Eclectic Amateur

New blog! (OK, not that new, but I'm slow...)

Our friend Mary Lund is now blogging at A Homestead Daughter about her life as, well... it's pretty obvious from the title, now isn't it?

Labels: agrarian, friends and family, homeschooling, Michigan

Today is the one-year anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Address.

As part of our homeschool co-op responsibilities, I find myself about to teach a class on logic.

Using Son #1 as a guinea pig for the class, I ran through the intro with him last night, and needed to find some explanation of why logic and reason matter, and most especially, why they should matter to us as Christians.

My shower-powered inspiration this morning was that I've already seen such an explanation, and just need to look up Regensburg. It was a nice coincidence to find out that today is the talk's anniversary.

Go, read. It's more lucid (and more important) than anything I have to say.

Labels: Catholic, homeschooling, Logic

Another stealth homeschooling endorsement:

The mindset that leads to consolidation in agriculture, so evident in the chicken business, has also taken place to an alarming degree in human culture, especially in consolidated schooling. Just as we herd more animals into confinement buildings, we herd more children into classrooms. Then we have little choice but to follow the rule of the chicken factory: one size fits all. And we justify both kinds of concentration camps with that all-American article of faith: it's cheaper per unit; we can't afford to do otherwise. Then we wonder why we must de-beak the chickens and frisk schoolchildren for firearms.

From All Flesh Is Grass, by Gene Logsdon (p. 137)

Labels: agrarian, homeschooling

Seen on a local homeschool email list (names withheld to protect the guilty):

Mom #1: .., it is always refreshing to hear about other homeschoolers losing steam these last few days/weeks. Shall we just move school outside and forget the cleaning?

Mom #2: That's exactly what we did today! :-) Too beautiful to stay inside. We read together on the lawn, worked on grammar, and the kids bossed each other around in Latin ... homeschooling at its bestest. :-)

Labels: homeschooling

Quick! What wild-eyed, harebrained, impractical radical recently made this statement to the press?

The U.S. educational system, K through 12, has essentially failed.

If you guessed co-founder of Intel (and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner) Gordon Moore,you would be right. Here's the context from the interview:

EET: Craig Barrett [who in May will become Intel's next chairman, replacing Andrew Grove] has been talking a lot lately about the problems in our educational system. What do you think?

Moore: The U.S. educational system, K through 12, has essentially failed. Our universities seem to be the envy of the world, but even there we are not getting the number of foreign students we used to get. And they tend to go home [after getting a degree], whereas they used to stay.

Yet Another Reason to Homeschool™, I think.

To be fair, Moore is not actually endorsing homeschooling here. He's "just" diagnosing the existing K-12 system as fundamentally broken.

Labels: homeschooling

Being a homeschooling dad definitely forces me to retain the "Eclectic Amateur" title. How else could it be, when in the same weekend I end up having to explain both the intricacies of presidential primary mechanics and help with tabulating and calculating body mass ratios for various dinosaurs for my eight-year old?

Bringing those two things together, has anyone else noticed that while the Political Graveyard exists for dead political dinosaurs (thanks to the good work of Larry Kestenbaum), there does not seem to exist a similar site to catalog dinosaur fossils? Am I the only one who thinks that it would be a nice resource to have available on the web for questions like "how many Diplodocus skeletons have actually been found? How complete were they? What was their size variation? Where were they found and where are they now?" As far as I can tell, these are questions whose answers can not be Googled and seem to require Serious Research from Serious Professional Paleontologists to answer.

Labels: homeschooling

How many rocks did CBS have to turn over to find a case of "homeschooled" kids dying from neglect?

How much coverage have they given Terri Schiavo?

And which one of these stories is front page right now at cbsnews.com?

Screwtape and friends must be working overtime.

God have mercy.

Labels: Culture of Death, homeschooling

I'm currently reading The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer, and found this gem:

Look at the general state of peace, joy, and sexual fulfillment at the average high school and ask: Is this what I want my teen to be socialized to?

Labels: homeschooling

"Mommy, you're the best homeschool mommy in the world!"

-- David, today.

Today was the first day of formal homeschooling for the year. I guess the kids are excited. :)

And it was wonderful going to the Project Grow potluck/meeting tonight and being told how happy and relaxed our kids seemed to be. Not that we're doing this for public affirmation, but it's great to hear some positive feedback once in a while.

Labels: homeschooling

... to find that the NEA thinks homeschooling is awful.

I especially love this part:

Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used.

In other words, go ahead and educate your children at home, but you have to do it our way.

I guess they're just sore because it's now become news when it's not a homeschooler that wins the National Spelling Bee. (Congratulations to Pratyush Buddiga on that accomplishment.)

Ah, well. The only thing more I can think to say to this kind of nonsense is to quote my son David: "Na na na na boo-boo!" Will not! So there! Can't make me!

Labels: homeschooling

Are parents boycotting public schools?, asks Wendy McElroy. We sure are. So are many of my coworkers and neighbors. My highly unscientific and ancecdotal take is that many is becoming most, at least in my circles.

Labels: homeschooling