Homeschool Granny

02/04/2022

My mother ran home on the first day of first grade and didn't return to school until the following year--as a second-grader. I guess she was "homeschooled" for a year. ..... Drivers' training for her consisted of her mother saying, "Drive out to the farm. Your father needs you. Stay in the ruts. When you are topping a hill, go to the right." Grandma stayed home. Her father was at the farm.
The first time I heard the word "homeschool" (that I remember, anyhow) was when my brother was in graduate school in New Mexico. He pointed to a remote hill and said, "There are five kids that live there. They don't go to school. Their parents teach them. It's homeschooling." The father was one of my brother's professors.
The next instance that comes to mind was about 30-40 years ago when an acquaintance said she was homeschooling her son. She had no support system to speak of, and she shied from unknown people and situations.
These are examples of three reasons to homeschool: 1) Family priorities; 2) Family pride ("We're smarter than the teachers."); 3) Fear.
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Occasionally there are periods where a student does not attend school because of health, injury, relocation, changes in family structure, or a detrimental relationship between the child and the school environment. Temporary (truancy), a drop-out, presumed to have moved. If caused by community impact -- the shutdown of a factory -- multiple children may be affected at the same time, but the general impact is usually isolated or gradual.

Alternative schools -- parochial, private, magnet, special needs -- have been accused of siphoning off so much of the school population, that the public school no longer represents the community make-up. Such schools must appeal to families and do so through identifying priorities, pride, and fear. And, like the public schools, they must have sustainable funding and infrastructure. Conflict, money, power, politics follow.

09/13/2021

Old Testament writers did not have foreknowledge of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. They were sometimes prophets, in the sense that they rebuked their friends and neighbors for bad behavior and predicted that bad things would happen to them if they kept it up. But they didn't have a direct wire to God.

New Testament writers recorded what they were seeing, what they remembered, and what was told to them. Letter-writers, historians, and occasional prophets. Those who traveled a lot and those who spoke several languages were closely attuned to other cultures and traditions. Many were Jewish. The New Testament world bears traces of Roman, Greek, Celtic (Gallatians), Egyptian, and Eastern cultures. The underlying (and spiritually unifying) culture was Jewish.

I wish more emphasis were placed on the HISTORIANS of the early church and less on the "foretellings" of the Old Testament. The latter may appear to be the result of foreknowledge (looking back on it), but historians (and prophets -- old and new -- ) look for examples and support from their OWN histories.

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As a Christian, I'm comfortable using the terms "Old" and "New" testaments because I see a unity between them and Jesus of Nazareth is the person of the great divide. However, among non-Christians, I think it wise and knowledgeable to speak in more general terms.

We limit God if we speak only to the Abrahamic faiths. Can I, as a Christian, have meaningful dialog with polytheists? atheists? Bhuddists? ethicists? Can I truly listen to them?

09/04/2021

My daughter read the last page of "Chicken Little" to me one night. One by one, the wolf eats Chicken Little and all her friends. It's a repetitious page, but Marcy was clearly reading, not repeating what she'd heard. It was the first time I'd heard her read.

I was surprised and joyful. "Let's go show Papa what you can do," I suggested. And we did. He, too, was pleased.

But Marcy was non-plussed. I suppose she'd been reading all along and I'd just never asked her to read aloud to me? JA

I

08/25/2021

I watched a couple of how-to videos during the night about tatted lace making (not to be confused with tattoos). The macro-photography was good. The steps were shown slowly and deliberately. The technique is one of "intermediate" difficulty and several alternatives were demonstrated.

There was music, but no words. Words would have gotten in the way.

In this video, I show 5 ways tatting split ring. Three ways for shuttles, one way for a needle and one way for cro-tatting.8:23 - tatting with a needle10:09...

08/22/2021

.. so this guy grabs a reed pen, adds red ink to it, and makes a flourishing A on a scrap of paper. (There are many strokes to his A -- I must note -- many more than can be shown here.) Two of these strokes, he says, did not end on the paper, but in the air above it. Like follow-through with a bat or golf club.

08/21/2021

"Throughout the work, the aim has been to combine the clear, explanatory methods of the French mathematicians, with the practical exercises of the English and German, so that the pupil should acquire both a practical and theoretical knowledge of the subject." From the preface of Ray's Algebra, Part First, 1848

My copy has an inscription dated 1877.

Imagine using a 29-year old algebra text.

08/17/2021

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

On Amazon, it has an overall sales ranking that's mediocre at best (though much higher among young adults). Critics love it. Negative reviews are scathing: "I wrote better stuff when I was 5 years old."

I found Truth in this story when I read it this year. It's stuff I wish I'd been taught 60 years ago, but I'd have probably dismissed it as bad writing back then.

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