Lift Up Your Hearts!

• A chance to excel?  A school district in Colorado is eliminating both grades and grade levels in a radical attempt to help its students learn.  In theory, students assume more responsibility for their own learning, and take as long or as short a time as they need to advance from one level of the material to another.  This has enormous potential for good, though I’ll withhold judgement until I see whether or not it truly encourages students to learn more, faster, or if administrators will be content with results like a first grade classroom that took a year “to create—and refine—a classroom code of conduct…which includes items such as "don't hit people" and "we will not play with hair."
• Food for thought.  From Percival Blakeney Academy, a thoughtful look at homeschooling through an analogy with home cooking.

  [Wh]at about a family eating a meal planned by the mom but cooked by a housekeeper or cook? Or a takeout meal served at home on one's own dishes? Or a frozen lasagna baked in your own oven with bakery bread and your own salad? Or a make ahead meal prepped in a commercial dinners-to-go kitchen by the mom from their menu card and then cooked up weeks later at home? Which of these is home cooking and which isn't? Is there a difference between home cooking and eating at home (and does the difference matter)?

• The Great Homeschooling Divide (or one of them).  Here’s a mom who effectively voices the position of those who homeschool because they believe public/private schools aren’t good/affordable enough.  My gut reaction is, these people don’t GET homeschooling AT ALL.  But that’s unfair.  Finding no suitable alternative is a legitimate reason for homeschooling, as long as it’s understood that if every school were suddenly, magically perfect for everyone, many of us would still insist on home learning.  To borrow from the above-mentioned analogy, I don’t care how great the restaurant is, it will never replace the family dinner table.
• In case you thought your state's homeschooling requirements were onerous.  Educating Germany, a website in English—though some links are to articles in German—in support of educational freedom in Germany, in which homeschooling your children is likely to result in having them forcibly removed from your home.
• Legislation, sausage...and textbooks.  Did you ever thumb through your child’s textbook and lament, “Who writes these things, anyway?”  Turns out that’s a dangerous as wondering what went into the hot dog you just swallowed.  More so, maybe.  A former editor at a major textbook publisher tells what you don’t want to know.

  I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today!"

Today marks our Constitution's 222^nd birthday, in honor of which I present another depressing civics quiz.  The questions are drawn from the test prospective U.S. citizens must pass, and if these standards applied to all, apparently 97% of Oklahoma's public high school students would be in danger of losing their citizenship.  I'm sure no one is under any illusions that the problem is limited to Oklahoma.  Here are the questions; for the answers, and what percentage of the students surveyed answered each question correctly, see the original article.

1. What is the supreme law of the land?   
2. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
3. What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
4. How many justices are there on the Supreme Court?   
5. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
6. What ocean is on the east coast of the United States?
7. What are the two major political parties in the United States?
8. We elect a U.S. senator for how many years?
9. Who was the first President of the United States?
10. Who is in charge of the executive branch?

What I find interesting about this quiz is that, although I did get answer every question correctly, I would say few if any of my answers were due primarily to what I learned in school, but rather to merely living life.  When it comes to history and politics, I admit to being abysmally ignorant; I wangled my way out of Pennsylvania's required semester of American Government by taking an extra year of independent study physics.  (Don't ask me why they let me get away with that, but I trust the Statute of Limitations covers it somehow.)  I loathe politics in general and other than voting am shamefully neglectful of my civic duties.  Yet even with my notorious lack of observational skills, I couldn't avoid learning enough to pass the test.  Perhaps my additional years on this planet do count for something.

I don't expect most of my Loyal Readers to wade through the entirety of Paul Gottfried's Voices Against Progress: What I Learned from Genovese, Lasch, and Bradford at the Front Porch Republic, but I include the link for those of us who were students at the University of Rochester during those times.  I find it fascinating to glimpse the political maneuverings that were going on over the heads of mere students.  I knew neither Eugene Genovese nor Christopher Lasch; I stayed as much as possible in the science and engineering part of the school, and never set foot in that "hotbed of the New Left, the University of Rochester history department."  But everyone had heard of Genovese, whom we usually referred to as Our Resident Commie, and his wife, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, the Resident Feminist.

Of even more interest is how the thoughts and ideals of these people changed over time.  I don't regret having avoided the U of R history department in the 1970's, but find myself wishing I had known these folks as friends.

