Central Indiana Homeschool

D. Weinberger has a fascinating post regarding how the exchange of information at the speed of light has changed our understanding of the world.

We used to believe that the world was divided into those who believe the truth and those who don’t. Our job was to convert them, kill them, or let them live their lives peacefully unaware they were about to plummet into an eternity of fire for believing the wrong things.

Then we were able to communicate at the speed of light rather than at the speed of wind, so we learned more about other cultures. At least some of us grudgingly concluded that those other people were entitled to their contrary beliefs. The world, we admitted, was unsatisfyingly relativistic and we attempted the impossible task of believing that beliefs for which we were willing to die were no better than their contradictions. Different strokes for different belief systems.

Then the Internet happened and the world fell into conversation. It’s no longer a matter of getting reports back on the strange beliefs of distant lands — “Why, in China crickets are considered to be smart and monkeys to be dumb…Believe it or not!” — but an immediate awareness that we’re all living within a single conversation space. We may not actually be IM’ing Chinese Communists or Jihadists, but we at least know that what’s being said in one corner of the Web is being refracted elsewhere. And we know that we can pick up the Skype phone and actually talk with a Communist. Where there aren’t actual conversations, there is now the constant awareness of the potential for conversation.

Read the whole thing here.

And, “transformative potential of deep connectivity”? Well, it’s an interesting read, whatever it means.

His explication of knowledge as neverending conversation resonates deeply with the kind of discourse that sits at the center of political behavior. The image of the town meeting, in which all are given the opportunity to express their points of view embodies that political discourse for me. In those conversations, minds are changed, knowledged re-formed, relationships deepened. This is why I believe in the transformative potential of deep connectivity.

And Savage Minds elaborates:

Weinberger is something of an Internet utopianist, so his post leans heavily on new technologies that have provided conduits for the wide transmission of ideas—as he says, you may not be IM’ing Chinese Communists or Jihadists, but the conversations others are having in out-of-the-way corners of the network are refracting through the whole. But I think his comments can be abstracted from the technology issue to encompass a way of looking at social communication in general. As noted here and elsewhere, the model of cultures as bounded entities is highly unsatisfactory as a way of looking at the modern world (and possibly of looking at human history at any point).

Here is an interesting list, from the Bluedorns of the Trivium Pursuit curriculum.

1. Reading & Writing Intensive Phonics; Copywork; start English Language Notebook
2. Oral Narration Daily
3. Memorization Bible; poetry; passages of literature; Greek and/or Hebrew alphabet
4. Hearing & Listening Read aloud 2 hours per day from a variety of fiction and nonfiction; start History Notebook; timeline
5. Family Worship Family Bible study morning and evening using grammar level questions
6. Arts & Crafts Provide the time, space, and materials; develop creativity
7. Field Trips & Library Start learning elementary library research; investigate the world
8. Work & Service Schedule for chores; visit nursing home, etc.
9. Discipline First-time obedience
10. Play & Exploration Develop the imagination

(Via Spunky)

If you haven’t seen the ruling from the 9th Circuit on parents rights regarding their own children in public school, check it out over at Myopic Zeal. This is from the ruling:

We agree, and hold that there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students.
…

It further concluded that the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of one’s children does not encompass the right “to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs.”

Turns out, there is some scientific debunkery to the urban legend of cow tipping.

A cow of 1.45 metres in height pushed at an angle of 23.4 degrees relative to the ground would require 2,910 Newtons of force, equivalent to 4.43 people, she wrote.

April Wood, a Discovery Toys Senior Education Consultant who advertises on this blog, has a post up which is something we would all do well to remember.

Good toys, books, games and software, carefully selected, can enhance and direct a child’s physical, social, emotional and intellectual growth.

and…

Play is the language of children… and the right educational products are their words!

One of my all time favorite products is the Discovery Toys Super Marbleworks set, which they have repackaged as the Marbleworks Starter Set. Check it out at her shopping site and buy them for your kids, nieces, nephews and grandchildren this holiday season!!

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine has an interview this month with Douglas Gresham. I am puttin an excerpt of one of his answers here for your consideration and comment, as it is an extremely interesting perspective.

TOS: What is your opinion of homeschooling and how did you reach that opinion?

Gresham: Homeschooling and why I advocate it is not a matter of whether the schools are good or bad, though obviously I would rather children went to good schools than bad ones, if go to school they must. It is that, as someone who has been trained and worsk in the field of post-childhood abuse trauma, and has devoted considerable thought to the matter, I have formed the opinion that the entire concept of school is flawed. In fact, it is a terrible mistake.

Look what we do: we observer what God has designed, a pair of parents, one of each sex, and two pairs of grandparents, often with a few aunts and uncles thrown in. In fact, a Family. This is the unit designed by God Himself for the specific purpose and ministry of raising each new generation.

Then what do we do? We take the child and remove him from this carefullly designed support group of parents and close family members, all of whom share a genetic bond with the child, and plunge him into a mass group of his peers, all of whom are as ignorant and as demanding as he is, with one adult stranger supervising. In terms of the psycho-emotional development of the child, this is complete madness.

A child is best nurtured by having the one-on-one attention from each of the two parents for a specfici period of time each day. Ideally, a child should be homeschooled by both parents sharing the task equally, though I do realize that this is not always possible. Bear in mind that I am not referring to idiotic parents, criminal parents, drug addicted parents, or self-indulgent, self-obsessed parents, nor to anyone else who should never be graced (in my view, not God’s, of course) with progeny in the first place. I am referring to normal, well-adjusted, good parents. And with our modern habits of sending children away from their home and families for the better part of every day, these [well-adjusted parents] are becoming more and more scarce as the vast majority of people are damaged or scarred emotionally and intellectually themselves by being exiled from their hom and parents and placed in the hands of strangers at a young age.

It is a transgenerational progression exacerbated by the fact that those who are damaged very often are not even aware of it. If I had known back then what I know now, my children would never have gone to school until they were at least 18 years old. [snip] As far as I’m concerned, schools are for fish.

Amy has some further thoughts on this.