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April 29, 2007
Tip For New Homeschoolers - Do Your Homework
Pet Peeve: People who post on homeschooling boards to ask questions like "What should my 3rd grader be doing for English?"
Bigger Pet Peeve: People who answer them with specific skills/content matter.
I can appreciate and understand that people homeschool for many different reasons. Perhaps you pulled your child from school suddenly, because of a bad situation. Perhaps you haven't yet had time to think. Okay. There are two things you can do.
First, you know what your child has been studying in school up until that point. (You should know.) Take that as a temporary starting point and carry on. Second, you can give them spring/summer/fall/winter break while you figure things out.
But whatever you do, you've got to take some time to think about this schooling thing. Please.
When you decide to homeschool, you are taking on the responsibility of the education of your children. That's a big responsibility. Huge. It's second only to the responsibility of caring for them and keeping them alive and healthy.
When you decide to homeschool, you become the one in charge. You. It's all up to you. You make the decisions. How do you make those decisions? You do your own homework. Right now, start reading everything you can get your hands on about education, and homeschooling. Right now, start talking to your children. What are their interests? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What do they want to do? Right now, start talking to your spouse about what he/she thinks is important about education and the children.
You can decide to stick with the state standards, and teach your kids as they would be taught in public school. You can decide to let your children direct their own education, while you facilitate. You can decide to do something else entirely. School in your home will not, and should not, look like school at anyone else's home.
What should your kid be doing in 3rd grade? I don't know. And no one else on that message board does, either. We don't know your kid. We don't know your philosophy of education. We don't know your goals. We don't know your lifestyle. No one can answer that, and no one should try. Please don't take anyone else's version of education into your home.
But if you don't give it any further thought than to ask some random people on a message board to direct the education of your child, you're going to do a terrible job.
Posted by lynx at 9:37 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
April 26, 2007
Concert Ticket Blues
Remember when to get a good seat for a show, you just had to be in line early? Remember when, if you were one of the first ones in line, you would get a good seat?
Hoo, boy, are those days gone.
Have you tried to buy a concert ticket lately? Here's how it works: First of all, you not only have to find out the date and time the tickets go on sale, but the dates and times of the presale. There is always a presale event, and, often, more than one.
The idea behind the presale is that you'll get better tickets, since you're buying them first, before everyone else. It doesn't work that way. Each group putting on a presale has a preselected block of tickets to sell. It could be a good block. It could be a terrible block. The fun part is - you have no way of knowing! Each presale has its own little secret password, or other requirements, such as fan club membership.
Last week I bought tickets for a show. I knew of three - three - separate presales. I wanted good seats to this one, so I found times and scrounged passwords and codes for all three. At the first and second presales (remember, this is before tickets go on sale to the general public) I came up with seats around the 30th row.
Eh? Excuse me? I tried the next presale - same thing. Finally, through the third presale, I managed to get into the 26th row. Oooh. I belong to a large online community of fans, and everyone reported similar results. When the point of the presale is to get the best seats because you've got first crack, well, somethin' ain't right.
Just to see, I checked the tickets at the general onsale as well, right when they went live. 30th row and beyond.
This means that none of the places selling to fans sold seats in the first 20 rows. As it turns out, this particular venue took most of those seats for itself, to hand out to season pass owners, corporate sponsors, etc.
So the venue grabs a chunk of seats. Each organization with a presale grabs a chunk of seats. General onsale is whatever is left over by then.
There are always scalpers, brokers, and the like. There's a group called "I Love All Access" that specializes in charging out outrageous fees for a seat in the first 10 rows. The fans fall all over themselves to buy these "special packages."
In other words, if you want a good seat at a concert, at least in Detroit, you should be prepared to pay upwards of $150 a seat ($350-$600 a seat for the first five rows). And, of course, people pay it.
It's insane. I'm not even sure who can afford to go to shows these days. Heck, even lawn seats are often $50.
What a racket.
Posted by lynx at 8:05 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
April 20, 2007
Shameless Brag
I just want you all to know that it's 8:30 am, and my two oldest (9 and 11) boys are awake. They are dressed. They are eating breakfast. They have already done their morning chores, which they did on their own, without any reminding or prompting from me.
This happens nearly every morning.
:)
Posted by lynx at 7:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 12, 2007
From the "Thank Heavens He Has No Idea What He's Saying" Department
We spent last weekend travelling. At one point we stopped for a meal at Cracker Barrel, where the kids love to play with the toys while we wait for our table. Apparently one of the toys is a rubber chicken, which my six year old loves.
As we pulled into the parking lot, he became excited. "Yay!" he exclaimed. "I want to go play with the toys! Now I can choke the chicken while we wait for our table!"
It was ten minutes before we could get out of the car with anything approaching a straight face.
Posted by lynx at 9:24 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
April 10, 2007
You Know It's Bad When ...
Earlier today Google was down. I needed a search engine.
It's been so very long since I've used any engine other than Google that I had to rack my brains to come up with any other name.
But first, without thinking, I typed "search engine" into the little search window on my browser.
It's kind of like how when your power is out, you still flip the light switch to look for the power company's phone number. Mmm, don't you feel like an idiot then?
Posted by lynx at 10:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
I won an O'Donnell Award!
Chris has graciously awarded me the "Blogger I'd Most Likely Run Into at a Hair Metal Concert" Award.
