Smrt Lernins

What do the Rosetta Stone language curricula have to do with creationist pseudo-science?

Yeah, my first answer would have been “nothing,” too, but now, if you “like” Rosetta Stone Homeschool on Facebook, The Old Schoolhouse magazine will be happy to send you free creationist e-books to befuddle, mislead, and indoctrinate your children into the glorious world of creation non-science. All you have to do is email gena@tosmag.com and you’ll be sent a list of The Curiosity Files e-books from which to choose*.

Personally, I’m having a hard time choosing. Which burning scientific inquiry do I most need answered?

Does the dung beetle really “bring glory to God?”
What does the Bible tell us about MRSA?
Were blue diamonds sent as a special gift to us?
Is the blue-footed booby an “evolution stumper” that “defies the theory of natural selection?”
Can these handy curricula can help hammer home the important fundamentalist idea that “male and female roles [are] very different?”

So hard to choose! *sigh*

Seriously, folks. Pseudo-science like this is insidious. It’s dressed up in fun little packages, but the stuff inside is designed to lead children away from real, evidence-based science. I genuinely pity children who are taught to blindly accept creationism, rather than developing a truly scientific mind and learning to discern fact from fancy, evidence from belief, and science from religion. Let faith be faith and science be science.

*A friend told me about this giveaway, with no info as to the name of the curricula that would be given away, just that it was science. Yes, I suspected that any science e-books given away by TOS would be creationist. However, I was under the impression that Rosetta Stone was a secular curricula, so I’m curious why the “reward” for liking their company’s homeschool curricula branch is a decidedly religious curricula.

Michael Smith, author of several books geared towards public school teachers, principals, and administrators, and a school superintendent himself, thinks we should stop teaching kids how to write, type correctly, or spell. He also suggests we don’t need to teach the periodic table of elements, how to use a dictionary, the memorization of “useless” facts like the state capitals, or poetry.

Before I address his specific complaints, I’d like to make it clear that I have very little respect for anyone (let alone an educator) who brags that he made 12 typos in the writing of his blog post and was able to fix them with spell-check. Was I supposed to applaud? Is “Bad Educator” going to be the new “Bad Mom” trend? Considering how insufferable I find those Bad Moms who play up how disengaged they are with their children, how badly/frequently/proudly they’ve screwed up, and how much time their kids are likely to spend in therapy, I’m not on the short list of people who are going to line up to praise Bad Educator.

Consider yourself informed that I didn’t read Smith’s blog with a particularly open mind. Much of what he writes just reinforces my sense of relief that my child isn’t in public school. I think he’s an anti-intellectual and isn’t nearly as funny as he believes himself to be. On the whole, he pisses me off, so here are a few of his bones, from which I am picking the meat. Smith writes:

Penmanship is rarely used by most adults. Unless they are signing their name, so spending hundreds of hours teaching children how to make the perfect “Q” in cursive could be a waste of time.

Rarely used by some adults. Other adults use it quite often. I personally do a lot of my first drafts in longhand. My husband has to take legible notes when he’s out on call (good thing they’re legible, too, because sometimes he calls home for information and I have to retrieve it from his notebooks). It’s also pretty hard to take thorough notes on a laptop while trying to read from a large textbook. Take notes during a lecture, sure, but I can barely fit my laptop and, say, Bevington’s Complete Works of Shakespeare on my desk at the same time, let alone use the laptop to take good notes from the Bevington. Legible handwriting is also very important during the moony teen years, because only cursive can truly impart the angst and passion of teenage poetry. Typing simply will not cut it.

There are benefits to teaching proper handwriting that extend beyond writing letters or poetry or notes, however. It’s a way to develop fine motor skills (a different set from those used in typing). A 2006 study found an increase in letter confusion (specifically mixing letters up with their mirrors, d and b, for example) among those who first learned the letter through typing, and that the “stability of the characters’ representation in memory depends on the nature of the motor activity produced during learning.” In other words, writing letters by hand, not typing, more firmly and accurately implanted the letters into the memory. Handwriting, particularly cursive, stimulates the frontal cortex in a profound, lasting, and measurable (via PET scan) way, not only helping the student retain that skill, but greasing the pathways for later learning.

