I’m very much enjoying “auditing” this course:

This is the third Hebrew Bible course I’ve listened to. (The first two were from Modern Scholar and the Teaching Company, respectively.) This is the first one to teach me more than Asimov’s Guide to the Bible did.

I’m very unhappy to learn that all three of these books are out of print.

I’ve posted many times about Asimov’s Guide to the Bible.

I’m now very much enjoying Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare.

I’ve just ordered a used copy of Asimov’s Guide to Science.

It’s starting to seem to me as if I could build much of a classical homeschooling curriculum out of these three books.

I regularly want to give them as gifts.

How can they be out of print?

From Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook:

Although some educators had been complaining about writing scores for decades, it was the mushroom cloud of business e-mail at the end of the 1990s that sparked the greatest change. Almost overnight, corporate America switched from telecommunication to written communication and, in the process, discovered how many CEOs, CFOs, and mid-level executives couldn’t string ten words together in a coherent sentence. Corporations were suddenly spending almost $3 billion a year to teach college-educated employees how to write, but the crisis was so deep it was often a case of “the blind leading the blind,” like this request to an online writing consultant:

i need help i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you.[34]

---

[34] Sam Dillon, “What Corporate America Cannot Build: A Sentence,” New York Times, December 7, 2004, p. A23.

I’m going to reproduce Jim Fedako’s post in its entirety:

My parents recently visited and left some relics of my youth. One look at this drawing sent my mind back in time.

Almost 40 years ago, it wasn’t enough for government to tell me about the evils of smoking, they also coerced me into sharing private family information — that my father smoked — in order to serve the agenda of the state.

Mind you, my father knew the dangers of smoking. Everyone did (and does). Nevertheless, after a hard day of work, my father had to face me — his smirking, deputized son — and my silly artwork and misspelled message.

At some time in our past, the state succeeded in elevating its education above all other institutions — the family included. By doing so, the state created the situation where it alone could indoctrinate the youth, and parents wouldn’t even raise a concern.

Yesterday it was smoking. Today it’s the environment. Tomorrow, who knows.

Whoever controls the minds of the youth controls the future.

“[In] Lincoln, Rhode Island … they cancelled the district spelling bee because only one child would win, leaving all the others behind, thus violating the intent of No Child Left Behind — or, as they might say in Lincoln, no child gets ahead.”

(Jim Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook, citing “P.C. Watch,” New York Times, Education, April 24, 2005, p. 7)

Reminds me of The Incredibles:

Dash: “Dad says our powers make us special!”

Mom: “Everyone’s special, Dash.”

Dash, muttering: “Which is another way of saying that nobody is.”

This is a must-read for anyone concerned about schooling:

[...] Of course, publishers prefer to face no objections at all. That’s why going through a major adoption, especially a Texas adoption, is like earning a professional certificate in textbook editing. Survivors just know things.

What do they know?

Mainly, they know how to censor themselves. Once, I remember, an editorial group was discussing literary selections to include in a reading anthology. We were about to agree on one selection when someone mentioned that the author of this piece had drawn a protest at a Texas adoption because he had allegedly belonged to an organization called the One World Council, rumored to be a “Communist front.”

At that moment, someone pointed out another story that fit our criteria. Without further conversation, we chose that one and moved on. Only in retrospect did I realize we had censored the first story based on rumors of allegations. Our unspoken thinking seemed to be, If even the most unlikely taint existed, the Gablers would find it, so why take a chance?

Self-censorship like this goes unreported because we the censors hardly notice ourselves doing it. In that room, none of us said no to any story. We just converged around a different story. The dangerous author, incidentally, was celebrated best-selling science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. [... KEEP READING]

(via Susan Wise Bauer)

Another reason to celebrate homeschooling.

Skip Oliva writes,

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated it would legalize pedophilia in the United States — at least when the pedophiles are government agents calling themselves “school administrators.” The court heard oral arguments over whether it’s constitutionally permissible for a school to forcibly strip a 13-year-old girl because she was accused of illegally possessing ibuprofen. Really, if this doesn’t conclusively demonstrate the depravity of the American state, nothing will.

Sigh. Read the rest.

A Reading List for Beginners by Jason Jewell

From Barbara Frank Online:

Ok, class, time for a quick current events pop quiz:

Which country just approved a $6 billion initiative that includes the following, directing its legislative body to determine:

“….whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

FULL BLOG POST

Two cheers for cultural elitism.

This is from About.com’s art-history mailing:

Do I Have to Like Everything?

This is an awfully frequently Frequently Asked Question that makes me sad and angry. How can The Arts expect to drum up popular support (read: ask for increased public funding) when many Arts writers seem hell-bent on alienating the tax-paying public? It’s arrogant and stupid, I tell you. In a better world, art should be presented to all humans as human friendly, by humans who are capable of BEING friendly.

So is it human friendly to coerce funding, so long as you make it feel inclusive? Or should we conclude from this note that About.com’s art-history guide is hell-bent on alienating fiscal conservatives and principled libertarians?

I have the same frustration with a lecture series I just finished listening to on classical archaeology. Hardly a lecture passed without an appeal for more “enlightened” government policies — meaning a disregard for property rights. Apparently an interest in the physical evidence of ancient cultures requires a paternalistic philosophy and a preference for expansive government.

(And of course, the underlying problem in both examples is the unquestioned assumption that anyone interested in education must have left-wing politics.)

Via LRC:

“There are a lot of aspects of selling education that are tinged with consumer fraud,” Sander says. “There is a definite conspiracy to lead students down a primrose path.”

“The Great College Hoax,” by Kathy Kristof,
Forbes magazine, February 02, 2009