This Week's Miscellany (04/28/23)

Saying no to smartphones for kids, and are classrooms designed for little boys?

Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of This Week’s Miscellany. TWM is full of my favorite things from around the web, typically trending literary.

Horrible strep throat has entered the chat (AKA the Stewart Household). And you know what? I’m sick of starting every TWM talking about how we’re sick. So let’s talk about something fun instead!

I’m going to do a book signing in June in Thomasville, GA! Details coming soon. Originally we planned to do it this Saturday (tomorrow) but pushed it forward to be closer to the release of my new book. I’ll keep you posted.

Links

You Have Permission to Be a Smartphone Skeptic by Clare Coffey for

The Bulwark

Importantly, the process by which smartphones change us requires no agency or judgment on the part of a teen user, and yet that process is designed to provide what feels like a perfectly natural, inevitable, and complete experience of the world. Smartphones offer a tactile portal to a novel digital environment, and this environment is not the kind of space you enter and leave. It is not a particular activity that you start and stop and resume, and it is not a social scene that you might abandon when it suits you. It is instead a complete shadow world of endless images; disembodied, manipulable personas; and the ever-present gaze of others. It lives in your pocket and in your mind.

This piece by the ever-brilliant Clare Coffey is a MUST READ. It will not only make you wary of smartphones for adolescents, it will make you want to ditch your smartphone. And to be honest, I’ve been considering it because I don’t like the sway my phone holds over me.

I have been told that my kids will hate me if I don’t buy them smartphones. My big kids are 9, 11, and 14 and so far, they don’t hate me. Most of their classmates do have phones. Yes, this is difficult. It’s annoying to feel like the only parents who said no. It is tempting to wave the white flag so we don’t have to go through the exhausting conversations of why we won’t take this step yet.

We did like having a kids’ Gabb phone (a dumb phone that just calls and texts), but it met an untimely death in a swimming pool and we have’t replaced it yet. We likely will replace it with a similar phone with calling, text, and group text capabilities. I see the benefit of my kids getting to be included in conversations with their peers and I have no desire to isolate them from friends. But I am not willing to offer constant access to the internet and social media.

To be fair, the parents I know personally whose children have access to smartphones do supervise their child’s usage for safety reasons. They are not leaving them alone in the wild west of iPhoneland. This is a necessary and good thing. But I have a lot of kids. The burden of staying on top of so many devices feels like a purgatorial task. I would much prefer having a device with fewer capabilities and fewer risks that does not require constant check ups.

Homeschooling Boys by Ivana Greco

While many children “might benefit from a different learning style,” Faith added, “they’re able to sort of roll with whatever they’re given.” But, in addition to these adaptable children who can easily adjust to different teachers, “there are kids who can’t, or won’t, or just don’t.”  These children, Faith emphasized, “…struggle with anything [where] there’s a focus on sitting still,” rather than on learning.

This was an interesting read. While this piece focuses on the challenges young boys face in a system of education that isn’t necessarily tailored for their needs, I think it’s of note that it’s not only little boys who struggle to navigate classrooms that require extended time for sitting and quiet work. We homeschooled for over a decade and one of the many things I loved about our experience was making schooling fit our children’s needs (for boys and girls). Two of my kids are neurodiverse and would have really struggled in a traditional classroom for the early years (but are doing well now in traditional school for upper elementary/middle school).

For the early years my vision of education is:

• Tons of playtime

• Long nature walks and outside time

• Conversation with grown-ups

• Exposure to beautiful music and art

• Access to art supplies to experiment with

• Acquisition of basic skills including cooking

• Read alouds (ALL THE TIME)

Speaking of read alouds, the wonderful Elizabeth Scalia interviewed me about my children’s book series, The Sister Seraphina Mysteries.

As strange as it sounds, it really was one of those things you just wake up with. I awoke one morning from a vivid dream about an order of mouse nuns who live under G.K. Chesterton’s house. The more I thought about the rodent nuns the more I fell in love with them.

The Year of Jane

We finished Emma for our Year of Jane book club! This week we’ll be chatting about Chapter 3 of Jane Austen’s Genius Guide to Life on Emma and then we’ll turn to Mansfield Park! Keep an eye out for the weekly reflection and discussion question email.

Coming Soon

I have a lovely interview with playwright Laura Pittenger in the works about her new play about Servant of God, Dorothy Day!

I also wrote up something about adjusting our attitude toward aging in an anti-aging culture that I may or may not post in the coming days. Does that interest you?

And that’s all folks! Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. And a huge thank you to Kaitlin, Seth, and Jan for upgrading to a paid subscription. This is a reader-supported newsletter so if you enjoy getting these emails, please consider supporting this Substack by upgrading to a paid subscription with the button below.

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Thanks for reading!

Haley

(Editor of Word on Fire Spark, Author, Former Podcaster)

Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns

Haley’s Book on Jane Austen’s Novels

Haley’s Book about Radical Simplicity