The future may belong to the Indians, or perhaps the Africans—or anyone who grows up in a multilingual environment.  Adding to the evidence of the benefits to the brain of speaking multiple languages is the research of Lera Boroditsky at Stanford University.  (Newsweek article by Sharon Begley.)

When the world's tallest vehicular bridge,^* the Viaduc de Millau, opened,

German newspapers described how it "floated above the clouds" with "elegance and lightness" and "breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense" "concrete giant." Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French saw heft and power?

Not coincidental, and also not conforming to my stereotypes, in which Germans focus on strength and organization while the French are concerned with beauty and grace.  However, 

In German, the noun for bridge, Brücke, is feminine. In French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw prototypically female features; French speakers, masculine ones. 

Nor is this an isolated phenomenon.

Germans describe keys (Schlüssel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to Spaniards keys (llaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess which language construes key as masculine and which as feminine?

Our language shapes not only our thoughts but our very ability to see.  People whose language has more precise words discern differences faster and better.  Russian, for example, has separate words for what English calls different shades of blue; experimenters found native Russian speakers to be faster than English speakers at distinguishing the differences.

Similarly, Korean uses one word for "in" when one object is in another snugly (a letter in an envelope), and a different one when an object is in something loosely (an apple in a bowl). Sure enough, Korean adults are better than English speakers at distinguishing tight fit from loose fit.

In Australia, the Aboriginal Kuuk Thaayorre use compass directions for every spatial cue rather than right or left, leading to locutions such as "there is an ant on your southeast leg." The Kuuk Thaayorre are also much more skillful than English speakers at dead reckoning, even in unfamiliar surroundings or strange buildings.

There's more to this than the obvious thought that knowing multiple languages opens the mind to more ways of thinking and perceiving. The most potent statement in the article is this:

Having a name for something allows you to perceive it more sharply.

People have wondered why I am so interested in the idea of sharing "encyclopedic knowledge" (sometimes derided as "baby flash cards") with very young children.  (I've written a small bit about it at Jonathan's Happy Hunger.) This connection between naming and perception underscores one of the primary reasons:  the more one knows, the more one sees...and generally, the more one enjoys, as well.  Whether it's birds or automobiles or paintings or constellations, knowledge increases both observation and enjoyment, which in turn increase appreciation, respect, and the desire for more knowledge.

Maybe if Adam had taught Eve the names he gave to all those animals, her thirst for knowledge wouldn't have led her in the wrong direction.  

 

King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, by Roger Lancelyn Green (Puffin Books, 2008)

I bought this book for my grandson, who so enjoyed Roger Lancelyn Green's The Adventures of Robin Hood.  His mother reported that the Robin Hood book was "perfect" for him, but I wish I had read it myself, first, so I could compare it with King Arthur, since I'm having second thoughts.  King Arthur has been read by and to children for half a century, and there's nothing at all inappropriate about it, but there are not a few battles in which people's heads get lopped off, and a few babies conceived under less than ideal circumstances (Arthur in a scenario not unlike Solomon's), and—perhaps more disturbing for a child—a couple of examples of children raised by others instead of their own families.

In other words, the stories are real, no matter how fantastic and mythical.  They have not been cleaned up, Disney style.  Which I say is all to the good, and makes this book great for adults as well as children.  The Knights of the Round Table are not born saints, but learn chivalry through trial, error, sin, and forgiveness.  Although the characters are shown to be complex, doing both good and bad, there is no question that sin is sin, and has terrible consequences, even though sometimes God brings good out of evil actions.  The Church is central throughout, and miracles and magic abound, not surprising for a collection of Medieval (and earlier) romances.

Everyone should read Green's book who is past the age of being overly disturbed by fears of being taken from his parents and given to someone else to raise.   Which brings me to the Digression:  How did I get through 17 years of education, and more than three times that many years of life, knowing so little about the King Arthur stories?  They make everything from the stories of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien to the operas of Wagner more understandable and enjoyable.  They are clearly part of the foundational education that such writers assumed every one of their audience would have.  They are a basic part of the heritage of Western Civilization.  So why were they lacking in my education?

There's enough blame to go around:  to me, for not seeking out the classics on my own; to my parents, for not seeing to this part of my education themselves; but mostly I am once again astonished that school should have devoured so many years of my life and not given back even the rudiments of this and other classic literature.  Have we traded our birthright for a mess of...Disney?

