I have been body slamed!

Our three daughters are typical girls. I have tried to expand their horizons over the years, with some success.

One of my first attempts meet with complete failure. My oldest was barely talking. We were at my parents, playing with legos. My parents have a couple thousand pieces of legos. As a child I use to build large and complex buildings. I asked my daughter to help me build a house. She said "No daddy, build bed." Then she went off and returned with a doll. For her legos were a means to an end, the end was mothering her doll.

We've been raising a foster care boy for seven months now. We got him when he was thirteen months. He is all boy.

He loves to look at cars. I think he will have a life long love affair with cars. Many objects in our house have been turned into cars which he pushes around the cars, things like remotes, shoes, the dust pan, and so on.

And he is much more physical. Just two days ago I was body slammed!

We were out back. The sun was going down. I was laying on a blanket on the grass. I pointed at the birds. He looked for awhile. Then he walked to my side and did a belly flop on my belly. He weighs all of 21 pounds so it didn't hurt. He thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. He did it again. Soon he was doing a belly flop from one side and then rolling over me landing on the other side. He gave me over twenty body slams.

Maybe he has a future in wrestling.

And for now we have a boy in the house. He'll even build with me using Mega Bloks, maxi size.


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Technorati tags: family, boys, girls

More on Glenda Norviel

After reading my wife's post about the 16-year-old who was told to write about her rape, I did a search on the teacher: Glenda Norviel. I found this post from just after the event happened:

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A certified teacher and a substitute teacher assigned to upper grades at the rural Tabiona School have been reprimanded for saying a teenage rape victim should not object to profane material in a reading assignment.
The substitute teacher, Gayla Hamilton, reportedly admitted telling the 16-year-old Duchesne County girl she had "been around the block" and shouldn't be disturbed by harsh language and sex scenes in "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult. The novel was assigned to a group of eight juniors and seniors at the one-building K-12 school in Tabiona.
Hamilton also reportedly admitted revealing the identity of the girl's rapist to a classroom of the girl's peers after the girl said she did not wish to discuss the matter.
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Read that last paragraph again. This poor girl is raped. The teacher hassles the poor girl trying to get the girl to read a book she is uncomfortable with, and then it appears the substitute teacher tells the class the girl was raped.

I don't have the words.

My heart goes out to this girl.


As a side note, this blog: Teachers and Trash Education, seems to find a scary teacher story every day. There is a real problem with government schools today as they do not aggressive deal with scary teachers. More teachers should be fired and many of them should do time in prison.


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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

The Carnival of Space is up

Fraser Cain of Universe Today is hosting this week's Carnival of Space.


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Technorati tags: carnival, space

Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books is up

Semicolon is hosting her weekly Review of Books.

The Review of Books starts off with this quotation:

"A nation that does not read for itself cannot think for itself. And a nation that cannot think for itself risks losing both its identity and its freedom."
-- Laura Bush

It is easy to join her review of books. If you have blogged about books recently consider adding your post to the review.


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Technorati tags: book, review

Wasp by Eric Frank Russell

My two older daughters and I have recently watched the first two Lord of the Rings movies. This was the first time for them. While watching Two Towers this last Saturday I commented a couple times how it was important to attack where an enemy is weak. It is best to aim for the Achilles' heel. After the movie we talked some more about how in battle you don't want to throw your strength at the enemy's strong defenses.

One of my favorite Science Fiction authors is Eric Frank Russell. He served in the RAF during World War II, and many of his stories have a military setting and withthe clever hero destroying much larger opponents. The hero always finds the Achilles' Heel. Wasp is the first Eric Frank Russell story I ever read. I go back and reread it every couple years. I just reread it, probably for the fifteenth time.

The background for the story is Humanity is fighting for its life. We've expanded out to the stars and settled several colonies. We bumped into Sirian Empire. We got along with them for awhile, but they then decided to try and conquer us. Earth has more advanced technology, while the Sirian Empire has about ten times the number of people.

