Classical Homeschooling Carnival

Classical Homeschooling Carnival. Only three entries, including one by yours truly at the request of our carnival hostess, Ritsume, at Ritsume Thoughts.  Good reading.

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Carnival!

Check it out here.

David Hicks, Part IV of the Prologue

In one of Miss Mason's six volumes on education, she discusses the books her students read, and then says something about how the list is suggestive, indicating the fashion in which one good book full of ideas makes one think of others, which will only lead to others. In the same way, David Hicks' work gets me ruminating about ideas I've picked up from other writers, which led me to other writers, which led me to others (I have no original thoughts, my brain is simply a grab bag of eclectic shiny objects I picked up, magpie like, from my scattered, unorganized lifetime reading list).
What I love about Cindy's comments on this book, and any topic really, is how tight they are, how cogent and coherent. She drops her bucket in the deepest section of the well and brings up cold, refreshing drafts full of nourishing minerals. For this reason, I have chosen to read section IV of the prologue first, and then write about it before I go read Cindy's cooler, more focused, and no doubt deeper thoughts.

Me, I skim the top in a skiff with a net and periodically get distracted by the damsel flies and other shiny objects flittering about the air, and you have to sift through a seemingly unrelated collection of thoughts. But here I go with my butterfly net:

 Wikipedia offers this working definition of the word normative: "In philosophy, normative statements affirm how things should or ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or bad, which actions are right or wrong."

The normative, says David Hicks, is about the *ought to* of life, and it leads to a self-transforming ideal by way of hard work.

Our current mode of education favors what Hicks calls the operational, a utilitarian approach which stops with the question of what 'can' be done and never gets to the ought to.  Indeed, it largely rejects such high standards and the serious personal introspection of the sort calculated to develop that sense of 'ought to.'


 I think this utilitarianism is so widespread and so much a part of our culture- in the air we breathe, even-  that it is difficult for all of us  to recognize it in the first place, or to see the wider implications if we do manage to spot it.

Consider Hicks' example of declining verbal test scores, which we would all agree is a bad thing.  But in most cases, the 'remedies' proposed for this would involve workbook pages and exercises, increased time on the nebulously named 'communication skills'- which might improve the test scores, but do not address the real problem, which Hicks reveals for us.  Declining verbal scores:

not only indicate a failing in communication skills, but a growing inability and unwillingness to think reasonably and to carry on an intelligent dialogue with the past.

Think about that a minute, and see if you get the same sickening sensation I do.  Because do you realize that this means our 'solutions' not only really do not help, but  further entrench the problem and cripple our children?  It's like cutting off the hydra's head, two more grow back for every one you whack off.

 Hercules found the way to defeat the hydra was to cauterize. 

Hicks says our modern schools give the impression that the primary purpose of good communication skills is utilitarian- as a tool for high test scores, and for a good job.

He doesn't point this out explicitly, but one of the flaws in this utilitarian approach is that it may well lead a perspicacious child to conclude that it's a waste of his time- if he has no desire to get good test scores and believes that he is going into a vocation where merely adequate communication skills are  more than good enough, why should he waste his time on these studies?  I have heard adults make similar arguments, after all.

Hicks points out that there is a transcendant value to speaking and writing clearly:

To what extent can man be a sentient, moral creature without the ability to communicate clearly with others and with his culural past?  Can there be true independence of thought without masteryof language?  In what way is man's verbal ineptitude a barrier to his knowledge of himself and of the world and of what lies beyond the reach of his five senses?

Charlotte Mason wrote on this topic as well.  She pointed out that even that most seemingly utilitarian of disciplines, science should not be merely utilitarian, as

"The utility of scientific discoveries does not appeal to the best that is in us, though it makes pretty urgent and general appeal to our lower avidities. But the fault is not in science...- But in our presentation of it by means of facts and figures and demonstrations that mean no more to the general audience than the point demonstrated, never showing the wonder and magnificent reach of the law unfolded."

And in one of her Parents' Review letters to the editor (from 1874), Sir Arthur Quiller Couch is quoted thusly:

A distinguished pedagogue once observed that boys are usually amenable to reason, masters sometimes, parents never. I take it, he had his eye on the modern parent, who imagines technical instruction to be an excellent substitute for education, and that the study of the humanities can be profitably replaced by Sir. Isaac Pitman's Shorthand. Education, which converts 'the small apple-eating urchin, whom we know' into an orderly citizen, respecting himself and his neighbour, is a gradual process not easily tested by examination papers. Technical instruction is far brisker, is quite easily tested, and produces the pleasantest immediate results in the shape of hard cash. The parent fascinated by these cheap advantages, is generally ill to deal with...

This focus on technical instruction over education has been the case for so long that we don't even recognize what it is we have been steeped in or all the other areas where  utilitarianism has seeped through.

David McCullough (author of the wonderful book John Adams) said in his excellent speech on history:

An old friend, the late Daniel Boorstin, who was a very good historian and Librarian of Congress, said that trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers. We’re raising a lot of cut flowers and trying to plant them...

My reading of Hicks here also made me think of Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red, by Harry Kemelman, which I posted about here. Learning, says the Rabbi, is not a spade to dig with, and if he were devising exams, "devise an examination that would indicate interest rather than just information."  As Charlotte Mason said the question to ask in determining the quality of an education is not just how much does the child know, but how much does he care?

And of course, you cannot read Hicks without being reminded of Richard Mitchell, or wishing that other people had read enough of him to be reminded of him, particularly his book The Gift of Fire.  As I wrote here:

One of Mitchell's concern about education as we have it is that it's not really education anymore. It's glorified vocational training. That's the direct fruit of a utilitarian approach to education, and what it produces isn't an education, but schooling. This is the source of the short-sighted, side-stepping question, "When will we ever have to know this stuff?" What we mean is generally, 'Do I need to know this to have a job or to pay my bills?' Schooling is important, and there are many vocational type skills that it is useful to have (keyboarding, arithmetic, basic literacy). But Mitchell suggests there is something more to education:

It is power over the inner world, the ability to know and judge the self and to do something about it. It is not, therefore, the same as whatever it is that gives us power over the outer world, the stubborn public world of Nature and Necessity. The two powers neither preclude each other nor include each other. In any mind, either may exist alone, both may exist, and, of course, in any mind, both may be absent.

The two powers are not exactly equal counterparts, however, for the power over the inner world can make judgment of the power over the outer world. By the latter, we can do something; by the former, we can decide whether we should do what we can do.

And while we seem to have come circle and come back up with can versus ought again, in actuality, we never left.  We have been picking it up and turning it over, examining it from different angles.

And, luckily for y'all, I had a lot more to say, but this post has been cut short (believe it or not), by a biggish grass fire Granny Tea accidentally started next door, and by the news fifteen minutes prior to that, that the Little Boys will be here shortly.=)

For further study, see A Month With Charlotte Mason at Dewey's Treehouse.

Extreme Extremities in their Angry Angriness. Plus the Pick-Up Trucks of Hatredness

This is one of the funniest parodies I have ever seen.  Please, please, please watch it.

CPSIA Amendment Proposed

I got distracted and missed a couple issues I really should have been writing about here.  For those new readers who may not be up to speed on this- last year a new 'safety' law went into effect.  It's called the CPSIA and it was widely touted as an anti-lead, safe toys law that would stop those dangerous toys being imported from China, blah, blah.  Well, it was never about toys from China.  It's anti-business, anti-child, anti-common sense, pro bureaucratic red tape law that does not increase safety for children.  Children's books printed before 1985 are now illegal to sell for the use of children 12 and under unless you spend a lot of money for expensive testing that destroys the book anyway.  That's just one of many hideous problems with this law.  Click on the label CPSIA at the bottom of this post to read more about it.