I'm tempted to keep King Arthur for myself, but would I then be any better than my schools? :)

  The Element:  How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Ken Robinson (Viking, New York, 2009)

I've written before about Sir Ken Robinson, Creativity, and Education, and put an order in with our library as soon as I heard about his new book.  It finally came through, as library books are wont to do, at a time when hours for leisure reading are scarcer than arts classes in a standardized-test-obsessed school system.  But unlike Last Child in the Woods, The Element is a quick and non-technical read.  Robinson's 2006 TED talk is a good summary of the ideas in The Element.  The book goes into more detail, with more examples, and expands a bit further.

I use the term the Element to describe the place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together.  I believe it is essential that each of us find his or her Element, not simply because it will make us more fulfilled but because, as the world evolves, the very future of our communities and institutions will depend on it.

Robinson is convincing enough, and encouraging in his belief that it is never too late to find and nurture one's Element, but he is frustratingly short on practical advice.  So many of the examples he gives are of people who knew from childhood what they were good at, and what they wanted to do.  They may have been obstructed at every turn, may not have been able to do what they knew they were born for until much later in life, but at least they knew.

Now, I can quickly name three passions that at least begin to stir in me the excitement he speaks of, what another friend refers to as the "fire in the belly":  writing, education, and genealogy.  But not only were they not passions of mine during the years when I was in school and presumably focusing and honing my skills for the future, they were actually anti-passions:  I disliked my English and history classes, had negative interest in family stories, and teaching was not even in the vicinity of my career thoughts.  Nothing excited me, really.  I focused on science and math because I was good at them, which kept me going until some point in college, when they no longer came easily and my fair-to-middling interest was not sufficient to inspire the hard work necessary to master them.  How do we help the me's of this world to find their Element?

Here are some fairly random excerpts to give you a taste:

[I]ssues of attitude are of paramount importance in finding your Element.  A strong will to be yourself is an indomitable force.  Without it, even a person in perfect physical shape is at a comparative disadvantage.  In my experience, most people have to face internal obstacles of self-doubt and fear as much as any external obstacles of circumstance and opportunity....Fear is perhaps the most common obstacle to finding your Element.  You might ask how often it's played a part in your own life and held you back from doing the things you desperately wanted to try.

[Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor] has identified four principles that characterize lucky people.  Lucky people tend to maximize chance opportunities.  They are especially adept at creating, noticing, and acting upon these opportunities when they arise.  Second, they tend to be very effective at listening to their intuition, and do work (such as meditation) that is designed to boost their intuitive abilities.   The third principle is that lucky people tend to expect to be lucky, creating a series of self-fulfilling prophecies because they go into the world anticipating a positive outcome.  Last, lucky people have an attitude that allows them to turn bad luck to good.  They don't allow ill fortune to overwhelm them, and they move quickly to take control of the situation when it isn't going well for them.

Effective mentors push us past what we see as our limits.  Much as they don't allow us to succumb to self-doubt, they also prevent us from doing less with our lives than we can.  A true mentor reminds us that our goal should never be to be "average" at our pursuits.

There is abundant evidence that opportunities to discover our Element exist more frequently in our lives than many might believe....I don't mean to say, of course, that we all can do anything at any time in our lives.  If you're about to turn one hundred, it's unlikely that you're going to nail the leading role in Swan Lake, especially if you have no previous dance background....Some dreams truly are "impossible dreams."  However, many aren't.  Knowing the difference is often one of the first steps to finding your Element, because if you can see the chances of making a dream come true, you can also likely see the necessary next steps you need to take toward achieving it.

In "The Pro-Am Revolution," a report for the British think tank Demos, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller underline the rise of a type of amateur that works at increasingly higher standards and generates breakthroughs sometimes greater than those made by professionals—hence the term Pro-Am....[They] call Pro-Ams "a new social hybrid," noting that they pursue their passions outside of the workplace, but with an energy and dedication rarely given to acts of leisure.  Pro-Ams find this level of intensity restorative, often helping to compensate for less-than-inspiring jobs.

In the last part of the book, Robinson deals with reforming, or rather transforming our educational system.

