HS Comments on the Fly

What does Michael Jackson have to do with homeschooling?

Obviously a whole lot!

He’s a homeschooling father himself apparently.

This comes straight off of Fox News in an article by Roger Friedman:

Jackson, by the way, doesn’t seem to know whether he is living in Virginia or Vegas. And what’s not being addressed is the home schooling of his three children.

“If he keeps moving around, he probably thinks no one can touch him on that,” one insider said.

But the truth is that 10-year-old Prince, 9-year-old Paris and 5-year-old Prince II, aka Blanket, have probably not received any formal education at all.

I can’t keep up. Which country is Michael Jackson a citizen of? Wouldn’t he just have to obey the education laws of that country when it comes to homeschooling? If he’s a US citizen, he just obeys the laws of one of the states that he claims to be a resident of (based on residency laws, I guess). Isn’t that the way it works? Couldn’t he also just hire a tutor and call it good?

I think it’s pretty Off the Wall that Roger Friedman feels he needs to say, “… [they’ve] probably not received any formal education at all.”

Michael Jackson is perfectly capable of teaching his own children. How could we ever forget the famous lyrics:

A B C
It’s easy as, 1 2 3
As simple as, do re mi

And if anyone should ever doubt Jackson’s ability to teach his own children, all he has to Say Say Say to them is, “Just Beat It.”

As promised many moons ago, I am announcing another RAQ page. This one is about “horrid math woes.” Basically, it’s about some students taking too long to complete a Saxon math lesson.

	actors rehearsing fight scene before the play

We did manage to see The Merry Wives of Windsor. Will Shakespeare’s play … not Camilla and the Queen. Well, I’m assuming Millie and Betty are merry, but I don’t actually know.
It was enjoyable — a pleasant bit of fiction.

This acting company continues to delight us summer after summer. Most productions* of Shakespeare fail to entertain — possibly because the actors take themselves or Shakespeare too seriously. But the group that performs here each summer ENTERTAINS! I’m not sure why this group is so much fun to watch year after year. Some credit must go to the director, Joel Jahnke, and some must go to the playwright. However, I tend to think that the actors must shoulder the lion’s share of the blame when it comes to audience satisfaction. They put on a good show.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is about Falstaff and his crazy plan to woo two married women — Mistresses Ford and Page. Falstaff, a retired knight, must put up with interference from one of the husband’s wives. Another story line is the wooing of Anne Page (daughter of one of the merry wives) by three men, two of which are patently ridiculous yet preferred by her parents. There are plenty of laughs, scheming, disguises, and swordplay.

We don’t get the full text of Shakespeare’s play. That might be a bit of a negative, however, I think that’s done because there’s only so much time in an evening. Also, I think that part of the goal is to make Shakespeare accessible to those who’ve not had much contact with his works elsewhere. I don’t think Shakespeare would mind a bit. I think he’d poke fun of the cult that has formed around his works as if his plays are part of some sort of holy folio handed down from Clio, Melpomene, and Thalia. The goal is to enjoy Shakespeare. The actors look like they’re having a good time on stage, and it’s obvious to the audience, which also ends up having a good time.

Here’s a photo. Left to right: Andrew Truschinski as Master Page, Jordan Ahnquist as Sir Evans, Michael Gonring as Master Slender, and Ian Andersen as Nym.

I wish I had a picture of the merry wives to share since that’s who the play’s named for. I taped about half an hour of the play on my camera instead of taking pictures so that we could watch a bit at home and compare it to the actual text. Jennefer Ludwigsen was just so cute as the smiling Mistress Ford. If you want to see her act, I believe she was a server/waitress on Desperate Housewives (Disc 5 of Season 1, Episode 19). I think it’s just a teeny tiny part; I’ve got it in my Netflix queue to watch soon.

Hmmm. Well, I really got off topic there at the end, didn’t I?

* Excluding Kenneth Branagh’s brilliant productions, of course!

Not all women look as good as Faith Hill. Not even Faith Hill.

Redbook magazine put Faith Hill on the cover, but totally gave her a Photoshop makeover, which she didn’t need, by the way. Jezebel.com put the original photo and the retouched photo on their web site. Faith got her back fat, back hump, hips, wrinkles, nose, arm, neck, hair, eyes, freckles, earlobes, chin, and maybe more all fixed with a little magic wand. Be warned that the language could be offensive to some, but then all you’re needing to do is look at the two pics, right?