Keyboarding? Haven’t we progressed past the point of controlling our students by making them sit straight up and down with both feet on the floor while they type? I don’t know of any former students who have computer skills and weren’t hired for a job because they didn’t type fast enough or use the proper technique. Last time I checked, most elementary students know their way around a keyboard.

A) “Controlling our students?” Really, Michael Smith? Really?

B) We haven’t progressed past the point of back problems, carpal tunnel, or a host of other posture-related health problems that are in large part the result of incorrect body and arm positioning at the keyboard. Why not help our kids develop the muscle memory to hold their bodies in a more optimal position while typing and help decrease their risk of these conditions? When I’m having back/hip pain or my wrists are starting to hurt, I’m always amazed (though no longer surprised) by how much better I feel when I put my feet flat on the floor, sit up with a straight back, and position my hands properly on the keys.

C) He’s never met anyone who wasn’t hired for a job because they lacked adequate typing speed? I suppose none of his students have ever been an administrative/personal assistant, then, as typing speed is still pretty important. When being hired for data entry jobs, as well, the ability to quickly and accurately enter the data actually plays a role in getting the job. In my line of work (writing/editing), speed and accuracy in typing may not be a determining factor in getting a contract, but definitely can mean the difference between meeting deadlines (and getting paid) or not, between turning in usable work or not. The faster and more accurately I could type, the more contracts I could take, the more work I could do, and the more money I could make.

D) Captain Science has been using a keyboard since he was 2 or 3. He still has to hunt and peck when asked to type an essay. Playing games online requires the mouse and a few keys, while writing papers takes the full keyboard and very little mouse usage. Please don’t confuse computer gaming proficiency with typing proficiency. Or, as the Nana so eloquently put it, “There is a vast difference in the keyboarding skills needed to hack NASA and the skills needed to write an eloquent term paper.”

Lastly, what’s with all the time on spelling? Do we really need to know how to spell in this day and age? Can’t we just come close when we are typing and then let the computer correct us? During the typing of this blog, I misspelled 12 words. Maybe it’s my keyboarding skills, maybe I’m just stupid.

Oh yes! Let’s just let the machines do all the thinking for us. What could possibly go wrong?

I’m dumbfounded by Michael Smith’s hoisting of the banners of “Meh. Close enough.” Here you have an educator who is not only not particularly concerned that we are, as a nation, becoming dumber (or maybe, to be more fair, lowering our expectations and then falling to meet them), but is actually encouraging it! While I don’t think spelling is a barometer of intelligence (I know of one incredibly gifted girl who struggles with spelling, but excels in practically everything else), I do think that spelling has an important place in a well-rounded education. Far from being a mere “exercise in confusion” that we should get rid of, as Smith extols in another post, or foist off on a computer game (really? do we need less human interaction in education?), spelling teaches patterns, reveals roots of words, and allows for a tremendous degree of playfulness with language. A spell-check program can’t tell which of a set of homophones is appropriate in a given context. Did you really mean that kind of meat, Mr. Smith?

Stop with the memorizing state capitals. [...] If you find yourself desperately needing to know the capital of Delaware… look it up. [..]]I haven’t even gotten to the Periodic Table, poetry [...]

How trendy! Someone in education knocking the value of memorization!

Of course, many professions require an extensive amount of memorization. Think of what doctors have to memorize to graduate medical school, of the laws and cases lawyers must remember to pass their bar exams, of the codes and pathways that programmers must remember. If college is the first time in your life you’re called upon to memorize a large amount of information, you’re going to be in for a real treat.

