HS Comments on the Fly

A colorful photo, eh? That’s the festival scene in the second half of The Winter’s Tale. The first half is terribly depressing. But as stories go, it’s a well-crafted one with a happy ending. I bet you’re wondering how I got such a close picture.
Well, it’s because I must sit right up front or all the birds and helicopters and cars and frisbee players, etc., etc., etc., will distract me and I won’t understand the play. It is Shakespeare, you know. He put his words together quite well, but I can’t listen with just half an ear.

My first memory of Shakespeare is the Zeffirelli version of Romeo and Juliet. I managed to sleep through most of it, waking up in time for the suicide at the end. Special. That was the sum total of my Shakespeare knowledge when I started homeschooling.

And in our homeschool we never did any Shakespeare until we could “watch” it because someone, years ago, like in the ‘94 or ‘95, wrote on a home-ed email list that Shakespeare was written to be acted out and watched, that the Bard never meant for his plays to be read. That made sense to me! So, Shakespeare was not a part of our homeschool curriculum.

Well, it was also because of that bad reputation that Shakespeare has earned over the years due to teachers making students read his stuff for English Literature class. I managed to avoid any teachers like that by always choosing Greek and Latin literature classes in high school and at university. Whew! I avoided any possibility of a chance encounter with boring, snoring Shakespeare like the plague. Or maybe the pox.

But one day, in desperation, when we were on a TV fast and I was starving, I picked up Much Ado About Nothing at the library to watch on video. The cover looked the prettiest of the eight video choices available. I guess that was about 7 or 8 years ago. Much to my surprise, Kenneth Branagh can make Shakespeare quite palatable. Having Michael Keaton, Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson, and Keanu Reeves as cast members also helps. (Now, Robert Sean Leonard and Kate Beckinsale are biggish stars, too.) So, I was all amazed that Shakespeare could be funny. You know, with those “How could I have been such an idiot all these years?” thoughts running through my mind.

So, I made it a point to get to a Shakespeare in the Park event after that. Our first was R&J — a good one for the kids to start with since most kids are already familiar with that. But familiarity or not, we loved it. It wasn’t so much the play as the players that made it good. Or maybe it’s the director who gives those actors their instructions that makes the play so good.

Anyway, so the other day we watched Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. I had avoided it because I thought I didn’t like Hamlet after watching the one with Mel Gibson playing Hamlet. My students didn’t mind that one, which we watched so that we could play The Play’s the Thing game, but it lacked something, I thought. I think Branagh just has the Midas touch when it comes to Shakespeare.

Anyway, Branagh’s Hamlet was really good, as in entertaining. We came into it a little after the beginning and so I was a little lost. I grabbed one of our Shakespeare comic books to catch me up on who was who. Then it was smooth sailing, and I worked on that quilt I mentioned a while back. (No, I never did find my sewing box. I gave up.)

Yeah, so now, what’s my point? I forget. I think I just wanted to share the picture since I ran across it earlier and thought it was so summery-looking. Or maybe it was something like, “I’m glad we homeschool so that we can do Shakespeare any way we want or even not at all.”

Bindi Irwin, homeschooler and daughter of Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter — what is her homeschool experience like?

There’s a little bit of info in each of the following articles.

Article 1:

[Terri Irwin] said the Irwins had made the decision to teach Bindi at home so they would not be absentee parents.

Article 2:

A home-schooling lifestyle that finishes at 4 pm each day is a luxury the Irwins — who she said decided not to be absentee parents — have. Bindi, she noted, can always knock off for the day and unwind in a zoo — great for her mental health and physical fitness.

Article 3:

She said Bindi, who is home-schooled and lives inside the family’s Queensland animal park, Australia Zoo, had an easier lifestyle than many other children.

“Every child is an individual and every parent needs to approach it uniquely and individually,'’ Irwin, explaining the way she raises Bindi, said.

Bindi, who finished year 3 last year, was an A-grade student, she said.

“I wouldn’t say Bindi has it easy, because I have to make her go to school,'’ she said.

“She doesn’t always want to go to school.

“But, when it comes to extra-curricular activities I don’t have to make her sing and dance. She asks to.

“Certainly I want to help encourage her in whatever direction she wants to take.'’

Sounds like it falls into the broad realm of standard homeschooling.

About 5000 watched Bindi put on a show at Australia Zoo earlier this month.

The new name is Homeschool Comments on the Fly.

Why? Because it seems that a homeschooling parent who is looking for a review of certain curriculum product is shunted to this page instead of my review of the product. The visitor can’t seem to find the review from this page and then clicks out of this site.

