Children, Are You Talking?

The school my kids attend did not run the president's speech, so here are some bullets from the text of the speech and some reaction from across the blogosphere.

The speech:

Hello everyone -

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school.
[S]ome of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

When I was young, . . . . my mother. . . . .decided to teach me extra lessons. [W]henever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

[N]o matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it.

What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country.

[I]f you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

[I}t's not always easy to do well in school.

I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have.

But I was fortunate.

[T]he circumstances of your life . . .[are] no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them.

I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well. . . .

[B]eing successful is hard.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work.

[F]ind an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

[W]hen you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be?

I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms . . . .

I expect great things from each of you.

Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.


Reading the speech, I thought it was worthy of a local principal or school superintendent. Did the President need to make this speech to all students at the same time? Wouldn't it have been better (and more efficient) to record his piece and let school systems download or stream it? And leave the hype running up to the speech out. Perhaps if they had known the length, more schools would have balked. As it was, the speech appears as a grand publicity ploy rather than a substantive addition to learning. And don't get me started on the first draft of the lesson plan suggestions.

So what was the school-kid reaction to the speech?

From The Bookworm Room

My daughter, who attends middle school, told me that she understood the the take-away message from Obama’s speech to be “The future is your responsibility,” a thought she found unpleasantly burdensome. Generally, she thought the speech was long and boring.


From Lorie Byrd's child on Wizbang

On September 8th, 2009, I watched President Obama give his speech. Some kids got a note from their parents and got to do fun stuff instead. I was very jealous. I listened to him talk about school and how it was the first day of school (although it wasn't) and other boring stuff for FIFTEEN MINUTES! To a kid that's a looong time in school.

During the speech, my friend and her friend were talking, and my teacher said they were being very disrespectful to the president, the leader of our armed forces (blah, blah, blah and some other stuff).


Pointless fact: My grandmother once taught at the high school where the President gave his speech.

Suffer the Children

There has been much brouhaha over the President making a speech to the students of the U.S. It makes me wonder if he is having trouble getting prime TV time, since he has used the privilege so often. Perhaps after this speech, he can appear on Sesame Street.

Count: Ah, President Obama, how nice to see you
Pres: Hello Count, how are you doing?
Count: Wonderful, just wonderful! Ever since you have taken office I have had endless fun counting the rising deficit! That's one, one trillion added to the deficit. Two, Two trillion added to the deficit. Three, three trillion. . .
Pres: Count!
Count: Four, four trillion added to the deficit! Five, Five trillion added to the deficit! Six, Six trillion. . .
Pres: Count! Please . .
Count Seven trillion, eight trillion, NINE, NINE TRILLION ADDED TO THE DEFICIT AH HA HA HA [cue lighting/thunderbolt].


Maybe that wouldn't be a great PR move after all. On the speech, the Obama administration is taking a great deal of heat, facing accusations of forced indoctrination of students. However, guess who said the following:

1) "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students"

2) [the White House should not be] "using precious dollars for campaigns" [when] "we are struggling for every silly dime we can get"

3) "the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"


Answers at the bottom of the post.

A menu of classroom activities for the speech exhorts teachers to ask students

"Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress or the governor? Why is what they say important?

Additionally, after the speech teachers will ask students to ponder "What is the President asking me to do?" and to write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. Teachers are also to encourage participation in the Department of Education's video contest. Perhaps the winning entry will look something like this:

"I pledge to be a servant of Our President.. . ."

An optional part of the plan called for the students' progress toward their goals to be tracked in order to hold students accountable. I wonder if anyone in the "pledge" video has been held accountable to their promises.


The answers: 1) Richard Gephardt 2) Patricia Schroeder 3) Richard Gephardt again
But, of course, they were saying this about President George H. W. Bush's speech to high school students in 1991, contrary to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's claims that Obama's speech would be "the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's school children about persisting and succeeding in school." Where are Gephardt and Schroeder now?
(source PoliFact )

Hat Tip to The American Catholic

In Defense of Bootstraps

I'm darned if I can track it down now, but yesterday I caught in passing a brief audio clip of a Barack Obama exchange with a nursing student at a recent rally. The 19-year-old young lady explained, between sobs, that she was putting herself through school. Obama responded, not with "Wonderful! You should be proud of yourself! With your dedication you'll be a great nurse!", but with words to the effect of, "We'll see if we can't get you some help with that soon."

Senator Obama, I have two adult children and two teenagers. My husband and I can ill afford to subsidize college for all of them, although we would love to see them go. And guess what, Senator?

We don't want your help.

We've both been through college. We each had a little parental help, but mostly used a combination of earned scholarship and grant aid, student loans (which we were paying off for a long time after), and old-fashioned sweat equity. We can remember plenty of "sponsored by Daddy" types who crashed and burned after three semesters of boozing it up. We know there's a direct relationship between the amount of effort required to obtain a thing and the value that thing holds for the owner.

We don't want our kids to have a free ride through college. We want them to appreciate the value of having earned the trip there for themselves. We want them to recognize that the privilege, once gained, must be maintained through diligence and hard work. We want them to learn to make good use of their time as they balance work, study, and lesiure time. We know this is not a skill that comes naturally to most people, and that it will not come at all unless the end in sight--the sheepskin--is desired enough to supersede for the time being less critical desires.

We've seen a year's worth of unearned grants wasted, to the moral and educational detriment of the student. We've also had a teenager earn and maintain a full scholarship for three and a half years (so far), taking on part-time jobs to supplement her personal needs and keeping up with a demanding GPA requirement, a full academic schedule, public service, and an Honors enrichment program all at the same time.