Smith mentions poetry as one of the things to ditch from education. Memorizing poetry isn’t just a tedious task for filling classroom hours. Poetry teaches us about language patterns, stimulates parts of our brain we don’t normally use, imparts important lessons about rhythm into our cores. I won’t belabor this point too much, because Michael Knox Beran did a far superior job in his In Defense of Memorization. Suffice it to say, it’s not about the importance of knowing the state capitals (though it’s amazing how many times in my life that knowledge has come in hand), but about the importance of the art of learning by rote (or as Michael Clay Thompson prefers to call it, by heart).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think I understand the point Smith is trying, but ultimately failing, to make. Technology must, absolutely must, play a more central role in our children’s educations. Technical literacy is becoming increasingly important in colleges and careers. Not only should children know how to use a computer for things like typing, graphic design, and programming, but they need to learn how to become fully participating online citizens. They need to be conversant in social media, because it has an undeniable power. Blogging reaches people in ways that other media can’t. Failure to respect the permanence and reach of anything that happens online has cost more than one job, friendship, or marriage. While my digital literacy soapbox can wait for another day, I wholeheartedly agree that digital literacy must be taught in public schools, private schools, home schools.

That doesn’t mean it needs to be taught to the exclusion of everything else. There are benefits to most aspects of a classical education that extend beyond memorizing a poem in that moment, studying Latin or Latinate vocabulary in that moment. Education isn’t just (or even primarily) about what happens in that moment, but about the big picture of lifelong learning, and Michael Smith’s inability to see that big picture is troubling. It’s particularly troubling that he is giving advice to teachers and (worse) administrators, urging them to sacrifice skills that have much greater benefit than what is seen in that moment.

Incidentally, Mr. Smith, spell-check may have corrected your 12 spelling mistakes, but not your attitude. Do you think they make a computer game that can address that one?

First world problems alert: my internet has been down for almost a week* and, with homeschool starting on Monday, I’m starting to panic a little. Two of Captain Science’s classes (computer programming and science) and one he and Tank are sharing (art) are online. We still have some pieces of curricula to order. We need to sign up for the homeschool soccer league. We might sign up for classes at a local co-op (since we aren’t hosting one this semester, a nice respite). We need more consistent internet for this kind of stuff!

Officer Daddyman made a rather irritable comment to me the other night, being a bit tired of hearing me carry on about how inconvenienced I am, about people having survived just fine before the internet. Of course, the same could be said for, say, refrigeration (did I mention our fridge was also on the fritz?) and telephones (oh yeah, same electrical storm that fried our internet killed our phones) and electric lights (our house gremlin has been blowing those like crazy, too) and air conditioning (thankfully, this still works, though with 100 degree outside temperatures, it’s not making too much of a dent in the heat). Once you’ve become accustomed to and built certain facets of your life around access to those things, however, having them suddenly take flight into the wimbly ether is rather…fraktastic. Can’t put it more eloquently or eruditely (or less geekily) than that.

More than the resources, however, I miss the “s word.” Socialization. We usually worry about our kids getting enough, but as a in-the-home-all-day Mama (because I don’t like that whole “work at home” vs. “stay at home” thing…all mamas work), I often pine for some adult time. Chatting online with Patchfire and The Mama and my other homeschooling (and non-homeschooling) mama friends is an important part of my life. It’s a way of swapping ideas and just generally staying sane. It’s lonely at 11pm when Daddyman is at work and I want the house to stay quiet (so no phone calls), but I can’t talk to someone online, read any news, listen to any new music, etc.

*sigh* Hopefully, we’ll have internet by Monday, because how on earth can I go without blogging about our first day of school? Oh internet! I don’t know how to quit you.

*I’m swiping a little wireless from my grandmother while drinking a glass of wine.

So, the manufacturer of the sexist “I’m too pretty for math!” shirt I posted about seven months ago has apparently stumbled on my blog and decided to spam it. Isn’t that professional of her!

Spam comments will not be approved. I was more than willing to approve this woman’s comment (and did, in fact) for response, but I won’t tolerate spam. I regularly approve dissenting opinions, but I’m not willing to be harassed. Flooding my blog with comments will accomplish nothing other than a quick click on the “spam” button. I’m also not so naive as to believe that a large volume of random people would suddenly discover a 7 month old post and all leap to defense of this woman, so spare me the “I enjoy your blog…” nonsense. I know who my readers are.

