Downton Abbey / Help!!!

It was a sad Sunday night last week. Downton Abbey's second series was over.  I feel like a kid who can't wait for the next Harry Potter book or movie to be released.  Those Brits really know how to tell a good story.  Being an Upstairs Downstairs fan back in the 70s made me an easy convert to Downton Abbey.  The PBS series, Upstairs Downstairs, was also set in the world of pre- and post-WWI era in England.  Much discussion everywhere, or as my new friend, Mary Ellen, so poetically puts it, much ink has been spilt, about why this PBS program has such a devoted viewing audience on Sunday nights.  We Upstairs Downstairs fans were a small quiet group back in the 70s: rarely did I find someone to discuss the series with.  Downton watchers are a pretty common lot, and it is fun to discover that many of your friends are watching the series too.

When visiting my daughter last month in New York, I overheard discussion of the series in two different restaurants on the Upper East Side near Lexi's apartment.  One such conversation was in one of those small Jewish deli places, so small that you feel like you should join in the conversation going on next to you.  A woman in her early thirties was explaining a recent Downton Abbey episode to her date sitting across the table from her.  I found myself rubbing elbows with her date as I ate my matzo ball soup and it was all I could do not to jump into their conversation.  The young man was doing an excellent job of feigning interest, though men generally do seem to like the series as much as women.  The man told the woman he would tune in for the next episode after the football season was over.  At an English restaurant,  I overheard a group at the bar planning the menu for their weekly Downton Abbey Sunday night dinner parties.  I might just try that when the new season begins!  Any takers?

Many critics are embarrassed and assail the American Downton fans, insinuating that we should all feel guilty because to watch is to delight in the abhorrent British class system depicted in the series.  Gosh, don't these critics understand that our American belief that we live in a country without a class system is a delusion?  Fans watch Downton Abbey to learn about how a class system works.  Can't these critics just let us enjoy our Anglophilia in peace?  Some credit must be given, however,  to the Downton series compared to Upstairs Downstairs.  The writer, Julian Fellows, goes to great lengths to give equal time to plot lines for both the aristocratic and servant classes.  

The recently popular novel and movie, The Help, is the story of the relationship between white housewives and their black maids in the American south of the 1960s.  As in Downton, the lives of the servant class are given equal time in this story.  The day-to-day social interaction between the housewives and the maids in The Help is much more cruel and harsh than the relationship between Lady Grantham and her maid.  The servant class in both stories do get their revenge: a bar of soap in Downton becomes a lethal weapon and an unusual chocolate pie in The Help is served up to the unsuspecting prima donna.  The last episode of Downton ended with the servants' ball at the mansion: upstairs aristocrats dancing the night away with their devoted downstairs servants.  In The Help, white women felt outraged if their black maids used the family bathroom. The idea of a servants ball in 1960 Alabama is rather unimaginable, given the bathroom fetishes of these southern belles.

Social class makes for good drama.   Both of these immensely popular stories, one in the early part of the 20th century and one in the middle, depict human beings who enjoy the good life thanks to those whose life is not so good.  The sort of thinking that justifies a class system can justify a lot of bad behavior towards the not-so-fortunate group.  Other people do all the grunt work for the group that does little all day but dress up for dinner.  In The Help one group has babies, the other group raises those babies.  One group lives in a mansion or a nice rambler while the other lives in shacks or small rooms in the mansion.  Sometimes it is even necessary to build separate toilets for those who do all the child raising, cooking, and silver polishing so those in the grunt-free group don't have to be exposed to their germs.

Ah yes, it is good that in America we don't have a class system.   On New York's Upper East Side, one cannot help but notice that the majority of the baby carriages being pushed along the streets contain white babies being pushed by black or Hispanic women.  In our country, one group can make doctor's appointments, while the other group has to sit in the emergency room for hours before being able to see a doctor.  The fruits and vegetables we enjoy eating everyday are picked by those who make a subsistence wage while hoping not to be arrested and deported.  The smart phones the majority of us now carry (except for Luddites like my husband) are made in China where workers live and work in conditions few of us can imagine.

