Salon.com > Helen Cordes

Not a moment too soon

Thu, 03 May 2001 19:33:00 +0000

The highly successful -- and controversial -- campaign to get children into orthodontists' offices as early as preschool seems exquisitely timed to coincide with a growing obsession with children as perfect parental display items. Witness, for example, the steady rise of cosmetic plastic surgery for kids such as ear jobs (doubled for preschoolers since 1992) and liposuction (quadrupled for teens). The idea that one's toddlers should have to endure a crooked smile or buckteeth until the fix of braces in the teen years is suddenly viewed as cruel and unusual, an unnecessary delay of superficial excellence.

Indeed, many thousands of well-meaning parents are being wooed by orthodontists to foot the bill for early or "phased" treatment, an approach in which doctors say they can more quickly and easily render a perfect smile by getting to younger, more malleable jaws (usually between the ages of 3 and 8), rather than waiting for traditional treatment in the preteen and teen years.

There's just one problem. Mounting evidence shows that early treatment often results in a longer, more costly stint of treatment, and may entail some worrisome side effects. So compelling is this new data that orthodontists increasingly are taking aim at their own, charging that much of the early-treatment trend is fueled by a desire to build up profitable practices by roping in more patients at an earlier age.

Battling for the heart and soul of home-schoolers

Mon, 02 Oct 2000 19:30:00 +0000

As more parents have felt alienated, frustrated or unserved by American schools, home schooling has taken off. The number of kids taught at home in the U.S. has more than doubled in the past five years, zooming to an estimated 1.7 million and growing annually at an estimated 15 percent clip. Young home-schoolers are consistently scoring beyond their grade levels on standardized tests, while home-schooled high school students are snapping up places at elite colleges, many of them after walking away with top honors in national academic competitions.

Recently George W. Bush mixed home schooling with presidential politics in a letter to a Texas home-schooler -- now circulating widely on national home-school e-mail listservs -- in which he enthusiastically praises home schooling and vows to fight for legislation that would allow families to set aside $5,000 tax-free annually to pay for the educational expenses of teaching at home.

Contrary to stubborn stereotypes, Bush is not preaching to the converted in targeting voters who home-school. An exhaustive look at home schooling released this year by former Department of Education home-school researcher Patricia Lines exploded the stereotype that most home-schoolers are conservative fundamentalists seeking to isolate themselves from blasphemous school systems.

Sour grapes, anyone?

Tue, 06 Jun 2000 19:08:00 +0000

The past few weeks have been mighty sweet for home schoolers.

Home-schooled kids hogged the headlines as finalists and winners at both the National Spelling Bee and National Geographic Bee. And more acclaim may be ahead: One of the home-schooled spelling bee finalists is off to a national math competition in which she was a finalist last year. The past few months also brought a New York Times puff piece on unschooling -- a child-led approach to home schooling -- and the Wall Street Journal published a paean to the home-schooled wunderkinders who are scooping up academic distinction and elite college spots galore.

But along with the accolades has come an ugly undercurrent of resentment from critics of home schooling. Last week, a St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist suggested that the current crop of home school contest winners came from families who are home schooling expressly to groom future competition winners.