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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Anakin Skywalker: “She programmed Artoo to warn us if there’s an intruder.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi: “There are many other ways to kill a Senator.”
Anakin Skywalker: “I know, but we also want to catch this assassin. Don’t we, Master?”
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
If you haven’t been yet, secular homeschoolers might want to go check out the Secular Homeschool website run by Topsy-Techie (sigh, how I do miss her blog). The forums are friendly and lively, but without the ever increasing flaming I got tired of seeing on another (very large) homeschooling website tied to a famous homeschooling method of the same name. Yeah, that one. An added bonus is a lack of “the argument for creationism” and “evolution is just a theory” threads that made me want to toss my computer across the room.
One that had me thinking today was about textbooks – and how they have gotten a real stink attached to their very being. Being lazy, but still thinking it was worth sharing, here’s my 2c on the topic – as copied from here.
There is no One Right Way
I wonder why there is often such strong feelings about textbooks versus non-textbooks.
They’re just books; some we find useful and some we find useless. Some books engage our imagination, some are strictly “just the facts, ma’am.” Some are luscious, some are dry. I don’t read the news – online or in print – because I’m looking to experience something. I read for a bit of information. When I want a more rounded, interesting look at something I read National Geographic or Smithsonian. If I want to immerse myself in the topic completely, I head to the library and immerse myself in minutia. I’m reading two books by John McWhorter right now – burying myself in the details of English grammar and the evolution of written language. I’ll probably recommend them to Padawan Learner, despite the fact that I know it’s not a real interest of his, because I find them so interesting. He just wants to know where to put a semicolon so he doesn’t have to rewrite any sentences in his online writing class. Furthermore, he’ll continue to recommend coding websites, because he finds them interesting, when all I want to know is how to keep my sidebars from going wonky.
Sometimes I get the impression that people don’t consider my son a real unschooler/self-directed learner/free-range learner (Topsy’s son’s term – and my personal favorite) because he uses textbooks as the base for the science and maths that he’s currently learning. Why? Isn’t the goal to learn the things that we both need and/or want to know? Of course it is. If learning about mummies, the goal really probably shouldn’t be to mummify a chicken. The goal should be to learn about mummification. Mummified chickens are cool or nasty or just plain weird – depending on who you ask. No right way to learn about mummies.
A friend doesn’t consider herself “a very good Charlotte Mason” homeschooler (despite her best efforts) because her kids want to cut to the chase and just grab an American History textbook instead of having so many different activities/books/tie-ins involved. Deep down, she admits, a few of her kids don’t really think history of any kindis all that interesting – no matter what she does – but she can’t bring herself to “give up” on her educational beliefs and buy a textbook to meet what she feels is a basic educational requirement for her American homeschoolers. Now, the goal is to know American History – and her kids ARE learning about it – but would their learning be any less if they learned it from the pages of a textbook? Does rendering lard make for better citizens or just better cornbread? No one right way to learn American History.
Textbooks are often accused of being dull, of crushing interest, of being needlessly rigid. And they can be, if you don’t like the textbook or the author’s methods of explaining things or are prejudiced against textbooks in general. But keep this little picture in your mind: my best friends’ husband (a bright and wonderful man) has kept all his college math textbooks because he likes to re-read them…for fun. She says that he once started chuckling to himself in bed one night while reading a geometry text and she (the math-hater) asked him why. His response was, “I just can’t believe the author went about making his proof this way. *chuckle, chuckle, chuckle* It would be much easier to do X, Y & Z instead.” Whatever floats your boat, I guess. No one right way to be entertained either.
Melissa in Oz, commented that CM isn’t the same as unit studies. Which is closer to what I described above, so I thought I should include my response, as well. Just to be accurate.
You’re right, Melissa. They’re not the same, and I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clearer.
I thought about that later – she calls what she does CM, but ties a lot of unit studies in as well (especially for her youngest ones). I thought of her though because she’s always talking about books like I remember CM writing about them. No twaddle, boring textbooks, only living books (a term, I admit, that I find condescending). She does focuses on spending time in nature, working on nature journals, and using “real books” in place of academic – aka, boring – books. I should have noted that she’s more eclectic in reality than she self-identifies.
I would like to note that I have a high regard for the multitudes of approaches to teaching children – I swear, I’ve probably tried them all over the years – and the various ways adults go about helping their children learn. I believe we do ourselves, our children, and the larger world of learning a disservice when we write off any sub-category of books as unnecessary or – worse, detrimental – to learning or achievement. My son learned to read, on his own and largely without my assistance, because of Calvin & Hobbes at the age of 4. He’s not a wunderkind, just a boy that wanted – desperately – to know what that spiky-haired boy and tiger were saying to each other. A series of cartoons, the horror. Complete and total twaddle, but it was the key to opening the doors to reading for my son and many other highly visual kids.