For some reason, this page is usurping my reviews in some search engines. That makes it difficult for homeschooling parents to find the reviews. I wrote the reviews so that homeschoolers might have an idea what exactly is in the book or curriculum product I’m reviewing … you know, so that they can save money if it’s not what they want. This page is getting in the way in the search engines.

Hence the name change and a few other changes.

Massive Resource List for All Autodidacts

Oh, look there’s even one link so that you can test your hearing loss — perfect for all iPod users!

UPDATE for NOVEMBER 2007: See EarthSky for directions to view current Comet Holmes.

Just an update to the other day’s comments about the comet …

We saw McNaught! It was so much better than Hale-Bopp, which we remember as a cotton-ball-type mass in the sky. McNaught had a really long tail, surprisingly, and it was rather vertical-looking. The comet and its tail were visible by the naked eye. It looked just like a comet should. Perfect.

I am so jealous of the Southern Hemisphere getting to see it for a few weeks.

Didn’t any other homeschoolers see it? I don’t see much talk about it among homeschoolers online.

UPDATE: No longer visible up north. See Wikipedia article.

On this weekend’s PBS show Religion and Ethics News Weekly, Lucky Severson examines efforts by some religious families to create a system of homeschooling. (source)

Two homeschool dads, Jube Dankworth, and a few others were interviewed. Jube has a number of homeschooling web sites that she runs. Three that I know of are:

Homeschooling Family to Family, Jube is the National Director

Texas Home Educators

The Homeschooler Next Door

Homeschooling Family to Family has the stated goal of “… [bringing] over one million new children into homeschooling over a five to seven year period….”

Wow. I wonder how far they’ve gotten? This has been going on since 06 OCT 2005. It might be interesting to see one of the bar graph charts or a thermometer chart showing the progress they’ve made on their goal.

Some folks from Seton Home Study School were in Rome for a meeting with members of the Roman Curia. All the info is in the second part of this article which starts out on the topic of The Divine Comedy.

Cambridge Academy has now added an online facet to their curriculum program. (source)

Since we can’t see McNaught, we’ve been watching it on YouTube.com here and here and here.

This unschooling article is out of California (photos included near the bottom). Here’s an excerpt of interest:

Forced to defend an unusual educational practice, unschoolers take great care as to how they describe it. Buchanan hedges a bit when asked if she’s an unschooler. She does put books in front of her children from time to time, which is anathema to orthodox unschoolers.

That might make her more of an “eclectic” home-schooler, she said. Still, “We’re letting (our children) find their own interests.”

“A lot of unschoolers are afraid to stand up and say we are unschoolers,” said Buchanan. “There’s this fear of being misunderstood.”

I’ve found that also. Years ago, a lady at a homeschool meeting had given a talk about something or other. Afterward, I went up to the table in the front to look over the pamphlets she had brought for us to gather up. I glanced over and saw her adjusting papers in her see-through bin and caught a glancing view of Growing Without School, a defunct unschooling magazine. I mentioned that it was a good magazine and quietly asked her if she unschooled. She looked around guiltily, smiled, and said something like, “Oh, I try to keep that under wraps.” She then finished adjusting the papers making sure the magazine was no longer visible.

A family lost their homeschooling certification in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It was revoked by the local school board.

The family teaching the child at home could provide no evidence that the student was receiving adequate, appropriate instruction, said Gary Harms, superintendent of Aberdeen public schools….

It’s the first time a public school exemption certificate has been revoked in South Dakota since Rick Melmer became the state’s secretary of education in August 2003, Harms said. “This doesn’t happen very often,” Harms said.

A few other homeschools are also under investigation.

Source

South Datakota Homeschooling Rules

An article out of the UK makes it sounds like some homeschoolers, among others, are responsible for hunger in Idaho.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, anarchist and socialist labour unions and political parties were rather influential in this part of America; the state’s miners, lumbermen, and other industrial workers were some of the most radical in the land. By the 1980s, however, as Christian conservatives and extreme, home-schooler-type libertarians gained in influence, progressive movements in the state had more or less imploded, and the state, its legislature dominated by conservative Republicans, embarked, pell-mell, on a programme of tax cuts and a decimation of the social safety net. (emphasis mine)

According to a review in Los Angeles City Beat, Thr3e is a “religious film.” I think it sounds rather untempting. It’s something about a seminary student, a secret, and a serial bomber. And let’s not forget the homeschooling parents who are trying to protect their children from the evil outside world.