We're now watching a heretofore unmotivated high-school junior as the realization slowly dawns on him that there is life beyond next week and he might want to explore his long-term options. Before this fall, he dabbled idly in his talents and interests and gave little thought to using them professionally; now he's actually considering where they might take him. We'd like to see this newfound realization lead to a college degree, but we know that his previous academic sins will impose the need for additional effort if he is to get there.

When he dons the cowl, we want him to look back at his time in college with pride born of personal accomplishment. We want him to look to his future with the sense that he can take on the challenges that await him, not to live his life waiting for Daddies biological or governmental to walk him through every difficulty. And Senator, those are things your entitlement mentality can not give him.

Or, as I like to call it, "The Church of the Great Cosmic Gumball Machine"

Now here is a quote that speaks to the problem of catechizing teenagers (and some other folks as well) in the present age:

[Christian]Smith — himself an evangelical — led an exhaustive study of the religious & spiritual lives of American teenagers, and his findings (published in the book Soul Searching and also found in a dvd with the same title) found that whatever the religious beliefs professed by American teens (and, I’d argue, by adults as well), the vast majority of them “practiced” what he terms “Moralistic Therapuetic Deism”, a worldview in which God acts as divine butler or cosmic therapist: there when I need Him, but out of the way otherwise and most of the time.

Chris Burgwald at American Catholic.

Having taught weekly faith formation classes for middle schoolers for a number of years (high schoolers briefly, but they're a bit easier) and currently enduring my own last two (out of four) teenagers plus their various friends and acquaintances, I feel his pain.

I could never quite wrap my brain around the debate I once had with an eighth-grade girl in one of my classes who habitually expressed her disdain for matters of church teaching and evidently regarded herself as very forward-thinking for doing so. One day I made the mistake of using the word "myth" in reference to the Genesis creation story* and had to spend considerable class time defending myself when she declared the belief (picked up from well-trained young-earth creationist schoolmates--how do those folks manage to indictrinate so thoroughly at such a difficult age?) that dinosaurs existed concurrently with humans as "proven" by the descriptions of Leviathan and Behemoth in the book of Job. Never mind my pointing out that crocs and hippos were both well-known, by reputation if not by personal experience, to the writers of Hebrew scripture.

For goodness' sake, if you're going to dabble in modernism, why rebound to fundamentalism over minor points?

*Although we would be mere monerans (anachronistic archaebacteria?) in the TTLB ecosystem if such a category existed and can usually count our hits on one hand, I just know somebody is going to drop in and rake me over the coals for even breathing the word myth in the same sentence with the book of Genesis. Not that it will be likely to make any difference, but I submit definition one of Webster's New World Dictionary, 1979 by William Collins Publishers (I am a fossil,aren't I?), edited for brevity only:

A traditional story of unknown authorship, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, institutions, religious rites, etc. of a people...

Or as I put it to the young lady in question at the time, a story that employs poetic or figurative language to teach a fundamental truth.

my life as a homeschooler, part 2c: the end, finally!

Math:

--Miquon Math and Cuisenaire rods, which I've described before. The workbook set covers grades 1-3.
--Saxon Math,4/5 and up. I haven't seen the Grades 1 & 2 books but have used Grade 3 some. Unless you're working with a child with difficulties in math, it seems a bit slow paced and probably more appropriate for one grade down. Saxon has a pretest for ascertaining the student's math level. The books have a 25-problem set per day and a lot of repetition, which is good for some students but may be exasperating to others. Since the arrangement of the problems allows it, I have, in the latter case, alternated evens and odds on daily work.
--The Key to...workbook series. These are step-by-step series of workbooks that lend themselves well to self-teaching as skills are broken down into steps. Topics available are Fractions, Decimals, Percents, Measurement (English units only, unfortunately,) Algebra, (mostly pre-algebra--it's a 4th-8th-grade course,) and Geometry. I think the geometry course is really cool, especially for visual and kinesthetic learners. No numbers are involved; students learn to construct and compare lines, angles, and different kinds of plane figures using only a compass and straightedge. Many homeschool suppliers sell these by the bundle along with Answers and Notes books, but Christian Book Distributors sells them either bundled or individually.

Science:
--DK, Eyewitness, National Geographic, and some others have published really cool books on different topics in Natural History. Your library probably has some.
Usborne has some really cool science books written at different reading levels. Lots of pictures, which we like.
--The Way Things Work, by David McCauley
Labs:
--The Backyard Scientist series is good for younger kids. Experiments are designed to use readily available household materials, so you don't have to go all over town chasing down some obscure chemical. Most of the stuff you probably have in your kitchen cabinets.
--You Can With Beakman and Jax (not sure if they're still around, but selected columns from the Sunday Comics series have been published in book form.)
--There are some more advanced level books of experiments and projects out there, but I haven't got a lot of practical experience with them. We have D's old Mr. Wizard book around here from when he was a kid, for instance. Right now, I'm using the McGraw-Hill general science books that came with the Calvert packages we bought for Son #2, which have "Quick Labs" that are usually pretty simple to put together.
--Most homeschool suppliers and some museum shops and educational toy companies have lab kits on specific topics, say, light or basic electrical circuits. Moderately-priced ones can be found, with a little diligence. These make good gifts as well, if the kid is motivated in that direction.

Other Stuff I Missed:
--Dictionary Skills workbooks from Weekly Reader were pretty good.
--English From the Roots Up is a really nice introduction to Greek and Latin roots that can be used in early or later grades. There are some spin-off products, like a set of flashcards (OTOH the book has instructions for making your own) and a game called Rummy Roots
--Where in the World? No, Carmen Sandiego doesn't figure in this one (although our kids used to enjoy her show.) But it is a really good game for teaching countries and their capitals and, if you stick with it long enough, facts like imports, exports, currency, language, and religions. Plus each country card has a flag on it.
--The Horrible Histories and Nasty Nature books are treatises on icky, yecchy, obnoxious facts that kids (especially boys aged 7-12) love. Good for keeping a pack of Cub Scouts quiet while waiting in line.
--Critical Thinking Press has really good critical thinking and logic workbooks. Scholastic and those companies that publish newstand puzzle books have cheap knockoffs of some of these that have the advantage of being, well, cheap.
--WFF 'n' Proof has for years produced some good logic games. They can be found online.
--In recent years there has been a proliferation of easy-to-read, illustrated biographies of people of note, which are very much enjoyed by kids once they have some basic reading skills. One we have is Theodoric's Rainbow, which tells of the monk Theodoric's (Dietrich of Freiburg) experiments to explain the visible spectrum. The illustrations provide a detailed and humorous look at life in a medieval monastery. Check your library, we've found quite a few there and new ones seem to come out regularly.

What I Think of Calvert:
--Since three years of Calvert is the only packaged curriculum I've ever used (Grades 5-7) I might as well put in a word about it. In general, I liked the program. Son #2 wasn't so crazy about it as there was a lot of work in it for him, but he learned from it in spite of himself. I chose Calvert school to begin with for several reasons: I had heard a quite a bit about it, I knew it had been around for a long time and was structured and traditional, The cost was acceptable, and I had a few options as to how to use it. Curriculum packages can be bought with or without teaching support; we forwent the teaching support but took the included tests (which I graded) anyway. Math can be bought separately, so we tried it the first year but soon went back to the Key To series (Son #2 maintains that I'm awful at explaining math, so the less I have to say on that subject, the better.) In general I would call Calvert a pretty good curriculum. It is highly structured and the work load is heavy enough that Son #2 was pretty much putting in a full school day by 7th grade--you don't slack off with this course. The reading load can be pretty heavy as well, so some modifications might be needed for kids with reading problems. Some of the textbooks I've reviewed positively above (though their U.S. History can't hold a candle to Joy Hakim's!) Son #2 was less than thrilled with some of the reading selections (for some reason, Anne of Green Gables just didn't speak to him,) but most selections were good. We tried their Spanish package but weren't crazy about it (I didn't care for the audio course speaker's accent) and as it is expensive I would suggest looking elsewhere for foreign languages. In short, a good curriculum, (skip the foregn languages,) but highly structured and work-intensive. Be sure that's what you're looking for before you write out the check. It probably works well for a self-motivated student (Based on what Darwin has said about his homeschooling experience I'm guessing that would be him,) or one who needs structure, but I could see it being onerous for a kid with learning difficulties or a more freewheeling learning style.

Hopefully, there are some ideas in all this text that will be useful. None of this, of course, is written in stone (duh! it's written in electrons!) Different kids have different learning styles, interests, strengths, and weaknesses. You are the expert on each of your children, and therefore the best judge of whether a given book or program is suitable. Homeschooling can give you a lot of freedom to experiment with different styles and learning materials, and choose what works. Along the way, you will undoubtedly discover your own favorites.

my life as a homeschooler, part 2b: more stuff we liked

On to the other subjects--

English Grammar and Composition:
--Mad Libs. Great for car rides and D has even used them for adult writing students.
--The Easy Grammar books. Start out by teaching you the prepositions (ideally to be memorized, although some of us here fall short of that goal) then, with minimal fluff, take you through the rules of grammar. Grade level about 3-6.
--Daily Grams. Quick drills in grammar; good in conjunction with Easy Grammar series.
--The Great Editing Adventure, if I could figure out what I did with it after our last move.
--A good spelling program. I have Dr. Fry's Spelling book, which has its weaknesses but is all right for building spelling vocabulary. Calvert was pretty good at middle school level, although we found flaws in some of their review puzzles. I got an early-level BJU book used from somebody that if I recall was phonics-based. It seemed like a terrific idea, except that I happened to have one of those oddball kids for whom any concept of phonics will always be foreign. Probably works for about 80-90% of the population, though. There are a number of programs and kits out there that look promising. Check out some homeschool supply companies' spelling sections and see what you like!
--Writing. I really, really like the Italic series, but there are a number of options out there to include traditional fancy-schmantzy Spenserian. (Most of my kids would lack the fine motor skills, I suspect.) If somebody gets really excited about handwriting, there are calligraphy kits! With my LD kid I ended up using a looped cursive course from Therapy Skillbuilders. I will probably never learn to love looped cursive, but it worked with what his occupational therapist was doing and did improve his chicken scratch somewhat. That and it was probably the most sensible method for looped cursive I've ever seen.
--Keyboarding. A good computer course is a must. I think all of ours are way out of date, so you'll have to check out the software stores on this one.