Our hero, James Mowry, is recruited to be a "Wasp." James is told a story of a small wasp that stung a driver. In trying to kill the wasp, the driver wreaked the car, killing three people, including himself. After months of training James Mowery is sent to a Sirian colony with the goal of destabilizing the colony, single handedly, to be a wasp!

This is a funny story. Eric Frank Russell does a great job of telling an interesting story while weaving in humor.

If you like classic Science Fiction from the 1950s, check out Wasp, or Entities which includes several of his novels. A couple dozen short stories by Eric Frank Russell's collected were put together in Major Ingredients.


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Technorati tags: Eric, Frank, Russell, Wasp

I almost couldn't believe this one

I believe that there are many wonderful teachers in the government/welfare schools. This story is NOT about one of those wonderful teachers. I'm wondering just what a teacher has to do to get fired.

Teacher to get a warning for remarks on rape victim

The Utah Professional Practices Advisory Commission (UPPAC) decided Tuesday after an investigation to send a letter of warning to Tabiona School teacher Glenda Norviel. The letter comes after one of Norviel's students, a rape victim, claimed the teacher assigned her to write an essay about her rape and pregnancy in front of the class as an alternative assignment to reading My Sister's Keeper, a novel the student and her family found offensive.

Norviel then made remarks about the girl and her family to newspaper reporters who called her for comment. The Uintah Basin Standard quoted Norviel as saying the girl, "has supposedly been raped by the father of her baby." Court records show a man was convicted of raping the 16-year-old girl.

Norviel also told a Tribune reporter, "The girl is not an innocent. . . . If she has just had a baby six weeks ago, is reading the f-word going to cause her emotional trauma for the rest of her life?"

There are so many things wrong with this.

1) Disdain for the parents' standards.

2) Disdain for the victim of a violent crime.

I could go on but I have a crying child to take care off.

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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

Are universities like drug users?

Analogies can be useful because they give us insight and help to understand concepts. For example Albert Einstein explained radio thus:

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

Neal McCluskey has an interesting analogy:

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For a junkie, a "crisis" is being un able to get the drugs he craves. American higher education is just such a junkie - with the federal government acting as the enabler who gives him another fix, rather than pointing him toward rehab.
In its latest beg for a fix, Higher Ed cries that the credit crunch will make it harder for students to get loans. Last week, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings rushed in to enable the junkies - announcing that, if needed to keep aid flowing, her department will buy loans and forward federal money to guaranty agencies to ensure that every eligible student gets as much aid as possible.
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His conclusion is: "The Ivory Tower is addicted to taxpayer cash, and Washington is happy to keep the junkie hooked."

To an extent I agree that government schools are like junkies. They have gotten used to demanding more money, for decades. The analogy also implies that the solution is for the government to cut the junkies off cold turkey.

I think our country would be better off if the government stopped giving money directly and went with solutions like vouchers which allowed parents and students more choice. The schools couldn't keep complaining to the government that they needed more money, they would have to entice customers, or shrink as students (and the money) went to better performing schools.


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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

I can understand popularity contests like who is most likely to succeed, but???

What was the teacher thinking? From Middle School Pregnancy Test:

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An irate father in Jackson, Mississippi is demanding that his daughter’s sixth grade teacher at the Chastain Middle School be fired, said pcblogspot.com.
According to Curtis Lyons, the teacher handed out a survey asking students to select which one of their classmates was most likely to contract AIDS, get pregnant or die before they graduated. When she learned that her fellow students thought she would be the first one to get pregnant, his daughter—an honor student—was humiliated, said Lyons.
“Where was the lesson in that?” asked Lyons, who said that in his opinion, this person should not be teaching kids. Lucy Hansford, JPS communications specialist, said that since the school system is investigating the matter, they were not able to release any details at the present time.
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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

Spit vs. Spam

In Crossing the Chasm Geoffrey Moore explains that as new technology is being sold different groups of people will buy the technology for different reasons. The early adopters will respond to one set of messages, while later groups have different issues. The early adopters tend to be a small segment of the market, like around five to ten percent. The bread and butter is in hitting the main stream. Companies make a lot more money selling to 70% of the market than 10%, but they need to change their marketing strategy. Crossing the Chasm is an enlightening book.