Toughen up or get out of the business, honey, but you’re wasting your time spamming me. I only have conversations with grown-ups here.

ETA: Received another comment from someone saying that the “too pretty for math” lady didn’t ask them to spam; they’re just doing it out of the kindness of their heart. If that’s the case, ladies, you’re doing your friend a disservice. Bad reviews are part of business. Perhaps this will be a lesson about thinking about the greater implications of your products, because reinforcing sexist and negative stereotypes is usually not taken as “fun.”

However, I have received my favorite comment so far! It might even be my favorite comment of all time: “I am not one to throw stones.. but the name of the blog has grammer and spellying typos ALL OVER IT.. Smrt lernins? seriously?…”

I hate when I have those “grammer” and “spellying” typos, don’t you? *snort* Please, please tell me these mistakes were made intentionally!

Lo, so many times doth I find myself declaring thusly, “This is why I homeschool!”

Today, at Olan Mills photography, the photographer argued with me over comma placement in the title on a photograph collage. The main picture was of all three of my beautiful, talented, and delightful children (whose behavior while Nana and I looked at photo proofs was such that they are lucky I did not devour them on the spot like a disgruntled hamster), with one small photo of Tank and Captain Science and one small photo of Babypie below. The collage was captioned “Captain Science, Tank & Babypie.”

I protested the lack of Oxford comma between “Tank” and “&” (the “&” was necessary in lieu of “and,” due to the length of Tank’s real name), only to have the photographer tell me, “No, that’s right. I thought it was supposed to be the way you’re saying it, but an English teacher was in here the other day and said this is the right way.”

I responded, “Well, I have a master’s degree in writing and editing. I can assure you that it’s supposed to have a comma,” then said to my mother, “This is why I homeschool!”

While it turned out to be a non-issue, as an additional comma wouldn’t fit on the line, I will not accept the dropping of the Oxford (or “serial”) comma simply because some English teacher says so. Dropping that comma may be acceptable in AP style, which is designed to minimize space, but dropping the serial comma is not otherwise acceptable to me. Unless the final two items are together (“peanut butter & jelly,” for instance, or even “Captain Science and Tank,” since they were in the same photograph, while Babypie was in her own), that comma belongs in that list.

But me no buts* about how this is acceptable in non-academic American written grammar, because Americans say and do many things that are an abject butchery of proper grammar and usage. American writers have become lazy, American grammarians have lost their spine, and American teachers are failing to impart a respect for proper punctuation in their students. If it’s good enough for Strunk and White, the MLA Style Manual and The Chicago Manual of Style, it’s good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you, dammit.

Yes, when Lynne Truss (author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves) talks about not getting between those on opposing sides of the Oxford comma issue when drink is involved, she is, in fact, talking about me.

Considering that most public schools use MLA writing guidelines, which advocate the use of the Oxford comma, the idea of a public school English teacher telling a photographer that the comma isn’t necessary incites me to a new level of grammatically righteous anger. I’ve tolerated too many notes (both from Captain Science’s old public school and Tank’s private preschool) that pluralized with an apostrophe or misused “to” and “too” (No! You do not have “to many volunteers!”). While I often have a playful relationship with English, I will not give up my commas without a fight!

*Neither Officer Daddyman nor Patchfire have heard the phrase “but me no buts.” They both thought it was a typo. I promise that it is not. Here is a nice article about the “X me no X’s” model.

Dear Crazy Internet Christians,

It’s time I had a little come to Jesus meeting with y’all, alright? And yes, I’m aware of the irony there.

Now, you intelligent and compassionate Christians, who treat others with respect and who actually try to live life as modeled by Christ, can just sit right back down. This isn’t about you or even about Christianity (or at least, its foundations). I know that the crazies aren’t the only representatives of Christianity, or even comprise the largest percentage of Christianity, but they are, unfortunately, the loudest. You reasonable people have my love and appreciation for making this world a kinder place, though most of us differently-believers and non-believers wish your voices were a little easier to hear over the fray. God bless you for trying.