Social Studies--World History and Geography:
--The Usborne Time Travellers' Omnibus (Also sold as separate books) Illustrated tours of four differnt places/times in history: ancient Egypt, imperial Rome, Viking Scandinavia, and Medieval England. Simple language works for younger kids, but the material is not dumbed down.
--David MacCauley's books such as Castle,Cathedral, and City, which give in construction details and other facts about the times in which they are set.
--Stephen Beisty's cross-section books. (Can you tell we're visual thinkers?)
--Dorling-Kindersley's History of the World by Plantagenet Somerset Frye. Almost worth having for the author's name alone!
I've noticed that there seems to have been a proliferation of books on similar themes in recent years, written at different reading levels. I haven't checked them all out, obviously, but they seem fairly similar in terms of design and information. The good thing about this is, it shouldn't be hard to find good materials and the public library will probably have books you can use.
--Weekly Reader used to have a good set of map skills workbooks. They'd be worth checking out.
--The Calvert School curriculum uses Houghton Mifflin's middle school world history books A Message of Ancient Days and Across The Centuries, which aren't bad as textbooks go. They also have a set of world geography books for the same age level, by Silver Burdett and Ginn.
--A good world atlas. A "for kids" one is nice, but even one designed for adult use has its merits. We have a kid one, but when Baby wanted to look up the location of the Bavarian town where her violin was made, it was our 1970 Britannica ox-stunner that saved the day.

Social Studies--U.S. History and Geography:
--I could go on all day about Joy Hakim's series A History of Us. Baby just finished the last book, but I ain't sellin' these! They are by far the best, most thorough, most thoughtful and most interesting books on the subject out there. Their only negative, and what probably keeps them from seeing much general school use, is that the set of ten books would normally take about two years to get through in a classroom setting. (I think it took us slightly over a school year and a half.) The positives make the time spent worthwhile. Hakim, a journalist, loves the U.S. and loves history--that much is clear from her books. She was inspired to the task when on reviewing one of her kids' school history texts, she was appalled by how dull it was. She began to work on her own book, which grew like Topsy.
Hakim writes in an informal and witty tone sprinkled with funny observations and asides. From the first she makes clear her belief that the U.S. is "the most remarkable nation that has ever existed." She doesn't whitewash the bad, though; no kid who completes this series will be Pollyannish about his country's past. Nor, however, will he be cynical or pessimistic about its future.
Young factoid buffs will love this series for the many profiles of people and incidents that most school history books gloss over. Kids who read it through will learn about the Zenger libel case, the War of Jenkin's Ear, and the battle of Ft. Sullivan in Charleston Harbor; they will become acquainted with people like Eliza Pinkney, James Forten, Deborah Sampson, "Ox" Knox, "Box" Brown, Wilmer McLean, Ely Parker, Charles Eastman, and Mary Antin. The books are an embarrassment of riches when it comes to information.
Hakim's politics are probably a bit more liberal than my own, but with few exceptions (sorry, Joy, but I'm really not convinced that Ronald Reagan was a better actor than he was a president!) she makes a concerted effort to present history in as factual but as fair a manner as she can. Thus I've read a review of her books by a southerner who thought she did a pretty good job of chronicling the War Between the States (theah was nuthin' Civil about it) even though he didn't agree with all her conclusions about its root causes. Hakim acknowledges bias in writing with a frankness all journalists in the business today ought to have, yet manages to keep her own in check to an impressive degree.
The appendix at the end of each book is an extra bonus. Each appendix has a year-by-year chronology of events taking place during the time period covered and a list of suggested readings (I think her choices are very good.) Some volumes also have important documents (like the Bill of Rights) and personal remarks by Hakim about writing and studying history.
I would call these books a "definitely buy" even if your library has them. There is a softcover binding available if the hardcover cost seems daunting. Although they are written for fourth or fifth grade readers, your kids will not outgrow them, and you may find yourself reading them. I'd recommend them for older students taking GED or college placement tests.

Now that I'm done rhapsodizing, back to business.
--We have an old copy of Geosafari software that the kids have enjoyed. It had U.S. and world geography and history games on it and was really handy on days when I "just had to get something done" and needed not to be on lesson call.
--A Blank U.S. map. Websites that post curriculum helps often have these.
--Workbook publishers often have U.S. states books that can be incorporated into a U.S. geography study. We used one once, (which we no longer have, so I can't give publishing info) that had the states arranged by region. Thus the task could be accomplished in sections which simplified things considerably.

This is getting long again (one would think I'd have learned to edit by now!) and lunch must be fixed. Math, science, and whatever else is left next, same bat-time, same bat-channel! (Or thereabouts.)

my life as a homeschooler, part 2a: the age of reason!

In part 1, I discussed some of the techniques and materials I liked for early education. This post will focus on students past first-grade level, or so.

A child who can sit still and focus on a task without assistance can begin the process of taking ownership of his (or her, but for the purposes of this post I'm using his) education. This isn't going to occur magically, and doesn't mean by any account that your kid can be expected to singlehandedly educate himself. As I've already mentioned, there's a lot of work in it for you; if you accept that, however, it can pay off academically and personally.

"Taking ownership" in the form of doing some work independently is a necessary skill if you have several children schooling at different levels. As in the old one-room schoolhouse, some kids are going to have to be working at their lessons on their own while you assist the others. At this point in his life, it doesn't hurt a kid at all to start doing some things in workbooks; still, it's one of the advantages of homeschooling that workbooks shouldn't be all it's about.

I understand that there are (were? I'm afraid I haven't kept up) some curriculum packages, like Konos and Weaver, that are designed for out-of-the-classroom learning by kids working at multiple levels. Some packaged unit studies are also designed this way. (Never having been able to justify the expense of these nifty packages, I pulled together my own stuff and tried to apply this concept as I could.)

