Stories by Marc Eisen

There’s nothing like parenthood for wiring you into education issues.  When my two daughters were in their K-12 years, I got a first-hand look at how the pedagogical fights in academia played out in my neighborhood schools.

This prompted a long essay in Wisconsin Interest in the winter  2007 issue. Given my previous post on the UW-Madison School of Education, this seems a good time to link to it.

Here’s how the story began:

Having kids is a lot like throwing dice. You never know how you and your mate’s genetic code will spill out. Snake eyes: The kid gets your mathematical obtuseness and your spouse’s fear of heights. Seven! The little tyke inherits your love of words and your spouse’s consummate sense of order.

Who knows how the dice will fall? It’s a crap shoot, so to speak. But that’s the nature component of spawning kids. The nurture element is another story. We try so hard to shape their environment to good effect.

How eye-opening, then, when I realized I had gotten it wrong with my older daughter….

Read here for more.

This entry was posted on April 1, 2010 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Education, Wisconsin Interest. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.