I've been working in the high tech industry for a couple decades. I enjoy being a software engineer. It is fun to create. Given my career I am a bit quirky in that I am not an early adopter. For example while my wife has had a cell phone for years and years, I only recently picked up one.

As cell phones pick up more functionality they become more and more like computers, with many of the same problems computers have. SlashDot reports that Spit Will Be Worse Than Spam:

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A team of German computer scientists has developed a program that reproduces all the known forms of spit (spam over internet telephony) attack. Their plan is to make the spitting software available to computer security experts wanting to test antispit strategies. Developing these won't be easy. There are various antispit techniques, such as white lists that allow only calls from predetermined callers, Turing tests such as audio CAPTCHAs that make a caller prove he or she is human and payment-at-risk services where the caller makes a small payment in advance and is refunded immediately if the receiver acknowledges the call as legitimate. But all have weaknesses, say the researchers. The main difference between junk calls and junk email is that the email arrives at your mail server before you access it. This gives the server time to analyze its content and filter out the junk before it gets to you. Not so with internet telephony, which is why radically different strategies are needed.
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It is developments like this that keep most of us back from being early adopters.

Have you had a SPIT attack on your cell phone?


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Technorati tags: cell phone, spit

Japan's version of the helicopter parent

Recently the news has reported on "the helicopter parent." These are parents who hover when a student go off to college. The parents will call the teachers and asking for special consideration, or badger the university administration to make sure their child gets the "right" class.

Japan has developed a similar problem: "Monster Parents."

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The stage was set, the lights went down and in a suburban Japanese primary school everyone prepared to enjoy a performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only snag was that the entire cast was playing the part of Snow White.
For the audience of menacing mothers and feisty fathers, though, the sight of 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch was a triumph: a clear victory for Japan's emerging new class of “Monster Parents”.
For they had taken on the system and won. After a relentless campaign of bullying, hectoring and nuisance phone calls, the monster parents had cowed the teachers into submission, forcing the school to admit to the injustice of selecting just one girl to play the title role.
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It is a bit mind boggling.

(Hat tip: Right on the Left Coast: Views From a Conservative Teacher)


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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up

This week's Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival is up at Adventures On Beck's Bounty.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Charlotte, Mason, Charlotte Mason

Good thought about friendship

This came in from Dan Galvin's Thought For The Day mailing list:

Do not keep the alabaster box of your friendship sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them, and while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier. The kind of things you mean to say when they are gone, say before they go.

-George W. Childs
(From Penny Pennington's
Today's Thought 2001/06/25)


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Technorati tags: friendship, George Childs

Joanne Jacobs has some good news

A couple years back I attended Joanne Jacobs' kick off meeting for her book Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds. Her book covers a charter school in San Jose which goes after students who are doing poorly, but want to improve. You can read my review here. The school's unofficial motto is "We're not good now, but we can do better."

Joanne reports They made it!

"Last night, Downtown College Prep honored the 12 students from the class of ‘04, the charter school’s first graduating class, who earned their college degrees in ‘08. Another cohort will graduate in the next year or two. In all, 75 percent of DCP grads are on track to earn a four-year degree. (Students who attended private colleges were more likely to finish in four years, but the high costs have pushed most DCP grads to enroll in public universities.)"

The students succeeded because the teachers worked with them and pushed them. The school worked hard to keep the students in, but they would kick out them out if the students were not performing. The schools didn't have more money. There wasn't some new program. There wasn't a new law. The students underwent a dramatic transformation because their parents cared enough to sign them up, and to commit to supporting the school.