Disparately-aged children may all study the same subject--say, the American Revolution--together, but each at his own level and depth. That way there's some unity of curriculum in the family, which makes life easier for the primary teacher and facilitates outside learning experiences. A young child can read Sam the Minuteman, sing or play Yankee Doodle, and learn about the Boston Tea Party; an older one can study the root causes of conflict and the decisive battles in depth (or if that's not her cuppa tea, research the role of women in the conflict) and read the Declaration of Independence; everybody can go to Living History Days and watch and talk to the reenactors.

I did most of my educating at this level in two blocs, as I had two kids fifteen months apart, followed by one four years later and one three years after that. The two eldest did a lot of things together, working separately in areas in which their developmental abilities differed. (The eldest, by the way, is LD, so we were using some techniques and materials with him that weren't necessary with his sibs.) Subjects like science and history were pretty much done together, which enabled them to collaborate on lab science projects. They had fairly free rein, within reason, to choose independent reading so there was some difference there: the eldest went in for things like Classics Illustrated comics and Heinlein's juvenile fiction whereas his sister preferred the Childhood of Famous Americans books (caveat: some of these are pretty fictionalized!) and period fiction, especially that with female protagonists. The Little House books and E.L. Koenigsburg's fictionalized biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Minever were among her favorites around the age of ten.

At one point in our adventures I did cave in and buy a packaged curriculum. Kid #3 by around fourth grade level was slacking off considerably and giving every indication that he would benefit from a higher level of structure than he was getting with my do-it-yourself methods. We bought Calvert packages for him for the next three years (more on them below,) without the teaching service. It's a rigorous course and he did his share of complaining about it, but I think it was overall the right thing for him at the time.

Things I used for primary-level education (first to sixth grade) are below. I'm sticking mainly to things we all liked although there may be some things that were controversial, in which case I will make a note of it.

General:
--The E. D. Hirsch Core Knowledge books, which I mentioned in the previous post. As I mentioned then, these are handy general resources for things a child should know. (Note to the Darwins: I think these could be a good reference for some of those "great stories and histories" you were seeking. Each book has some very good short historical accounts and excerpts from good literature. I'm looking at the 4th grade book now; some selected topics are: "A Voyage to Lilliput," "On Thin Ice" from Little Women, Sojurner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, a selection of King Arthur stories, and in the world history section, "The Byzantine Empire," "Charlemagne and the Growth of Learning," "Where English Comes From," "A Bad King and a Great Charter," and "The Travels of Ibn Battuta," to name a few. Check 'em out.)
--A copy of your state's curriculum requirements, so you can check off the boxes and have something to show for if anybody wants to know what you're doing.

Reading:
--Edgar and Inri Parin D'Aulaire's wonderful and gorgeously illustrated books, especially Greek Myths and Norse Gods and Giants (back in print as D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths.) By far the best of the genre IMHO, though there are plenty of imitators out there today. We had a tradition of reading Leif the Lucky every Leif Ericson Day, which is, of course, the day before Columbus Day when we read about Columbus. Naturally, we'd read Jean Fritz's Brendan the Navigator the day before that.
--The Book of Virtues by William Bennett. Lots of "great stories" here, too. I think there's also a young reader's edition of this book.
--The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder; also Caddie Woodlawn and its sequel Magical Melons (currently in print as Caddie Woodlawn's Family or some such.)
--The Wizard of Oz and other books by L. Frank Baum. We borrowed some of these on tape from the library for a trip once; the repartee in the books is clever and hilarious and will keep the adults as entertained as the kids!
--Astrid Lindgren's books, especially the Pippi Longstocking trio.
--Madeline L'Engle's Time Quartet, and some of her other books. I wasn't crazy about some of her later works and would caution that parental prereading and discussion are imperative for these as mature themes come up. Many of her books are unsuitable for kids still in the single-digits ages and iffy for 'tweens. Consider yourselves warned. A Wrinkle in Time, however, is a must-read. As a nearsighted nerdy kid, I adored Meg Murray.
--Kids' Sci-fi. Heinlein and Asimov wrote some good books for kids. Be wary; they also wrote adult works that you don't want to mix up with the kids' books. Particularly Heinlein--oh, la la. Group marriage, anyone? Bradbury's a little weird for younger kids, but Farenheit 451 ought to be read by everyone before he's gone too far into high school.
--Nat Hentoff's The Day They Came to Arrest the Book. Civil libertarian Hentoff usually writes for adults but has published a few works for young teens. All are fairly good; this is certainly the strongest. It deals with the issue of book censorship in schools and argues eloquently for the freedom to read.
--Biographical works (like Brendan mentioned above,) or historical fiction (like The Cabin Faced West) by Jean Fritz. Fritz's works on the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers, with titles like Can't You Make Them Behave, King George? are quick but thorough reads and excellent additions to younger kids' history studies.
--A good collection of Shakespeare stories for children. Throughout English literary history, such notables as Charles Lamb (with his gifted but tragic sister Mary) and E. Nesbit have turned out excellent volumes that are still in print; there are also some good collections of more recent vintage.
--The Childrens' Homer by Padraic Colum (sp?), or some other version depending on individual taste (like Hawthorne's A Wonder Book or Roger Lancelyn Green's The Tale of Troy)
--King Arthur. Sometime Inkling Lancelyn Green published a good selection of tales; older kids might go in for T.H. White's The Sword in The Stone, but should have some background in the old tales first. Also the Robin Hood tales. We liked Howard Pyle's collection, and a British one we found once at a library and have never seen again. That one included the story of the unconfirmed "find" of Friar Tuck's remains by a pair of 19th-century coal miners!
--A good general collection of poetry.
I could go on and on, so I'll leave the reading section at that. Public libraries often have "suggested reading lists," as do many homeschool resources. These days I seem to be down to the Christian Book Distributors catalog, but I've found that browsing the literature section of that or any good homeschool supply catalog is a great way to get reading ideas. Dover Press, a book company that publishes a lot of "dollar editions" (they may have gone up slightly since I last saw their catalog) of public domain literature is a good place to get ideas, and cut-rate volumes. (Read the fine print, though; they also do abridgements and adaptations so you might not get the whole book.)
Finally, the appendix to Marva Collins' Way, the story of the notable educator who founded an inner-city preparatory academy, includes her recommended reading list.

