Common Sense Child Rearing By Thomas Cowan

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Common Sense Child Rearing: Unconventional Wisdom for a Nourished Childhood
By Thomas Cowan, MD
Steiner Books

Whose side are you on? That’s the question Tom Cowan asks in his book Common Sense Child Rearing. The key is for your child to know that you will always be on his side. That doesn’t mean you condone bad behavior, but you need to figure out what that behavior is telling you.

You are on your child’s side when you feed him a nutritious diet and keep the junk out of the house.

You are on your child’s side when you listen, really listen to what he has to say.

You are on your child’s side when you resist interfering with the sacred activity of play.

You are on your child’s side when you provide her with a home life of rhythm and boundaries—within which she can be free to pursue her own interests.

You are on your child’s side when you don’t force him to eat broccoli (no one should have to eat broccoli).

You are on your child’s side when you turn off the Wi-Fi in your house and do not let him have a cell phone.

You are on your child’s side when you let him have a pet.

You are on your child’s side when you let him have a fever and childhood illnesses, and do not succumb to giving him Tylenol.

Tom fills the pages with interesting an­ecdotes and sage advice. My one complaint is his diatribe against what he calls “compulsive” education, which makes a not very convinc­ing argument that schooling is a “universal monopoly,” which insidiously forces children to engage in activities of no interest to them, creating little apparatchiks for the New World Order.

Actually, the idea of universal education did not start with socialists or industrialists but with the German Protestants of the Reformation, who believed that all children should learn to read the Bible. The aristocracy and the church opposed such a radical idea, believing that it would pave the way for rebellion—as indeed it did, leading to, for example, the German Peas­ants War of 1525, the first shot of the common man across the bow, eventually leading to the American Revolution.

Tom states that anyone can learn to read without schooling and gives as an example the American colonies, where a very high propor­tion of the population was literate in spite of not going to school. But they did go to school. The Puritans and Protestants who settled in the colonies—at least in New England and Penn­sylvania—believed strongly in education, and every village had its one-room school house.

As a former remedial reading teacher, I can tell you that very few children learn to read on their own; some learn very quickly while others require dedicated teaching. . . and it is a terrible thing to let a child or teenager out into the worldnot knowing how to read or do the rudiments of arithmetic. Even if we are “forcing” a child to learn, we have an obligation to ensure that all those who are able do learn to read. (Sadly, not all children are able.)

Published by Steiner Books, Common Sense Child Rearing l ooks t o R udolf S teiner for guidance in questions involving children and education. Tom quotes Steiner on the deadening effects of teaching reading before age seven (although the Montessori method argues for ages three to four as the best years for learning to read). The key, it seems to me, is teaching reading in a way that is fun and interesting—play-based learning, as Steiner would call it, particularly involving phonics and rhyming words. Otherwise, reading for the average student is just rote memory work.

Steiner had other interesting things to say about childhood education. For example, he believed that the classroom should provide an atmosphere similar to that of an upper middle class household, one that is colorful and orga­nized, for children whose home lives might be drab and chaotic. He felt that children should be introduced to certain subjects at specific ages, for example, learning about the Greeks at age nine and the Romans at age twelve. He also spoke of the importance of young people having teachers whom they could admire and emulate—teachers who were not their parents.

People are often shocked when I tell them that I am in favor of public schools. I am not in favor of homeschooling because it often means that children are spending too much time with their parents and often not having exposure to the wider world and children from different back­grounds. Of course, it is often not possible to put children in the local public schools—they may be too violent or too far away—but whenever possible, public schools can provide important experiences for children and adolescents—as with Tom’s acquaintence with Willie (as mentioned in the book), a defining experience for him could not have happened except in a public school.

My own grandchildren, all in public schools, have had many valu­able experiences they would not have had otherwise. One participated in engineering club in middle school, building bridges with popsicle sticks and making robots; another has excelled in chess at chess club; another learned samba dancing from his Hispanic teacher (which has made him the life of any party). My daughter-in-law attended a large midwestern high school—an institution the likes of which is found nowhere else in the world—and learned to play three instruments as part of the march­ing band. Team sports, chorus, drama, art—all are now available at most public high schools, as are the trades for those not wishing to continue to college. Many public high schools today offer carpentry, plumbing, electrical and auto mechanics—which can come in handy if you want to drop out of the rat race and be a homesteader.

While Tom could have given better advice on education, he redeems himself in his last chapter, where he argues movingly that no parent who is on his child’s side will let him be injected with vaccines, that in fact parents who are on their children’s side will do everything to prevent such pollution of their children’s sacred bodies, even if it means schooling them at home.

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