HS Comments on the Fly

My daughter’s reading The Mystery of the Periodic Table. She’s been doing textbooks for science the past few years, so I decided it was time to give her the option of reading living science books for the year. She enjoyed Archimedes and the Door of Science and also Christine Bennet, Chemist, which is an older book about about a teen girl who makes perfume, sells the formula, and heads off to college to become a chemist, which is a big surprise … unless you actually read the title.

I’m reading Andalucia in preparation for our big pretend trip to Spain. I’m thinking of staying in Salobrena, but I can’t figure out if we can actually walk to the beach from there or if we have to take a bus. I’m also trying to figure out how much it will cost to take the train up to Madrid to see Las Meninas by Velazquez (you know, the artist in I, Juan de Pareja). Of course, we’re going to see The Alhambra (you know, that place that Washington Irving wrote stories about) in Granada because it’s right there about an hour away from Salobrena by bus. Yes, I waste a lot of energy planning a big maybe trip, but pipe dreaming is fun.

My son is reading something. I can’t tell which book; he’s got a few strewn about. He’s at work, so I can’t ask him.

I can’t figure out what my husband’s reading either. The last novel he read was last month and took place in Bologna, Italy, but I can’t remember the title. Last night he picked up a book I had been making fun of titled, The Consumer Survival Book: How to Fight Inflation by Bittinger. It was published in 1976! The part I found rather ridiculous was the part about how to find quality furniture:

The best stuffing is horsehair. Curled pig bristles are just about as good.

Eeeewwww! No offense to horsehair-stuffed furniture lovers, but YUCK!

And let’s not forget this derision-worthy comment about another “good” material to stuff a couch with:

Rubberized hair is a new development which is of good quality. (Cow hair mixed with latex.)

I think the 70s were weird. Very weird.

My husband pointed me to this blog entry over at Healthbolt about cognitive bias and how it affects our decision-making abilities. I guess a lot of the time we’re just deluding ourselves, which is probably not really surprising if I really think about it.

I thought I had a lot of decision-making stuff taken care of with Logic and critical thinking curricula. I was wrong. I should have covered this with my son. I can still cover it with my daughter, but I’ve never heard of most of this stuff so teaching it won’t really be all that easy. Drats.

Here’s an excerpt to pique (not peak) your interest:

A cognitive bias is something that our minds commonly do to distort our own view of reality. Here are the 26 most studied and widely accepted cognitive biases.

1. Bandwagon effect - the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias. Carl Jung pioneered the idea of the collective unconscious which is considered by Jungian psychologists to be responsible for this cognitive bias.
2. Confirmation bias - the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
3. Disconfirmation bias - the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and uncritically accept information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.
4. Endowment effect - the tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.

See? They’re rather in depth — or at least unfamiliar to me for the most part.

You know, we only did the first semester of Memoria Press’s Logic and maybe that’s why we missed some of this stuff. But my son quickly perused the Book 2, thinking it would look like Book 1, and promptly rejected it, I believe, because it had a bit of a different look to the content. That’s fine with me … you can lead a horse to water, etc. Book 1 was quite good; in fact, it was what I’d been looking for for a number a years. Book 2’s likely good also, but I no longer have it to comment upon. Easy come, easy go.

Anyway, I digress as usual. The list of 26 cognitive biases is well worth covering in this homeschool since how we make decisions in life is so important.

Oh, yeah, and my son did use the instructional DVDs for Logic 1 a little. I think it depends on the student if they can stand the repetitive nature of reading the lesson and then listening to it all over again on the DVDs. A younger student would probably want the instructional DVDs.

Yes, “… the funeral pyre for thought in America today….”

That’s what the bookstore owner said as began torching his pile of unwanted books.

He’s got a pile of 20,000 books that he can’t sell and can’t give away to the library or thrift stores. Tom Wayne, bookstore owner in Kansas City, Missouri, is lamenting the demise of “The Reader.”

The humorous twist to this story is that the pyro-biblio-maniac didn’t get a burning permit, and the fire department came and doused his bonfire before it was even an hour old. Tom Wayne, though, plans another book burning next month. Read the story here.