This is getting long and unwieldy, so I'll post the rest of the list, and perhaps some more Adventures in Homeschooling, tomorrow.

my life as a homeschooler, part I

Mrs. Darwin posted a question about Charlotte Mason and her education philosophy on DarwinCatholic yesterday, so I sent her some of what info I had on the subject. As she was curious to know about my own homeschooling process, I decided it might be a good time to do some posts on this subject. I have homeschooled each of three children into middle-school age, with one going into a traditional school setting around sixth grade and two more going in eighth, and I have one left at home in the sixth grade. As I have some definite ideas about what constitutes good schooling, and am not shy about imparting them to others, I'm going to take a few posts to share them.

I'm going to start from one of MrsD's comments, as it gives me a very nice springboard for some of my own educational philosophy (and a few household hints:)
I know (in person, I mean) very few homeschoolers with a "philosophy" of homeschooling other than items such as "I won't let those awful public schools corrupt the minds of my children" or "really, we're homeschooling for religious reasons, because what's more important that getting your kids to heaven?" I mean to post on this sometime soon, but the difficulty is in meeting local homeschoolers for whom education is more than just ticking off the list of subjects from a packaged curriculum.
So here goes.

Yeah, I guess I know what you mean about homeschooling philosophies--it's been an interesting evolutionary process. Fifteen years ago when I was still thinking about homeschooling, my mentors were mostly the wild and wooly unschoolers that still predominated in the movement and with few exceptions even the canned curricula strove to avoid the too school-y model. Lately on the few occasions I hang out with local homeschoolers (I'm not trying to be antisocial, but we've really got too much else going on) it seems everybody's on workbook packages and video courses. There's something about the idea of sitting your kid in front of the tube all day--even for educational lectures--that just grates on me. Even if you're schooling primarily for religious reasons, it seems to me there are better alternatives to "school at home" with an electronic tutor, yet!

It looks like you've got quite a few suggestions for readings on educational theory in your combox. As one who managed to acquire several books on ed theory on which she would just as soon not have spent the bucks, I do recommend using the library as much as possible unless you find something you're really sure you want to keep and use. Interlibrary loans are a wonderful thing, too. I also recommend nagging your library staff about things you want to read but can't find--if you're persistent maybe they'll cave and buy it, especially if it's a classic. Also, as you've mentioned having both homeschooling parents and in-laws, I'd suggest asking them what they found helpful as well. Who knows, if they're anything like me they might even have some books in the attic!

One thing to keep in mind is that there are ed theories and then there are ed methods. If you pick up one of Maria Montessori's books, or one of Charlotte Mason's, or John Holt's, or Raymond Moore's, or Rudolf Steiner's, you're probably not going to have a cut-and-dried set of outlines for each age level; you're going to have a theory. Figuring out what to do every day is still up to you unless you contract it out. (Actually, Montessori did have a step-by-step early education plan, but it wasn't all she wrote about.) Implementation in the form of lesson plans is another thing entirely. I noted yesterday that Mason (as I recall her--it's been a while) was more of a theorist whose books consisted of good advice rather than syllabi; I think somebody else in the combox mentioned that Karen Andreola of CBD had published what I presume to be an implementation of Mason's ideas.

But, I'm supposed to be describing my homeschooling process. I'm going to stick with early childhood stuff today, since it's what concerns you right now and since I'm in danger of going on way too long if I try to cover everything.

Like Lord Rochester, I have children but no theories. I probably tend to lean in a relaxed homeschool direction without actually going to the point of unschooling (does anybody actually have kids that self-directed?) I've got definite perennialist tendencies, but I'm not a purist about it. I think the basic ed philosophies (the others are essentialism, progressivism, and existentialism--but that's another post) all have their good points and certain parts of them may apply to certain kids at certain times.

I use workbooks and at the current level (middle school) some texts, but I'd rather work with what Mason called "living books". I think games or labs are a good way to learn some things. A lot depends on who I'm working with, and on what.

At pre- and early school levels, I tended to avoid formal lessons and school-y materials. I did try to keep an area of the house where school materials were handy (and more importantly, the Hot Wheels and dolls were not.) Lessons were brief, simple, and developmentally appropriate. With the younger kids, I was usually doing somewhat more structured things with their older siblings anyway, and keeping a preschooler at a desk or table "doing stuff" would have been frazzling.

