HS Comments on the Fly

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.

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.

T. R. Fehrenbach wrote a short commentary on the education of journalists, but I think it can apply to people in general who are serious about education … you know, like homeschoolers.

A degree in journalism can help you get a job and teach you some skills but the best journalists, I think, have degrees in history, economics, philosophy, English, or science.

Education has little to do with making a living; a great deal to do with understanding the species and the cosmos. We tend to mistake trade-school training (law, medicine, journalism) for education. Nor is education information that can be Googled….

You’ve heard that one before, right? You know, it’s similar to that old saying that goes something like, “Education is not about learning how to make a living, but about learning how to live.”

A good editor should never be unread in Shakespeare, the Iliad or the Bible.

I’d add in mythology, too. I’m sure there are more topics to add in, but our society seems to be riddled with mythological references. I think you could just buy a copy of The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy to cover the topic of mythological references for a teen. If the goal is to get the main mythological references, I think it might be overkill to have them read Hamilton’s Mythology, though one of my students did and I was required to in high school.

The journalist unschooled in science [who writes about] science or the reporter on politics who has never read Machiavelli are often the blind misleading the blind.

Ha. Good use of misleading, huh?

And that last quote, my friends, is why I don’t write about politics — I’ve never read Machiavelli. Nor do I intend to. But these two books do look good: What Would Machiavelli Do: The Ends Justify the Meanness and Ross King’s biography of Machiavelli. There are so many books I want to read. I wish authors would just take a break so that I could catch up.

T. R. Fehrenbach’s complete commentary can be read online.

BBC1 has developed a mini-series called Cranford. It is based on Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell which I was reading earlier this year. It got so depressing … what with a lot a dying and lost love … that I couldn’t bear it and put the book down and have not picked it back up.

I would like to say that the mini-series is more upbeat, but it really isn’t. It doesn’t go into the detail the book does, so I’m not left weeping. However, I’m still seeing lots of death and sadness. The good news is, though, that Imelda Staunton as Miss Pole has me laughing so hard that I’m spewing hot chocolate. It’s actually best that I don’t eat while I watch it. I do wonder, though, if she actually intended to say “renumeration” instead of “remuneration.” Or maybe I just heard it wrong.

I watched it Saturday night on YouTube.com in 10-minute increments. It’s a bit trying to watch it in such short bits, but I otherwise wouldn’t be able to see it for a few years, I imagine. It’s just now showing on British TV and isn’t on DVD yet. It’s not on BBC America yet either. But it’s worth buying, so we’ll probably buy it when it comes out.

I’m dying to see episode 5. I hope someone uploads it to YouTube in the next couple of days. The rest of the family watched it Sunday evening, and I rewatched bits of it. It’s very well done. It’s about a very small town basically run by older women, some of whom believe that men in a home just get in the way. Men come and go, but the leading ladies in the town aren’t married. The town has various trouble and events — things like a garden party, railroad issues, new doctor, amputation, young love, old-and-wrinkled love, the croup, gypsies, problems with the help, a sickly sister, proposals, visitors, the cat that ate the lace made by nuns, hair dying with indigo, etc., etc., etc. Victoria is the Queen, and it’s set in the early 1840s up near Manchester, England.

My only student has now picked up the book and is reading it. And, of course, this is homeschool related. It’s a mini-series based on classic literature and has inspired my student to read the literature. So. There ya’ go. Of course, she’s already completed all of her literature credits and should be focusing on science, but I’ll turn a blind eye. It’s not like the US didn’t win the space race, right? Sputnik causes no fear these days.

In an effort of full disclosure, here’s what I wrote back on 01-DEC-06:

I’m reading Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I spent some quality time with it while waiting for Costco to balance and rotate my tires. I sat in the food court. I felt a little self-conscious while laughing at the funny bits though. I’m surprised that it’s as amusing as it is. I mean how can two townspeople fighting over the literary talents of Samuel Johnson and Mr. Boz be amusing? I don’t know, but it is.

It’s a story about life in a fictional small town in England in the mid-1800s. It’s slow; it’s not like The DaVinci Code. It’s simple and yet complex. You have to pay attention, though, sort of like watching Michael Kitchen’s face as Foyle, or you’ll miss the humor. Maybe I should spell it humour since it is British humor.

Gaskell also wrote North and South and Wives and Daughters. I’ve not read those; I’ve only watched the DVDs. I’m reading Cranford because I picked up a lovely little vintage copy at a booksale, and I grabbed it off the shelf on the way out of the house knowing I’d be stuck waiting on my tires.