I’m talking to y’all over there, the other Christians, the ones who use your religion as a weapon of hate and denigration against others, who expect everyone in this world to treat your beliefs as true and absolute while you dismiss all of theirs as falsehoods and heathenry, who balk at any implication that an alternative set of beliefs might ever be acceptable to discuss (or God forbid, to actually believe), who wander around like rabid dogs in a hot summer street, looking for a chance to become righteously offended and bite anyone who commits the grievous crime of not thinking how you think.

If this is your version of Christianity, well, I feel awfully happy that I’m not a Christian (and even if I were, I’d be happy that someone like you probably wouldn’t consider me the right kind of Christian). You are not convincing me to become a Christian. You’re not convincing me to think highly of Christians or Christianity. You’re certainly not convincing me to think carefully about what I say, out of fear of offending you punkin dunkin liddle baby feelings.

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to hate Christians so much? A little hint — it has nothing to do with being afraid that your religious beliefs are right, being jealous of you, being lead astray by the devil, or any of the other nonsense your more extreme Christian groups keep claiming. Here’s a great example of the behavior that triggers that sort of response from others: Getting worked up over someone asking for recommendations of “books about Christian mythology for non-Christians”, dressing them down for daring to (accurately) use the term “Christian mythology” to refer to “the body of traditional narratives [everything] associated with Christianity,” accusing them of “insulting [your] intelligence” by asking for secular resources in a manner you find unacceptable, and really, when it all comes down to it, making an ass of yourself because someone is addressing a question to non-Christians on a board where you seem to think that everyone should feel obligated to ascribe to your narrow and unreasonably rigid view of Christianity, all while making plenty of blatantly insulting and ignorant comments about adherents to other faiths and their beliefs in the exact same thread and plenty of others.

That’s why people hate you. You’re narrow-minded. You’re petty. You’re completely self-absorbed. You see insult where none is meant just for the pleasure of feeling wronged. You’re judgmental. You’re hypocritical. You’re passive aggressive when you aren’t being openly aggressive. You cast the first stone into your neighbor’s eye. You’re just plain mean.

In short, you give Christianity a very bad name and you look like pure fools in the process. The best thing you could do to win people to Christ would be to just shut up, because y’all aren’t doing him any favors right now.

Sincerely,
Smrt Mama McLernins

P.S. The heathens called and they’d like their holidays back.

I think I’ve figured out the crux of Captain Science’s issues and it mostly comes down to the above statement. Captain Science always thinks he knows a better way to do things, and when his way isn’t actually better, he has a very difficult time accepting it. The roots of this are buried pretty deeply in his psyche, so I’m not sure how we’ll dig them out, if we even can.

I’ve seen a lot of chatter on the WTM forums lately about the difference between “gifted” and “just bright.” Several people insisted that giftedness comes down to “the way they think.” I am inclined to agree, because I’ve seen Captain Science’s brain working. He really does think differently and has a hard time relating to people who are more “inside the box” thinkers (or people who have difficulty getting the whole box of concepts immediately*). The upside is that it makes him a great abstract thinker and problem solver, when he applies his abilities confidently and diligently. The downside is that it has created an unwarranted sense of his own mental superiority, which manifests as the stubborn insistence that he can always, for every subject or activity, find a “better” way to do it. He’s also constantly on the search for shortcuts, even if those “shortcuts” end up requiring 10x the amount of work as just doing it the normal way.

We saw this a lot when he was little. When Officer Daddyman would teach him martial arts, he would usually respond with, “But I can show you a better way to [roll, stand, kick].” Eventually, he did have to acknowledge that, at five or six, he really didn’t have the knowledge to school the 4th degree black belt in martial arts, but before he could get to that point, there was a lot of headbutting and chest pounding (mostly on his part, as Daddyman isn’t generally going to dignify the young monkey’s attempt to show up the big gorilla).

