Fanny Harville' s Commonplace Book

Why Professors at San Jose State Won't Use a Harvard Professor's MOOC

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:01:31 -0400

Why Professors at San Jose State Won't Use a Harvard Professor's MOOC:

In an open letter, the San Jose professors worry that public higher education will suffer if scholar-student interaction is replaced with videotaped content.

…”In spite of our admiration for your ability to lecture in such an engaging way to such a large audience,” the letter’s authors write, “we believe that having a scholar teach and engage with his or her own students is far superior to having those students watch a video of another scholar engaging his or her students.”

Is Organic Better? Ask a Fruit Fly

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:32:37 -0400

Is Organic Better? Ask a Fruit Fly:

A middle-school experiment using fruit flies and organic foods has won publication in a national scientific journal and spurred a debate about the relative benefits of organic eating.

An impressive example of self-directed learning! Not exactly a “middle-school experiment” as the preview describes above, but an independent project pursued by a girl of middle-school age.

Redefining Success and Celebrating the Unremarkable

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:10:40 -0400

Redefining Success and Celebrating the Unremarkable:

Many of us define success as being extraordinary, but where does that leave the average child who enjoys a pickup basketball game but is far from Olympic material?

Leaving the Picture Books on the Shelves

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:08:25 -0400

Leaving the Picture Books on the Shelves:

Sorting the children’s books for a move, and rediscovering old favorites.

A Splendid Little Book Club Has Ended Its Run

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:07:44 -0400

A Splendid Little Book Club Has Ended Its Run:

Dwight Garner is packing up the last, best books in his children’s picture book library and reflecting on his family’s nightly ritual.

When Parents Kill Parents in the Name of Literature

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:07:02 -0400

When Parents Kill Parents in the Name of Literature:

We weren’t very far into “Little House on the Prairie” when it hit me: Ma was kind of a bummer.

Bertrand Russell on Education

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:52:33 -0400

Bertrand Russell on Education:

“Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce. What it should produce is a belief that knowledge is attainable in a measure, though with difficulty; that much of what passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be more or less mistaken, but that the mistakes can be rectified by care and industry. In acting upon our beliefs, we should be very cautious where a small error would mean disaster; nevertheless it is upon our beliefs that we must act. This state of mind is rather difficult: it requires a high degree of intellectual culture without emotional atrophy. But though difficult it is not impossible; it is in fact the scientific temper. Knowledge, like other good things, is difficult, but not impossible; the dogmatist forgets the difficulty, the skeptic denies the possibility. Both are mistaken, and their errors, when wide-spread, produce social disaster.”

(from Brainpickings.org)

Why We Should Memorize Poetry

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 12:37:24 -0500

Why We Should Memorize Poetry:

The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen. Robson puts the point succinctly: “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.”

Ruining Our Children: The Scourge of College Admissions

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:44:50 -0500

Ruining Our Children: The Scourge of College Admissions:

At present, we inculcate the young into our superstitions, first of all the belief, against all evidence, that where you attend college determines your fate. “Where you go to college is not important,” Pinsky insisted in his talk. “It is a stupid distinction.” It is stupid, at least, to place so much weight upon it when in reality so much of what happens is up to the individual. The self-starting, energetic student at a community college will learn more and do better afterwards than a sloth attending Harvard or Yale. When we look at the college affiliations of successful business people or writers or scientists or you name it, nearly all hold degrees from schools that are not ranked in an asinine Top Ten created by a failed news magazine. There can be and should be no escape from the fact that your destiny depends not on your trappings but on your creativity, integrity, and sweat. Yet when we make our children feel that their self-worth rests wholly on an impersonal institution’s judgment, we suggest to them that they do not own themselves.

Children Are Not Our Friends (Until They Are)

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:35:19 -0500

Children Are Not Our Friends (Until They Are):

When my children were little, I was always a bit baffled by parents who talked about being friends with their children. Maybe I expect too much from my friends, but I like to hang out with people who read chapter books and bathe without being told. I’m big on reciprocity in my friendships — we exchange views and experience and occasionally good advice. I don’t tell you when to go to bed. You don’t tell me when you’re done pooping.

I Don't Want My Preschooler to be a Gentleman

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:12:25 -0500

I Don't Want My Preschooler to be a Gentleman:

A mother critiques her preschool’s inculcation of gender-based codes of manners:

So while he finishes his bowl of cereal, I tell him that I think a gentleman lets other people go first. If two boys reach the top of the slide at the same time, a gentleman lets the other one go first. Furthermore, I say, it would be very nice if his teacher decided to alternate on a daily basis who uses the bathroom first at naptime. The girls, I assure him, wouldn’t mind waiting a few extra minutes and it would give them a chance to feel gentlemanly. But the concept of a gentlemanly girl is beyond him and he shakes his head.