Things I've used at this level that I really liked include:
--Teaching Montesorri in the Home by Elizabeth Hainstock. While I haven't ever been a strict Montessorist, I like the developmental approach and many of the learning activities and ideas.
--Counters (you can use marbles, beans or buttons if your child can be trusted to keep them out of orifices, or you can splurge on the cute little animal ones from the school supply. Or you can use the Legos if you have them anyway; these come in handy later as well when you're doing base 10 stuff. Some color variety is a good thing to have for sorting purposes)
--A hundred chart (you can make your own)
--A blank calendar
--A Saxon K math book I got secondhand. While I thought most of it was a bit slow for your average kindergartener, it did have some really good activities for preschoolers. I came into it when my third was a toddler, and the handiest thing about it was that I had, at my fingertips and without having to do much, a set of fun, developmentally appropriate math activities we could do together in about fifteen minutes a day. Activities included forward and backward counting, some skip counting, sequencing, and comparing shapes and sizes.
--Cardboard shapes in different sizes
--Letter or number puzzles or magnets or, if you're really adventuresome, those cool homemade sandpaper Montessori letters. My sister-in-law should inherit mine if I ever figure out where I stashed them.
--The Bob books (I like these for introducing prereaders to the idea of reading. They are simple, phonics-based, and funny. They can be a little pricey in stores but sometimes public libraries have them.)
--Good books in simple language on a variety of subjects for the parent to read to the child. Most of our family have a visual streak and gravitated mainly to books with really artistic or creative illustrations. A variety of topics can be covered in addition to literature and folktales: most of the kids' book publishers (i.e. Scholastic, Usborne, Dorling-Kindersley, and Eyewitness) have science, history, and geography titles at various reading levels. I've found that public libraries are generally pretty good about keeping a supply on hand.

For K-1st I added:
--A set of three small books by Ruth Beechick that I think can still be had relatively inexpensively from some homeschool suppliers: An Easy Start in Arithmetic, A Strong Start in Language, and A Home Start in Reading. These are actually for the parent, but they provide good activity ideas and are a fast read.
--The E. D. Hirsch Core Knowledge Series books for these grades. Not a curriculum by themselves, but they're good for keeping track of things you want to teach at each level and they have some pretty good readings and math activities for "school time." These were quite a fad for a while and the chances of finding some used copies should be good. They're usually in libraries as well.
There is also a paperback edition.
--Miquon Math and a set of Cuisenaire rods. This series introduces a variety of math concepts that the student can work out using the rods. The rods are graduated in length from 1cm-10cm and can be used to represent whole numbers from 1-10 or fractions (white is half of red and one-fourth of purple, etc.) Some pretty tricky math skills can be learned in this way, although I found that as we moved into the later books the kids tended to want to dispense with the rods whenever possible and just do the problems. I've heard of some other math programs that are visual and tactile, such as Math-U-See, but I don't have any experience with them.
--A writing pad or workbook as needed. I like italic myself (it's done wonders for my penmanship!) but everyone has their preference. As pathologically bad fine motor skills run in D's genome, we had variable results, but I think it was easier to go from printing to cursive with italic than with the standard school ball-and-stick-to-D'Nealian-to-Looped Cursive.
--Easy spelling lists. At this level you could practially make your own, but various spellers and programs are out there as well. I like phonics lists, but my oldest turned out to be LD and couldn't make any sense of them so we had to come up with other ideas. Which brings me to...
--Scrabble tiles (or magnets, or any kind of letters.) Good spelling aid for kinesthetics. For distractible kinesthetics (which I think is most of them) it may be necessary to limit the letters to the word they are trying to spell plus three or four extras unless you want to be spelling all day.

One of the advantages to homeschooling (that tends to go out the window when you go straight for the packaged curriculum) is that school can be tailored to the needs of each child. While some kids can learn math out of workbooks, visual and especially kinesthetic learners develop more unerstanding when they can work out problems with manipulatives or draw pictures representing what they are about. A slow reader can still work at his level in other subjects; likewise a kid with difficulties in math can still read at an advanced level. Literature can be selected based on interest. Material that hasn't been mastered can be gone over again until it is.

I noted in your post that you've resisted the temptation to put your five-year-old down to do a lot of "sit-down" work; I think your instincts are sound. At that age in particular, much more is learned by doing than by doing worksheets. Baking, a walk through the park, and a trip to the store all have learning potential. I don't think it's a bad idea to introduce the three-year-old to the idea of reading or to provide her with simple books, but I would caution against pushing the issue if she doesn't seem to be into it. I don't think there's a link between early or late reading and later appreciation of good literature, so there's time enough to develop that taste. The reading issue does happen to be one where I think I can shed some light, however. I'll address it further in a day or two. Probably two; I'm considering doing a little muckraking tomorrow.

Motion Tabled

Last week, my younger son was enjoying lunch with friends at the Large High School cafeteria, when he was informed by some of his fellow students that he and his group were sitting at the "black" table. My son and his friends were not to be easily deterred: they claimed that they had a right to be at the table, and that the student body should be one community anyway. Those that were staking out the table for "blacks only" weren't buying it. So, one of the boys took a different tack. "Well, I am black," he stated, his blond hair and northern European features giving the lie to his declaration. This strategy did not dissuade the claimants. Despite the objections, the boys held their ground until the end of their meal. When they got up to throw away their trash, the encroaching party at last won the day and took their seats.

