Things Worth Remembering The three habits that lead to success are: Patience, Application, and Vision.
Take care: The person who will tell others' faults to you - will tell yours to others.
It is always better to be underestimated.
There are three things that are better than riches: Health, Freedom, and Honor.
Think swiftly, speak softly, act wisely.
"The world is neither Scottish, English, nor Irish, neither French, Dutch, nor Chinese, but human, and each nation is only the partial development of a universal humanity." - James Grant on founding the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, 1862
All from: The Book of Celtic Wisdom
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Princess Leia: “Han!”
Han Solo: “Yes, Your Highnessness?”
Princess Leia: “I thought you decided to stay.”
Han Solo: “Well, the bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell changed my mind.”
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
With apologies to the people who have already seen this on Facebook…
I did it. I signed Padawan Learner up for classes at a local high school last week.
Despite the fact that he had – for years – said that he never wanted to set foot inside a school again, PL decided that classes on environmental sustainability and Italian sounded too good not to attend. Despite the fact that he’s a confirmed night owl, he chose to take a class that starts at 7:55 am. Choice makes all the difference in the end, doesn’t it?
On days that he has school, his day will end at 2:15 pm - those will be every other school day – with a 2 hr study/lunch period in between the two classes. He also wanted to take an intro art class, but it had a waiting list of 40 students so he couldn’t add it this time – maybe next year. So I guess we’re about to join the ranks of tied-to-the-school-year families now. (We’ve even bought a few school supplies to get him through his first few days: a 1″ binder for each class, an insulated lunch box, a water bottle, and mechanical pencils. We already have a ton of paper and pens.)
About two hours after I signed him up, I had to point out the inconsistency of taking a class in environmental sustainability and leaving the deck slider door open when it is about a billion degrees outside and the AC is running.
“It’s very dangerous, putting them together. I don’t think the boy can handle it. I don’t trust him.” – Mace Windu, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
Padawan Learner and his loyal neighborhood buddy, Chewbacca, hit the neighborhood garage sales this morning with a vengeance. It took all he had to get through his piano lesson before hitting the streets. They scootered from one house to another picking up other people’s crap undiscovered treasure for pennies on the pound. Put an Abe Lincoln in your pocket and the garage sale world is your oyster.
About once an hour, he and she would come back and show off their treasures before heading back out for rounds 2-4. The highlight of PL’s day was finding a tiki lamp; don’t ask me why. The lowlight was the complete and total lack of broken electronic equipment for dismantling. Seems our neighbors don’t save and then attempt to sell or give away broken items. Oooh, aren’t we hoity-toity.
Isn’t there some kind of unwritten garage sale law that requires all broken motors, yard machines and consumer electronics to be stored in an old cardboard box until the next garage sale date? How’s a boy supposed to learn how stuff works if he can’t take stuff apart?
“I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.” – Luke Skywalker, Star Wars IV: A New Hope
Fellow homeschooler M-T’s Mom and I are taking a van full of kids to a science and engineering career expo today. This is a huge expo, with kids coming from around the state; last year over 15,000 kids showed up. Our group is pretty excited about seeing all the displays and the demonstrations. I’m sure it’ll be worth the five hours that we’re going to be trapped in a moving box. Thankfully, I won’t be the one driving.
One of the big draws for me is that Dad Windu’s alma mater is putting it on and they don’t do anything halfway. The careers that they’ll be emphasizing are robotics, space exploration and travel, and special effects for the movie industry because, let’s be honest, those are the fields that are sexiest to most 13-18 year olds. But there’ll be a good number of “regular” science and engineering careers represented as well. I’m looking forward to seeing if anyone tries to make the waste water treatment process hip and exciting.
“I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn’t allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars IV: A New Hope
So, to avoid any confusion about the real purpose of an education, Chancellor Michelle Rhee, the Mayor of D.C. and (no surprise here) an economist from show.me.the.money Harvard… The schools of Washington, D.C. have replaced the idea of education being its own reward with a paycheck. “Here, kid, here’s a dollar. Now shut up and learn.”
A little background music before you call me elitist: I grew up poor. Sometimes quite seriously poor. Didn’t always know if we were going to be eating tonight poor. So, no, I didn’t grow up financially “privileged”. I did, however, grow up knowing what real education was – inquisitive, ever present, alive, essential. It was shown daily in my equally poor school district from grades K-9 and from my mom. (Grades 10-12 were at a different school district and were absolutely dismal.) So, yes, I was privileged in that sense. I had the chance to learn early on that learning is what gives the world color, meaning and joy. Money, of which few of us had any, was considered nice, even admitted to be essential for the basics, but limiting. Yes, limiting. Trapping. Confining. Unless put under your own firm control, so as not to begin controlling you and your own desires.
I went on to a good state university and earned (and simultaneously earned the money to pay for) two advanced degrees. After a decade or so in the rehabilitation world, I currently earn $0 an hour. I teach for no paycheck, but the fringe benefits are fabulous. I still, decades later, absolutely love to learn: about everything, all the time. I live for the moments that I see Padawan Learner really digging into something, lapping up details and waking up talking about books he wants to get from the library. Mythbusters, the History Channel, and Wallace and Grommit have all been springboards into new worlds. Timelines, geometry and even diagraming sentences have all spilled over into new understanding and growth. These are not things he learns because of the dollar value attached to them. The three of us are considered middle class. Dad Windu has a profession and makes a fair wage, but money is still considered a tool, not a goal, to me.
Education is, ultimately, never about our earning potential, but about OUR learning potential.
HT to Chris at Odonnell Web for putting this up today.
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Secular Homeschoolers Unite!
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