50 Posts About Interest-Led/ Self-Directed/ Unschooled Learning

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:45:13 -0500

50 Posts About Interest-Led/ Self-Directed/ Unschooled Learning:

A big, rich, diverse list of articles and videos worth checking out.

A Silicon Valley School That Doesn't Compute

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:48:09 -0500

A Silicon Valley School That Doesn't Compute:

The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.

But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.

Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.

Giving a Child Permission to be Miserable

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:03:36 -0500

Giving a Child Permission to be Miserable:

“Sometimes, when something goes wrong, people do not want to hear that it is all going to be ok, or that so-and-so had that happen and it was all fine, or any of a variety of such things. Sometimes it is better to just agree that it sucks, and leave it at that.”

Can You Measure An Education? Can You Define Life's Meaning?

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:15:16 -0500

Can You Measure An Education? Can You Define Life's Meaning?:

Here’s what I would want for my children, if I had young children today. I would want them to grow up feeling in charge of their own lives. I would want them to be happy but also to care about the happiness of others. I would want them to be emotionally resilient, so they could bounce back from life’s inevitable stresses and disappointments. I would want them to feel confident in their ability to learn throughout life and to adapt to a world that is changing faster from year to year than it ever has before. I would want them to have goals—goals that they feel some passion about. I would want them to be able to think critically and make rational decisions that help them achieve their goals. I would want them to have moral values that help give meaning and structure to their lives, and I would hope that these would be human values—values having to do with human rights and obligations not to tread on those rights.

Art as Antidote for Academic Ills

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:52:00 -0500

Art as Antidote for Academic Ills:

The artist Chuck Close describes his artistic development in childhood to visiting children from Roosevelt School in Connecticut:

“I wanted people to notice me, not that I couldn’t remember their faces or add or subtract,” he said, referring to the learning and neurological disabilities that set him apart from his classmates when he was growing up in Monroe, Wash.

A terrible writer and test-taker, Mr. Close used art to make it through school. Instead of handing in a paper, he told the children, “I made a 20-foot-long mural of the Lewis and Clark trail.”

"Systems Thinking" Controversy

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:12:59 -0500

"Systems Thinking" Controversy:

File this under Why We Homeschool. Some members of our local school board believe that Systems Thinking is a communist plot…. GAH.

The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education is bitterly divided over the method known as “systems thinking.” Some say the method subjects students to a socialist political agenda, while others — including Superintendent Don Martin — claim it is simply another instructional tool teachers have employed successfully in the classroom.

NY Magazine's Everything Guide to Urban Homeschooling

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:46:43 -0500

NY Magazine's Everything Guide to Urban Homeschooling

What Should Children Read?

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 11:07:26 -0500

What Should Children Read?:

What schools really need isn’t more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. Most students could use greater familiarity with what newspaper, magazine and book editors call “narrative nonfiction”: writing that tells a factual story, sometimes even a personal one, but also makes an argument and conveys information in vivid, effective ways.

I only discovered the wonderful world of narrative nonfiction late in high school when I began reading the New Yorker, and it was a revelation to me. I wish I had known about this kind of writing earlier! While my son loves to have fiction read aloud to him, he is most drawn in his own reading to nonfiction.

Scholars Criticize Wiencek's Portrayal of Jefferson

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:40:12 -0500

Scholars Criticize Wiencek's Portrayal of Jefferson:

The critiques of Wiencek’s book highlight the differences between popular and academic/scholarly history. For academics, context is of absolute importance — the context of selected quotations, the context of one’s claims within the larger body of scholarship. This attention to context generates work of nuance and subtlety. Wiencek’s book, on the other hand, paints a sensationalist picture with broad strokes.

But in a letter last month to The Hook, a Charlottesville newspaper that ran an article about “Master of the Mountain,” Ms. Stanton blasted him for a “breathtaking disrespect for the historical record and for the historians who preceded him,” including Edwin M. Betts, whose 1953 edition of Jefferson’s plantation records Mr. Wiencek claims deliberately left out a passage indicating that Jefferson knew that very young enslaved boys in the Monticello nail factory were being whipped.

“How can he know that Betts ‘deliberately’ suppressed this sentence, in what was a compilation of excerpts, not full letters?” she asked, noting that Betts’s edition contains many far worse details about Jefferson’s treatment of slaves.

Lucia Stanton’s letter is printed in full here.

I wrote about our reading of an excerpt of Wiencek’s book in Smithsonian Magazine (and critiques by historians) in our homeschool here.