Oh, wanna hear what’s on the back cover of our newer softcover version?

Elizabeth Gaskell’s comic portrait of early Victorian life in a country town describes with poignant wit the uneventful lives of its lady-like inhabitants, offering and ironic commentary on the separate spheres and diverse experiences of men and women. As the external world necessarily impinges even on Cranford, the unlikely juxtapositions of old and new brought about by the pace of change are also explored: the effect of Victorian commerce and imperial expansion co-exist with the survival of customs and habits of thought from much earlier times.

Yeah. So there.

Go get some hot chocolate and a cozy blanket and start watching it on YouTube now. It will give you a little peaceful diversion after a long day of homeschooling and momming. My advice: Do not delay. Things have a way of disappearing off of YouTube pretty quickly in some cases.

UPDATE: Episode 5 is now up!

Since I have been lacking inspiration lately, I went and dredged this entry up out of my old archives from 2003. I had recently read The Odyssey aloud to my students.

I re-found this really irreverent classics site while trying to find something else. Perfessr writes,

Homer is also the Emily Post of antiquity. The Odyssey is nothing if not a book about manners. In a world without law or government, the guest relationship is all-important. There were certain rules to be followed among the nobility, and the moral person was above all a good host. Martha Stewart has nothing over King Nestor, except possibly her strawberry tortes.

Many others have mentioned Greek hospitality (as described in Homer’s works) as being a theme of the poems. We have been noticing it, too, over and over again while reading The Odyssey.

At one point (can’t remember which book or even who), we were surprised that a stranger had to be fed and wined before the host could even ask him why he had decided to visit. Can you imagine? Also, it seems that you were supposed to send your guests off with gifts when they left — not a bad idea, but a little costly if you’re not careful.

In Book XV (Rieu trans.) Menelaus says to Telemachus, “I condemn any host who is either too kind or not kind enough. There should be moderation in all things, and it is equally offensive to speed a guest who would like to stay and to detain one who is anxious to leave. What I say is, treat a man well while he’s with you, but let him go when he wishes.” Okay. Fine. But what about those nasty freeloaders–the Suitors? Hmmm? Frankly, I think they abused the hospitality offered them. Why didn’t the laws of hospitality allow them to be booted on out of there?

And what about Hyperion? Why was it okay for him to withhold his sheep and cows from the weary travelers? But, you know, Polyphemus was the worst. He gobbled up his guests and washed them down with milk. Yeah, it doesn’t get much worse than that.

Oh, yeah, and we also read Perfessr’s column entitled, “Choose Your Truth” after we read Euthyphro and were shocked by how “the great Socrates” acted.

Here’s an excerpt from Carmon’s blog that caught my attention:

I am aghast at the idea of a home with fewer than 10 books, and marginally appalled that 100 books in a household would be considered a number great enough to make a significant difference in test results for the student who lives with those tomes. There are more books than that scattered around my room, begging for me to read them. I’m amused that the researchers found people with college degrees who had fewer than 10 books in their households. What are they teaching them in schools these days?

10 books? Only 10 books in the home? Are you kidding? And this isn’t a poverty issue (one caused by lack of money) because you can get really inexpensive books at library sales or thrift stores. This is a poverty of another kind. Why wouldn’t people want more than 10 books in their homes? Why is it that they don’t need more than 10 books in their homes?

However, when you think about it, you can get a ton of stuff online. Shakespeare, automotive repair, world atlas, home remedies, gardening, general household repairs — all that kind of thing can be found online now. In fact, I hardly ever use my cookbooks when I need an idea on what/how to cook anymore. I just use a search engine and type in — as I did yesterday — chicken pot pie recipe. Then I read about five different recipes and go make chicken pot pie. It’s much easier to do that than to dig out five different cookbooks and read the recipes in them. So, life is different with the internet — and I suppose with XBOX, DVD players, and IPods, which we also have.

But still … we have more than 10 books. I probably bought nearly that many just in the past month.

And I don’t think I even believe that the researchers found people with college degrees who had less than 10 books in their homes. That’s not possible. When I finished university, I had tons of books. I can’t imagine someone just dumping the books they’ve bought during the college years as soon as they’re done with college. It just doesn’t work like that.