This kind of process is hard, if not impossible, to legislate.


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Technorati tags: education, Downtown College Prep, charter schools, Joanne Jacobs, Our school

Blogging is good for your health!

Interesting, a recent study found that blogging improves your health:

"Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not."

I haven't noticed an improvement in my health, but it has been awhile since I last had a cold.

(Hat tip: Slashdot)


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Technorati tags: blog, health

Nebraska court recognizes fathers are important in raising children

I found Glenn Sacks' post about An Important Win for Fathers, Children in Nebraska Supreme Court interesting on two points.

The first point was the acknowledgement that both parents are important in bringing up children. In the United States many judges seem to feel only a mother can really raise children, that fathers are mainly good for bringing home the bacon.

Glenn writes:

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In the case, a mother abused her daughter and child protective services took the girl. There were no accusations of abuse against the father. Nevertheless, they deceived and manipulated the father into relinquishing custody of his daughter.
The girl was left fatherless -- can anyone guess what's going to happen to her?
Surprise, surprise -- without her father, the girl's life, in the words of the Nebraska Supreme Court, "spun out of control." She lived the life that so many fatherless girls live -- doing drugs, running away from home, getting pregnant at a young age, etc.
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I'm speechless that the social worker thought it was a good idea to get the father out of the child's life. I'm sure the father wasn't perfect, but there were no accusations of abuse. In today's age it seems like all a social work has to do is hear a neighbor or family member hint there is abuse and they land like a ton of bricks on the poor parent or parents.

"The high court upheld an award of $150,000 in damages and $64,697 in legal and other costs to Amanda."


The second area was I started wondering if this ruling would embolden the FLDS crowd. The courts have been ruling that the Texas CPS was wrong to yank over four hundred children from their parents. If the FLDS parents won a ruling like the one above Texas could be looking at paying out $200 million.


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Technorati tags: Texas, Child, Protective, Services, abuse

June 23rd could be an interesting date

In February this year a California judge ruled homeschooling parents needed to have teaching credentials. Reason partially prevaled and the ruling was vacated.

A California Court of Appeal will rehear the issue. They will listen to arguments for and against homeschooling on June 23, 2008. Mary Nix had a good interview with Debbie Schwarzer, HomeSchool Association of California (HSC) Legal Team Co-chair, about the issues.

To the surprise of no one, the California Teachers Association has filed (hat tip: HomeSchoolBuzz)

"an amicus brief arguing before the court that parents should have no right over the education of their children, should not have a right to home school, and that these children should be literally forced to be put back into the public schools -- even though parents object ..."

Debbie said the hearing June 23rd could be as short as an hour. Once the judges take all the briefs they'll retire and ponder their ruling. They could rule quickly, or they could take a long time. We may get some idea what the judges think based on the questions they ask.

June 23rd could be an interesting date.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

It looks like Spunky is back in full force

Spunky was a very prolific homeschool blogger. Then she took a break.

It looks like she is back in the saddle, ready to pick up the baton and again bring us fascinating news and thoughtful insight into homeschooling, and other topics.

In Eye on Education: What works? she writes about a television show that is claims to be trying to find what works in public education. One of the examples was putting GPS devices on high school students. Spunky was kind. I think putting GPS devices on high school students is turning the school into more of a prison.

She reports that Obama has a Generation Joshua project, and HSLDA is going to stop what they consider a trademark infringement.

NEA Endorses Obama is on the effect presidential politics on homeschooling.

Spunky does a great job in writing about important issues. If you never read her blog before, go check it out. If you use to read it, then you know to go check it out.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

Dana is going to do a dry run for Home School Talk

A few homeschoolers are putting together an internet talk radio on homeschooling and related issues. It is appropriately named Home School Talk.

Dana of Principle Discovery is going to be doing a dry run on the 16th of June. They'll go live on the 7th of July. I wish Dana and the rest the best.