I will miss Downton Abbey, but thank goodness the show Bethenny Ever After made it's second season debut on the Bravo channel Monday night.  In the first episode of this reality show we find Bethenny, again in angst, talking with her therapist.  The pressure of having made 100 million dollars upon the sale of her Skinny Margarita cocktail to Jim Beam is just too much for her to handle.  She is in the process of buying a huge New York City apartment that she wants to be perfect.  We all know what that must be like.  Talk about pressure!  Granted her apartment in Manhattan isn't the size of Downton, but still: how do you get good help nowadays?

First the Chinese and now those damn French!

Americans become very defensive -- no, more like hostile -- when they feel their child-rearing practices are being scrutinized: ie, American kids are fat, lazy, and talk back.  Last year when Amy Chua, author of Tiger Mom, went on a book tour, she had to travel with security guards due to the angry emails and threats of personal violence which she received upon publication of her book on parenting the Chinese way.  Chua, a Yale law professor, is in town this weekend speaking to a packed house at the University of Minnesota.  I guess the anger and hostility has died down into a healthy discussion mode.

Chua thinks many Americans coddle their children, not preparing them for the demands of the real world.  Chua's book details how she raised two now highly accomplished daughters, using the techniques and philosophy her Chinese immigrant parents used on her.  Chua has admitted that she was often mean and unfair to her daughters, making them practice their musical instruments for hours on end every day and rejecting their hand-made gifts because they were poorly constructed.

Tiger Mom did not allow her daughters to watch television or attend sleepovers with their school chums, and she demanded that they make straight As.  (Sounds like child abuse to me.)  In truth, the tale she tells about putting one of her daughters out barefoot on the porch in December for an extended period of time when she would not practice piano as she had been instructed upset me greatly.  I had an abusive father and this story came a little too close to home.  Chua has admitted she would do many things differently now and says there are many positives in how Americans raise their kids.  Her daughter, the one sent to the porch, now attends Harvard and writes a blog, probably to show that although Mommy was indeed strict strict, her daughter has not, as yet anyway, landed on the shrink's couch.

Last week, a new book about raising children was released, Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman.  The author is an American Expat who has lived in Paris the past six years.  She is married to a Brit, whom she calls a curmudgeon (as I and others have always called Harry), and has a five-year-old daughter and twin sons aged three.  Most  reviews of the book have been harsh and a bit glib, in my view.  In 2004, the book Why French Women Don't Get Fat was published, and we Americans learned that disciplined moderation, not starvation, Weight Watchers, or Slim Fast shakes is the French secret to keeping a trim figure. Now we learn that same disciplined moderation, not exactly a trait common to our culture, is also practiced by the French with regard to their child-raising.

When Druckerman began living in Paris, she found French children very different from their American counterparts.  I had the same reaction when Harry and I spent a week in Paris a few years ago.  I remember thinking I never saw a child throwing a tantrum in public, but even more importantly the French seemed to delight so in their children.  I thought there must be something in the water!  The author says that in six years she too has never observed a French child throwing a tantrum in public, and when she visits French homes, children are amazingly well behaved.  The author goes to great length to examine the historical and cultural elements that may account for the French style of parenting.

In England, the same year we took our Paris trip, I frequently found the Brits to be verbally abusive to their children in public, painfully so.  I witnessed parents yelling at their kids and criticizing them in the supermarkets, in restaurants, on the streets, and kids yelling back abusively at their parents.  A toddler tantrum in public was as common in the north of England as it is here in the States.

So, just what do the French do to raise these calm, seemingly happy, well behaved, non-tantrum children?  Well, lots of things, subtle things, many of which Americans would never do because patience, consistency and moderation are required. Our culture, with all its diversity and complexity, seems to be evolving ever faster towards the ever more intense need to instant gratification.  We do, after all, text and drive.  The French government also supports young families in ways that our government never has and never will.  Young families get help in France that would make Tea Party members even more hysterical than they already are.  The French birth rate is up while many other European countries are in a state of steep population decline. This is worrisome for those living in these low birthrate countries who plan on retirement some day. 

The French gently teach their children to wait, and the waiting starts in the hospital nursery.  Learning to wait, they believe, teaches children that the world is not always going to give you what you want instantly so it is best to learn the lesson early.  Being able to wait shows respect for other people who have rights too, even parents.  A newborn in Paris is gently taught to sleep through the night by the age of three months.  It is expected of them and they do it.  After all, mommy and daddy need their sleep too.  Toddlers eat scheduled meals, three healthy ones and a once, I repeat, once a day snack. Part of the culture in Paris is to teach very small  children to bake a simple cake which they are made to wait to eat at snack time in the late afternoon (recipe below).  Toddlers and young children can sit in a restaurant with their parents and not disturb everyone around them. When the family leaves the restaurant, the waiter or waitress does not have to bring out a broom to sweep up all the food on the floor.  French children play frequently in parks without their parents monitoring their every move.  The French do not believe that dragging your children to a bunch of lessons after school or on the weekends is necessarily good or desirable.
 