Anyway, both of my homeschooled students seem to like books, and they buy their own these days. They each own over 100 and will take them with them when they move out. So, I don’t think either of them will purposely live in a home without 10 books in it. Mission accomplished.

Hint for newbie homeschoolers: Buy each child their own bookcase early on.

Sure living books are great for grade school, but should a homeschooler still be using real books (aka living books) at the high school level?

I really don’t see why not. That’s how I, as an adult, learn. Think about it. All adults who are done with their classroom education use real books to learn. Oh, sure, you might use a tutorial to learn PostgreSQL, but a tutorial isn’t a textbook. While some college classes require a textbook, many also require that real books be read or consulted. If I want to know how to garden, I don’t grab the first botany textbook that I can find; I buy a gardening book. Take a look at your local bookstore. Is it full of textbooks? No. That’s because learning is best done through the use of real books.

So why can’t high schoolers learn by using real books, too? Why should high school science education be different? I guess it probably shouldn’t.

However, how can someone like me make sure that my students are properly prepared for college-level science if they’ve not covered what’s in the high school science texts? Well, a high-school-science-teacher homeschooling parent can figure that out. But I can’t. It’s easier and faster to just do what’s in the science text than it is to re-invent the wheel. No pun intended.

So we only do one year of “real book” science in high school. We title the class “Science Survey.” I have no idea if that’s the best title for the class, but it’s good enough for us. If you know of a better name, let me know.

For that class, the student chooses from biographies of scientists or any non-fiction science book that we can find in the library. It has to contain a lot of science; it can’t be a story about the childhood years of Enrico Fermi. My daughter’s already chosen and read a few books. She read that one about Archimedes, I think it was. She read another about a teenage chemist who became a perfumer. She’s read a few others, but I can’t remember the titles. She’s got them written down in her school records, but that’s at her desk a ways away.

Right now we’re reading Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel together as a read aloud. I’m enjoying how Sobel shows Galileo’s excitement about finding four “Jovian planets” and how that when he took a trip from Florence to Rome, he set up his telescope every night along the way. She also tells that when Galileo found two of Saturn’s moons that he sent an encoded note to Johannes Kepler in Prague. Kepler could not read the code, as intended by Galileo. But the code proved to the world that Galileo was the first person to find two moons of Saturn — or it proved it when Galileo released the meaning of the code. He was a little hesitant because he wanted to make sure of a few more things before he told the world, but yet he still wanted to get the credit for the discovery.

So far, it’s a good book and we’re enjoying ourselves reading it. It gives us an example of a real scientist at work and how he recorded his findings and why. Reading books like this makes science seem real to the regular person rather than something only done in labs by people with goggles on. I truly think I’m learning more by reading some of these books with my students than I did taking that required science class at the university. Science doesn’t have to be boring. There are all sorts of science topics out there to choose from when picking real books.

Anyway, if you want to see a list of the books my son read for his class, I’ve posted them over at Homeschool RAQ.

I just re-evaluated the *Visitors Favorites* section at my Latin and Greek roots site and my favorite is not on the list!

The top 5 Latin and Greek roots resources are pictured at the bottom. These are based on visitor sales since the beginning of July of this year.

The surprise new addition to the list is Vocabulary from Classical Roots. I’m not overly fond of it since it didn’t seem to help out my student at all. It seemed to not include enough work with each of the roots — or at least not enough for the roots to successfully lodge in the gray matter permanently. And no, I don’t think it was the student’s fault.

It took us 12 hours to read aloud The Lost Painting. I am pretty sure that is correct because I have a little form that I use as a bookmark that I note times, dates, and pages on. Of course, we discuss during that time, too. A straight read through would take less time.

It was a satisfying read. It would be great for a high school student who has an artistic bent. It covers things like restoration, provenance, artistic scholarship, etc. It is actually a non-fiction book but is written as a narrative. It reads just like a novel for the most part, but the names haven’t been changed to protect the innocent. Carravagio’s life story is creatively woven in also.

This is the lost painting.

If you do read the book, follow-up will need to include info showing that art experts found another version of this painting in Rome which was authenticated by Mahon and others. (source)

I am thinking of decreasing my breaths per minute. That will lessen my carbon footprint, right? Anything to be green.

I am rather miffed that we did not get to finish The Lost Painting today. I want to finish it myself, but it’s a read aloud that my daughter and I are reading together. It takes real character to not go and finish that book on my own, I will have you know. But then, that would rob me of the pleasure that comes from reading it together. Okay, it would rob her of it, too, but it’s all about me right now.