We’re seeing it now with math, and today it proved to be the trigger for his absurd display of hissydom. He is perfectly competent in mathematics and math foundations, so the last two days, when he suddenly couldn’t do multiplication correctly, we knew something had to be up. Apparently, he decided he could develop a better (and more importantly, faster and easier) way to do multiplication. He would only do multiplication in his new “better” way, despite the fact that the answer came out wrong every single time. The more someone tried to demonstrate that his new method wasn’t working, the angrier he became, until suddenly, he went utterly nuclear. How dare we, the simple-minded parents of his great and hideous oppression, try to act like we knew better than he? How dare we say his way wasn’t hands down the single biggest mathematical innovation EVER in the history of the world?

I’m not exactly sure what to do about this. I’m glad he wants to try new methods, but insisting they’re the right or best ones, when they obviously aren’t, has got to stop. Captain Science is probably too aware of his intelligence, which was partially avoidable (too much praise from family and teachers, too involved in his own test scores during the grade skipping and gifted class testing process) and partially unavoidable (when you’re in a class environment, it’s really not hard to compare yourself to other children, and see that your capacity or performance is different from theirs). I do think that homeschooling will help somewhat in that respect, though — instead of being the gifted kid in a mainstream classroom with diverse ability levels, he’s one several. If Eclectic Girl’s math abilities don’t poke a little hole in his delusions of grandeur, then nothing will. I also hope that being with other highly intelligent children, working on higher-level work, will start encouraging him to rise to the challenge more, rather than finding short cuts.

I agree with Patchfire when she says an IQ of 300 doesn’t matter if all you do with it is sit around and play video games. “Gifted” may describe a certain, special way of thinking, but what does that really matter if the result is a smug attitude and the constant search for cheats and shortcuts? I was a “gifted” student, too, but by high school, I was cutting so many corners in order to put in as minimal effort as possible that I was performing at a significantly lower level than the “average” students in my classes. By college, I was making no effort at all, and I’d managed to functionally dumb myself down through sheer force of “couldn’t be bothered.” The brain is like any other muscle, and if you don’t exercise it to its full capacity, it starts losing that capacity and getting mushy. I don’t want that for Captain Science.

I’m happy for him to look for a better way to do things. I don’t want him thinking his way is automatically going to be better, simply by virtue of it being his way. I definitely don’t want him falling out with the red ass any time someone points out his way isn’t an improvement over the original way of doing things.

*When Captain Science was three, his preschool teacher told me about an incident in the classroom where his frustration with another classmate’s difficulty in mastering the colors came to a head. Nick had incorrectly identified something blue as green, prompting Captain Science to say, with great exasperation, “It’s blue, Nick. B-L-U-E, blue. Not blew like the wind. Blue like the color.” A warning sign of trouble to come?

Yes, we’re having another WTF Wednesday around these parts. Captain Science, after two wonderful weeks, has been on a slow decline this week, culminating in a full blown stomping, screaming fit. Yes, he’s been assessed for all those things you’d assess a child for when he is pitching a stomping, screaming fit (that was part of our barrage of testing before leaving public school). He doesn’t have any specific problem. He’s just throwing a hissy.

My theory is that we relaxed the prison-style homeschooling too quickly, because he was being so good and agreeable. We probably needed to continue to apply it for another two weeks beyond the improvement stage. Instead, we were too quick to relax and reward, and now Captain Science is back to having meltdowns. Gotta say, the kid is a master manipulator. I’m sure he’s just waiting for one of us to go try and empathize with him or attempt to understand why he’s acting like this.

Honestly, I don’t care why. I’m the adult. He is the child. I’m not going to be yanked around by a 9 year old with a bug up his butt. I’m done with sympathizing, empathizing, or in any way trying to explore his motivations. I do not give a rat’s patoot about his motivations. It’s behaviors that interest me, and his are going to change.