You know that book Fahrenheit 451? You know, the one with all the book burning. It was authored by Ray Bradbury who gave us this quote:

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

I think that’s where we’re at that point these days. Of course, there are exceptions; homeschoolers come to mind as one exception because many of us tend to read a lot. It’s rather a sad commentary, but I don’t think one can hold back the tide. Maybe homeschoolers are the little Dutch boy at the dike. One thing’s for sure, our culture is definitely changing when it comes to reading.

Do I recommend Fahrenheit 451 as a good read? Sure. Why not? I read it aloud to my two students when they were in their teens. It made for some good discussions. But we slogged through parts of it, so it wasn’t completely gripping. We used a Cliff Notes guide as we went through it. It was as good as any other “message” novel, I suppose, you know, the ones that have a message and are labeled literature and get put on reading lists compiled by academics. It was a bit of a cautionary tale warning folks about the misuse of television, I believe. I don’t think that Bradbury envisioned WoW and other video games, which also seem to pull people away from books.

Gary listed me on HomeschoolBuzz, and I listed him over on the left.

Another administrative bit of news: I’m going to leave comments on for a short period of time … like a few days. Comment s-p-a-m is troublesome and leaving comments open for too long encourages it.

Surprisingly enough, it snowed for about 6 hours earlier this week. And it stuck on the ground, too. My husband thought we had about 2 inches. It was big and fluffy and is now gone. May 22. Snow. Wow. I got a sunburn over the weekend, and it seemed very strange to be nursing a sunburn with snow on the ground.

I received a Mother’s Day gift of North & South the other day. It’s a film adaptation of Gaskell’s book, which I’ve not read. I have read most of Cranford, by the same author, but too many people died, leaving me sad, so I quit reading it. But North & South is a pleasant bit of fiction–for the most part. The gentleman, Richard Armitage, who plays Guy of Gisbourne in the most recent Robin Hood series is the male lead in North & South. It’s rather amusing to compare his performances. I have a difficult time seeing him as evil in Robin Hood — no matter his menacing deeds — because he seems like mostly a “good guy” in North & South.

Gaskell also wrote Wives & Daughters. I’ve got the book here on the bookcase next to my desk waiting to be read. I can’t remember if my daughter’s read it yet. The movie version is fine. Best line: “I’m not saying she was very silly. But one of us was silly, and it wasn’t me.” All the actors are enjoyable to watch; it’s a good cast. We saw the actor who plays Roger Hamley in a West End production, but we couldn’t see him very well without the opera glasses because we were up in the balcony.

Anyway, I’m blathering on. And not an awfully lot about homeschooling … well, I guess it is “Literature,” isn’t it?

Yea! Branagh’s Hamlet is available on DVD! It’s about time! Okay, it doesn’t ship until August, but you can order it now!

I think Branagh’s Hamlet is the best. Hands down! It’s entertaining and actually enjoyable to watch. Branagh makes Shakespeare so much fun. I’m not kidding.

Hopefully, your English teacher in high school didn’t ruin Shakespeare for you and you are capable of enjoying Shakespeare’s stories. I managed to make it all the way from Kindergarten through 4 years of university without ever having a teacher or professor taint Shakespeare for me. That’s right — no Shakespeare in school for me — ever. I’d be appalled at the state of U.S. schools if I hadn’t purposely tried to focus on Greek and Latin Literature. Of course, I wasn’t the least bit interested in Shakespeare because I’d heard all the horror stories from others, so I’d not ventured beyond Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet, which my parents took me to at the drive in when I was young and sleepy.

Ignore Mel Gibson’s version of Hamlet; it’s abbreviated/abridged. Plus it’s dark and dreary. Branagh’s Hamlet is a production meant to engage and entertain the audience rather than be a dull high school reading by amateurs. Hamlet isn’t only palatable in Branagh’s hands, it becomes a feast. A four-hour long feast, btw — so get the popcorn and nachos ready before you sit down.