I have been weeding out my links on the left. You know, removing links to unproductive blogs. If they haven’t posted since May, then there’s no need to keep them on the list. While doing that, I got distracted a bit — particularly by Mariposa, Wind Dancer, and Lifetime Learning.

I was also distracted by Crystal who wrote:

Basically, our society thinks it’s REALLY COOL to treat kids like crap ~ oh, and husbands too!

Crystal can be found over at Daikini Crossroads, and she had a link to this song on YouTube. It made me shudder and feel like I was about 8 again. Hopefully, all moms don’t all sound like that all the time. I have tried not to, but a few things have to be said and taught, imo. Or maybe it’s just quicker to tell a child something than it is for them to figure it out on their own or hear it on the playground. Like … raw veggies are usually better for you than cooked. But with kids, sometimes you’re wrong either way you slice it because I know there are things I wish I’d been instructed on before I left home — like that using a fork upside down with your left hand is okay. Someone dropped the ball on that one. I just hope that most folks think that there’s more to motherhood than that song indicates. What will digital archeologists 200 years from now think of motherhood in the early 2000s when they view it? Yes, I know there are no digital archaelogists … yet.

Okay, what else to blather about?

Oh, I know. This is a good one. I’m finally getting around to selling my oldest’s homeschooling books — now that I know which ones we won’t be needing for my daughter. I thought for sure I could get about $200 on eBay for all the books, but all I found is one set of books which will net me around $45 if I’m lucky after eBay and Paypal fees. So, yeah. A minor disappointment. Not a big deal, but still a deal.

I ordered The Man Who Made Time Travel last night. And then as I was brushing my teeth in preparation for slumbering, I remembered that I could have Mooched it, or at least tried to Mooch it because I’m not sure that BookMooch.com has any copies available. What was I thinking? How could I forget about BookMooch? Quick change of topic, sort of: Doesn’t it seem like BookMooch is just more like StandInLineWaitingForABookYouCan’tWantAllThatMuchOrYou’dJustPayForIt?

To avoid any chance at misunderstandings, I am now removing the world sleep from my vocabulary because the second listed meaning for the verb sleep at m-w.com is to engage in s*-x-ual i-n-t-e-r-*-ourse. (must foil the search engines) Why can’t we just freeze our language and never let it change? kwim? I know! Oh, I bet it’s because it’s a tool. We are not the servant of our language. You know, just like curriculum is a tool and we don’t let the curriculum dictate how we teach our children.

See how I brought that right back around to homeschooling?

Oh, but I forgot to say something about The Man Who Made Time Travel. That’s John Harrison. The smartest and most resourceful and determined man in history. Did you see that movie Longitude? Of course, you did. Everyone has. It’s so good. Inspiring. Michael Gambon’s (you know, Dumbledore) acting is superb. He is the perfect Harrison. But he was also good in Wives and Daughters — shockingly so. It brought tears to my eyes. But back to the book — The Man Who Made Time Travel is supposed to be for little kids, but I’ve never seen it. I finally just gave in and ordered it. (I’ve been trying to see a copy before buying — one of my cardinal homeschooling rules — for way too long.)

John Harrison was the fellow who made a clock that could travel by sea. That’s important because people used to get lost at sea and then starve to death or die of scurvy, which, of course, led to ghost ships. Queen Anne of England offered a huge reward to anyone who could figure out a way of figuring longitude at sea because she was tired of losing her expensive ships and quite possibly tired of losing her subjects, too. Many tried to figure longitude by figuring out the movements of the stars and moon. Harrison did it with a clock by using springs and layering metals (see H1, see H4). I think they need a statue of him at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Seriously. I’m surprised there isn’t one. Wait. He was a commoner, wasn’t he?

Hey, you know that homeschooling mom, Amy, who makes soap in the middle of the night with a goofy hat on and has four boys in Florida? I love her Pearberry Soap! You need some. It smells great! You remember the description of Pearberry on her site? It’s the soap that her neighbor spends hours whiffing. Now I understand. I’m not a big fan of the Lilac. But the Pearberry and Rosemary Mint are both brilliant.

The good news? The Office is on tonight. Let’s hope it’s got more funny parts than *shudder* parts.

So, anyway, I guess I’ve got plenty to do around here. Like correct yesterday’s algebra work. And, yes, I do wield a claymore-sized red pen. It’s math. And it’s high school.