I suspect I’ll watch it, though, no matter how dull it sounds because Justine Waddell and Marc Blucas are in it. They are interesting actors to watch — but in this case only on DVD. I guess it released last Friday, but I didn’t see one commercial for it on TV.

Marc Blucas is also in a movie not yet released called The Jane Austen Book Club. It sounds great! The book club gets together and then finds that their present relationships begin to resemble the relationships in Jane Austen’s novels.

Won’t that be a kick? Now, I’ve just gotta find out which Jane Austen novels so I can make sure we’ve read/watched them.

You whine like a mule. You are still alive.

~ Azeem in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves

Useful, but unsympathetic, reply to all whining. Sort of puts it all in perspective. Perfect for student or parent use.

Short review: Hasn’t everyone already seen this movie? Sword fights, fair maiden, Crusades, crone using runes, Picts as mercenaries, King Richard, Maid Marian being nearly compromised by the Sheriff of Nottingham, bows and arrows, blood, death, hangings, King John usurping, PG-13. It would have given me nightmares in my early days. Homeschool use? Has enough references to historical stuff to be useful for a movie night after studying this time period depending on the ages/maturity of your students. Of course, there are better movies like The Lion in Winter, though it is more work to watch. It’s not as entertaining, imo, as the Costner movie.

Today, West Virginia University is running a standard homeschool article in its online paper The Daily Athenaeum.

When I was at university, our school paper never ever ran an article on homeschooling.

So I think it’s significant that university students are hearing about homeschooling and are being shown that it’s rather mainstream.

Times they are a changin’.

Wait. Isn’t that from an old song or something? It’s before my time. I’ll check Wikipedia. ::time passes:: It’s a Bob Dylan song. Who knew? (probably everyone, but me) (lyrics) 1964. Yeah, that’s an old song.

Anyway, let’s see if I can get back on topic. I think that the growth of homeschooling is inevitable. There is a whole total change of mindset going on. It will be interesting to see how public schools start changing as they try to wrestle children back into the classrooms. Oh, I know that not everyone will want to homeschool and that not everyone can homeschool. However, if college students are learning that it’s normal, some will start planning on doing it when their own children come along.

A couple of snippets from the article. The first one is from David Callejo, an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at West Virginia University.

… home schooling is no longer a disadvantage for students when it comes to applying for college.

The second is a snippet about Kristen Veyon, a sophomore there at WVU.

Veyon said her experiences with being home-schooled helped prepare for her time at WVU.

“It really taught me how to study and that sometimes you need to teach yourself,” she said.

Today, a convoluted path (through Farm School) eventually got me to an older entry at Jennifer Armstrong’s journal where she tells us why she writes for homeschoolers. Basically, in 10 words or less, it’s because it seems to her that homeschoolers are more connected to the world of learning, but you’d be better off reading it for yourself.

I thought I recognized Jennifer’s name … and I actually did. She’s the author of Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. I bought it through Scholastic, in ‘98 or ‘99. It sat on our shelves until one day in 2000 or ‘01 when my husband asked me if I’d ever heard of Ernest Shackleton. I quickly ran downstairs, grabbed the book, and surprised him with a complete book on the topic. (I love doing that. The joys of a home library.)

I think most folks know who Ernest Shackleton is, but if not, I’ll just mention quickly that he was a fellow who was trying to be the first to travel straight across Antarctica (or something like that, he did a couple of trips with different goals). On this trip, which occurred near the beginning of WWI, his ship, the Endurance, got stuck in the ice, then cracked up, and sank. (It took a while for all of this to happen, many months.) Eventually Shackleton and his crew made the long trip back to where they started — well, a few of them did and they sent back help.

So, the book ended up sitting on our coffee table (a place for promising books to sit while I hope one of my students will be tempted by it) where it was picked up by my son. He read the book. My husband even read the book. Multiple oohs and aahs proceeded. We were doing a bit of sailing then and learning a little about navigation, so Shackleton and his abbreviated crew finding South Georgia Island was deemed a marvel (by us).

While reading the book, my son startled me with his decision to try snow camping. It was a lucky thing that we had a good 3/4 of a foot of snow outside or it might have been a tricky proposition. Out came the tent and sleeping bags — right into the backyard. He drug some firewood back there, too — way back there — far away from the house and other outbuildings. He talked his sister into staying out there for the night, too. I’ve got some old pictures of them the next day standing near the fire remains. I wish I had gotten a photo of the tent, but it was too cold out there when they were setting up their “Antarctic” camp. I can’t believe they even wanted to sleep out there.

