msjen

One chemistry unit down (only two weeks late! I rule!), one to go. The one I just finished had a lot of heady conceptual visualization for fourth graders. ("Everyone put on your 'nanovision goggles' and imagine what's happening with the molecules.") The one I will start revising tomorrow actually has 'splodey things. Okay, it's only somewhat reactive and safely contained 'splodey, of course, but still more excitement than usual. Apparently once you hit the age of nine, handling chemicals is okay, but at the age of seven you can't even read the word 'alcohol' without people going off the deep end. Whatever. I don't make the rules and I have no idea who does, but as long as someone gets to mix chemicals in a baggie, I'm happy.

And so it goes on the Big Curriculum Project. If anyone is harmed in the making of this unit, I'll be sure to let you know.

We were asked to remove a picture of hot dogs from one of our books because hot dogs contain nitrates which are Bad for Children.

I can think of a much better reason we shouldn't show fourth graders a picture of hot dogs, but whatever.

Can you find the Very Bad Idea in this sentence from one of our teacher's guides?

You may want to assign students to take the temperature of a variety of things or places, such as: the classroom, a cup of cold water, a cup of hot water, an ice cube, their own body, the inside of a refrigerator, the inside of a freezer, the inside of an oven, etc.

I can't believe this got past the safety police at the publishing company (the same people who wouldn't let us show a picture of a stapler).

I just realized that the concept map that I came up with in order to explain energy transformation to kids -- which I thought was such a great idea -- is in the shape of a pentagram.

Do you think our publisher will think that's a problem?

This month's winning ridiculous comment from the Paranoid Publisher:

They claim we will traumatize children irrevocably if we tell them that they have many of the same genes as earthworms.

How lame is that? However, I just realized that I don't know why my co-workers are constantly using earthworms as examples in books. That's really what the publishing gestapo should be asking: "What is it with you people and worms?" (jetspeaks, I'm sorry yet again!)

Also, I have been given the heads up that the book I wrote about solar energy may be deemed too heavy-handed. They should have seen it before I removed the "we-are-all-going-to-die" angle! We'll see if I feel like going ten rounds on that one. I suppose I'd better. Because I'm a hippie.

Things have calmed down considerably with the Paranoid Publishing Company. We finally agreed that they would have the last word on safety issues, but that all things in the category of weird/icky/gross would be our domain. I'm not sure exactly how this all played out, but this agreement ultimately resulted in the picture of the stapler, the peanut, and the rubbing alcohol being removed and everything related to earthworms and snails staying in. Including the lovely image of mating earthworms. Hooray for sex, I guess? I would have done it the other way around, but I suppose that's why I write the stuff, not print it.

As you can imagine, though, the line between icky and unsafe can be blurred. This issue hasn't come up in a while (fortunately for my sanity at work, unfortunately for your entertainment purposes), but today the Paranoid Publishing Company freaked out about a line in one of our books referring to the existence of a vomit flavored jellybean. They came across one casually phrased reference on the web about kids getting sick if they tried the jellybean, and so therefore it's now a huge safety issue. (These people have absolutely no conception of context. Things are one way or the other, and they cannot differ given the situation. And their perception of tone appears to be broken. They are also Republicans. Think that's significant?) According to them, we cannot even mention the existence of a vomit flavored bean if it might encourage kids to try it and then get sick. Let's think about it, people: the candy company in question sells millions of these jellybeans a year, and *they're* the ones worried about lawsuits? I called the candy company to ask them about it. The secret vomit-flavored ingredient is parmesan cheese. I wouldn't eat it either.

I guess my point here is that I spent the better part of this morning helping my co-workers rally our "pro-vomit position" for keeping the word in the book. Now, if someone had told me three years ago that I would be taking such an ardent stance on this issue, I would not have believed them. Fie on bodily fluids! A (non-gushing) pox upon their very mention! I would have said. But no more. I am the vomit cheerleader.

This is all because I work with science teachers. Next thing you know I'll be giving dramatic readings of Everyone Poops.

Since you all were so horrified/entertained by my last post about our publisher and their paranoia, here's another example that I came across today.