Waxman, who happens to be the biggest obstacle to fixing the law, has made a few proposals to 'fix' it, and if you've been following this issue, you know this is much like letting Wile E. Coyote propose some changes to the laws for the purpose of increased Roadrunner safety, except that Waxman has an inappropriate amount of real power and the thuggish disposition to abuse that privilege.

Today is the last day to comment on Wile E. Waxman's Roadrunner safety proposals- you can read them here.


But before you comment,  you should read:

CPSIA - Duplicity and Sleight of Hand in the Waxman Amendment

as well as a few other things by the diligent and insightful Rick Woldenberg, whose direct experience in a business badly injured by the CPSIA and his ability to write clearly on these issues is absolutely invaluable.

So click on the link above and read carefully, then, if you have time, come back here to read further.  We'll wait for you.

  Take this post on the current make-up of the five member CPSC Committee, for instance:

Of course, there is far less need to open up or listen when control of the outcome is certain. Debate becomes a kind of charade mainly for public consumption. As has been apparent in the health care debate, frustration builds quickly when absolute power is used coercively. I heard someone on CNBC refer to the process leading to the passage of that bill as "dictating, not governing". This kind of resentment of the CPSC is also mounting as the "have not's" in the regulated community find themselves with fewer and fewer options. We did not sign up for a dictatorship.

This is a sad reflection of the increasingly polarized world that followed Mr. Waxman into his Chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. He governs by "take it or leave it" as in his two CPSIA amendments. This is not the only way to get things done, however, as the Dingell era demonstrated.

Remember when we were being assured by Congress, the press, and a few trusting souls that small resellers of used items had nothing to fear, the CPSC wasn't going to be going after the likes of such small fish? Obama appointed a new head of the Commission to replace the much maligned Nancy Nord:

Remember the words of Inez Tenenbaum: "'CPSC’s new authority to seek higher civil penalties does not mean we will ignore serious violations by small businesses,' said CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum. 'We will continue to take enforcement action against any business, large or small, that violates the Commission’s product safety laws and regulations.'"

And the market reality for the resale industry today? Ask the National Association of Resale & Thrift Stores: "NARTS members have reported significant increases in both sales and incoming inventory, according to NARTS, but those that sold children's products did not fare as well with 44.2 percent experiencing a decrease in sales due to the challenges of complying with the consumer act of 2008."

You'll find more on the poisonous back room politics of Tennenbaum here.

The Shop Floor suggests the following Woldenberg posts:

“CPSIA - Comments & Observations.” Chairman Waxman has at least acknowledge that the law is flawed, Woldenberg writes, but he sharply criticizes the draft’s omissions and failings. From “CPSIA - The New Waxman Amendment Analyzed,“:

CRITICAL ISSUES are absent and unaddressed in this legislation. Examples:

• Risk Assessment by the CPSC and/or the Commission.
• Changes in age limits for the lead standards and phthalates ban.
• Narrowing of the scope of “Children’s Product” to eliminate many categories of products unthinkingly pulled into this law by its overly broad language.
• True reform to protect small businesses.
• Tracking labels relief.

All valid points.
More from Woldenberg:

• CSPIA - Treatment of Resale Goods under the Waxman Amendment
• CPSIA - Treatment of Section 101(b)(2) in the New Waxman Amendment

 You will also want to give this letter to Congress from Commissioner Anne Northrup a careful reading as she explains the folly of requiring excessive and expensive labeling on products that do not pose any risk to the health of children, among other things.

Recycling

Somebody commenting on this post asked for my sources on recycling (which was a fair request.  I'd lost part of my map of links during a computer crash and had been lazy about rebuilding that post).  So here is the path I believe I followed for that post on recycling:

 I started my rabbit trail at Coyote Blog, in this post,- I don't present the post as conclusive, I am simply sharing my own starting point. I suggest reading the post and the comments.

Then I went to Sippican Cottage, this post- it was actually a response to a previous post where he'd said this (and other things worth thinking about):

"I've done more recycling than forty-five Ed Begleys, so I'll clue you in on a little secret: after you sort through your trash like a raccoon and put it on the curb to try to resurrect Bambi's mom through clean living, it all gets thrown in a landfill when you're not looking. It's a kabuki theater, not a real process."

Naturally, people challenged him on it, so he clarified (this is from the post I linked above):

""All" recycled stuff is not landfilled, but an enormous portion of it is, and it is "all" thrown in together after they make you sort it out. And of course, it might get incinerated instead of buried, but the point stands. According to the video I'll post at the end of today's drivel, the New York Department of Sanitation says 40 percent of what you sort for recycling ends up all dumped together in the landfill. I suspect it's way more than that now, because in the current economic climate coupled with high gas prices, the price of collecting and hauling all that trash around has skyrocketed, and the price for the raw materials they would yield has plummeted. As I said, metal and a few other things are worth recycling. The rest is nonsense, and not just unproductive, but counterproductive."

Well, how does he know this? He lists this experience:

"Division Manager for a large Environmental and Construction company before. We built landfills occasionally, so I knew for a fact that the recycling maven in the upcoming video was full of unrecycled merde when he says a landfill is just a hole in the ground with a 1/16" diaper in the bottom, well before Penn and Teller visited one and disproved it. And me and all the dozens of employees that worked for me, including a few environmental scientists, had all sorts of training and the resultant credentials to handle all sorts of waste. I've had hardcore RCRA training. I doubt anyone else I've mentioned has. And I've had profit and loss responsibility for the safe disposal of beaucoup tonnage of wood, glass, metals, plastics, paper, cardboard, soil, contaminated soil, concrete, bituminous concrete, tile, asbestos, lead, waste oil..."

And then he suggests this experiment:

"Now bundle up your newspapers from the last thirty years, or all your milk jugs, or all your coffee grinds, or whatever floats your boat. Now I want you to start driving from recycling center to recycling center, paper mill to paper mill -- all those places you currently imagine are just dying to get your assorted sorted stuff -- and try to find someone that won't charge you to accept it."

Very interesting. I also recommend the comments, including one from Jim, who says that his uncle was able to make recycling pay, but only because of:

"...the fortuitous location of the township. If there weren't three unusual sorts of industrial facilities nearby, the recycling of metals and plastics would not have made much sense. Second, the recycling efforts worked because it made economic sense. The biggest plague - plastics and petroleum by-products - is hard to dispose of, and my uncle got lucky finding a Canadian plant that wanted things like old tires, plastic bags, and low density plastics too. A lot of municipalities will not have such a fortunate location, and the shipping costs to a facility that uses these materials will make cost of recycling prohibitive. "

And this, from a Mr. Dart (I loved this story):

"We moved to our little unincorporated area in 2005. The trash hauler came out to see me personally when I called him to set up service. We sat on my porch rockers and had a pleasant conversation about many topics.


Finally I asked him if he also picked up recycling. He said he could pick it up weekly for an extra fee. But, he added, nobody will buy any of it from him these days so it all just goes to the same place as the other trash. I said, so you offer the service... why? He said that he found that a lot of people moving in from up north paid for it even though he told them what he told me. Said they do it to feel good about themselves or sumpthin'.


I elected not to go through the dance. Recycling never made me feel better about myself anyway."