Later we got Branagh’s movie of Shackleton and watched it. And fairly recently we were at a museum and chanced upon a special exhibit of Shackleton’s trip, complete with the little boat that Kenneth Branagh had sailed in as he pretended to be Shackleton trying to return to South Georgia Island.

Anyway, my point, Jennifer Armstrong … she writes for homeschoolers. I’m grateful (and more than a little surprised). She inspired our students and introduced our family to one of the great explorers of history. Yea for her!

26

Homeschooling is 26th on JWT’s list of services, trends, and products that will define 2007.

Really? 26th.

So I looked at this list — analytically — with my average U.S. mind and have decided that some of these things shouldn’t be on the list because they are so like … well, you know … old news.

Five Items That Are So Old News

• 8. Hydrogen fuel cell technology (we had these in 1997)
• 11. Reality show talent searches (remember Star Search?)
• 21. Locally sourced produce (buy locally)
• 25. Indian cross-over actress Aishwarya Rai (2 Austen remakes +)
• 51. Higher-waisted pants (so 1978)

Five Items That JWT Is Perfectly Correct About

• 6. The rise of nanotechnology
• 14. Halal food
• 32. Chindia
• 38. Google domination
• 41. Inconspicuous consumption

Five Items That I’ve Never Heard Of
(the category that brands me an ignoramous)

• 4. Pop-up stores, restaurants, and bars — installation style
• 23. Reunions of donor insemination siblings
• 28. Binge chilling
• 33. Alpha moms
• 34. Brand sluts

Anyway, it’s food for thought, possibly prophetic. Rather fun. Definitely fun.

Except, do you remember that artifical insemination doctor that artifically inseminated women with his own sperm and made a little army that looked like him? I think that sibling reunion might be uncomfortable, regrettably.

Here’s an article from Australia with comments on JWT’s list. Oh! It describes binge chilling. Here it is:

Another phenomenon Salzman expects to see rise this year is binge chilling.

Like binge drinking, she says overworked, stressed-out people will take a break by overdosing on relaxation.

“People might, for instance, just sleep or stay in bed for 24 hours or a whole weekend,” she says.

Well, that sounds tempting, but it’s not one trend that many homeschool parents will get to indulge in. Too bad.

Here’s the link to an interview with the Director of Trendspotting (would that look funny on a business card?), Ann Mack. Media Life magazine asked the questions. As I read through it, I find out that the list is not ranked. So homeschooling being at #26 is not a position of rank; homeschooling is just 1 of 70 top trends.

Gary Davenport, homeschool dad, has his name on a court case that is supposed to be heard next Wednesday in front of the Most Notable Nine.

Davenport v. Washington Education Association has been combined by the Supreme Court with a similar lawsuit filed by the state of Washington against the union. Both cases involve the fees paid to the union by teachers who declined to join. (source)

Docket info at the Supreme Court web site.

Another article, from the NY Sun, seems to think that this is a big deal and that labor union leaders should be there. It looks like it’s about union dues and how they can be used/collected.

In December, Education Week published an article on unschooling, but only subscribers could read it.

The good news is that we can read it now for a limited time.

HT: Ms. Moon

Education Week has provided at Talkback Section where you can read people’s comments on unschooling.

Catchy title, no? I stole it from the Daily Mail, but titles (of books, at least) aren’t copyrightable as I understand it. So I’m probably safe.

I think it’s a great way to more clearly examine the consequences of events if we ask, “What if Event X had never happened?”

Example: What if Henry VIII had never divorced Catherine, his first wife? First off, there would have been no Elizabeth I, daughter of Queen Anne (Boleyn). Without Elizabeth I, England may not have gained supremacy of the seas and Spain may have colonized the Americas, specifically the U.S. east coast, more thoroughly. Or possibly the French may have, but then that is more likely a discussion for the question, What if the Pope had given the Portuguese the land west of the Line of Demarcation?

So, that said, I liked the question posed by the Daily Mail, What If Britain HADN’T Joined the EU?

The question is posed because it’s been 50 years since the Treaty of Rome, when the EEC was first formed, and the article’s author, Christopher Booker, is taking stock. I remember learning about the EEC (European Economic Community) over and over again in 4th and 5th grade. I got so sick of it. I guess the textbooks my school was using those years were really into the EEC. It was supposedly the best thing in the world, that and collective farms in the USSR. Anyway, the EEC lives on, and we here in the States also live with the EU.

