HS Comments on the Fly

From an unschooling article:

“The [public] school system that we have now was invented in the late 19th century and had very explicit models: factories, railroads and the army,” Glass said. “So they took features from each of those areas and created a school system.”

The article has some interesting tidbits on educational philsophy — even mentioning Rousseau — and worth a read whether you believe unschooling (or Rousseau) has merit or not.

The article, surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) mentions Ferris Beuller. “Beuller? Beuller?” And possibly Ferris Beuller is the most famous of all those who practice unschooling — even though in his case it was only for a day. Who can forget his famous words after serenading us with the clarinet? “Never had one lesson.” Yes, that’s one of our most favorite movie quotes for homeschoolers. And no I don’t recommend this movie for the little ones.

Jeanette Symons and her homeschooled son died in a plane crash Friday. She was piloting the plane. Her daughter was not on the plane. Jeanette was the CEO of Industrious Kid and founder of Imbee, a free social network for kids.

A new book, Chasing Windmills, includes a homeschooled character who has a fairy godmother who introduces him to the wonders of pizza. (source)

Is that a stretch or what?

Sebastian has never eaten pizza and his controlling homeschool dad takes sleeping pills at night which allow Sebastian to sneak out at night to ride the subway, meet married chicks, and eat pizza.

What 17-year-old homeschooler in the US/Canada has never had pizza? Well .. for any reason other than health issues?

How do authors come up with this stuff? Has this author ever even met just one homeschooling family?

Talk about negative stereotypes based on thin air.

Interesting tidbit for authors who want to write about real homeschoolers: One of my homeschooled students ate pizza crust as their first solid food. Exclusive breastfeeding followed by a long-term weaning which begins with Domino’s Pizza — yeah, that’s how we roll.

Elisha Woienski, who’s majoring in history, is currently a sophomore and on the Dean’s List at the prestigious Citadel.

Home-schooled as a teen, Woienski applied to a number of colleges and universities, but chose the Citadel because they offered him a full-ride scholarship, and because he liked the school more than others.

Source. HT Izzy, the famous ex-blogger.

Tim Tebow, recent Heisman Trophy winner, was homeschooled. That is old news, I know. But in an article about his parents’ upcoming appearance at a conference, we find out a little bit about their homeschooling philosophy.

The Tebows decided 26 years ago to homeschool their children….

Teaching their children to “honor God” played a consuming role in Pam and Bob Tebow’s decision to homeschool their five children.

[Bob states,] “You can be well educated in the world’s eyes and still be a sorry person. You can graduate with degrees and have no character. Character defines who you are.”

Pam Tebow often taught her homeschooled children through use of scripture memorization. And she believes that such memorization has kept her youngest son, Tim, the University of Florida quarterback well grounded in a world of athletics and adulation.

“We had to start when he was very young” said Pam Tebow, “emphasizing humility and character as a part of our schooling.”

Okay, so my daughter did a ton of science yesterday, so now that she’s got her math done for the day, we can get on with the other subjects.

• English - Shakespeare
• Geography/Social Studies - Venice and the Doge
• History - Battle of Obdurman (Winston Churchill fought in this battle)
• More History and Literature - Chivalry and Chaucer

Hmmm. Very rigorous, don’t you think? So let’s ponder this. What would be the best way to cover these challenging topics?

No-brainer answer: With movies. Obviously. But remember, I’ve only got one student left and she’s an older teen. These movies aren’t for the youngsters — or even the oldsters depending on your tastes.

• English - Shakespeare - 10 Things I Hate About You (modern Taming of the Shrew)
• Geography/Social Studies - Venice and the Doge - Casanova
• History - Battle of Obdurman - Four Feathers
• More History and Literature - Chivalry and Chaucer - A Knight’s Tale

Well, that will keep us busy through the evening, won’t it. Somebody better warm up the popcorn maker. We’re already mostly finished with the first one on the list.

And look, one week after the death of the much-loved, legendary Heath Ledger, we’re paying homage to him by watching four of his movies on a school day.

And if we wanted to go further, we could also watch Ned Kelly (Australian History), The Brothers Grimm (Literature), and The Patriot (US History). But that would keep us up just too late, and I’ve already slept through Ned Kelly once.