Now, the point of that story is not that recycling is always a waste of time and it always goes to the same place. No, the point is that sometimes stuff does get recycled, but other times, it just gets sorted (by you) and then dumped in the same place (or burned), but some people want to sort their trash anyway because it makes them feel better about themselves. It's the leftwing substitute for religious ritual.

Commenter Sykes.1 explains it this way:

"For the very best discussion of what's in landfills, read William Rathje and Cullen Murphy's "Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage." [at least one other commenter recommended this as well]


Rathje is an archaeologist who digs in landfills. Murphy is a professional writer. While Rathje does not discuss what happens to recycled items, he has a very detailed discussion of the woes and foibles of recycling.


The prices fetched by recycled items vary wildly, and are often negative for extended times. That's when they go to the landfill.


In general, only steel and aluminum have stable, profitable markets. All other recycled items require subsidies.


As to location, the rural county in which I live is about to lose its recycling center because the operator is losing money.


I taught environmental engineering and science for 37 years. The governing rule is that total cost is the best indicator of total environmental impact. If recycling is more expensive than landfill/incineration (the usual case), then it has a bigger, negative environmental impact."

Sippican did a follow up post with the following information:

A recycling center in East El Paso which recycles only about a third of the materials sorted for recycling- the rest go to the landfill.

This link is from a Telegraph UK article, not the USA, but still, it's another interesting point:

Around 240,000 tons of paper, glass and plastic is either dumped or burned after being collected in green bins and bags by local council staff, according to the Local Government Association, which represents town halls across the country. However, the true amount could be much higher as only around half of local authorities submitted their data.

 This is a printable information sheet on what and how to recycle.  There are some interesting points to note here but you do have to read carefully.  Consider plastic recycling: 

Plastic recycling faces one huge problem: plastic types must not be mixed for recycling, yet it is impossible to tell one type from another by sight or touch. Even a small amount of the wrong type of plastic can ruin the melt. The plastic industry has responded to this problem by developing a series of cryptic markers, commonly seen on the bottom of plastic containers. These markers do not mean the plastic can be recycled, these makers do not mean the container uses recycled plastic. Despite the confusing use of the chasing arrow symbol, these markers only identify the plastic type. Virtually everything made of plastic should be marked with a code. Not all types can actually be recycled. Types 1 and 2 are widely accepted in container form, and type 4 is sometimes accepted in bag form. Code 7 is for mixed or layered plastic with little recycling potential. You should place in your bin only those types of plastic listed by your local recycling agency! Due to fluctuating market conditions, some colors or shapes may be useless to the recycling agency.

Now the bins that I have seen do not have you separate your different plastics.  There is just one bin for plastic bottles.  And it turns out that most of them are not recyclable, and those that are will vary with market conditions.  So much of what you sort will end up back in a landfill, it's just that the plastic recycling company will do that, after paying to haul it, ship it, sort it, and so forth.

The square boxes used for liquids are called "Aseptics", the most common brand of which is "Tetra Pak". Aseptics are made from complex layers of plastic, metal and paper. The aseptic industry has spent millions in public education on the issue of aseptic recycling, including distribution of classroom guides and posters like "Drink Boxes are as Good on the Outside as They are on the Inside" and "A Day in the Life of a Drink Box". The actual recycling process, unfortunately, is very expensive and awkward, and is therefore only available in a very few places.

Read the rest and you'll find that while some things are certainly recycled, others you might have assumed were being recycled almost certainly are not, and that recycling only really makes sense economically and all the time for aluminum and some other metals, and clean paper.  It might be done in a few other cases, but it actually costs more to recycle than to throw it out in many cases.

This bit on aseptic packages was interesting:

The square boxes used for liquids are called "Aseptics", the most common brand of which is "Tetra Pak". Aseptics are made from complex layers of plastic, metal and paper. The aseptic industry has spent millions in public education on the issue of aseptic recycling, including distribution of classroom guides and posters like "Drink Boxes are as Good on the Outside as They are on the Inside" and "A Day in the Life of a Drink Box". The actual recycling process, unfortunately, is very expensive and awkward, and is therefore only available in a very few places.

So...  how much of the trash that you rinse and carefully sort into the proper bins actually gets recycled?  Well, we don't know, because it varies by region and with the market.  The way to find out for sure is to call your local garbage collector and ask, and then follow up by paying a visit onsite to see if the garbage is sorted or dumped.

Onigiri, or pressed rice balls

Repost

Following the tutorial here, I used the rest of some rice which I had cooked using liquid from some leftover beef stew to make onigiri for the first time.

The small round, sort of flattish ones worked very well and were wildly popular, but they had no filling. I made those using the mini muffin pans in the background of this picture.  I lined one of the cups of the pan with plastic wrap, giving a generous overlap, spooned the cooked rice into the cup, gathered  the plastic wrap tightly up and twisted it.  The twisting tightened the rice ball, and I flattened it into the pan to give it a good, firm shape that would stick together well.

The ones with filling, which I made using the adorable antique egg cup you see here, sort of fell apart.

For a filling I used leftover smoked salmon, a bit of wasabi mayonnaise, some capers, and some dried onion. I added the dried onion because the filling was a bit moist and I thought the dried onion would absorb it. It did.


Here's one with the filling in progress.

I lined my cup with plastic wrap, wiped the wrap with wet fingers, dusted it with salt, and then spooned in some rice. Then I poked my finger in the center of the rice mound, making a small dent in the rice.  I put a bit of the salmon mixture into the hole, and topped it with more rice.
Then I gathered up the plastic wrap and twisted it, squeezing the rice into a tight ball, and then I shaped the ball into a triangle, pressing it into the angle between thumb and forefinger, shaping, turning, pressing, shaping, turning.

Some of my triangles were a bit wonky, but some of them looked just right.

I tried frying them, but those are the ones that really  just fell to pieces.  I had better results putting them on a sesame oiled cookie sheet, brushing them with soy sauce and sesame oil and putting them under the broiler for a few minutes and then turning them to broil the other side a  another minute or two.

My husband and I loved the salmon filled ones. Pip couldn't stop snacking on the other ones, left on the counter to cool a few minutes before supper.  These are a bit tedious to make, but you can make a lot at once;  they are really inexpensive and very tasty.  If you don't use a fish and mayo filling, they are quite portable, too, making them great foods for picnics, for car trips, and for snacking on at the zoo.

Saran wrap and egg cups- works for me!

Cost: Leftover cooked rice: about a dollar's worth
Can of salmon: 1.25
dab of mayo or wasabi mayo- about .25
The capers were optional- I just happened to have them on hand.
Enough oil and soy sauce to brush the onigiri with: approximately .50 worth
Serve with chili-zucchini-corn salad or whatever fresh veggies or fruit are on sale in your area, and you have the makings of a nice picnic supper.  Grill the Onigiri outside on the grill if you like, but you'll need to be careful not to have them fall apart on the grill.
My recipe for chili-zucchini-corn salad serves 32 people- reduce it down to four servings, and you have a menu well under five dollars.

Be sure to come back on Thursday when the four moms with 35Plus kids ( Kim, Connie, Kimberly and I) share our ideas on family,  budgeting, raising a passle of young'uns, and more!

This post linked at Five Dollar Dinners, A Soft Place to Land (DIY days), and Tasty Tuesdays.
Also at All the Small Stuff, 




Note: I later purchased a kitchen gadget that makes really cute onigiri balls:
Onigiri mold and I like it, too- it's a wee bit quicker than using saran wrap. I dip the molds in a bowl of warm salty water before each use- dip, fill, press, release, dip, fill, press, release.. and I can make three at a time with mine.=)

This post reposted at The Common Kitchen

Apropos of Nothing At All

At our last church there were two deaf old ladies who sat in the back and every week during communion held a whispered discussion about where they were going for lunch after church.


Only.



They weren't whispering.


Even a little.

Bah-da-BING!

The Power to Act, David Hicks and Norms and Nobility Discussion

We have forgotten, Says David Hicks, who we are and what our purpose is, and we cannot teach these things to our children since we neither know or value the answers.

"We have advocated selfish and irresponsible learning and fostered a system of education that must lead this generation of students- unless the neglected wisdom of the ages is as inconsequential as we seem to think it is- into a sure and speedy disaster."

He quotes the science chairman of a prestiguous school:

"To pass the standardized tests in biology my students must memorize results of unobserved experiments and know conclusions based upon unpredicted assumptions and unknown methodologies.  This year I spetn only three weeks on man, and every bit of it was chemistry.  There is simply no time to ask; what is the human value and moral implication of all tis?  How does this touch our lives and increase our understanding of ourselves and of our purposes?"

We should consider, says Hicks, what sort of education it is:

"to avoid knowledge not of the five senses, and to presume mastery over nature but not over himself."

This reminds me of Proverbs 16:32:  He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.   Hicks emphasizes this point in the preface to the 1990 edition of Norms and Nobility, written ten years after first publication (As I quoted at greater length here).  Here he says:

Although in my curriculum proposal I use history as the paradigm for contextual learning, the ethical question "What should one do?" might provide a even richer context for acquiring general knowledge.  This question elicits not only knowledge, but wisdom, and it draws the interest of the student into any subject, no matter how obscure or far removed from his day-today concerns.  It challenges the imagination and makes life the laboratory it ought to be for testing the hypotheses and lessons of the classroom. As this implies, the end of education is not thinking, it is acting. It is not just knowing what to do; it is doing...

 That's the hard part, isn't it?  As Charlotte Mason said, the mark of a really good education is not just how much does a child know, but how much does he care?  We do not act on topics we do not truly care about, do we? 

Cindy, at Ordo Amoris, addresses this hubristic feature of modern education which Hicks points out:

How do we strive for excellence while protecting ourselves and our children from hubris? I think the future of CE or CCE rests on that point. I say future because when we puff ourselves up there is only one way to fall.

But I do think Hicks is offering us a solution. We are to use "...myths, parables, proverbs, histories, laws and philosophies..." to warn our children, to give them pictures and metaphors and maps to follow.

Cindy's discussions of Norms and Nobility are wonderful reading, and one lovely result is to bring U Krakovianki out of her year long silence.  You should read her comments at Cindy's blog and her own.  Here is a taste:

One of the particular points of this discussion (from my perspective, anyway), is to point out where David Hicks' vision of classical education intersects with Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education. In my opinion there is no better book for this job, because it was this book that gave me the first glimmering of how CM's ideas fit into the larger picture.

David Hicks begins to make his case for the importance of normative education, and notes that we have abandoned the normative question (what ought I to do?) for the operational (what can I do?). Anyone familiar with the motto of CM's schools ("I am, I can, I ought, I will") should notice the similarity of the words, and the order in which they occur. I am affirms existence, and I can indicates power to act, but I ought suggests that there are norms/standards by which actions should be governed, and I will is the most important of all--the determination to act, without which, all the previous steps are virtually nullified. All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to...do nothing. Classical education reaches to the level of "ought" in CM's motto, and attempts to touch "will," but (I'm leaping ahead) David Hicks is going to suggest that this was classical education's failure.

  That power to act is vital.

Economic Crisis, Coming Soon To a Country Near You...

Robert Samuelson:

When historians recount the momentous events of recent weeks, they will note a curious coincidence. On March 15, Moody's Investors Service -- the bond rating agency -- published a paper warning that the exploding U.S. government debt could cause a downgrade of Treasury bonds. Just six days later, the House of Representatives passed President Obama's health-care legislation costing $900 billion or so over a decade and worsening an already-bleak budget outlook.

Should the United States someday suffer a budget crisis, it will be hard not to conclude that Obama and his allies sowed the seeds, because they ignored conspicuous warnings. A further irony will not escape historians. For two years, Obama and members of Congress have angrily blamed the shortsightedness and selfishness of bankers and rating agencies for causing the recent financial crisis. The president and his supporters, historians will note, were equally shortsighted and self-centered -- though their quest was for political glory, not financial gain.

Let's be clear. A "budget crisis" is not some minor accounting exercise. It's a wrenching political, social and economic upheaval. Large deficits and rising debt -- the accumulation of past deficits -- spook investors, leading to higher interest rates on government loans. The higher rates expand the budget deficit and further unnerve investors. To reverse this calamitous cycle, the government has to cut spending deeply or raise taxes sharply. Lower spending and higher taxes in turn depress the economy and lead to higher unemployment. Not pretty.
...

So Obama is flirting with a future budget crisis. Moody's emphasizes two warning signs: rising debt and loss of confidence that government will deal with it. Obama fulfills both. The parallels with the recent financial crisis are striking. Bankers and rating agencies engaged in wishful thinking to rationalize self-interest. Obama does the same. No one can tell when or whether a crisis will come. There is no magic tipping point. But Obama is raising the chances.

Bonnet Tip: The New Editor

Over at Powerline there is a post about the Health Care bill that lays out an interesting case that 'errors' like this one are not so accidental.  Obama wants these crises.  We know (for a fact) that his administration believes it should never let a crisis go to waste.

Speaking of Economics, this is funny- Zombie has pictures of two different rallies, one left and one right, and he asks, "At which rally would you feel more comfortable?"  Me, I'd be uncomfortable at both of them because I dislike crowds.=)  But here's what tickled my funny bone.  At the leftwing rally there's a photo of a t-shirt with "F* Capitalism" (the asterisk is not in the original) written in lettering clearly intended to parody Coca Cola.  Here's the kicker- it's got a fifteen dollar price tag on it.=)

Do you think the folks buying the shirt recognize the irony?

News Stories That Caught My Eye

"It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."-James Lovelock, developer of the Gaia theory, in a discussion the need for urgent action in response to climate change.

On the other hand, he also emphatically stated that scientists should expect to release their data in a timely fashion, and he acknowledged this:

On the over-reliance on computer modelling:

I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole. But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault. We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models. But they're not complete models. They're based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don't take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet. So I don't see how they can accurately predict the climate. It's not the computational power that we lack today, but the ability to take what we know and convert it into a form the computers will understand. I think we've got too high an opinion of ourselves. We're not that bright an animal. We stumble along very nicely and it's amazing what we do do sometimes, but we tend to be too hubristic to notice the limitations. If you make a model, after a while you get suckered into it. You begin to forget that it's a model and think of it as the real world. You really start to believe it.

This reminded me of David Hicks' point in Norms and Nobility, which Cindy recently shared with her readers:

We think that a statistic is a philosophy. We are overawed by technology.  This has been illustrated in my life through the difference in my home births and my last hospital birth. In my homebirths the midwives relied on me to tell them where I was in labor, and they used their hands. In my last hospital birth when I told the nurse I felt like pushing she looked at the screen and said that was silly. Guess what?  The baby was being born while the panicked nurse was yelling for the doctor. Thank goodness the doctor arrived in time ;)

I think every woman who has had a hospital birth has experienced the disconcerting sensation of having the nurse tell you whether or not your contractions are hard based on the print out instead of actually LISTENING to you.

One of the more disturbing issues brought out by the climate change emails was the way the scientists discussed hiding files, withholding data, and refusing to comply with legal FOIA requests. This reporter in this story apparently didn't read those emails, because he reports uncritically Mann's assertion that his only regret is that he didn't instantly tell Phil off for that suggestion, and that, of course he thought that request was inappropriate.
However, according to the emails, Phil Jones asks Mann to delete certain emails, and he also requests that Mann contact Gene to do the same.  Mann replies that he will contact Gene about this ASAP.
Mann also says he doesn't believe Jones deleted any emails.  That appears to be an accidental truth,  because Jones own emails indicate he believed that he had deleted them.

Not pretty:

Mary O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal has been on this story since the beginning and she's not letting it go. Not only does she have new details on the machinations of the US government in support of Manuel Zelaya Chavez lite attempted coup and America's continuing efforts to destabilize a democratic ally.
Last year, the U.S. tried to force the reinstatement of deposed president Manuel Zelaya. When that failed and Team Obama was looking like the Keystone Cops, it sent a delegation to Tegucigalpa to negotiate a compromise. Participants in those talks say Dan Restrepo, senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, let slip that the U.S. interest had to do with American politics. The Republicans, he said, were using the administration's support for Mr. Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan Hugo Chávez, against the Democrats. It's not going to work, Mr. Restrepo is said to have informed the other negotiators, because "we have the power" and would be keeping it for a long time.
It can't have been comforting for Hondurans to learn that while their country was living a monumental crisis, fueled by U.S. policy, Mr. Restrepo's concern was his party's power. For the record, an NSC spokesman says "Mr. Restrepo didn't say that." But my sources are more plausible considering what has transpired since.

NeoNeocon thinks it's insidious:

What appeared at the outset to be a possible aberration has become a pattern. What initially seemed a surprise is a surprise no longer. Obama supported Zelaya not just because he is a fellow-leftist, but in order to stand for the principle that, once a person is elected, he’s allowed to do anything he wants. That principle could come in handy here; in fact, it already has.

Thinking of donating to the Republican Party?  You might want to think again.


Good Gravy, Ed Schultz is a dishonest person.  watch the video on this post by Dave Schultz at Ace of Spades, see here.

He insists that over the top rhetoric and violence never happens on both sides, it's entirely a right wing, tea party phenomenon (never mind the years of 'Bushitler' nonsense, along with calls that 'we support troops who kill their officers' and more along the same lines).  He yells "tell me a Democrat who has thrown a brick through a window who has also recently threatened families and left messages threatening families" and issuing death threats.

Eddie Cantor,a Republican, had a *bullet* shot through his window by an Obama donor who issued the following threat:
"you received my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads" - that was  Obama donator Norman LeBoon, who was arrested for credible death threats against Republican Eric Cantor.  I'm sure you'll have heard all about that connection in the mainstream news.



Dennis the Peasant has a very interesting take on the recent dust-up where several companies said that Obama-Care was going to cost them loads of money and they would have to trim expenses somewhere, and Waxman retaliated by sending them vaguely threatening letters asking for all their documentation.  Waxman and progressives imagine the companies were making a political statement, says Dennis, but not so:

"In fact, they didn't release press statements at all. What they did was what was required of them by law: They filed an 8-K with the S.E.C.For those of you who are unfamiliar with financial regulation, the law requires all publicly held companies to file a Form 8-K with the S.E.C. when said company becomes aware of either a (1) unscheduled material event, or (2) a company change. As a matter of fact, that's what a Form 8-K is called, a "Report of unscheduled material events or corporate changes". And according to the law, when a company becomes aware of an unscheduled event that will probably have a material impact on the earnings or operations, it must file a Form 8-K with the S.E.C. or risk sanction.That's exactly what AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co., Verizon, AK Steel and others did: They complied with the law. Financial regulatory law. You know, the sort financial regulatory law Democrats are saying they are real keen to strengthen. Anybody think the irony of Henry Waxman's stooge Bart Stupak {^$&#*#*) out Randall Stephenson for doing what financial regulatory law requires is going to be lost on the Congressional Republicans in the room?Beyond that, you can bet the staffers working for Democratic Representatives sitting on the Energy and Commerce committee, and especially those involved with Energy and Commerce's investigation subcommittee are, at this very moment, completely horrified. They're quite aware, even if Waxman isn't, that because each of the companies named above have filed a Form 8-K and booked losses related to the event described in the Form 8-K, those companies have documentation that has been labored over by tax and accounting professionals for months; documentation that was then reviewed thoroughly by the company's independent auditors. Everyone that was involved is a @*#&#& site better than any of the staffers Waxman and Congressional Democrats will have available for investigation.What Waxman is now laying himself open to is the charge that he is attempting to force these companies to manipulate their financial data to suit the political aims of President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Since there is absolutely no hope of investigative committee staffers finding evidence that AT&T's (or others') calculations are materially incorrect, Waxman simply comes across attempting to force the managements of publicly held companies to circumvent the law."

Waxman's hubris comes as no surprise to anybody paying attention during the CPSIA mess (which is an ongoing mess, btw). 

Hmmm.  And isn't this odd:
Firearms deaths fall as millions obtain permits.

A sure sign that the Democrats recognize they've stepped in it with the individual insurance mandate- they now try to insist that part was all a Republican idea (cos we noticed how many Republicans voted for the bill). Volokh says not so fast.

Jim Geraghty documents the President's broken promises.  My favorite (though it's hard to pick just one):

HEALTH CARE NEGOTIATIONS ON C-SPAN
STATEMENT: “These negotiations will be on C-SPAN, and so the public will be part of the conversation and will see the decisions that are being made.” January 20, 2008, and seven other times.
EXPIRATION DATE: Throughout the summer, fall, and winter of 2009 and 2010; when John McCain asked about it during the health care summit February 26, Obama dismissed the issue by declaring, “the campaign is over, John.”

\Andrew  Breibart offered $10,000 for any video  proof that the N-word was shouted even once at the black congressmen,  some of whom were even filming the crowd, as they walked to the Capitol.   Wonder why there have been no takers?

Bedtime Stories and Literal Children

From the FYG, edited for spelling:

The other night my dad was telling a Ralph story (I've heard them all my life, they are about a little fish). The story this time was how Ralph got sea sick.

Dad: "I don't know if you've ever seen a fish get sea sick or not. . ."
Blynken: "No. Can I see a picture on the computer tomorrow?!"
Silence
Dad: "no."
Blynken: "Why?"
Silence
Dad: "Because I don't think there is one."

A Few Health Care Links

Mandated purchase of a commercial product:

Politicians love to sugarcoat their threats of force. So the Reid bill calls the mandate “shared responsibility.” To those who wonder by what authority the government can make us buy insurance against our will, the bill alludes to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to “regulate … commerce among the several states.” (For a fuller story on the clause, see this.) The bill says, “The individual responsibility requirement provided for in his section . . .  is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce.”
How would an insurance requirement affect interstate commerce? The bill says that since without the requirement people wouldn’t buy insurance until they are sick, it therefore “will minimize this adverse selection and broaden the health insurance risk pool to include healthy individuals, which will lower health insurance premiums. The requirement is essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold.”
In other words, for the sake of making the insurance market work better, we must be forced to buy coverage. How’s that for a justification?
It’s amazing how many fallacies can be stuffed into one argument. To begin, medical insurance isn’t really interstate commerce. One of the few sensible things proposed during the public discussion on medical care is that the federal ban on interstate purchase of coverage be repealed. Residents of California are not free to buy less-fancy, less-expensive policies offered in Arizona. They are stuck with policies made more expensive by California’s overbearing regulatory regime. Interstate sales would increase competition and lower prices, but the ruling party shows no interest in that idea. So how can this be about interstate commerce?
There’s more that is wrong with the argument.

Read the rest to see what that is.

Want to see some real McCarthyism?

Congressman Henry Waxman intends to haul before Congress corporations that have told their employees to expect increased health care costs because of Obamacare. This is behavior that can indisputably be described as soviet behavior. If McCarthyism was about hounding out communists and their sympathizers, the left seems intent on creating their own version of McCarthyism, which we can call Waxmania — silencing capitalists.
We have seen this abuse over and over from the Democrats in the past year. Waxman is a chief abuser, wanting to haul in insurance companies and other companies that have opposed the left’s agenda.
Barack Obama himself encouraged his supporters to bring guns to knife fights and get in conservatives’ faces. Where was the media handwringing back then over incitement? Why wasn’t the media bothering to mention, at least, the bipartisan “fighting words” in the past week?

read the rest. I find it incredibly chilling. These 'lawmakers' must go.  They simply must.

Aetna's CEO says premiums are going to have to go up:  

You knew this and I knew this and the vast majority of voters knew this. Now health insurers are saying it out loud.
Jim Geraghty spotted it in an interview with Aetna's CEO:

More Than Narration

From Charlotte Mason's School Education, Volume 3 of her six volume set–There is much difference between intelligent reading, which the pupil should do in silence, and a mere parrot-like cramming up of contents; and it is not a bad test of education to be able to give the points of a description, the sequence of a series of incidents, the links in a chain of argument, correctly, after a single careful reading. This is a power which a barrister, a publisher, a scholar, labours to acquire; and it is a power which children can acquire with great ease, and once acquired, the gulf is bridged which divides the reading from the non-reading community.

Other Ways of using Books.––But this is only one way to use books: others are to enumerate the statements in a given paragraph or chapter; to analyse a chapter, to divide it into paragraphs under proper headings, to tabulate and classify series; to trace cause to consequence and consequence to cause; to discern character and perceive how character and circumstance interact; to get lessons of life and conduct, or the living knowledge which makes for science, out of books; all this is possible for school boys and girls, and until they have begun to use books for themselves in such ways, they can hardly be said to have begun their education.

The Teacher's Part.––The teacher's part is, in the first place, to see what is to be done, to look over the of the day in advance and see what mental discipline, as well as what vital knowledge, this and that lesson afford; and then to set such questions and such tasks as shall give full scope to his pupils' mental activity. Let marginal notes be freely made, as neatly and beautifully as may be, for books should be handled with reverence. Let numbers, letters, underlining be used to help the eye and to save the needless fag of writing abstracts. Let the pupil write for himself half a dozen questions which cover the passage studied; he need not write the answers if he be taught that the mind can know nothing but what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind to itself.

Disciplinary Devices must not come between Children and the Soul of the Book.––These few hints by no means cover the disciplinary uses of a good school-book; but let us be careful that our disciplinary devices, and our mechanical devices to secure and tabulate the substance of knowledge, do not come between the children and that which is the soul of the book, the living thought it contains. Science is doing so much for us in these days, nature is drawing so close to us, art is unfolding so much meaning to us, the world is becoming so rich for us, that we are a little in danger of neglecting the art of deriving sustenance from books. Let us not in such wise impoverish our lives and the lives of our children; for, to quote the golden words of Milton: "Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was, whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. As good almost kill a man, as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a good reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself––kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye."

If you can't say something nice....

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tags: fuming, prayers for wisdom, still fuming, prayers for patience, head is a ball of fire fuming,  self-control, really totally fuming

The Common Room Version of Those HandyNoodle Fritters

I like recipes that are easy, very adaptable to what's in my hand, and frugal, and this recipe qualifies.

We can change the ingredients daily and have the same thing in a different flavor several days in a row. 

Here is the original.
 Here's what we do:

Ingredients:

2 packets Ramen Noodles (we have also made these with leftover noodles, you just have to remember to add extra seasoning)

1 1/2 cup of diced or grated vegetables such as carrots, onions, bok choy, sweet potato, and I cooked some with homemade lentil sprouts...  We've also grated carrots that had frozen in my temperamental refrigerator, and they were just fine, and I've used nearly double this amount of vegetables with good results.

1/2 to 1 cup diced, cooked meat.  We've used turkey and turkey ham,

3 eggs

1/2 cup milk (once I made these and I was out of milk, so I substituted sour cream and water)

1/4 cup whole wheat flour, plus
 1/4 teaspoons baking powder, plus 1/8
dash salt.

Method:

Soak noodles in a bowl of warm water for about 5 minutes while running the other ingredients through the food processor or under your knife.

Drain noodles and add rest of ingredients to the bowl, add the noodle seasoning or other herbs and spices and mix it all well with a fork.

Heat oil in a skillet or on a griddle, and spoon some of the noodle mixture onto the griddle.  I spread it just a little, fry a couple of minutes until the bottom is golden, then flip and fry the other side.

This is not the FYB's favorite, but Blynken and Nod have seconds.  This recently made enough for Blynken, Nod, the FYG, the FYB and me to have a good lunch with enough leftovers for one or two extra servings.  We serve them with fruit, usually, and a glass of milk.

This meal costs closer to 2.50, especially since I can use carrots that accidentally froze and I might otherwise have thrown away, so it's also linked at Five Dollar Dinners.

This recipe reposted at The Common Kitchen, where you will find other recipes our family uses and loves, as well as the occasional oddity.=)

Multi-tasking for Lunch

While it is certainly true, as Cindy pointed out (in a post I, again, strongly recommend all mothers read) that 'what' I, or any other mother does, is not even close to being as useful as the why, the ideas, the philosophy of living that you develop, it is also true, at least for me, that I needed a lot of 'whats' when I was muddling through, figuring out how to make life work with my brood while had suddenly grown from three to five (and which now seems most days to have gained another two children, seemingly overnight, and less predictability).  Whew.  that was a long sentence.

I needed the ideas about what  and how so that I could carve out the time and space to think about the more important why,  the philosophy.  So on the theory that maybe my 'what' of last Friday afternoon might help somebody else find a way to squeeze out time to ponder ideas, here's how our lunch hour (which went more like two hours) went.

We have a schedule where an older Progeny shepherds a younger Progeny through meal preparation with an eye to preparing them to be able to take it over on their own, but.... Jenny's work schedule is really cramping my style.  So I realized at 12:20 that nobody had thought about lunch and I was supposed to be next door sitting with my dad while Mother went to a DAR meeting in ten more minutes.
I started lunch (these noodle fritters, highly adapted and substituted for us) and asked Pip to run next door and sit with Grandpa.

I sat Blynken at the island in the kitchen with a stack of reading words written on index cards.  First he went through them reading them, then we took turns making sentences with them and reading them to each other.
Nod joined us, and I mostly just told him it was not his turn to talk anymore. If you knew Nod, you'd know why.  The FYB and FYG came in and got out ingredients, cleared space, and started more bean sprouts as required.  They also peeled carrots, chopped meat, got out drinks, set the table for lunch, entertained Nod, kept the Cherub out of food she can't have, fixed her a plate of food she could have, helped Blynken with hard words when I got with a mouthful of cookie right when he asked a question.  I mixed the fritters, grated the veggies into small bits, and fried the fritters.

Blynken was ready for me to help make sentences with the index cards right at the time when I was frying fritters, so I would put the fritters on to fry (say that three times fast), and then I would dash to the island, make a quick sentence, and it would be time for me to flip the frying fritters.

Intermittently, the older two and I would exchange jokes, riddles, snatches of poems with the Progeny, and yes, I also barked orders that I could have phrased much more nicely.

We sat down to eat and have some conversation.  Conversations is important, and I need to make more time for that.   I set my lunch aside halfway through and read the young scholars a chapter in a book called Number Stories of Long Ago, and then we talked briefly about it.  I chose this book because it has an ancient history connection (especially the early chapters) and we are still reading a lot of ancient history.  I also liked the ideas I think it can give my young listeners about numbers, about how interesting counting and the idea of numbers can be.  I could be wrong, but the point is, it's not a textbook, it's an idea book  There was also a spontaneous poetry moment.  Again.

  There was a time, long ago, when I would not eat my lunch until quiet time.  I would sit with the Progeny (and the 13 year old boy who would grow up to be my son-in-law, whom I was babysitting at the time along with his kid brother) at the table for lunch and read aloud to them, and they would help clean after lunch and then go down for naps and quiet time and I would eat and read a book for me.  Incidentally, I know of another friend who says there were a couple of years where she ate her lunch standing up because if she sat down she would fall asleep in her soup.

Anyway, Friday after that read aloud, I finished my lunch, and while I ate:
14 y.o. girl unloaded the dishwasher and reloaded it
11 y.o. boy put away the food and wiped the counters
6 y.o.boy helped clear the table, put away the clean silverware, checked the living room for extra dishes, and wiped the table and the front of the cabinets (this last was busy work)
3. y.o. boy helped clear the table, then was given a very clean wash cloth, well rung out to wipe the clean table again (he might have caught some spots Blynken missed, and it gave him something useful to do and involved him climbing up and down into chairs, over a bench, using wide sweeping arm motions), and using a dustpan and dustbroom he swept up scattered flower petals (from an enthusiastic drawing geraniums and daffodils session before lunch. He missed a lot of them.).
The Cherub sat with me and watched them work.  We both enjoy that.

There were reasons I had the little boys clear the table, besides that it needed to be done and they could do it.  Due to the gate guard set up between kitchen and dining room for protecting the Cherub from her food allergies, they had to carry one dish at a time and go the long way around, through the living room, down the laundry room passage, into the side kitchen door instead of directly from point a to point b through the door shared by kitchen and dining room.  This means they expended some extra energy, which they needed to do, while also being useful.  This gave me time to finish my lunch.  This gave them practice in the careful carrying of dishes (not all our dishes are plastic), and gave Blynken some large muscle use when he wiped down the cupboards.  This activity also kept them from making more messes during this period of time that they were busy trotting up and down.

The FYG had some annoying CD on, and it is my intention that starting today we are instituting AGAIN the rule that during school hours only classical music can be played.  I think to make this work I am going to have to  confiscate the kitchen CDs before I go to bed and set out the classical options in the kitchen.

While the big kids finished the kitchen, the Little Boys came in the living room with me and picked up some of their toys while we sang a folk song or two.

Then we went for a walk through the woods to my parents, relieving Pip of her duties, and they all walked back and the Little Boys took quiet time, much against their will.

Menu Plan Monday

From The Common Room

Breakfasts: Eggs, muffins, oatmeal
Green smoothies

Lunches: noodle fritters (I love these things, and I'll be posting my adaptation later), popcorn and fruit, leftovers, salmon quesedillas,

Dinners:
Monday: Sesame chicken, rice with furikake, green beans, and an order of crab Rangoon from the Chinese restaurant in town, Strawberry cake and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Tuesday: Savory Vegetable Pie

Wednesday: we leave the house at 5:00 on the dot, and do not return home until 9:00, so we like to be able to bring along a finger food edible, and these savory breakfast scones are scrumptious.  We usually bring some apples and bottles of water, or cups of home-made coffee for the HM and I.

Thursday:  These amazing fish sticks.  I promise, you have NEVER had fish sticks like these, and your kids should love them, even the non-fish eaters.  Really.  Trust me on this one.  Have I EVER steered you wrong?


Friday: Enchilada pie (OAMC meal), green veggies from freezer

Saturday: TVP burgers, lettuce, tomatoes

Sunday: Rice cooker lentil rice tacos, with lamb, for lunch, bar-b-qued crockpot pork sandwiches for dinner.

Come back Thursday when Kim, Connie, Kimberly  and I,  four moms with 35 plus kids amongst us (Blynken and Nod aren't ours, but they live here all but about four days out of the month, I think, and that's no hyperbole),  talk about budgeting in the kitchen.  I think my post is going to be titled The Incredible Shrinking Dollar Meets The Valiantly Creative Family or something humble like that.  Y'all come back, now, heah?

This post to linked at Menu Plan Mondays at Organizing Junkie.

Justyn Martyr Concerning Patience and Swearing

Justyn Martyr lived from 110 to 165

The writings of Justin Martyr are among the most important that have come down to us from the second century. He was not the first that wrote an Apology in behalf of the Christians, but his Apologies are the earliest extant. They are characterized by intense Christian fervour, and they give us an insight into the relations existing between heathens and Christians in those days...

Swearing here should probably be understood as taking an oath rather than what we might call 'cussing'.

And concerning our being patient of injuries, and ready to serve all, and free from anger, this is what He said: “To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak or coat, forbid not. And whosoever shall be angry, is in danger of the fire. And every one that compelleth thee to go with him a mile, follow him two. And let your good works shine before men, that they, seeing them, may glorify your Father which is in heaven.”^17941794    Luke vi. 29; Matt. vi. 22, 41, 16. For we ought not to strive; neither has He desired us to be imitators of wicked men, but He has exhorted us to lead all men, by patience and gentleness, from shame and the love of evil. And this indeed is proved in the case of many who once were of your way of thinking, but have changed their violent and tyrannical disposition, being overcome either by the constancy which they have witnessed in their neighbours’ lives,^17951795    i.e., Christian neighbours. or by the extraordinary forbearance they have observed in their fellow-travellers when defrauded, or by the honesty of those with whom they have transacted business.

And with regard to our not swearing at all, and always speaking the truth, He enjoined as follows: “Swear not at all; but let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”^17961796    Matt. v. 34, 27. And that we ought to worship God alone, He thus persuaded us: “The greatest commandment is, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shall thou serve, with all thy heart, and with all thy strength, the Lord God that made thee.”^17971797    Mark xii. 30. And when a certain man came to Him and said, “Good Master,” He answered and said, “There is none good but God only, who made all things.”^17981798    Matt. xix. 6, 17. And let those who are not found living as He taught, be understood to be no Christians, even though they profess with the lip the precepts of Christ; for not those who make profession, but those who do the works, shall be saved, according to His word: “Not every one who saith to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. For whosoever heareth Me, and doeth My sayings, heareth Him that sent Me. And many will say unto Me, Lord, Lord, have we not eaten and drunk in Thy name, and done wonders? And then will I say unto them, Depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity. Then shall there be wailing and gnashing of teeth, when the righteous shall shine as the sun, and the wicked are sent into everlasting fire. For many shall come in My name, clothed outwardly in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly being ravening wolves. By their works ye shall know them. And every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire.”^17991799    Matt. vii. 21, etc.; Luke xiii. 26; Matt. xiii. 42, Matt. vii. 15, 16, 19. And as to those who are not living pursuant to these His teachings, and are Christians only in name, we demand that all such be punished by you.

I think he got some noodles

Nod, Bouncing up and down on his tippy toes as he happily bounces into the kitchen, me following, getting wacked in the knees by his excited arm waving as we go to dish him up more supper:


"I get more NOO-DLES!  I get more NOO-DLES!  I get more NOO-DLES!  I get more NOO-DLES!  I get more NOO-DLES! I get more NOO-DLES!"



He stops as I dish up his plate, so, as I am  dishing up his NOO-DLES, I say, "Boy, I am glad you stopped.  That was kind of annoying."


He grins, tells me he won't say that anymore, and then goes upstairs with his plate chanting, "I got more NOO-DLES!  I got more NOO-DLES! I got more NOO-DLES!"


It is true that he was no longer saying the same thing...

Books and Literature in the Common Room School, part 2

I started this last week, where I said:

Most people, when they think of language arts, think of things like spelling, penmanship, grammar, composition, writing, vocabulary lists, the parts of speech, diagramming sentences, workbooks, reading comprehension, research papers, dictionary skill workbooks and more- and we do some of these things (not all of them)- but they are only tools- the fork, if you will, to convey the tasty goodness of a banquet from plate to mouth. Yet the way most programs do these topics, you spend years and years examining the forks and spoons, diagramming the anatomy of a dish, and never get to the feast. The feast, the whole point of it all, is the books. But what books? Why those books? And what do you do with them once you've got them? We will talk about some of the ways we introduce our children to the spoons and forks of language arts later in this series, but I want to start with the primary reason for those utensils. After all, a species which never eats has no use for forks and spoons, and if you wait too long to introduce the feast, your children will have perished of eating stones instead of bread. So here are some of my favorite resources on why we read and what we read:

I listed these three books last week:

1.  Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt 
2. For The Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer MacAulay
3. Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason

And here's the rest of my list:

1. Norms and Nobility by David Hicks 
2. Moral Illiteracy, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong and  Books that Build Character both by William Kilpatrick 
3. Tending The Heart of Virtue, by Vigen Guroian 
4. The Gift of Fire by Richard Mitchell (and everything else by the same author) 

These last four are slightly out of the order in which I read them- Norms and Nobility was actually the second to the last of the books I read from this list, but I wish I had met with it sooner. In the preface to the 1990 edition of Norms and Nobility, written ten years after first publication, David Hicks explains what he might have changed about his book had he written it after those ten years of additional experience, study, and thinking, and what he still likes as it is.  He says:

I have vigorously defended contextual learning in my book because I believe that it is the key to how we learn as well as to the delight we find in learning.  Children learn to speak by hearing words used in context, not by memorizing their definitions or studying their etymologies.  Although in my curriculum proposal I use history as the paradigm for contextual learning, the ethical question "What should one do?" might provide a even richer context for acquiring general knowledge.  This question elicits not only knowledge, but wisdom, and it draws the interest of the student into any subject, no matter how obscure or far removed from his day-today concerns.  It challenges the imagination and makes life the laboratory it ought to be for testing the hypotheses and lessons of the classroom. As this implies, the end of education is not thinking, it is acting. It is not just knowing what to do; it is doing...

He lists a possible curriculum, content rich, heavily based in well written works of history as well as the best literature has to offer to young minds.  One of the discoveries that has come to him in the ten years since he first wrote his book is that the

'greatest value of the curriculum proposed in this book is that it sustains and nurtures teachers as practitioners of the art of learning and discourages non-learners from entering the profession.

As my childrens' teacher, I, too, need to be sustained and nurtured in the art of learning, and these books and the reading that stemmed from these books are wonderful feasts of the ideas that sustain and nurture. William Kilpatrick's book explains further what an important role good literature plays in examining that question about 'what should one do,' and his Books that Build Character and Guroian's Tending the Heart of Virtue both further examine that question, and then give book titles to help toward that aim. All of these books helped to develop my understanding about education, what it is,  and what it is not.  These books are worth reading and rereading, because periodically I need to be reminded to focus on the feast and remember that the tools of punctuation, spelling, and grammar are the tools- necessary, and I want my Progeny to use them well, but I do not want the tools to take precedence over the nourishment of ideas, and sometimes they do. The Gift of Fire can be read online here (or printed out for underlining, marking up, and adding exclamation points for emphasis).  Here are review blurbs which I think demonstrate why this book belongs on this list:

"Richard Mitchell is a superb shatterer of icons. In The Gift of Fire, passion, commitment, exquisite reasoning, and Mitchell's unique sense of humor are trained on the vital question: How do we use and, more commonly, misuse our minds? An important work." --Thomas H. Middleton

"There exists in every age, in every society, a small, still choir of reason emanating from a few scattered thinkers ignored by the mainstream. Their collective voices, when duly discovered a century or so too late, reveal what was wrong with that society and age, and how it could have been corrected if only people had listened and acted accordingly. Richard Mitchell's is such a voice. It could help make a better life for you or, if it is too late for that, for your children. Ignore it at your and their peril." --John Simon

The Underground Grammarian is back with the most important book of his career. Richard Mitchell, author of the classics Less Than Words Can Say, The Graves of Academe, and The Leaning Tower of Babel, delivers in The Gift of Fire a series of fiercely witty, brilliantly considered "sermons" on an issue as old as Socrates but still controversial today: What is the role of morality in education, and therefore in our daily responsibilities? And how do we decide what morality should be taught, and why?

I have written here before about how I think good literature serves as an excellent source for thinking about and learning how we should act, and for prompting the young thinker to then act upon those thoughts. You can read those posts beginning here. This may seem far afield from questions about which spelling book to use and how to teach punctuation, but I promise you it is not.  The point is that life and education have much broader and deeper purposes than mere utilitarian matters such as commas and exclamation marks and the proper care and feeding of apostrophes (this is hard for me to believe at some times, but it's true).  I never want a focus on proper spelling and capitalization to crowd out the bigger ideas. Even in utilitarian skills, the best place for learning them is, as David Hicks said, in context, and the best context is in the midst of excellent writing- whether that be in the reading of Mother Goose and Millions of Cats for the youngest set or Pride and Prejudice, Shakespeare, and Plutarch for older students. There are probably other books that informed my thinking as well, but these are the books that came to mind immediately when I sat down to work on these posts, (wish I'd thought of A Landscape with Dragons).  These books formed the bones and sinews of our approach to the Language Arts, and where I wander astray from their principles, we tend to whither. I have written about Norms and Nobility before here. I've mentioned Vigo Guroian here. Next week I'll begin breaking down the topic into more manageable chunks with a little more emphasis on utilitarian issues such as punctuation and capitalization. Meanwhile, which books would you say influenced you most philosophically?  how do you choose the books you wish to use in your homeschool, and why? (The Bible is a given for those of us who are Christians.  I hope). Thank-you for reading. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------As long you're here: Though Friday the 26th was the last day to vote for 10 favorite poems at Semicolon- http://bit.ly/9HaiJN , she will take votes thru the weekend. She's not gotten that many entries, so send her your favorite ten poems published before around 1924 NOW!  Hope you'll look around, and come back Thursday! 


See also:
Books and Literature in The Common Room  (March 27, 2010)
Reading and Literature in The Common Room (March 20, 2010)
Books Build Character, Part One, April 23, 2005, edited and reposted in 2008.Part 2, April 27th, 2005
Part Three, Horrible Warnings and Bad Examples, Why We Need them,

April 29th, 2005