune. But there’s also plain old hangman. And my daughter’s spelling was greatly improved by lots of playing a game I used to amuse myself with in grade school when the teacher wasn’t looking: you write out one longish word, like chocolate or spaceship, and then form as many littler words from those letters as you can.

Don’t make the study of grammar entirely worksheet-bound either. Read Ruth Hellman’s lovely picture books about parts of speech, and Lynn Truss’s hilarious picture book versions of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Print out words from different grammatical categories on slips of paper, different colors for different parts of speech, and build sentences beginning with noun-verb, gradually adding on and becoming more and more elaborate (and silly). Peggy Kaye has a few games similar to this. Have a hunt for misspelled and ungrammatical public signs, advertisements, or the like. Play MadLibs.

As your child begins to (ever so slowly) improve in handwriting legibility, stamina, and spelling, begin to incorporate small bits of writing into other areas and subjects. Experiment with different ways to do this, depending on your child’s interests and abilities. Your child can write longer captions for drawings and photographs of science experiments, for example; can draw a political cartoon and fill in thought bubbles for history; can do pre-writing exercises like making a T-chart of pros and cons, causes and consequences; can begin outlining short articles using phrases rather than complete sentences or making a graphic representation of the article. One really useful, relatively painless way to work on sifting out the main idea is to cut off or black out the title of an article, poem, or other short piece of writing and have your child come up with an alternate title, then see how close you come to the author’s. Instead of elaborating supporting evidence in full sentences, allow your child to write single words or phrases.

Writing at this level can go on for an awfully long time in a dysgraphic kid. Try not to give in to the urge to push your child further too quickly; this is an incubation stage where important things are happening beneath the surface. Ideally, what you are hoping for is the discovery that writing can happen in all kinds of arenas, for all kinds of purposes, not just in essays and homework that someone else assigns.

Above all, DO NOT push the draft/revise model of written work on a dysgraphic child too soon. Keep revision and editing on hold for a bit longer. The physical labor involved in copying and rewriting what was already difficult the first time around will alienate your child from the whole writing process more quickly than just about anything. Yes, revision is a crucial skill. Yes, a child should be able to edit and correct his writing. If your child is already using the keyboard easily, you can work on revision; but if you’re still working with handwriting, ease off. It will happen.

How will you know when your child is ready for more? I suspect this will vary dramatically among dysgraphic kids. But my daughter was able, by around age eleven, to write spelling lists of up to thirty or so words at one sitting without undue fatigue. She needed to get up and shake out her fingers afterwards, but she could get through all those words. The lists she wrote on her own, connected to her free play, got longer and longer too, often taking up an entire page. She was beginning to recognize her own spelling mistakes and write words over without being prompted. She could line up numbers well enough to write out long division and multiplication problems (we used graph paper at first, which helped, but she moved on to regular paper). At one point when she was working on a posterboard display on a favorite book, rather than dictating to me as she usually did and pasting the paragraphs under her drawings or clay models or whatever else she found to glue onto the board, she wanted to write them herself. She wanted to google things she found of interest on the web by herself rather than having to ask me to type in the search words for her. In other words, writing was becoming not something she feared and resisted, but something she pursued on her own initiative.

Some kids will have enormous difficulty making the transition to formal, expository paragraphs. Ease up on them; they’re not ready. Begin with utterly familiar, understandable structures for them to fill in and show what they’re learned, such as an alphabet book (for an older elementary child, read G is for Google for inspiration, to move away from the idea that an alphabetical presentation is necessary baby stuff). Or use a chronological structure for a homemade booklet of, say, a robotics project, having your child document progress with photographs and bits of writing. What you are looking for is a way to make the actual overall structure a given, so that your child will not be struggling with so many elements of writing at once.

Don’t overlook the fact that many dysgraphic kids are highly visual learners; let their responses to other texts and subjects draw on this strength. Let them make maps, draw flow charts and diagrams, look at or draw blueprints, architectural drawings, scale models, patent designs (you can find a lot of historical patent applications on-line). They can write brief passages to complement their visual presentations rather than have writing bear the entire weight of the matter. There are whole sets of books that offer manga or comic book versions of physics, calculus, chemistry, history. See whether your child might be interested in doing a comic version of an event in history, in which each panel would represent an important event or factor leading up to a conflict or political decision of some kind. Look at the history of political cartoons, and make cartoons of current events or from the time period you’re currently studying.

The point is not to put the entire burden of an assignment on writing, but to mix that up with drawing, painting, extensive researching, building, or other ways of interacting with content – to engage a child’s enthusiasm, to build confidence in a child who is probably used to thinking of himself or herself as unable to write well. Open up definition of writing in order to let go of a history of struggle with particular forms or requirements.

Dysgraphic children will produce full paragraphs or short essays much later than most kids; but they will make up for that late start, provided they have the groundwork under their belts. They will most likely take tremendous leaps in terms of ability in much the same way that late readers often move from not being able to read a word to reading chapter books or even adult fiction within weeks. There is no need to worry that they have not had sufficient practice in essay writing at younger ages. By the time their hands catch up to the rest of their brains, or the different parts of their minds become sufficiently interconnected to allow them to write independently, they will also have progressed in terms of logic and ability to understand more abstract and/or advanced concepts. If you’ve read and discussed books across subject areas, they will have plenty of information to work with when they begin to write, have more to say and a better ability to explain it clearly than younger children struggling to learn to manage both at the same time. The complexity of their thoughts will have had room to move ahead rather than be tied to the lower level of their written ability.

Dealing with dysgraphia requires some very, very difficult acts from you as a homeschooling parent. It requires you to suspend reliance on timetables, to let go of what your child “should” be producing at any given age. It requires you to think of education, and the place of writing in education, far differently than you probably did before. Hardest of all, though, is sitting back and waiting, waiting for those brain connections to develop and mature, trusting that they will, trusting that your child can and will be able to write.

But the more you can take the pressure off both of you, the more you can make writing a tool not only of serious thought but of pleasure and play, the more you make it a social endeavor connected to the wider world and not just to academia, the more you discover the different ways it can be used and the different forms it can take – the easier the process will be.