With all of our homeschooling focus on academics — Latin and algebra and phonics and penmanship — let’s not forget to teach our children about the lies that are perpetrated in the greedy pursuit of “sales.”

Our boys need to know that girls and women are pretty without being retouched and that what a person is on the inside is also part of what makes a person attractive.

Our girls need to know that models on the covers of magazines have been digitally enhanced. Our girls need to know that they are pretty just as they are, that they don’t need to live up to some impossible lie perpetrated by the media.

I think we should define pretty for ourselves and teach that definition to our children.

Author and Austen fan, David Lassman, submitted three of Jane’s novels (including Pride and Prejudice under the title of First Impressions with the characters’ names changed) and the classic novels were rejected over and over again by big-name publishers like Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, and Simon & Schuster.

Was it because of plagiarism? No, only once was Austen’s work recognized.

Read the article yourself. It’s startling.

But it’s only startling for a second because once you think about it, Pride and Prejudice, while being a good story, is not written in the language of today. It’s a classic because of its popularity in the early 1800s not because it’s easy reading for today.

Language changes. Chaucer would get rejected today also.

But wait … would you recognize the novels Lassman submitted? They were Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. I wouldn’t have recognized Northanger Abbey.

There may still be time to catch your local Shakespeare in the Park play. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest search engine and type in “your town” (or nearby city) and “Shakespeare in the Park” and see what pops up. Hopefully, you’ll still have time to enjoy a little Shakespeare with your kids. I was shocked the first time we went at how enjoyable it was.

If you want one of those handy lists that proves that we still use Shakespeare’s words daily (or at least weekly), here ya’ go:

List #1 at PathGuy.com

List #2 at CummingsStudyGuides.net

Amazon.com has a rating system based on 5 stars. I know you probably already know that, but just in case one reader out there doesn’t, I mention it.

It’s not often that a book can maintain a 5-star rating through 14 reviews. But I found one!

It’s a really cool book because, if a parent reads it, they’ll be able to answer all those pesky science questions that little kids come up with about the world we live in. Okay, it probably doesn’t have all the answers, but it sure has a load of them. And it’s got helpful illustrations to go with the explanations. It’s a fun book for higher levels, too, because the questions seem easy to answer, but often aren’t. Truly cool.

What book am I referring to? Thinking Physics.

We’ve had our copy for about five years now and thoroughly enjoy it. I wish I’d had it when the children were little so that I could have laid a better foundation for them for higher-level science, but, oh well. Anyway, even through all the book purges we’ve had, we’ve kept this book and will continue to do so because the information in it doesn’t go out of style or become stale. It’s not a textbook; it’s a real book and worth hanging on to.

And 5 stars! No one has given this book a 4-star rating yet; it’s that good! Go on … go read about it and see what others are saying. I’m surprised some “homeschooling expert” somewhere isn’t already extolling the virtues of this book … and hawking it. Be the first homeschooler on your block to have your own copy!

And if I can’t figure out who squirrelled away our copy, I’ll have to buy another!

UPDATE: Hey, look at this … a professor at St. Andrews (Prince William’s alma mater) uses some material from Thinking Physics in his optics lectures (passing mention in syllabus). Interesting.

For years I’ve been having my children teach me (or each other) what they’ve learned, knowing full well that it’s one of the best methods of learning. You know, nothing strenuous … just asking, “Tell me something interesting that you learned” coupled with something like, “Really? How?” or “Why did they do that?”

So who’d have thought I’d find this quote on my box of tea yesterday?

To teach is to learn twice.

The box said it was by Joseph Joubert. I looked it up, and sure enough, Joseph Joubert wrote it around 200 years ago. You can find the documentation at this link.

Also on that page are two other quotes that I found startlingly apropos:

The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value. ~Bertrand Russell

For the truly inquisitive, the quote is from the Celestial Seasonings Antioxidant Plum White Tea box — a very pleasant tea.

	I couldn’t hold the camera steady!

We actually traveled about 60 miles to view 20 minutes of fireworks. I guess that’s what happens when you live in the sticks as we do.

To be fair, we did carpool with another family. We also played a lively game of charades, yes, by streetlight, while we waited for the fireworks to start.

So, hmmm. What else? It looks like I’ve got space to fill up because of the photo. So the rest of this entry is just filler. Feel free to click on out of here now.

The library’s Summer Reading Program is in full swing. Let’s hope my daughter wins a prize since this is her last year. She’s currently reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve never read it. I know I’m missing out, but I’m enjoying A Good Year which is quite different from the movie.