I'd like to thank all the little people ... you know, the ones I used to run over to get to the ticket window first. Homeschooling, of course, affords me the freedom of staying up late to rock out, not to mention to take the occasional road trip, without having to worry about getting the kiddos to school on time. And to think they told me that one day I'd have to grow up and have a real life!
Posted by lynx at 12:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 5, 2007
Britain Down the Tubes
Speaking of Becky, I see that she posted on her blog an article about the British actively discouraging the study of Greek and Latin in schools. Earlier this year it came out that British schools are also not really teaching about the Crusades, or the Holocaust (because they don't want to offend their Muslim students, you know). And of course, last year we learned that they're also not going to teach British cultural heritage.
Doesn't it make you want to cry?
I suppose it was inevitable. Once you take away a sense of cultural identity and key events in your history, you have to squelch any study of classical languages and literatures. Latin and Greek teach you to think logically, and the study of classical texts teaches you the signposts that tell you when your culture is on the road to hell. The study of the classics can also bring up disturbing ideas about "right" and "wrong," which they seem to want to avoid as well.
What was that bit about those who cannot remember history ... ?
I love England. I've always dreamed of living there. Now, though, between stupid educational reforms and stupid laws restricting self defense, it would be more of a nightmare.
Posted by lynx at 4:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
I Feel Smarter Already
Thanks to L and Becky, I've joined a secular Great Books discussion group. We're going to read through the Britannica Great Books of the Western World in 7 or 8 years.
I feel smarter already.
This month's reading assignments consist of a little Plato, some Aristotle, and a couple of Aristophanes' plays. I've finished the initial readings already. Now I get to go back and think about what I've read.
Plato (The Apology, Crito, and books I and II of The Republic) was easy, entertaining, and horrifying. I had never read The Republic before. What a scary little text that is.
Aristophanes is funny, and I've read him before, though I don't like the translations they chose for the Great Books: the meter of The Clouds literally put me to sleep this afternoon, and I'm pretty sure they've cut some of the naughty bits out of Lysistrata.
Aristotle, though ... this month's assignment is to read Book I of Nichomachean Ethics. I read it. It was all I could do to keep my eyes on the page. It was difficult and boring, and in the end all I think I understood was that kids can't be happy because they don't have experience, and that happiness consists of virtuous acts. It took him 20 pages to say this. I have to say that so far, I don't look forward to more Aristotle. Does he get better?
I found the entire set of the GBoTWW for a decent price on Ebay. When they arrived I told my kids, "You know, if we did nothing else for school but read these books, you'd have a great education!"
They gazed up at the 52 volumes and quietly ... slipped ... away. You could almost hear them thinking: "Maybe if we move quietly, she won't make us start reading them now." Heh. Aren't they cute?
Posted by lynx at 3:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 2, 2007
Why We Homeschool - Lego Freedom!
As if we needed another reason to be glad we homeschool. Check out this piece entitled Why We Banned Legos.
A group of teachers of children ages 5-9 fostered unstructured play with Legos, resulting in a structure they called "Legotown." Children built, traded Legos, and created a large, creative town. But then, you see:
Occasionally, Legotown leaders explicitly rebuffed children, telling them that they couldn't play. Typically the exclusion was more subtle, growing from a climate in which Legotown was seen as the turf of particular kids. The other children didn't complain much about this; when asked about Legos, they'd often comment vaguely that they just weren't interested in playing with Legos anymore. As they closed doors to other children, the Legotown builders turned their attention to complex negotiations among themselves about what sorts of structures to build, whether these ought to be primarily privately owned or collectively used, and how "cool pieces" would be distributed and protected. These negotiations gave rise to heated conflict and to insightful conversation. Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.
Which is sad, because that's how life works.
I wonder what the rebuffed children did with the time they were not spending on Legos. Did they find other activities? Did they get involved in an interesting project that meant more to them? Did they sit on the sidelines, watching and moping? I'm guessing they left the Lego barons to themselves, and found something else to do. Which, again, is how life works. Not everyone is good at everything, or suited for everything. And golly, that's okay.
But no, the children must be stopped before they realize that capitalism works. The teachers banned the Legos and embarked on a re-education program. In the end:
From this framework, the children made a number of specific proposals for rules about Legos, engaged in some collegial debate about those proposals, and worked through their differing suggestions until they reached consensus about three core agreements:All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the Lego structures. But only the builder or people who have her or his permission are allowed to change a structure.
Lego people can be saved only by a "team" of kids, not by individuals.
All structures will be standard sizes.
With these three agreements — which distilled months of social justice exploration into a few simple tenets of community use of resources — we returned the Legos to their place of honor in the classroom.
Oh, you poor kids. You thought you were having fun and being creative with toys. Now you know just how wrong you were. But through a careful examination of how bad power is, what a bad person you are if you have any power (even if you have the power/wealth by pure chance) and how creativity might hurt someone's feelings, you can be cured. Now that you're free from the ideas of competition, ownership and creativity, and full of guilt for your previous successes, now you can play correctly. Go on, kids. Have fun!
I'll make you a deal, folks. You teach the kids socialism and guilt. I'll teach mine to be creative, resourceful and successful. I have a feeling I know how both groups will end up.
Posted by lynx at 7:43 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack