Writing in the Margins: Plato's Apology

"I hope you won't be too slavish about the Plan of Graded Reading.  My advice is, reach in anywhere.  If what you look at doesn't interest you, put it down and try something else.  Everything in this set will interest you sooner or later.  I recommend browsing as the best method of locating the possible world you want first to explore." 

--Robert M. Hutchins,  "A Letter to the Reader", Gateway to the Great Books, Vol. 1

How eagerly and happily I read this advice!

Mr. Hutchins goes on to explain in the Introduction that the works in in the 10-volume Gateway to the Great Books "are outstanding creations of the human mind, but they are not of the same order as the works included in Great Books of the Western World.  They consist of stories, plays, essays, scientific papers, speeches, or letters, and in some cases they are relatively short selections from much larger works.  In contrast, Great Books of the Western World contains whole books or extensive collections of books."

In the appendices of Gateway, Vol. 1, four graded reading lists are provided starting with "Suggested Readings for the 7th and 8th Grades" and progressing through "Suggested Readings for College Freshmen and Sophomores".  Each level includes readings from the Gateway set and the Great Books set.  If I were still homeschooling, I would definitely choose this as the basis for my junior/senior high curriculum.

In The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education, which is the first volume of the Great Books set, there is a suggested 10-year reading plan using only the Great Books set.  Number one on this list is Plato, with two selections--Apology, Crito.

Taking Mr. Hutchins' advice, I followed my interest and started right in on Plato, finishing his Apology, which is from Dialogues of Plato.  This is Socrates defending himself to the Athenians.  I enjoyed it immensely, especially the way he tells about his experience of doing good by informing others that they are not truly wise and how in this manner he gains more and more enemies.  Too funny!  The Athenians of his time do not seem to be any different than the Americans of my time:  If you tell people  that they don't know what they are talking about, they usually are not grateful.  On the other hand, I can't think of a contemporary counterpart to Socrates.  And there is the whole issue of scale.  Socrates went directly to individual Athenians to question them.  He was well and personally known.  We have celebrities, but in general, we don't know them well or personally.

I also identified with his description of himself as a gadfly, "given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life.  I am that gadfly that God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.  You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me."  We have many gadflies today, so many that I think we get hypnotized by their buzzing and do nothing.  Again, though, these folks are not in the same league as Socrates.  In fact, the most popular ones seem to be the ones whom Socrates would have found wanting in wisdom.

I also followed Mr. Hutchins' advice about writing in the margins.  He said that you can't really make a book yours until you make notes alongside the text.  Only then are you really engaging in a conversation with the author.   So I penciled in a few things.  I didn't feel really comfortable doing it, but it occurred to me that this was one way to share more deeply with my husband, who will be reading with me.  That encouraged me.

Boys Will Be Boys, But Why?

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I spent the most enjoyable and educational interlude the other day listening to a talk by writing expert Andrew Pudewa on the differences between boys and girls.  It's called, "Teaching Boys and Other Kids Who Would Rather be Playing in Forts".

After raising a boy and a girl and homeschooling them from kindergarten through high school, you would think that I would already know these things, but I didn't.  Well, I knew how the differences were expressed.   I knew the problems they caused.  What I didn't know were the underlying reasons for them.  Now I know that they are physically different in the way they see, hear, and the way their bodies react to stress.

Pudewa bases his 2009 talk on the work of Dr. Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph. D., the author of  Why Gender Matters, (2005) Boys Adrift, (2007) and Girls on the Edge, (2010).  I am ordering the two most recent ones and will publish reviews here on my blog.  Some of the information in the talk has been updated with new research.  Go HERE for Dr. Sax's explanation.

The talk was so good I listened to it two times.  The second time I played it on my iPhone for my husband and daughter to hear as we blazed down I-10 on Saturday to attend an engagement party.  I enjoyed it just as much the second time.  And it was FREE.  You just can't beat that with a stick.  Unless you're a boy.  They can beat just about anything with a stick.  That I learned when my boy was about 18 months old.  He gleefully made music one day by whacking the ivory off the edges of most of  our piano's keys.

Go to Circe Institute's Free Audio Library and scroll to the bottom for the "Teaching Boys" talk.  Don't delay.  Apparently these talks are rotated regularly.

Homework: Helping to Make Round Pegs Fit in Square Holes

"Homework may be the single greatest extinguisher of children's curiosity that we have yet invented."

This quote comes from the video below.   I agree wholeheartedly with its message.

When my eldest was approaching kindergarten age, we lived in a subdivision with a school within walking distance.  It was actually right in our neighborhood.  Sidewalks from our front yard led straight to it, and every day I watched streams of my neighbors' children flow there and back.  They were so cute!  I loved watching them every day.  However, talking with their parents about the day-to-day expectations of the school convinced me that I didn't want my children to go.

One of my main concerns was the homework.  They had loads of it.  They even had science projects in kindergarten!  This sounds impressive to a lot of people, but I soon realized that the parents were the ones who were bringing the science projects to fruition, not the children.  The pressure to get the homework and the projects done in the limited amount of free family time caused a lot of tension between the parents and the children.

I saw that the school was reaching into the home and robbing the parents of their right to direct the children's after-school time.  And even this was not enough.  Nationally, movements to keep the children in school year-round re-surfaced on a regular basis, on the false assumption that if the system used to educate children wasn't working well, the solution was to add more hours to that system.  At least that was the reason given.  I think the real reason is that the government wants to be the primary influence in our children's lives, so the less time at home, the better.  It wants all the children to think the same, to be predictable, and submissive.  Having free time gives children the opportunity to become individuals, to discover what their interests are and develop them, even if those interests are not going to channel them into college, which has been set up as the path that must be followed to "SUCCESS".  Of course success is narrowly defined as something that will allow you to get a "good" job at a place that provides "good" benefits.  This is usually not going to be self-employment.  It is going to be a corporation.  The corporations with the best benefits are usually the multi-national ones.  This means that they have a cozy relationship with the government.  They will provide all the social "training", otherwise known as indoctrination, that the government regulations require, through programs on sexual harassment, affirmative action, etc.

And it all starts with a little worksheet.

The Factory Model in Home Life

How important is efficiency in a family's home life?

I've been thinking a lot about this since we attended a dinner theater at church way back on Laetare Sunday.  The play presented was Cheaper by the Dozen, and I really enjoyed it.  It made me laugh.  The father and mother in this biographical drama, set in the 1920s, were an engineer team with twelve children.  They helped factories become more efficient, and they applied these factory ideals to their family life.  For example, the father showed the children the most efficient way to to take a bath, and he installed record players in the bathrooms so that the children could listen to foreign language instruction while they were in there.  No time was to ever be wasted.  Great emphasis was put on testing and being able to skip a grade.   The parents obviously loved their children and wanted what was best for them, and there is an absolutely fabulous defense of the pro-life position. . .It's just. . .I don't know.  I felt like they saw their children as products to be manufactured rather than humans to be nurtured.  This had nothing to do with the number of children they had, just their way of parenting them.  My feeling was that every one in that family had to be busy at all times improving themselves or doing something productive as determined by the parents.  Maybe it's different in the book on which this play is based.

As a mother whose children are grown, I often do look back and wish that I had done a lot of things differently, but making efficiency and "measured" education top priorities of my family life are not on my list.  Pondering this, I asked my dear engineer husband what he had thought of the family life portrayed in the play.  He admitted that he liked the emphasis on efficiency and achievement.  He also said that he did not want to live that way.   Whew!

Emma and I discussed this issue as we cleaned the kitchen after breakfast one morning.  She was reading A Daughter of the Land, by Gene Stratton Porter, and she said a female character marries into a family that emphasizes work.  It is often made-up work, and there is never an end to it.  Eventually the young wife gets pregnant, becomes exhausted from the lack of leisure and dies in childbirth.  Later, I compared this in my mind with one of my grandmother's favorite stories.  She married at 15, and she and my grandfather lived with his parents in the early years of their marriage.  This was in the 1920s, just like the timeframe of Cheaper by the Dozen.  My grandmother said that she and her mother-in-law, Martha Rollo Somerset, would hurry through their daily chores so that when they were done, they could snatch up their cane poles and Catawba worms and light out for Bassett's Pond.  Clearly, the "work" had an end, and there was this wonderful leisure to be enjoyed together at the end of it, the memory of which was so dear to my grandmother that it brought a twinkle to her eyes and a smile to her lips, decades and decades later.  I think this leisure was truly an end in itself--a time to absorb nature and enjoy each other's companionship--not just a "break" so that they could do more work.

I do believe that scheduling and efficiency have a place in family life.  I just don't know exactly what prominence should be given them.  Probably if I had had more children, I would have been forced to figure it out.  All I know is, my attempts to give primary importance to these things have never lasted long, whether from my own lack of discipline or because I simply don't value them highly enough.  Probably it's both. 

Row Me Softer Home

"Emily Dickinson is another heroine for me. I don't know where she came from. She's a good argument for just living at home with the door shut."--Jane Campion, Director of Bright Star, in this Barnes & Noble interview.

I don't know about keeping the door shut, but the memories I cherish most are of staying home with the children when we lived "in the woods" in Louisiana, watching them explore their little world.

Here is an Emily Dickinson poem that I remember fondly from Nathaniel's and Emma's grammar school days. They took such delight in memorizing it. It was about the same time that we had hatched goslings, and the two of them spent many happy afternoons leading their fuzzy yellow charges around our property to puddles and ponds, catching baby frogs for the goslings to gobble up "raw".

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

Driver's Education and the State

Emma completed her online driver's ed course and made a 93% on her first try on the exam. She was glad to be done with the course; she did not enjoy the experience.

We used Virtual Drive of Texas, which overall was a good program. The things that Emma groaned through were the things that she recognized as politically correct ideology, most likely required by the state. All of the programs available have to be approved by the state.

The module dealing with drugs was one of the biggest ones. It even discussed growing and selling marijuana and other drugs, sniffing paint, etc. At this point Emma went into defensive mode and started clicking the "next" button as soon as the program would allow it. She paid the drug module no more attention because, she said, "It was stupid." She even had to be subjected to a lesson on date rape. Interestingly, her "preserve my innocence, don't waste my time" tactics did not cost her test points. There were NO QUESTIONS about the drug module on the final.

She began to doubt the veracity of all the teaching when the narrator said explicitly that it was against the law for anyone under 21 to drink alcohol at any time. Emma immediately left the tutorial and checked Texas law where her understanding was confirmed: Minors may drink under the supervision of their parents.

The course presented alcohol consumption anywhere, anytime as negative. Emma knew that the point was to convince students that they should not drink and drive, but to present all alcohol consumption as negative was, in her mind, dishonest. She thought that in order to tell the truth, they should have mentioned that drinking in moderation can be pleasant, and good effects can come from it. She reminded me of the diners in the movie, Babette's Feast and how the wine allowed them to relax and begin to forgive each other for past hurts.

Then Emma had to learn about the Texas litter program, "Don't Mess With Texas". She even had to answer a quiz question about the name of the program. By this point she was leaving the tutorial frequently to watch YouTube videos of the Lennon sisters, who sang sweet harmony and wore really pretty dresses. (Emma could tell this even though the videos were most often black and white.)

When it was time to take the final exam, optional videos were made available. Emma watched them and said that they were very helpful, so helpful that they should have been made part of the main course instead of wasting her time with all the other "garbage". I suspect the state requires a minimum number of hours for a driver's ed course to be approved. The quality of those hours is apparently of no consequence.

She's Going to Have a Cow!

Emma pulled her friends close after church on Sunday and whispered excitedly. I wondered what it was about. Then one word escaped their snug circle, floated on the air toward me and slipped into my straining ear. (The straining ear is a chronic condition of motherhood.)

"Cow."

"Oh," I told Herb. "She's telling them that you have finally given in and are letting her get a cow."

So Emma is feverishly cow shopping. She found a Dexter that she likes. Dexters are related to the Kerry and are good dual-purpose cows. She is also looking at Jerseys. Besides high-quality milk, she likes them because they have pretty faces with long eyelashes. Unattractive cows will not be considered.

The cute cow candidate must be good-natured, accustomed to being hand-milked, and enjoy being sung to. Being amenable to wearing be-ribboned straw hats and other accessories is a plus, but not required.


A RELATED STORY

Emma peruses a cow forum regularly now and has been researching the benefits of raw milk. I'm seeing early development of homeschool mom syndrome in her. After more than an hour studying the testimony of two expert witnesses in a raw milk court case, she reported that it was time well spent, as she had covered science, law, and politics. She mentioned a couple of other subjects, but I disremember them.

The Bee Man Cometh

I find it terribly embarrassing that we have still not completed the bee hive project that we started more than a year ago, but maybe our difficulties will prove inspirational for some.

To recap, back in January, Herb found some more of the nails that Emma needed to finish putting the frames together. She finally got to it a couple of weeks ago when Herb was home sick with the flu. It's always inspiring to have dad home, just in case you need project guidance!

Then she sprayed on another coat of paint, and I called Mr. Keenon, our county's bee expert and a member of our homeschool group. He came out yesterday with his wife and daughters and looked at my mom and dad's bee infestation on the north end of their home. He told us that he gets some of his best bees from our area. They originate from a feral hive under a mobile home nearby.

He recommended that we place the hive under a pecan tree in the backyard, facing east, adding that it's good for it to be close, so that you can check on it regularly. I saw Emma's face light up. Those bees will never have a moment's privacy.

He is coming back Thursday morning, at the crack of dawn, with his two daughters and Nathaniel's friend, Ryan, who has helped Mr. Keenon before with bee removal. Throw Nathaniel and Emma into the mix, and it ought to be quite a party! Maybe I'll have a loaf of bread ready to come out of the oven, and we can slather it with fresh honey.

The Sampler is Finished!

Now she just has to trim some threads, finish the warp repair, and hang it. Emma can't wait to work on her own loom now. It is a 45-inch Nilus Leclerc, and she can make much bigger projects than the sampler, which was woven on a Schacht Wolf Pup.

Learn to Weave Day 4, Creative Possibilities

These pictures were taken last Thursday. I had hoped that Emma would finish that day, but alas, we must go back tomorrow.
The white "stripes" at the top of the picture above are actually formed by weaving in plastic sticks.

Making chenille the old-fashioned way. Clarice mentioned the Cajuns as one of the groups who traditionally favored this technique.

The strange-looking bunch of white threads in the upper left corner is where Emma learned how to fix the warp after accidentally cutting six threads.

The palette, above and below.

It's fun to see how these different threads/yarns change in appearance when they are woven.

An interesting view. We can't wait to see the sampler hanging on the wall at home.

This stuff is so beautiful and soft.

Little bits of the pink wool are worked randomly into the sampler.

The rag rug technique. Clarice gave Emma strips of indigo-dyed cotton and cochineal-dyed cotton to work into her sampler. Clarice has an indigo-dye pot. I think that she said it takes 44 pounds of indigo leaves to make one ounce of dye. She was going to show us some dying techniques on Friday, but we couldn't go that day.

I forgot the name of this fringe-looking technique. I'll find out tomorrow.

Learn to Weave Day 3, Twill is Queen!

"Shuttles are so elegant," Emma told me. I think that must be the kind of thing girls say when they are in "raptures". Strange, but interesting.

Yesterday was pure bliss for Emma. She skipped when she had to go ask a question and smiled and sang at her loom, "I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls with vassals and serfs at my side."

The beloved antique bobbin winder.

Can you chew gum and pat your head at the same time?

The elegant shuttle, with a cargo of pink thread.

After losing her place several times and having to take out her work, Emma found a pattern holder on an unused loom and borrowed it.

See the diamond pattern in the middle?

Emma's favorite, pink and purple together.

Learn to Weave: Day 2, Tabby is King!

You can't see it, but Emma is standing on a cloud of euphoria. The majority of the first two days of weaving lessons were occupied with getting the warp ready, and Emma was fairly reserved. The Day 1 post and the first five pictures below show that. Then, when that was finished, the last 45 minutes to an hour of class yesterday, Clarice took Emma into her shop to choose yarn, and Emma started to percolate with excitement.

Emma is following the pattern in her lap to thread the heddles.

On the first class day, Clarice showed Emma two methods for the threading, one easier but slower than the other. Emma adopted the faster method. She said it felt more comfortable because it reminded her of crocheting.

Here she begins sleying the reed.

The warp is tied onto the front apron rod. Then Clarice showed Emma how to run her hand over it to check for even tension.

Gravitating immediately to the pinks and purples, Emma begins choosing her colors. So far, this has been the only part of the weaving lessons that has been difficult for her, because she only had five minutes to choose if she wanted any time to begin weaving before the end of the class day. If left to her own devices, she probably would have spent a half hour or more. As it was, she followed Clarice back to the studio, agonizing over the green thread that she had chosen to go with the pink and purple.

As Clarice set up the thread to be wound onto the bobbin, she explained that someday, because of life experiences, Emma might not care for pink anymore and could possibly come to love orange. Emma was not convinced.

Clarice showed Emma how to wrap a bobbin and insert it in the shuttle, then headed back to the loom with the shuttle in her hand. Emma scurried close behind her and begged, "Can I hold it?" I wish I had a picture of Clarice's face when she heard that. She kind of chuckled and had this "knowing" look. She clearly realized that Emma was consumed with the weaving bug.

The project Emma is working on is a sampler. The first weave Emma learned is the Tabby, and Clarice emphasized that, "Tabby is King!" She had Emma "beat" soft, then hard, to see how it affected the weave.

Several inches of pure satisfaction.

Learn to Weave: Day 1 Photo Essay

First, an encouraging note from Upstairs Studio owner and weaving teacher Clarice Shanks.

A Week of Weaving

Emma begins her weaving classes today with Clarice at Upstairs Studio. She goes from 10-4, today through Friday. I'm taking a camera and Madame Royale! Stay tuned.

Catholic Classical Educators to be Honored

The Circe Institute announced today that Marcus and Laura Berquist are to be co-recipients of the Russell Kirk Paideia Prize For Lifetime Contribution to Classical Education.

I will be forever in Mrs. Berquist's debt for her Mother of Divine Grace lesson plans and her books Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum and The Harp and Laurel Wreath.. They have been my constant companions for much of my homeschooling years.

Life With Emma

"You two have a lot of fun walking," a senior lady commented to me the other day as Emma and I finished our 2 1/2 mile rhythm walking session at the community center.

It kind of took me by surprise, but she was right. We walk around a big room with a bunch of retired people for 45 minutes to a medley of old songs like "Beautiful Dreamer", "In the Good Old Summertime," and "Buffalo Gals". Emma and I love all these songs. Every 1/4 mile is announced, and then a little bell rings and everybody reverses direction. Emma and I clasp hands and swing our arms. Sometimes she takes off skipping for a while or she dashes out the door and runs around the parking lot and through the front door before rejoining me in the circle. If it's not too crowded she works in a few ballet leaps. And we sing.

As we sat in the lobby to drink some water after the walk, Emma told me how wonderful homeschooling is--for the parents. She explained how they can start out "normal", but grow and change into "homeschool moms" because they are constantly learning new things and looking for good experiences for their children.

"I've been thinking and figuring out a whole lot of things lately," she confided. "And there's a whole lot of things I've thought about and figured out that I haven't even told you yet!"

Oh, my! I'm not sure how to prepare for these revelations.

Later we were doing some shopping, and Emma and I were witnesses to a crime. We didn't know we were at the time, though, and so I paid absolutely no attention. When the crime was discovered, the manager asked us if we could provide a description of the perpetrator. I could not. Emma said that she could, so I agreed for her to be interviewed by the police. I was floored by the detail that she gave: hair color and style, height, weight, clothes and accessories, physical peculiarities. She told everything she knew very slowly and carefully. She took it seriously, and so did I. But the last thing she told the officer sent me howling with laughter into the other room:

"And she had bad grammar," Emma pronounced solemnly.

Happiness is French Cooking Class

As I reported yesterday, Nathaniel did not want to go to the French cooking class Monday afternoon, but his teacher, Gayle, was so good she won him over in the first few minutes. It didn't hurt that she had a really cute puppy underfoot. Every few minutes Nathaniel would give me the eye and nod toward the puppy. "Get one for Dad," he would mouth silently. Even if I couldn't have read his lips, I would have known what he was trying to tell me.

Gayle's daughter, Anna, is in the class, too. Happily, next week a male friend of hers will be joining. That will max out Gayle's kitchen, so I will probably not attend any more classes.

Gayle involved all of her students' senses in the cooking experience, having them shake the produce and smell the aroma, then giving them leaves of cilantro and parsley to chew and asking for their opinion of the flavors.

She showed them how to hold a knife properly, chop an onion, and debone a chicken breast. She talked to them about the properties of different herbs--like the ability of bay leaf to aid in food preservation--while they were chopping vegetables for their soup.

She had them sampling the soup pot regularly and giving their suggestions. This process was used again when they made the salad dressing.

They set the table. Then Nathaniel filled the soup bowls and garnished them with a stylistic flick of his wrist, clearly enjoying himself.

We all sat down together and enjoyed a lovely meal punctuated with happy talk.



After the cleanup, Nathaniel and Emma both thanked Gayle profusely. I recognized that Nathaniel was ready to give her a hug, but she was distracted and didn't give him the opportunity.

Nathaniel and Emma can't wait to go back next Monday. They'll be making a French onion soup and a fish soup--and lovin' on that cute, lil ol' dawg every chance they get. Bless their pea-pickin' hearts!