I am surprised that anyone would give anything that Robin Sampson (aka Robin Scarlata) has done a negative review. And yet, remarkably, it has happened.

The following quotes come from Eclectic Homeschool Online, and they are about Robin’s book, The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach.

Mrs. Sampson presents the Hebraic educational model in a well-researched and thorough manner. Her treatment of the Greek/Classical educational model stands in stark contrast as biased, superficial scholarship. I wouldn’t accept the imbalance in resources from either of my high school age students, and I certainly expected better from Mrs. Sampson. A great deal of these chapters amount to a thinly veiled attack on what the author perceives as the evil of classical education. Her campaign runs into problems with the details.

Her repeated use of poor logic antagonizes the very people (classical homeschoolers) she’s trying to convince. Her classical education bashing rests on the unstable foundation of a number of logical fallacies.

… she assumes that other homeschool parents can’t recognize the propaganda in these chapters. Perhaps this is because she doesn’t recognize that it IS propaganda.

Ouch! I think that’s gonna leave a mark.

But that’s not all! Eclectic Homeschool Online points us to John Mark Reynolds at Scriptorum Daily who gives The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach a thorough tongue lashing.

These groups attack a straw man by arguing against “Greek education” and advocating “Hebrew education.”

… [I]t is easy to demonstrate … that good intentions on sites like “Heart of Wisdom” combined with bad information are not going to help the Christian home school movement.

It is an abuse of history to argue that the varied educational methods that produced thousands of years of Church leaders are simply “pagan.”

The problem with the “Heart of Wisdom” argument is not the intentions, but the reasoning.

Which Greeks? The atheists? The ones who welcomed Paul at Mars Hill (Acts 17), because he had the answer to their philosophical questions that had prepared the way for their reception of the gospel? The Platonists? the neo-Platonists? The Cynics? The Stoics? The Epicureans? They agreed on so little that making a chart of their beliefs as a unified whole is absurd.

One would be hard pressed to find a single doctrine on this chart that would command a majority of Greek philosophical support. It should disturb home school folks tempted to believe these folks that [Robin’s] chart is just wrong . . . not wrong from a worldly point of view, but wrong factually.

The fact that this chart can rapidly be shown false not just in some small details … but in almost every point should cause the home school mom to lose faith in it.

The Heart of Wisdom folk risk reading books to educate their children in a way that guarantees that their children could not write the books they are reading.

There’s a lot more that is said at Scriptorum Daily. Robin Sampson and the homeschooling parents who use the Heart of Wisdom program are really taken to task.

Not to change the subject very much … here’s a recent interesting and instructive post on Robin’s blog for you: Should Homeschoolers Teach Logic? (This might be a better link.) Yeah, we did and will, but who knows if they should. Does it really matter all that much? I should get started on it with my daughter; the end of the school year is looming. We used Traditional Logic with my son and my daughter will go through it also. We only use Book 1 because … um … maybe it’s because I kind of listen to my kids and let them decide on a great many things pertaining to their education once they are upper teens. My son took one look at the second book of Traditional Logic and said that it went into it further than he was interested in going into it. I think that part of it was the format changed a fair bit and the lessons seemed to be less practical than the first book. But that was a few years back, and my memory is fuzzy.

If you want to buy it:

Traditional Logic, Book 1, Student (35% off special, limited time only)
Traditional Logic, Book 1, Key
Traditional Logic, DVDs (24% off special, limited time only)

Traditional Logic is easy to use, simply set up, takes about a semester. I just threw it in with the English class. It’s decent training for the mind. If your student wants to learn logic, and many do, then it’s probably the best product on the market for homeschoolers. For those homeschooling for reasons other than religious, the religious flavor of the program is probably skippable in the first book of the series but not the second.

So, it is two days after the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.

It is the perfect time to ask* your students to tell you what they know about Martin Luther.

Some students will rattle off, “Assassinated in 1968, Montgomery Bus Boycott, I Have a Dream, etc.”

And then you can say, “Hmmm. And I always thought Martin Luther was from Germany.” Or “Oh, and what did he nail to the door in Wittenberg?” Or “I’m asking about Martin Luther.”

Yes, I did this with my students … back when my kids occasionally fell for it. It helped my students to pay better attention and subsequently avoid the confusion with the two names that quite a few people encounter. It’s an easy mistake to make if you’re not paying attention.