Public education puts relentless pressure on its students to conform.  Public schools were not only created in the interests of industrialism—they were created in the image of industrialism.  In many ways, they reflect the factory culture they were designed to support....This system has had many benefits and successes.  It  has done well for many people whose real strength is conventional academic work, and most people who go through thirteen years of public education are at least moderately literate and capable of making change for a twenty.  But dropout rates, especially in the United States, are extraordinarily high, and levels of disaffection among students, teachers, and parents are higher still.

Used the right way, standardized tests can provide essential data to support and improve education.  The problem comes when these tests become more than simply a tool of education and turn into a focus of it.

Many of the people I've talked about in this book say that they went through the whole of their education without really discovering their true talents.  It is no exaggeration to say that many of them did not discover their real abilities until after they left school—until they had recovered from their education.  As I said at the outset, I don't believe that teachers are causing this problem.  It's a systemic problem in the nature of our education systems.  In fact, the real challenges for education will only be met by empowering passionate and creative teachers and by firing up the imaginations and motivations of the students.

Too many reform movements in education are designed to make education teacher-proof.  The  most successful systems in the world take the opposite view.  They invest in teachers.  The reason is that people succeed best when they have others who understand their talents, challenges, and abilities.  This is why mentoring is such a helpful force in so many peoples' lives.  Great teachers have always understood that [their] real role is not to teach subjects but to teach students.  Mentoring and coaching is the vital pulse of a living system of education.

As if I don't already have a huge backblog, Jon keeps posting things in Google Reader/Facebook that I think those who can't see them will be interested in.  In this case, since I can't comment at GeekDad, I'll comment here.

When GeekDad's son was 12 years old he entered his school's science fair, which called for inventing something new and useful.

[A]fter various aborted attempts and blind alleys, ;he' came up with the idea of a self-buttering toaster....The device Andy designed was intricate yet simple: a wood and steel construction that held a slice of bread at an angle in front of a carefully wound matrix of nichrome wire heating elements. While the bread toasted, the heat from the wires melted a glop of butter on a perforated metal holder positioned over the bread. The butter dripped through the holes and on to the toasting bread. Voila! There was a slice of automatically buttered toast....When the judges came to Andy’s table, the toaster worked perfectly. With self-assurance and a smile, he handed each judge a slice of warm, buttery Wonder Bread for a snack.

But when the winners were announced, Andy’s name wasn’t called. Crestfallen, he approached the judges and asked, “Why didn’t I get a ribbon?”  “Well, Andy,” said a judge, “we thought your machine was dangerous. After all, it uses electricity and it gets very hot.”  “Of course it does. It’s a toaster,” he protested. “It’s supposed to get hot and use electricity. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a toaster.” Unswayed by logic, the judges would not reconsider.

First place went to a girl who made a cap and vest for her hamster.

Further commentary would be superfluous, but I'll share one of our own frustrating experiences with science fairs.  I know that at higher levels kids are doing projects with names like ALPHA-Lipoic Acid: Towards a Novel Neuroprotective Treatment for Alzheimer's Associated Cognitive Dysfunction in a Drosophila Model, but how they get there from here is a mystery to me.

When Janet was in kindergarten, our school district, which is county-wide and consists of many elementary schools, held what they called a Curriculum Fair, including not ony science but also mathematics and social studies.  All students were required to participate on the local school level, and Janet chose mathematics.

Her project, which I suggested, was to consider the numbers 0 through 20, to write down all the combinations of two numbers whose sum was a given number, and to note how many such combinations there were for each number.  The work was all her own, and she discovered that, for each number, the number of com­binations was always one more than the number itself.  She also noticed that she could write the problems so that the first addend ran from 0 up to the number, and the second addend ran from the number down to 0.  She made observations, formed her hypotheses (how she loved the word "hypothesis”), and checked them for the remaining numbers, finding them to be true.  It was a fun and valuable project, and to my mind demonstrated true mathematical thinking at an appropriate level.

Her teachers thought so, too, and her work earned first place at the school level.  Not so the district judges, where she was given an "honorable mention."  It's difficult to comment on this without sounding like a ridiculous stage mom or helicopter parent, but I was offended more as a mathematician than as a mother.  There was no opportunity to talk with the judges and attempt to discern their logic, but based on their choice of winners they appeared to be impressed by surveys and charts.  In my admittedly not-so-humble opinion, Janet's was far and away the best kindergarten project there, certainly the only one that considered real mathematical questions and showed mathematical thinking.