Years ago my sister, who lived in Colombia at the time, said that all children were potty trained there soon after they could walk.  I did not believe her.  She came to visit me one summer when Alexis was a year or so and gave me the book, Potty Training in a Day.  I remember thinking, well, why not try it, diapers are a pain?  I read it, followed the protocol, and we trained Alexis in one day.  I was thrilled as a working mom and so was her babysitter, Sonia, who had several other toddlers in diapers at the time.

I vividly remember the competition between the Suzuki parents when Alexis took violin lessons as a child.  "What song is she playing now?"  "Oh, my Susie played that months ago." French parents find this sort of competition distasteful.  So did I.  In an adult English class I taught a few years ago I remember a Japanese woman explaining how Japanese mothers teach their children to stop eating well before they are full.  There is little obesity in Japan or in France.

Parents with self control usually have children with self control: as a teacher I know this to be true.  Just watch an episode of The Nanny if you don't believe me and you will never again question how children can become so rude and demanding.  Yes, it is quite simple: if children are rude and demanding, it is because the parents let them be rude and demanding.  The French believe that parents must set firm limits.  Too many choices only confuse a child.  Within the strict boundaries, however, children enjoy much freedom in France. They allow for much unstructured playtime, without adults hovering overhead. 

It should also be noted that French mothers rarely breast feed their infants.  Fear of droopy boobs, perhaps?  French mothers scoff at natural childbirth.  Why would you if you can have an epidural?  I also doubt there are many home-schooled French students; few French mommies would be willing simply to stop their lives for a few years to give their child the luxury of a one-on-one tutor.  French women are so selfish! 

There are a million books and websites out there telling parents how best to parent today. This book is just one more to add to the pile: one which, I would argue, should be taken off the pile and read carefully here in America.  There is some wisdom to be had!!

Editor's note: I wonder whether impatience will become an adaptive behavior in the new world from which I increasingly opt out in order to practice being a curmudgeon.

Writer's note:  Harry needs no practice in being a curmudgeon.

GATEAU AU YAOURT

2 six ounce containers plain whole mile yogurt  (use the empty containers to measure the other ingredients)

2 eggs

2 containers sugar (or just one, depending on how sweet you like it) 

1teaspoon vanilla 

Just under 1 container vegetable oil

4 containers flour

1 and one half teaspoons baking baking powder

Creme fraiche  (optional)  

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Grease a round cake pan or loaf pan

Gently combine yogurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil.  In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until ingredients are just combined. Do not overmix.  You ca add a container of frozen berries or chocolate chips or any flavoring you like.  

Bake for 35 minutes, or more if the cake does not pass the stick in the knife test.  It will be crispy on the outside and springy on the inside.  Let is cool.  Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche.  (found at Lunds or Byerlys in Mpls.)  

 










  

Want to cheat? Your cell phone can help!

The richer of the two districts I sub in, the one with all the amazing technology in all its classrooms, is experiencing serious technological problems: students use technology to cheat.  I know this district is not alone.   Last Friday was the end of the the first semester and  I took a job at the high school.  The job turned out to be assisting in a math class where they were taking an end-of-semester exam.  The regular math teacher told me my job would be to circulate about the classroom as the students took the test.   He would deal with the test protocol.   I was to stay on my feet for two two-hour periods, watching for students who might pull out their cell phones, take pictures of the test, and text the photos to their classmates who had not yet taken the exam.  He told me this bad behavior had happened three times the day before.

When the students arrived, the teacher informed the class that three students had been sent to the office the previous day for cell phone cheating and had received a zero on the exam.  He went on to say that no cell phones should be seen at all for the entire exam period.  Those who took out their phones at any time would be sent to the office for disciplinary action.  He didn't bother to introduce me to the students in the first exam period, so before the second session started, I jumped up and introduced myself.  I felt it polite for students to at least to know the name of the person who was going to be spying and ratting on them.