The article, remember I’m no expert in international relations, just a homeschooling mom — but the article indicates that not everyone in the UK is particularly happy with membership in the European Union (which is the new name for the EEC - it’s gone beyond just economics). The article discusses the reasons why Britain joined, why it seemed necessary at the time.

It then gives about ten ways that Britain would have been better off if they’d never joined. If it’s all true, it’s a sad commentary.

Here’s one of the reasons given as to why Britain would be better off if they’d never joined:

If we had never joined, we would still have retained the right to choose our own weights and measures. It would not have become a criminal offence to sell a pound of bananas.

What!? It’s illegal to sell a pound of something? Wow. That seems stringent. And yet they’re still allowed to print miles (as opposed to meters) on their traffic signs. There’s so much I don’t understand.

The article even draws Margaret Thatcher’s views into the discussion:

DRAWING on the experience of those 11 years when, as Prime Minister, she saw the real nature of the ‘European project’ at first hand, Mrs Thatcher wrote in her last book that the attempt to create a European superstate would be seen in the future as having been ‘the greatest folly of the modern era’.

She went on to say that for Britain, ‘with her traditional strengths and global destiny’, to have become part of it, would come to be seen as having been ‘a political error of the first magnitude’.

So, what I wonder is whether or not Britian can get out of the EU? What happens if they just quit? The article indicates that non-member Norway still trades with the EU, so if the UK were a non-member, you’d think they’d still be able to trade with the EU. So, can the UK just withdraw from the European Union? Maybe quickly, before they have to trade their pound notes in for euros? Or has the UK irrevocably given their country to Brussels?

Links that are also good:

- History of the European Union (includes reasons why Britain was hesitant about joining)

- European Union Timeline (at the BBC site, nice, interactive)

You remember having to learn about Henry VIII’s wives in school, right?

Here’s a visual site to help your homeschool students remember how each of Henry’s marriages ended. Just drag the cursor over the illustrations of each of his wives.

WARNING: Please preview before showing your students. Some would say this link (to a UK site) is in bad taste.

UPDATE: Tebow won the Heisman Memorial Trophy Award December 2007. Read more.

Tim Tebow, one of the quarterbacks for the Florida Gators, was homeschooled. Here’s the main bit from George M. Thomas’s article:

Not many people realize that Tebow is the son of a minister and that he was home-schooled. The quarterback said that he’s aware of the nerd stereotype associated with children educated as he was and the faith behind it. It doesn’t bother him.

Cornelius had his back, however, and said that Tebow had a competitive nature that comes out in everything he does. It makes him a popular guy with his teammates and students.

“He’s so into (football). You can tell that he lives to play football. The fans like that and just the excitement he brings to the game,” he said. “He sacrifices his whole body. He puts everything into it. When fans see that, they’re attracted to it.

Rob Oller tells us a lot more info:

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow was born in a jungle, attended school in his living room and plays in a Swamp. Other than that, his life has been perfectly normal….

On one hand, the freshman from Jacksonville, Fla., born in the Philippines, fits the perception of the popular big man on campus. During one of the team’s game-day walks to the stadium this season, two female fans fainted after high-fiving Tebow.

At the same time, Tebow blows apart the stereotype of the nerdy, anti-social home- school kid whose athletic prowess amounts to holding a pencil with two fingers. Educated at his farmhouse through the 12 th grade — Florida law allowed him to play sports at a public high school — Tebow’s outgoing personality, strong leadership abilities and athleticism have combined to help the Gators reach the national championship game Monday against Ohio State.

There’s more to read in Rob Oller’s commentary.

Here’s Tim Tebow’s info at the Gators’ site, and it includes a photo in case you’re wondering why the girls swooned. The big game is next Monday, January 8, 2007. It’s the BCS National Championship Game and will be the Florida Gators (Tim Tebow’s team) and the Ohio Buckeyes. It looks like it’s going to broadcast on one of the Fox channels.

So, if you’ve got homeschooling naysayers to deal with, you can always tell them that they can watch a former (and recent) homeschooler playing for the Gators on Jan. 8th.

Dana at Principled Discovery points out a great quote from the back of The Federalists.

Do go read it if you feel like you need a little homeschool inspiration. It will remind you of your goals with your students … well, for some of you.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

~ Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride

When someone uses a five dollar word, this is the best reply. Perfect for student or parent use.

Short review: Fun movie for most ages. Adventure romance. Swordplay. Rhyming. You can watch it and learn the lines and then watch it in French or Spanish to help you with your foreign languages. Homeschooling value, beyond that, is basically nil. A classic.