Through this and other science fair experiences we learned to be content with the knowlege gained and not give much credence to the judgements of others, positive or negative.  But somewhere, somehow, our top students are finding reward and encouragment for high-quality work, even if it "uses electricity and gets very hot."

A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family, by Mary Ostyn (Gibbs Smith, Layton, Utah, 2009)

This book sounded useful to Heather, who wishes both to have a large family and to retain her sanity, so we bought it for her as a Mother's Day gift.  Naturally, I read it first.  (Book-gift recipients are accustomed to that behavior from me, I'm afraid.)

I recommend A Sane Woman's Guide to all families who aspire to sanity, even if their hopes don't include a large family.  Although I don't agree with all of Mary Ostyn's advice, it's a surprisingly useful collection of ideas in a slim 192 pages, amusingly presented. Here's the table of contents for a quick preview, followed by a few, rather random, excerpts.

• Growing a Family: Are We Crazy to Want Another Baby?
• Money:  Just How Broke Are We Going to Be?
• Making Space:  Will We Need a Shoehorn to Fit Another Bed?
• Kids and Activities:  Is It Still "Home Sweet Home" If I'm Never There?
• Affordable Vacations:  Is a Disney Vacation a Childhood Essential? [Absolutely not.  But a Central Florida vacation is, if your grandparents live in the Orlando area.]
• The Supermom Myth:  Where is My Supersuit?
• Parenthood and Stress:  Will Bedtime Ever Come?
• Parenting Hacks:  Isn't There a Better Way to Do This?
• Likeable Kids:  Will Grandma Be Worn Out by Our Brood?
• School Success:  What if My Kid Isn't an Honor Student?
• Encouraging Sibling Friendships:  Why Can't They Be Friends?
• Celebrating Each Child:  Will They Know How Special They Are to Me?
• Conclusion:  Never Alone

Making it work on a moderate income comes down to clarity of purpose.  What do our children need most from us?  They need love.  They need food, clothes, and shelter.  The need clear expectations and responsibilities.  The need time just to be kids....But they do not need huge allowances, rooms of their own, TVs in their rooms, and name-brand clothes.

Though I am a tightwad at heart, years of mothering a large family have made me a reluctant fan of high-quality components in certain places [e.g. faucets, carpets and other flooring, cabinets, and doorknobs].

Every household should have a good collection of books....The library is a wonderful resource as well.  But kids should be able to find something to read anytime, not just when you have time to hit the library.

My mom taught me to sort laundry the traditional way:  whites, lights, mediums, darks, and towels.  As a new wife, I dutifully emulated my mom's approach.  A few kids later, I got lax and tried the "grab any heap and chuck it in the washer" approach.  To my surprise, the laundry didn't look much different.  Sure, there were those few rare occasions when I forgot about that new red shirt and my (very secure) hubby ended up wearing pink underwear to work.  But those times were rare.  My casual approach saved minutes every day and decreased our quality of life not one bit.

Instead of aiming to get out the door five minutes before I had to get out the door, I started aiming to leave half an hour sooner.  Don't get me wrong:  I've never managed to actually leave half an hour early.  But often I manage to walk out the door five or ten minutes ahead of schedule.  After years of unsuccessfully trying to beat the clock, let me tell you, that's a sweet, sweet feeling.

A huge key when dealing with poky homework-doers is to give children ownership of the problem.  Make sure they know what they're supposed to do and remind them that nothing else is going to happen till this is done.  Then leave them be.  Sometimes kids will need a session or two of staring at the problems till bedtime to decide to work.  Sprinkle a bit of exercise in there even if the work isn't done.  Chasing the dog around the yard for ten minutes is sometimes just the thing to break the logjam in the child's brain and motivate them to finish the work.  But stick to your guns and require that the work get done.

My husband and I only had two kids when we realized that the whining had to quit in our house.  We made a serious push to stop rewarding that behavior.  Though it didn't end entirely—we still fight the battle some days—it did diminish the level dramatically, which made my job as mom much more enjoyable.

Pick a few essential house rules and stick to them.  Here are the rules we have at our house:

• Be respectful to your parents.
• Be kind to each other.
• Work hard without complaining.

