Here are three very recent occurrences:
- While Victoria was attending a library program, I finished reading Home Education Magazine (a very useful publication despite the fact that the current issue has a essay decrying virtual schools) and picked up Homeschooling Today, which is filed next on the shelf. "Feminism, which has its roots in the age-old problem of women being discontent with their place in God's created order, is still sowing seeds of confusion about a woman's role in our modern culture," begins Marci Putman's article, Uprooting Feminism. That gave me pause. Goosebumps, even. I don't know how I manage to read a daily paper and peer at crap on the internet regularly and still manage to forget that everyone is not Just Like Me. Whenever something breaks through and reminds me I feel a little loopy.
This is not to say that HT is not a useful publication. Following Ms Putman's book reviews there was an article about investment clubs with a specific book recommendation. The library's catalog was unclear as to whether the book was on the shelf or not, so I ran up to take a look. It wasn't, but there was a John Allen Paulos book I hadn't seen before so I picked it up instead and it's now my favorite of his so far. And I loved Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. So yeah, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market is definitely worth a look. - Today the blogosphere was alive with chatter about the Yale art student's senior project incorporating deliberately induced miscarriages. I couldn't figure out how that might work. I kept reading the only explanation available: "a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible' while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages" and I really wanted to know how she even thought she might have been miscarrying. Well, before the day was over the project was revealed by the University to have been a hoax. The artist claimed that this statement was "ultimately inaccurate", which sounds weaselly to me. It does seem like better art as a hoax, more situationalist and less showboat. But I am a real dope when it comes to art, believe me.
In fact, I appear to be quoted asking question number nine in this excellent poetry FAQ - I am being tugged and bounced all over the sociological landscape is what's happening. My head is spinning and THIS does not help.
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I am glad to hear that you are not surrounded by home schoolers who are like the old fuddy-duddy up there!
That book link just boggles the mind.
I guess it's no surprise that homeschooling is a vehicle for wacko "christian" nut-jobs, although I know several Unitarian Universalists who do it because, well, they weren't satisfied with the public school options. Or because they have kids who don't fit the mold. Or both. But heaved forbid the dirty old public schools should teach my child that his granddaddy was a monkey, shudder shudder quake.
I'm not homeschooling although I've considered it. The public school pisses me off but not enough for me to take him out yet. Yet.
**please note the intentional non-capitalization and quotes on "christian;" I meant it not as an insult to those who genuinely find fulfillment in Jesus' message, but to those who use their misunderstanding of that message as an excuse for ignorance and hatred.
I'm going back to my corny YA novel about dragons. Wake me in 50 years if things get better.