So, back we go to lockdown. We’re divesting him of his worldly toys and pleasure reading, too, in the interest of full blown attention to what needs to get done. We might be taking the door off the hinges again, as he’s been slamming it this week in his fits of tantrum. We aren’t scaling back any curricula, but we aren’t adding to it, and he might miss out on next week’s board game class if he can’t improve in the next six days. We’ll go to Patchfire’s house for science, then come straight home with no playtime.

At least Officer Daddyman was home to witness the sound and the fury. Also, I didn’t get even remotely upset about this magnificent display of jackassery (at least, not externally), so Captain Science didn’t accomplish getting a rise out of either of us. He is going to learn he can’t control us, but he had better damn well learn to control himself.

Ticked off mama is ticked off.

If you’ve ever wondered why I’m not a fan of unschooling, this pretty much sums up my concerns about what unschooling has the potential to become in the hands of someone who believes children innately have the foresight to know exactly what they need to know, and thus, makes no effort to adequately prepare her children for the future. A woman on the Mothering.com forums writes:

My children have been mostly unschooled which has meant engaged kids who are lovely people.. however they are at an age where they are looking to go to college (like the end of high school, kids here in the UK go at 16). Nearly all home-schooled kids want to go at 16 and mine are no different.
Their literacy is not great though. Spelling is difficult, punctuation and grammar need some work and they need to learn eg. how to write an essay. Most books with this in are aimed at quite young children. Does anyone know any books, websites etc. that we can use to get thier literacy improving?
We have the writing strands programme which is great but we need to work on the other bits of writing which aren’t covered in this.
Any advice?
TIA x

Yes, her children are “engaged, lovely people” who can’t read or write. This isn’t the first time she’s talked about her children’s functional illiteracy on the forums, or about her children’s struggles with math and other subjects, but she has taken no advice and implemented no measures consistently enough (or at all) to lead to any notable difference. When asked if tutoring or putting the children in school is an option, her response is:

School is not an option, they lead busy full happy lives and would not want to go.
Yes we have literacy struggles. I think the eldest 2 are dyslexic but can’t get help till college. We have tried various things, programmes and books. Mostly they type on keyboard which they prefer to writing and use spell-check. They have each just completed a qualification that is an exam equivalent but with no exam and they typed the stuff up. They don’t enjoy writing so I suppose it is a wait and see, carry on what we are doing and let college help them. Thanks for your replies
I was only asking if anyone had suggestions for books that may explain spelling rules/punctuation for older kids.

There is so much wrong with this picture. SO much. How has this mother’s brand of “unschooling” failed her children? Let me count the ways:

1. At least two of these children have a potential learning disability that their mother refuses to address, placing the responsibility for that on the college. Her children “can’t get help,” though I am sure they could if she were to enroll them in any sort of program.
2. Her children cannot read well, cannot use grammar, cannot spell, and do not know the basics of writing an essay, yet she believes all of this can be solved by a book that “explain[s] spelling rules/punctuation.” She also seems surprised that books on basic grammar and usage are all geared towards younger children.
3. Her children’s “busy lives” and “not want[ing] to go” to school apparently outweigh the fact that their mother has allowed them to reach their teen year without the basic abilities to read or write, yet she expects they will magically do well in college.
4. These children have apparently never been made to do work they do not enjoy, yet she expects they will waltz right in to college and be successful there.
5. These children have not been taught even the basics of writing, cannot read, cannot spell, cannot use grammar, and have not yet successfully passed an entrance exam, yet she expects they will waltz right into college and be successful there.
6. She believes that it is the job of the college to teach the children the basics of reading and writing that she has failed to teach them.
7. Her child, who didn’t even realize until age 14 that she would need to know these things, requested to learn them through a curriculum, and had her mother turn down that request because it would be “spoonfeeding her.”