When I heard the story, I was saddened, and a bit angered. Had we made so little progress in the last 50 years that our children still openly used race to include or exclude? And what would be the reaction, if someone had placed a "coloreds only" sign on the table? My own highschool experience at The Central Highschool in the late 70s saw plenty of racial incidents, but it was rare that anyone of any race would be so overt in their racism. On reflection, though, I found something about which to be positive. At The Central Highschool, a similar incident would have probably ended violently, especially if the party had decided to hold its ground as my son's party did. The incident at the Large Highschool ended peacefully, and my son did not indicate that he felt threatened. Perhaps this is all the progress I can expect.

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."
- Martin Luther King, Jr. August 28, 1963

Not Too Smart

Apparently I got book memed a week or so ago and missed it completely; I realize it now only because D was playing geek and tracking links or something and pointed it out to me. My apologies; I'll get to work on it. Thanks to MrsDarwin for thinking of me!
---------------------------------------------------------------

A tech innovation widely coveted by school teachers today is a jazzy computerized 'blackboard' sometimes called an Active Board or SMART Board. It has some advantages over that the methods that went before: No chalk dust, no neuron-destroying hallucinogenic marker ink, no more collection of early Jurassic visual aid projectors that must be passed room to room and used with the blinds pulled down. The boards are controlled from the teacher's computer, and everything each class needs may be posted on them. Teachers can post and remove notes for each class they teach without having to erase and rewrite several times a day. The coach with the illegible handwriting can finally be understood. Films, pictures, charts and graphs are available with a keystroke. Maps can be kept up to date cheaply and easily--no more reminding the students to ignore those two Germanys, East Pakistan where Bangladesh should be, or that "Here be Dragons" in the more remote parts of the Indian Ocean. It's Powerpoint for the Converse All-Stars set; K-12 tech for the tech generation.

There's one bad meatball in this electronic smorgasbord, however, which we encountered the first week of school. Hon. Son #2 found out about it the hard way during his beginning-of-term Algebra pre-test the second day of classes.

When one of these silicon marvels is on but not being used to present information, the screen has to default to something neutral. This isn't a problem if that is a nice relaxing still picture of something. But often, it's the moving screen saver on the teacher's computer. Not everyone, it seems, has caught on that this can be a problem.

Hon. Son's Algebra teacher has a screen saver with a motif honoring her alma mater. That's fine as long as it's just on her computer screen--but not if it's playing life-size on the board behind her during a test or while she's lecturing! Hon. Son, who has no previous experience of SMART Boards, wasn't very smart himself that day. He was so thrown off by Ugga the Georgia Bulldog prancing back and forth across the classroom wall that he didn't finish the test before the bell rang.

School is in its second week now, and Hon. Son, not generally a distractible sort, says he is (after multiple repetitions of the dog act) able to tune it out completely. I wonder, though, if this space-age study aid will end up creating as many problems as it solves. I'm not sure, for example, that his older brother, who has learning disabilities and is easily distracted, would have made it through high school if he'd had to grapple with aquarium fish, cartoon characters, and fireworks dancing on the note board in front of him in every class.

We spend huge amounts of money (you could look it up) on school programs to assist special-needs students. Imagine all those programs, all those learning specialists, being mooted by an interfering bit of machinery and froufrou!

Most people will have difficulty focusing on a task when the environment is filled with distractions; some are especially sensitive and have very low tolerance for anything moving or making noises around them. If teachers want to be effective, they need to keep this in mind. Teachers, would you set up a television set tuned to Cartoon Network in the classroom during a lecture? No? Then please, please, spare your students the Smartboard Show as well!

A few reads

Nat Hentoff deplores the lack of public attention to the Darfur genocide. With the world focused on flare-ups in other areas, God only knows where this will end.

When the violence began, it was Muslims targeting Christians. Now, it's Muslims targeting Muslims who happen to have darker skin and Subsaharan features. (Oh, did I mention the oil?) I'd really love to see some of those theorists who assert the unity of all Islam to explain this one.

A letter exchange between Luana Stotlenburg, an activist who now regrets her abortions and the editors of Ms. Magazine.

feminine genius, well-armed with irony, relates a case of side effects from the contraceptive patch, while the manufacturer looks the other way. There's something about these ladies' writing style that I like!

The Ironic Catholic launches an Iron Theologian competition and posts the first installment if a list of '100 Ironic Reasons to be Catholic.' One of her commentors was Sister Mary Martha, whom I decided to check out and have thus far found pretty funny. Like some other people around here, she couldn't seem to resist social commentary on Mel Gibson's troubles, either.

Mrs. Darwin at DarwinCatholic discusses the moral status of the tarot deck and other occult paraphernalia and It put me in mind of some issues I've been thinking about (and discussing) recently, but that's for another post.

I did recall that back when I was a plaid-skirted second grader at Catholic school, we had a number of donated board games on the cloakroom shelf for rainy-day recess use. It was the first time in my life I'd ever seen--or heard of-- a Ouija board (who in the Sam Hill let that one into the building, I wonder? I remember the Sisters being a little more on the ball!) Anyhow, nobody summoned up any spirits or created a need for a consultation with an exorcist (wouldn't that have gone over well? Our diocese wasn't taking any orthodoxy prizes as it was, even then. Well, especially then. It was the late '60s...but I digress.) A number of the boys, however, who had a little knowledge about the mechanics of the thing, found an entertaining use for it:
Small,nerdy-looking necktied Catholic Schoolboy:
Ouija Board, who is Pattie in love with?
(very brief pause)
M...A...R...K...
For some reason, the mediums (media? medii?) in the movies always seem so much more laborious in their use thereof. Was it youthful energy, or did some of those guys have an in with the spirit world?...