Once the child knows what behavior you expect, give consequences with every offense.  Too often we parents think we are being merciful when we give kids one more chance to obey, but, really, we are training them to disobey....Kids are smart, and they learn quickly when it is in their best interest.  And here's the truth:  learning to obey the first time you say it is in everyone's best interest.  It makes for a happier family.

Over the years, I've learned to vary the consequence [for misbehavior] depending on the occasion.  If a child doesn't cooperate during work time, he'll need to work during part of his playtime.  If a kid is cranky and argumentative, maybe he'd benefit from an earlier bedtime.  If a child destroys his bedroom, he cleans up the mess.  Kids who hurt siblings can make up for it by doing a chore for the hurt sibling....Most kids do not like to do extra work.  I will often give a disobedient child an extra job to atone for defiance....If kids learn that misbehavior takes away their free time, they'll be less likely to do the same thing again.  I also find that getting a bit of assistance helps me feel more positive towards the child.

I've stopped berating children about the state of their rooms right before they fall asleep at night.  No kid needs the last words of the day from mom to be a lecture, no matter how well deserved.  Better to brush the clutter aside and end the day on a positive note.

When you're feeding half a dozen kids, you'd go nuts trying to be a short order cook for each and every child.  So you offer fewer choices, and kids learn to be more flexible.  Here's another thing that moms of many know:  kids almost never starve themselves, despite their parents' fears.  If they're given a reasonable variety of food, they'll eat enough to live on.  Really.

Thomas Edison once said, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."  By training our kids to work, we are making it more likely they will see those opportunities when they come along in life.  Training should start young.  Even a twelve-month old can help put blocks into a bucket.  Kids need to know that everyone in your family helps out, and they need to learn that complaining will not get them out of work.  In fact, at our house, complaining is a great way to earn an extra task.  Even an indignant "Uh!" means kids need to practice giving the right answer in the right tone of voice...Don't just give children busywork.  Kids are competent....It is better to overestimate your children's ability a bit and then train them to the task.  Don't keep kids doing the same overly simplistic jobs for years.  Promote them!

One of the best things we can give our kids is the right kind of praise.  Words of affirmation come naturally to many parents these days....The problem is that kids get used to being applauded for the simplest things....Rather than giving huge applause for every action, it is better to praise specifics and to match the level of praise to the amount of effort that the child made....The most powerful praise focuses on things that children can control.  We should notice effort.  We should notice concentration.  We should especially notice when kids have worked hard on a project.  In the end, hard work will get kids farther than native ability.

Here's something that a lot of people don't realize.  All kids come out of school with "gaps," no matter what type of schooling they've had....But if we can instill in our children an ethic of hard work, the ability to read, and a curiosity about the worlds, they will have the tools they need to overcome any gaps they may have.

When I notice my kids picking on other children's weaknesses, I pick a quiet time to speak directly to the person who is being unkind.  "Have you noticed how Ben really hates to wear his glasses?"  Usually the child will admit that he has.  If he pretends ignorance of the issue, I'll explain the other child's feelings in a non-accusatory way and ask the child if he will help me support his brother.  "Could you help me make sure nobody teases him about his glasses?  Let me know if anyone does, okay?"  Enlisting the child's help as his brother's protector will often discourage teasing.  You may not even have to mention the child's part in the teasing.  Most likely his conscience will do that work.  If we can teach our children to make allowance for the weaknesses of others, we will be encouraging a kinder gentler spirit in our home.

I've come to realize that fighting between children is most intense when they are having a hard time getting their own needs met.  If a kid is feeling neglected or out of sorts, he can't have the emotional energy to speak gently to another child, to forgive, to be kind.  Often I can trace an increase of fighting in the family directly to a too-busy schedule, especially a too-busy momma, or to a too-great focus on accomplishment at the expense of family fun.

A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family is a quick first-time read, during which most people will find sound principles worth re-reading a time or two.  It's also well-written, and the tone is not condescending.

I wrote a long comment to Mark Shiffman's Front Porch Republic article, Why we do not own a Television; not being one to waste an item on a single use if it can be recycled, I reproduce it here.  You'll have to follow the link to see the context (and other readers' comments), but I think what I wrote is pretty clear on its own.

To my total surprise and (almost) mortification, I write in defense of television.  I agree with some of the comments that DVD is the only way to go, but most if not all of the content I find valuable on DVD originated in the TV and movie media, so despising them completely would be a bit hypocritical on my part.