I love how she mentions several times what delightful people her children are, as though that makes up for her complete parental failing to instill any form of academic education in her children. Being pleasant is great and all, but 16 is a bit late to be learning to read, and it’s certainly way too late to be addressing a learning disability like dyslexia. Her “engaged” and “lovely” children could have a successful career ahead of them at Chick-fil-A (which has delightfully pleasant servers). However, her daughter who does absolutely no math (outside of “money stuff”), cannot read well or write well, and who spends hours a day watching “Gossip Girl” and doing trampoline (according to this woman’s other posts) is not likely to flourish in college.

Sure, some of you will say, “Well, this lady is just one example of unschooling gone wrong. She’s hardly the rule!” Take a moment, if you will, to read some of the comments to that post (or to any posts in the unschooling forums on MDC) and you’ll find other unschoolers telling encouraging her in her gross negligence with little gems like, “If your daughter wants to go to college next year, it is up to her to make sure her writing skills are up to par. She can use you as a resource, but it is not your responsibility – it is hers,” “I’d make it HER responsibility to prepare for college- if she slacks off, the result is that she may have to wait longer to go,” “I think because our kids have choices and control over their lives, it’s unlikely that they’ll turn around and say something like, ‘You should have made me do xyz.’”

Yes, mom completely fails to teach her child anything, because the child doesn’t “want to.” Then, when that child is finally old enough to have that “oh shit!” moment and realize that perhaps a little learning might be necessary for a future, the mother is in no way obligated to help, nor is she culpable for the lack of education up to that point. The Unschooler Mantra (or “Radical Unschooler” Mantra, since all the unschoolers always say that what these people are doing isn’t “unschooling,” but “radical unschooling,” despite the fact the people actually doing it just call themselves unschoolers) — if they don’t choose to learn it, don’t make them learn it, and then take no responsibility that they didn’t learn it. Must be nice, being completely absolved of any responsibility or obligation to your children. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to play catch up for 10+ missed years of education in one or two years, but hey, let’s blame the kid!

As an aside, where did these unschoolers get the idea that reading alone will teach everything you need to know about proper grammar, spelling, and usage? Is it to make themselves feel better about the fact that their teenage daughter reading Twilight is the closest thing to an education she’s getting?

Let’s talk about the weather or international disasters or politics. You know, something less painful.

Captain Science is…well, I’ll just call it “boundary testing.” I believe I mentioned that a little earlier this week. Of course, I made the huge mistake of commenting that he’d improved greatly by Wednesday, which of course means that by Wednesday afternoon, it had all gone to hell in a tightly-woven, decorative, but highly functional Longaberger hand basket*.

Sometimes, Captain Science is not the most forthright of children. He occasionally sneaks, cheats, and/or lies, especially if he’s trying to do something fun that requires polishing off a few chores or some work first. Along with being slow, slow, slow this week, he opted to do a little copying down the answers in Life of Fred and turning it in as his own work. Of course, because the answers to each section of Life of Fred are just right there, I can understand the temptation, but really, if you’re going to lie about having done the work, pick a problem where it’s not so obvious. Pal, I know you didn’t convert .875 to a fraction in your head that quickly.

Captain Science had been warned that lying would result in writing lines, so he got to start a page of lines that said, “I will not lie and I will not cheat.” That took him about fifteen times longer than it ought to have, pushing back even more work. Every task this week, with the exception of the first have of Wednesday and science on Thursday, has been like a long, slow tooth extraction. I’m pretty sure he’s accomplished a few chapters of Life of Fred, perhaps 11-14? He also managed to do a lesson of Editor in Chief and two Writing Strands sections. Before he goes to bed tonight, he’ll do a chapter of Vocabulary from Classical Roots. It’s not that the week has been educationally fruitless, it’s just been rather devoid of joy.

We’re trying some new things to get us back onto track, but it will take a couple of weeks to see how they pan out. Wish us luck and that week 21’s review is more positive than this week’s.

*The Nana collects these. She’s not really the collecting type, but she does love a basket, because “you can put things in baskets” and they are useful in the event of a disaster. The children all have Longaberger Easter baskets. I am not a Longaberger consultant or anything, but if you want to buy an expensive, but very nice, basket, Longaberger is the way to go.