* Of course, you can only do this if you’ve already studied Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation as well as Martin Luther King, Jr., and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

Are you one of those Frugal Friday people? Not me.

I cannot share my tips each week about being frugal because you would be disgusted and think that I am an all-out kook and then never come back and read my words because I have discredited myself.

I am that crazy type of person that did not get a dryer until we’d been married 11 years. I dried everything outside. Even the cloth diapers. And that is just one thing I’m willing to share. Oh, here’s another. I cut all the dryer sheets in half before using them and then reuse them and reuse them until they don’t have any smell left. Sometimes there’s four partially-used dryer sheets in one load. And I don’t use a dryer sheet for every load. And I won’t buy them without a Costco coupon.

I’m so frugal that I will overcome my embarrassment and daintily pick up a flattened aluminum can in a parking lot to take to the recyclers. It’s difficult to publicly pick up trash, but I have to think to myself, “It’s okay. It’s for our trip to Europe. And besides, I’m so green that I deserve a medal.”

But this is one great Frugal Friday tip: Use a hot box to cook and save on your utility bill! I guess it takes about half the energy that it would otherwise. Go and look at the hot box. For me, that’s just way too extreme. That link also has other links to hot box web pages. I think it’s called fireless cooking. But I just can’t imagine waiting all day for our potatoes to be cooked for our mashed potatoes. I’m not saying that I’ll never try this, but right now, it would drive me bonkers. Where would I put it while the food cooked? For us, right now, I think we can spend our human energy on saving the earth’s energy by employing other methods.

Here’s one thing that I’m doing right now. I don’t turn on any lights without first asking myself, “What would Jane do? [That’s WWJD] Would Jane Austen light a candle right now?” Then I look around and decide. And when I don’t flip the light switch I think, “Awww. How nice. I just saved a lump of coal from being turned into air pollution. Aren’t I a philanthropist? I can now buy some smaller shoes for my carbon foot.”

NOTE: Place T-shirt over the clothes line so that you can place the clothes pins in the underarm. Result: no visible marks on the shirt indicating that you dry your clothes on the line.

Okay, this is old news, but it is new to me.

The Magna Carta went up for auction at the end of last year (2007). No, it was not on eBay.

It was auctioned off by the famous Sotheby’s.

Magna Carta, a declaration of human rights that would set some of the guiding principles for democracy as it is known today.

The U.S. Constitution includes ideas and phrases taken almost directly from the charter, which rebellious barons forced their oppressive King John to sign in 1215.

It sold for $21.3 million. Wow!

You remember the Magna Carta, don’t you? Bad King John of Robin Hood fame. Runnymede. 1215. The barons. No one is above the law. Good stuff. You may find this over-done Wikipedia article helpful if you find your memory has dimmed. The following articles, though, were pretty good and not nearly as verbose.

Article A: Magna Carta Copy to Fetch Fortune at Auction
Follow-up Article: Magna Carta Copy Sells for $21.3 Million at Auction

When working on our U.S. Government class in high school, we read most of the Landmark Magna Charta. It’s pretty good.

The big news is that some notes were found that indicate that Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo of Florence, Italy, was the subject of one of da Vinci’s paintings.

The basics are that an acquaintance of da Vinci scribbled some notes in the margin of a book about who was being painted. This book is in Heidelberg, Germany, and has been examined by experts who say that the margin notes verify that Mona Lisa is Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, merchant.

So it looks like E. L. Konigsburg made a pretty good guess way back in 1975 when he/she wrote The Second Mrs. Giaconda. The spelling may be a little different, but that’s to be expected in Italian. But if you’re interested in this famous woman, don’t read this book because it’s about da Vinci, his apprentice, and a lady from Ferrara, Italy. Mona Lisa doesn’t show up until the very end of the book. I liked the book — it made me crave anise cookies — but waiting for Mrs. Giaconda to show up gave me gray hair. Lovely book. Stupid title. And now I have to use Miss Clairol.

Hey, News Flash! I have an older paperback version of the book and the title is The Second Mrs. Giaconda, with an “A.” The newer version has a different spelling and is titled The Second Mrs. Gioconda, with an “O.” Interesting, no?