A new giveaway (and last call on the old one)

We all know that bribing one's children to do something they ought to have done in the first place (as opposed to negotiating payment for the occasional labor-intensive special job) is a terrible idea.

However, you're not my kids, and you're as reared as you're going to get. So I'm fine with a little shameless payola.

The fact that I've refused to talk about anything else for the past several days may have given you a gentle hint that I feel very strongly about the Swedish homeschoolers who may soon be forced to choose between breaking the law and hoping to get away with it, leaving their country, or unwillingly sending their children to school. From everything my friend and fellow homeschooler Jenny Lantz has told me, the surprise of receiving multiple letters from out of the country on the subject may impact the decision the Swedish politicians make in June.

I know that writing is difficult, as is finding the time to. Here is a sample of an email that would be fine to send to any or all of the politicians listed in the previous posting:
 
"I'm an American homeschooler who is surprised and unhappy to hear that homeschooling may soon be illegal in Sweden. Homeschooling may seem strange to those who have no experience with it, but our children are just like any others: they learn, play, have fun with friends, and grow up to be vital, educated members of society. I'm very grateful to have the choice to homeschool, and I hope that you will vote to keep homeschooling legal in Sweden."
 
Or words to that effect.

What's great about giving a little time and energy like this is that it doesn't cost money and you don't have to worry that you're supporting a questionable cause and/or organization, as is sometimes a concern with charitable donations. You're offering moral support to homeschooling friends in Sweden, and your contribution is going exactly where it ought to and doing just what it should.

Just to make it easier for you to rationalize the time it will take (and believe me, as a working homeschooler I understand how precious even a few minutes can be), I'll offer some bribes.

I have some books that I was going to use in giveaways later. And I looked around on my shelves and found some lovely volumes that I'm willing to part with for a good cause.

These books are now offered up as shameless bribes for the good of homeschoolers in Sweden.

It's simple. Every couple of days -- and I will be prompt on this one, because the clock is ticking overseas -- I will post announcing what the newest giveaway is.

You can either email me privately or post as a comment here your letter to Sweden.

If you've already written a letter, you can use that as an entry for the first giveaway. (Jean, Toni, et al -- this does mean you, lovely ones!) After that, you can either send a letter to another politician or show me the letter you persuaded a friend, relative, spouse or child to send.

Because the point of this is to generate as many letters as possible, you can enter as often as you like, but you have to have a new letter to offer for each entry. Put the kids to work. Cry to your mom. Pull a Lysistrata-strike until your spouse feels selflessly compelled to type up a quick missive. Do what it takes.

I still haven't heard back from a couple of winners from the previous giveaway. If I haven't heard from the winners of 601 Spanish Verbs and 365 Ways to Live Cheap by the time I run out of other books to offer, those titles will be added to this giveaway. (Not trying to sound mean; I just don't know what else to do with them, and would like it if they could do some good.)

The first book doesn't have much to do with homeschooling, but I have the feeling it will appeal to readers of this blog. It's a first edition copy of The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie Coe and Michael Coe. This trade paperback is in new condition, has 97 illustrations (13 in color), and has an $18.95 cover price. It is not a cookbook, but a gorgeous history of this much-loved food. (And I should probably add that the only reason I'm willing to part with it is that I have a copy of the second edition.)

You can post your letter here, or send it to me privately at deborah @ 2ds dot org.

Good luck and thank you!

Let's help homeschoolers in Sweden!

As you may already know, the right to homeschool in Sweden is being threatened by proposed legislation. If the law being voted on in June goes through, it will be virtually illegal to homeschool in Sweden. Specifically, families who wish to homeschool will have to prove that they are doing so due to "extraordinary circumstances" -- that is, health or travel reasons. The proposed law argues that "there is no need for the law to offer the possibility of home education because of religious or philosophical reasons in the family."

You can read more in English about this legislation and what's being done to fight it here:
 
http://www.rohus.nu/en/
 
Several issues ago, I ran an article about homeschooling in Sweden. I thought it would be fun and educational to talk to homeschoolers all over the world, and was lucky enough to be able to interview a couple of Swedish homeschoolers. That article is posted, free to read in full, on the magazine's web site:
 
http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/006/sweden.html
 
Just a couple of months after this article came out, I heard the bad news from Jenny Lantz, one of the parents I'd interviewed and a homeschooling activist. I was outraged and indignant. As I think my article makes fairly clear, homeschooling in Sweden is hard enough under the existing laws. At most, a couple of hundred families in Sweden homeschool -- and that's the biggest number I've been able to find, out of a country of nine million people.