We have these "About the Author" blurbs on the back of our books. Obviously, they tell a little bit about who wrote the book. (They also talk about what is truthful and what is fictional in the books, which is a whole other big battle, but more on that later.) We try to mention whatever connection the author has to the content -- really, what possessed this person to volunteer for this particular book out of all of the 81 books under development. (Usually, the actual reason is because no one else wants to write it, or because you feel guilty that the person sitting next to you in the meeting is already writing five books. But anyway.) These comments from the Paranoid Publisher concern one of the back-of-the-book blurbs.

This particular book is an interview with a scientist, who goes on a walk in the forest and talks about decomposition, pointing out slugs and fungi and whatnot. My officemate went on this walk with the scientist, took pictures, and wrote a book about it. He is a science/nature educator kind of guy. So, on the back, the About the Author text says:

Sentence 1: [Jen's officemate] has been leading children on walks in the woods for many years.

Paranoid Publisher says: "Leading children into the woods sounds creepy." Okay, whatever, so we changed it. But then...

Sentence 2: He never knows what he might find.

Paranoid Publisher says: "Is this a safety hazard, if he has children with him?"

You know, I have shared an office with this guy for 18 months and have never even once pictured him nefariously leading innocent children into the woods to be devoured by bears or bitten by poisonous snakes. Now they have me scared.

They really are unbelievable.

There are a number of factors that determine what children learn in school. There are state and national standards in all subjects. There is a large body of educational research that suggests what children should learn. There is conventional wisdom and there are social norms. There are district-wide and school-wide expectations, standards, curricula, traditions. There are many, many tests that shape instruction in various ways. There are teachers, who were trained at different institutions, have different pedagogical approaches, and have different experiences that they bring to the classroom. And there are books, hopefully lots of books. And these books, they have publishers.

I am not sure I understood until recently the ultimate stranglehold that educational publishing has on what happens every day in schools. I have realized this because we have been fighting with our publisher over their tendency to see everything we write as a safety hazard, or as offensive to someone, somewhere, for some reason. We started out with a set of really interesting children's books that were educationally relevant, enjoyable, easy to read, and taught kids about many different things that they often don't learn about in school. How do we know this? Because we tested them -- in almost 100 classrooms all over the country. And kids learned a lot from them -- and teachers were grateful that we helped them provide their students with something interesting to learn. We have evidence that says this (I'm oversimplifying, of course, but generally it's positive). Our publisher agreed to publish our books and curriculum. Which is all good, because our bright ideas do not help anyone if they're not available to teachers and schools.

But the problem is, the publishing company wants to make money off of us. And, to really make the cash, you have to become a state-adopted curriculum, preferably in a big state, and most preferably in one of the six big states that completely drive the educational market in this country. And to be a state-adopted curriculum, you have to get through all the hoops and checkboxes. So, slowly, they have been trying to sanitize everything we write so that it will end up looking like a textbook from Disneyland. All so we can, as the saying goes, play in Peoria.

Here are some actual examples of things they have asked us to change:

We cannot show a picture of a stapler, because a kid might decide to staple themselves.
We cannot show people at the beach unless they are fully clothed.
We cannot state that it is okay to taste sugar water.
We cannot talk about kids using rubbing alcohol to make a mixture, even if they are fully supervised by an adult in a fictional story -- because some people abuse alcohol.
We cannot say that snails make slime.
We cannot show a picture of anyone eating anything unhealthy. Things on the list of unhealthy foods: crackers, pretzels.
We cannot show any candy, even if no one is eating it.
We cannot say that dirt gets under your fingernails.
We cannot show a picture of earthworms mating, even if the text, very delicately and vaguely, says that this is one of the things organisms need to do.
We cannot say that earthworms can be up to 12 inches long, because that is too scary for kids.

And, I am not sure which one of these was my favorite, because they are both so ridiculous:

We cannot show a PICTURE of a peanut, because some kids are allergic to peanuts.
We cannot say "Earthworms can do something you can't do. They have adaptations that let them live in their habitat. They can live underground." because kids would get the mental picture of being buried alive and would be traumatized.

No wonder no one ever teaches science. It's just full of potential lawsuits. Just raise your kids with cartoon smiles and bright colors and rounded edges, and nothing will ever hurt them.