(Update I - 11 June 08) I corrected the dates.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up

The Headmistress is hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling at The Common Room.

After reading the carnival you might check out her good news.





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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Carnival of Homeschooling

Our academic phase of homeschooling is drawing to an end for this year

We are nearing the end of homeschooling for the recent academic year. In four more years my oldest daughter may be leaving for college. It is a bit sobering.

Last week and today Janine had the girls take a set of standardized tests so we'll have a sense of how they are doing. We like to know what areas the girls are strong in, and what areas we need to work on.

It has been a good year. My daughters are progressing on the fronts I care about. They are mastering academic subjects. I am pleased with their characters. They are kind, hard working and thoughtful. Most of the time they get along with each other.

One of the nice things about homeschooling is they have time to chase things that interest them.

For example my oldest spends every free minute reading. I've been surprised to find that some of her free time books are not just fantasy and science fiction. I caught her reading a book about Shakespeare this last month!

My middle daughter has become a cooking fiend. She cooks almost every day, often doing a full meal. When I was about twelve I complained to my mother that we needed more deserts. She replied that if I wanted more cookies and cakes I could bake them. For the next couple years I used simple recipes to satisfy my sweet tooth. My second daughter has a much greater range. She'll cook sweet stuff, but she also cooks almost everything else.

A couple months back my youngest daughter expressed an interest in flying remote control planes. A friend at work was willing to donate his starter plane, the basic frame, but we needed to buy things like a battery and the transmitter. I was surprised by how expensive all the pieces would be. I made a deal with my youngest that I'd pay half. For over two months she worked odd jobs. She saved and saved. Finally we got the parts and this last Saturday my friend came over to our house and put the servos and receivers on the plane. We needed to special order the battery. It comes in tomorrow. Wednesday morning we'll get up around 6:30 AM, much earlier than normal, and go fly a plane!

I love homeschooling. We are able to provide our daughters with a solid academic education, while giving them a chance to explore the wide world.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

Reminder - send in a post for the next Carnival of Homeschooling

The next Carnival of Homeschooling will be hosted at The Common Room.



As always, entries are due Monday evening at 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.



Here are the instructions for sending in a submission.




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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Carnival of Homeschooling

When government schools get really weird

Over the years I've seen some really weird things happen in government schools. For example the high school teacher who gave his freshman students an assignment to research internet porn. Or the fired teacher who continued collecting a salary and had even gotten two raises. Or the recent teachers abusing kindergarteners.

It is easy to become jaded over the multiple problems with public education. I often read another story of some strange thing public schools do and I just roll my eyes.

Today's account of a teacher advising schools to skip academics and focus on more important things like learning how to conserve energy exceeded my normal tolerance.

Joanne Jacobs reports in Unsustainable schooling:

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You may think the U.S. education system is daffy, but just look at the Brits’ struggle with the national curriculum: A government education adviser wants to stop teaching academic subjects, which are “middle class.” Instead of history, geography and science, Professor John White thinks students should “learn skills such as energy-saving and civic responsibility through projects and themes,” reports the Daily Mail. White believes that “traditional subjects were invented by the middle classes and are “mere stepping stones to wealth.” Which seems preferable to preparing students for poverty.
White served on a government curriculum committee that “reformed” schooling for 11 to 14-year-olds by “sidelining large swathes of subject content in favour of lessons on issues such as climate change and managing debt.”
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Wow. Words fail me.


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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education

The Carnival of Education is up

This week's Carnival of Education is up at The Education Wonks.

If you would like to submit to the next Carnival of Education, go here.


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Technorati tags: education, school

The Dark River to Antares

I greatly enjoy the Astronomy Picture of the Day. This picture was posted yesterday:

It is by Máximo Ruiz, who game me permission to post this on my blog.


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Technorati tags: Máximo Ruiz, Dark, River, Antares

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling is at Tami's Blog.

Tami breaks up the many posts with a lovely set of banners.





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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education, Carnival of Homeschooling