I wrote an article about the proposed legislation and sent some copies to Jenny. She said that it might help if she could show the government that the eyes of the international homeschooling community were on the unfolding events. She also thought that the fact the magazine was called SECULAR Homeschooling might be an advantage, since in Sweden homeschooling is associated with religious extremism in the minds of the mainstream population.

Recently I got in touch with Jenny, asking if there'd been any news. Her reply sounded dejected. There was no news, no change to the proposed legislation, and no reason to think it wouldn't go through.

Feeling helpless, and guilty about my own freedom to homeschool, I asked if there was anything I could do to help. Perhaps a letter-writing campaign? Maybe if a lot of secular homeschoolers got in touch with Swedish politicians, it might help alleviate the fears that were obviously fueling this legislation.

Jenny and the group she works with really liked that idea. She gave me a lot of information on who to contact, and we talked a bit about the best way to go about this.

First, we're looking for stories from secular homeschoolers -- that is, those who are homeschooling (regardless of their personal beliefs) for reasons that aren't religious. We'll be getting in touch with people who simply may not realize that there are non-religious reasons to homeschool. We need to educate them.

It's crucial that our letters be polite. We're trying to persuade people over whom we have no political power to please reconsider what they're doing. We're also writing from a country that has a reputation for thinking it knows what's best for everyone. The last thing we want is to come across as angry, insulting, or condescending.

This is the hardest one for me: aim to be as concise as possible. Homeschooling is a topic we all have a lot to say about, but shorter letters have a better chance of being read.

Thankfully, it's more common than not for Swedes to be multilingual; but English is not the first language of the people we're writing to, and the English they speak and read is likely to be closer to British than American. We need to keep idiomatic phrases to a bare minimum.

Because of this, and because we're representing homeschooling, spelling, grammar, and punctuation should be beautiful. If I can be of help, my proofreading services are at the beck and call of anyone who wants them. You're also very welcome to post the letter you're thinking of sending as a comment here and asking if anyone has anything to say about it. You can also post to let us know that you've sent an email, and to whom, and what it says. I would love to be able to pass along encouraging news to Jenny Lantz and her fellow homeschoolers.

If you intend to send one letter to many people, please make sure it's appropriate for everyone you're sending it to. Jenny has given us a fairly diverse list of people. It might be more effective to send one or two emails tailored to the political and philosophical views of the politicians in question.

So far as content and tone are concerned, we want to be pro-homeschooling rather than anti-school. We also want to address the fears of those we hope to persuade. They're afraid that homeschooled children won't get an adequate education, and won't be an integrated part of the Swedish community. They're undoubtedly concerned about "socialization" -- in every sense of the word. (This is Sweden, after all.) If your child participates in school athletic or other activities, this would be wonderful to mention. If he or she is a Scout, a volunteer of some sort, or takes classes through the local community college, these would also be excellent points to bring up.

We are trying to put a human face on homeschooling. The proposed law is seen by politicians as impacting a group. We need to make it clear that these are families who stand to be hurt. If the reason you homeschool is similar to those of one of the families mentioned in the SHM article, perhaps you might mention that, and mention the parent by name.

Don't worry if someone posts something here that is very similar to what you were going to write. Originality isn't the real concern. We just want both the politicians and the Swedish homeschooling community to know that we're here and we care.