I learned the basics of physchology in highschool because I saw a used textbook at a book sale and thought, 25 cents? You bet. It’s wasn’t an involved read, but it was thorough discussion of the topic and gave me a desire to know more, fueling my decision to take a few courses in it during my undergrad years. Not a career in it, not a passion for it, but a definite interest.
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.
Padme: ”You’re a funny little boy. How do you know so much?”
Anakin Skywalker: ”I listen to all the traders and star pilots who come through here. I’m a pilot, you know, and someday I’m going to fly away from this place.”
Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
There’s so much to learn in the brief time that I have here on Earth. Even if I lived to be 120, 150, 200 years old, I would still run out of time for learning all about all that interests me. I remember being Padawan Learner’s age and thinking that I would probably be able to learn everything that I wanted and needed to learn by the time I got out of university. I didn’t understand why anyone would ever get a Master’s Degree or Ph.D. I mean, like, ohmygod , didn’t they totally have anything better to do with their time?
I must officially be getting old, because I’ve recently begun wishing that I had more time for learning about all the interesting things in the world. There are the things I must know more about: such as, running our household more efficiently and reducing unnecessary expenses; things I want to know more about: such as, astronomy, history, classical literature, a handful of languages and where to get a chocolate croissant in Paris; and things that I don’t even know that I’m going to want to know about someday.
So, I do what I can. Not having traders and star pilots to talk with, I read and read and read. I read for knowledge and I read for entertainment. And I hope that, when all is said and done, I have passed that love of reading on to Padawan Learner. You can see what I’ve read recently and what I’m reading now at the page titled The Holocron, up above. As you can see there, I read my first Agatha Christie novel this summer and I’m finding them quite entertaining.
Han Solo: ”We don’t have time to discuss this as a committee.”
Princess Leia: ”I am not a committee.”
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
Vander Kitten has shown two of my favorite traits, the courage to ask questions and the courtesy to do it well. She writes:
What about discussion with other learners? I tend to learn most when interacting with others, and hearing the questions they come up with.
I hope you don’t think I’m jumping on this because I disapprove. You of course don’t need or seek my approval. Instead, I’m in such awe of what you and PL are doing, that I just want to learn all I can about it.
Did you see how she did that? She asked her question, giving it a personal touch, and then followed the question up with a softening clarifier, which shows that she’s all too aware of the risk that someone might misinterpret her tone as judgmental. Now, I know for a fact that Vander Kitten isn’t like that in any way, but it was still a mighty kind thing to do regardless.
First, I’m really sorry, Vander Kitten. I have been meaning to answer this for the last week, but just haven’t taken the time to do so.
Second, I agree. Discussion – even a heated discussion – is one of the greatest ways to learn something. I really have to talk things out to make sense of complex ideas. Dad Windu might say I have to talk things to death, but that’s a different issue.
So yes, we do a lot of discussing between the three of us – as we read, watch or hear about things we discuss them in varying degrees of detail, sometimes once and sometimes again and again. Obviously, a fair share of the discussions between PL and I have to do with our formal learning, but we also do a lot of just talking about “stuff”. Stuff meaning things we see on the Discovery or History Channel, movies that we watch, Science Friday on NPR, books on tape, family/friend conversations, and the assorted things that we wonder about that are just rolling around in our brains. I know that you were probably thinking of other students his age, but remember that I’m doing a lot of learning right along side of him, so we’re often discussing and debating what we think something means or has meant. We had a great talk a couple of weeks ago about why the verbs “to be”, “to have” and “to eat” are irregular in languages that conjugate verbs (such as the English, Dutch and Latin languages that we’re studying).
PL and I were talking yesterday afternoon about the different “histories” you get from a variety of biographies of the same person. He had just finished reading a couple of biographies about Mozart and said, “I think it’s really interesting that each of these books is about Mozart, but each author picked a different thing to focus on. So even though they’re all about the same man, you only see the parts of his life that each author thought was most interesting or important. Why do you think people pick one thing over another? How do they decide what to include and to exclude? What makes someone decide that someone else’s life is worth writing about anyway?” Now that’s a discussion! (It was excellent, by the way, and although it pushed one of my planned lessons completely aside, I didn’t mind in the least.)
More to your intent, PL and his friends talk about what they’ve been learning frequently, asking questions and bringing up points from their own learning in the same subject or related topics. I’ve been really pleased to see how they are willing to challenge each other’s assumptions, while also letting someone have the time necessary to draw his thoughts out. From some other hs’d kids down the road, he’s also learning to hear someone else’s (crazy) ideas and decide when to push a point and when to let it go. That’s a lesson that’s best learned early, in my opinion. 
He also goes to a monthly book club at B&N, where he discusses books (and ideas and games and movie adaptations) with anyone else that shows up. Our librarian, one of the hippest male librarians ever, is always pulling him aside to talk about new books that are in, or “Does this book sound interesting?”, or about what we’re studying and what topics PL wishes there was more info about.
So discussion, it’s a really big part of our lives and our learning.
“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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