The teacher rose from his computer at the front of the room a couple of times to help those who had trouble launching the computer part of the exam.  The rest of the time he did not get up from his chair in front of his computer screen: surfing the web perhaps?  In the two testing sessions, the teacher threw out a total of six students, sending them to the office for reasons that were unclear to me.  He yelled at them from the front of the room to get out, saying that he had had it with them.  They must had done something to annoy him other than taking out their cell phones.  I was on the job after all.  

Both districts where I sub, beginning in kindergarten, have a test protocol such that students are trained to put up folders to block the student next to them from being able to see their test.  I guess the presumption is that everybody cheats, even in kinder.  Students in all grades often sit at tables nowadays.  Individual student desks, which offered a little privacy and autonomy, are becoming a thing of the past.

Students finished their math exams at different rates, some being done in 30 minutes and some taking the entire two hours.  Several who finished before the allotted time, handed in their tests and sneakily took out their cell phones -- not to cheat, just to do what we all do with our cell phones.   I quickly made a judgement call and decided to go up to the students and quietly remind them of what happened yesterday and that they should put their phones away.  I then smiled and said, "Why don't you just take out a book from your backpack to read?"  That remark prompted all but one to look at me as if I were crazy, but they did all politely put their phones away.  (Geez! and here I thought students still read books in their free moments.) 


I was amazed that the students who took out their phones were so good at hiding the fact.  The regular teacher, glued to his chair and his computer, would never have noticed from his vantage point that they had phones out even if he did look up from the front of the classroom.   It became clear to me how easily cell phone cameras could be used to cheat if a teacher did not spend the test period walking around the classroom. 

Students today bring cell phones to school, be they in elementary, middle, or high school.  In 2006, New York City banned students from bringing cell phones to school, and parents sued (and lost), arguing that their children's safety was at stake.  The policy in most schools across the country is that students are not to use phones in class, but of course students do anyway.  Teachers threaten to take phones away if they see them out in class, but often when you confront students they have a ready reason for why their phone is out: Mom just sent them a text and they have to call her immediately; or Dad was supposed to drop off the lunch box that was forgotten on the kitchen table and the office has not called to tell them it arrived.  Do you really expect them to go without lunch?  Truth is, kids are just as addicted to their phones are we adults are.   

I had my own personal wake up moment with regard to cell phone use in a classroom several months back in the same school district.  I was subbing in a middle school math class and I learned that a certain boy went to the principal after class to complain that I was too strict: strict meaning that I did not let the class deviate from the regular teacher's plan for the period.  This student had become very defiant so I told him to sit in the hallway.  When this child got home, his parents called the principal saying that their son had used his cell phone to tape me and I could be heard swearing at the students in the class.  The principal called me into his office the next day, as I was subbing in the building again, and told me what had happened.  I asked him whether he had heard the tape of me swearing and he said no, but the parents were going to bring in the phone and play him the recording tomorrow.  He asked if I had sworn at the students.  I said of course not, and he said, "Well, they have you on tape and I will meet with you after I meet with the parents."   I never heard back from this jerk, I mean principal, and I don't chose to sub in this school anymore.        

I do not presume to know the answer to the problem of cell phones in the classroom.  I remember sitting in church in the front row, years back, and my phone went off during the sermon (the only ringing oration I remember!).  It rang several times before I could turn if off.   Last month at Lincoln Center, a man's phone went off during a performance of the New York Philharmonic and the conductor stopped the concert.  

Cell phones are here to stay and they are both wonderful and terrible, like the many other technological devices that fill up our days.  I hate the idea that if students are not watched at every moment during an exam they will cheat.  There will always be students who lie because they do not get to do what they want in school.  The realization that students may be recording you in the classroom is a bit sobering, however, it is probably good to know it could be happening to you at anytime.     

Good thing I don't swear at the students I teach, but as I walked around the classroom that day for four hours, I did have my Kindle in my hands reading the New Yorker.  When the battery went dead on the Kindle, I took out my cell phone to read a book as I continued looking for cheaters.  A good teacher can multi- task because she has those eyes in the back of her head.  Luckily, the regular teacher did not send me to the office for taking out my cell phone.  I guess he did not want to do my job.  He did use a couple swear words though that day so I hope no one got him on tape or he might have been in for some disciplinary action from the office himself.