And now I'll give the floor to Jenny Lantz, with many thanks for the work she's done and the chance she's giving us to make a difference:
 
Our minister of education, the one in charge of the new school law, claims to be liberal and speaks a lot about freedom:
Jan Björklund <jan.bjorklund@liberal.se>
Jan Björklund <jan.bjorklund@education.ministry.se>
 
At his office, as an expert in school politics, there's also:
Fredric Skälstad <fredric.skalstad@education.ministry.se>
 
Our prime minister (conservative):
Fredrik Reinfeldt <registrator@primeminister.ministry.se>
 
The other parties' spokespersons in school politics:
Vänsterpartiet -- the socialists
Rossanna Dinamarca
rossana.dinamarca@riksdagen.se
 
Socialdemokraterna -- social democrats
Marie Granlund
marie.granlund@riksdagen.se
 
Miljöpartiet -- the environmental party
Mats Pertoft
mats.pertoft@riksdagen.se
 
Folkpartiet -- the liberals
Fredrik Malm
fredrik.malm@riksdagen.se
 
Centerpartiet -- the centre party
Sofia Larsen
sofia.larsen@riksdagen.se
 
Moderaterna -- the conservatives
Margareta Pålsson
margareta.palsson@riksdagen.se
 
Kristdemokraterna -- the Christian party
Gunilla Tjernberg
gunilla.tjernberg@riksdagen.se
 
The government presented this law to the parliament the other day, and the parliament will vote about it in June. A few weeks before that could be a good idea to send the members of the parliament emails too, but right now these are the important ones.

We are really thankful that you want to help!!! We feel really strengthened by all the international support we have!

Sid Fleischman just died.

Children's writer Sid Fleischman -- author of the McBroom stories, By the Great Horn Spoon! and The Whipping Boy, which won the Newbery Medal -- just died, the day after his 90th birthday.

Mr. Fleischman lived less than a mile from my home, and my son and I were lucky enough to interview him last year. He must already have been ill with the cancer that took his life; but when I, a total stranger, emailed him with a request for an interview, he immediately offered a date and directions to his house. This in spite of the fact that all I told him was that I wrote for a homeschooling magazine. He was greatly relieved when he saw the name Secular Homeschooling on the copy I offered at the door.

"I was a little worried when you contacted me," he said. "Homeschoolers have a reputation of being rather conservative, and I'm pretty lefty." I assured him that we are a most diverse community, and the conversation took off from there.

We spent a fascinating three hours with this dryly funny writer, leaving his cozy home with great reluctance. (Such a relief to see a simple family house in a wealthy neighborhood of Santa Monica, now home of the McMansion.) My twelve-year-old son sat almost silent as Mr. Fleischman and I talked, moving only to take many pictures (some of which we used to illustrate the article that the interview became).

After we left, I asked him what he'd thought. "Well, it wasn't like I understood every word of the conversation," he said. (We talked about history, biography, literature, magic, and skepticism, among other topics.) "But I just kept thinking, 'Wow, I'm sitting in Sid Fleischman's house.'"

The death of a 90-year-old man can never come as a surprise; but, as I pointed out to my son, death is always a shock. It was one thing when Lloyd Alexander, whose books I adored as a child, died a few years ago. That was a gentle, nostalgic sadness -- I knew the writing, but the writer was a distant figure. I hadn't read nearly as many of Fleischman's books; but I met him, spent time in his home, heard his soft and slightly raspy voice offer my son a glass of root beer. I have three hours of his life, hours he gave with what strikes me now as extraordinary generosity, recorded and waiting to be listened to again whenever I should choose to.

My son teared up for both of us when I read the news and couldn't restrain my surprised gasp. I want to cry at times like these, but have had to hold tears back so often that it's hard for me to let them out. It hurt to see my son so moved. It also seemed right. I wouldn't take this away from him -- not the chance to have met a great and friendly writer, nor the chance to quietly weep for his passing.

If you haven't read any Sid Fleischman, The Whipping Boy is the funniest book to ever have such a serious-sounding title. My son and I read it together just before the interview and pretty much giggled through the whole thing. I was shocked that a work so genuinely humorous should have won the Newbery. It wouldn't have now -- Mr. Fleischman and I discussed and agreed upon that. Humor has always been underrated, and now our awards are reserved for those who can rip us up the hardest. (Not that this particular humor writer is bitter or anything.)

Fleischman's biography of Houdini is a great work not just of biography but of skepticism. Houdini wanted so much to believe in the supernatural that he wouldn't accept second-rate evidence. Most people think of him primarily as a magician, but during his life he was just as well known (and often hated) for his debunking work.

Every library is packed with Fleischman's books. If you haven't already enjoyed his work, grab a few titles on your next visit. It doesn't matter how old or young your kids are -- you'll find something to suit. That's part of the magic of this kind and funny writer.