It was Marie Winn's The Plug-In Drug that first alerted me to the dangers of the beast, and when our first-born, at age two, asked to watch Sesame Street at a time when the television was off, I said, "That's it.  No more."  Had the decision been mine alone, I think I would have discarded the television set altogether, and certainly that would have been the easiest course.  What we did instead—because my husband was not quite ready to give it up himself—was to make it less convenient.  At first we moved the TV to a room away from the main traffic of the household; later we put it on a shelf with doors that remained closed most of the time.  Out of sight, out of mind.  We also never had cable, and reception was not that great, and the TV screen was small.

Our first concern was for the effect of watching television on our growing children, so we instituted some pretty strict non-watching rules.  This was not difficult for the children, since we started when they were young enough not to have developed an addiction.  At this stage it's much harder on mom than on the kids, because anesthetizing lively preschoolers with an "educational" television program sounds like a guilt-free way to grab a precious half-hour of peace.  I'm standing here today to tell you that removing that option—and thus forcing yourself to help your children develop the ability to entertain themselves—is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your future self.

And your kids?  The benefits of growing up free from a television addiction far outweigh any social harm that comes from not having TV as a conversation-starter.  (Our children became quite adept at picking up enough information about TV shows from their friends' conversations to be able to hold their own without ever seeing the shows themselves.)  Even long ago when our children were young there were one or two high-quality shows available, but we soon discovered that even a half hour a day of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was better filled with real-life activities.

It's also important to point out that, when it comes to creating or avoiding a TV addiction in children, it matters little whether the show is broadcast, cable/satellite, VCR/DVD, or online.  We do our children no favors by calling them "TV free" yet popping in a movie every afternoon so we can fix dinner without interruption.

And yet...and yet....  If the only way to avoid the ravages of the beast were to destroy it altogether, I would do so.  Taming the beast, however, may have greater benefits.  Our youngest's lifelong love of opera began when she was 10 years old and we let her stay up—wide-eyed and astonished—to watch the four-day PBS presentation of Wagner's entire Ring Cycle.  Performances were meant to be watched, and if they remain true to the original, television and movie productions give us cultural opportunities often out of our reach in real life.  (My definition of "true to the original" is admittedly hazy.  I'd call Kenneth Branagh's Henry V a great, accessible version for neophytes, even if it omits parts of the play.  But the movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings fails miserably to capture the book, perhaps because the book was not meant to be performed in the first place.)

Television is also great, as was mentioned, at providing an entryway to books and further investigation of a subject.  Ken Burns' treatment of the Civil War succeeded where friends, family, and all my history teachers failed, overcoming my lack of the Y chromosome that seems to give interest to studies of war.  "Educational TV" may be somewhat of an oxymoron, but a little, at the right time, can be invaluable.

I could go on—discussing the value of armchair travel as preparation for the real thing, for example—but the point is made.  Television and its cohorts (movies, DVDs, computers, video games) I dare to say, are the hot peppers of life:  In small amounts they enhance the experience; in greater amounts, they wash out all other flavors; overused, they destroy the senses and wreak havoc on the whole system.

Here's a perfect funding opportunity for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundatation, or anyone else who is interested in both technology and education:  Sponsor grants—available to both universities and private video game companies—for the production of really good educational games.

Although video game technology has made tremendous progress in recent years, educational software is for the most part stuck in the past.  Entertainment is where the commercial money is, but with proper funding there's no reason why the best and brightest of our video game designers couldn't revolutionize gaming as a learning tool.

The first thing we'd need to ditch is the idea that entertainment and education are separable, that the one is given as a reward for making one's way through the other.  We want neither 90% entertainment and 10% education, nor the other way around, but 100% education and 100% entertainment.

Consider the possibilities in language learning, for example.  A virtual world that is a total immersion experience, in which one's character must survive by interacting with the native speakers.  Speech recognition technology is good enough that this could be both an oral and a written experience.  One could be learning culture, geography, and more in addition to language by having the virtual world be a real country.

Imagine starting the game and finding yourself in Paris.  You could explore the city, learn to use the metro, convert your dollars to euro, explore the Louvre, enjoy crêpes at a café...all the while picking up French vocabulary and grammar in the most natural way.  I WANT THIS GAME!  Don't tell me it's impossible; I know it can be done.  And I know it can be so much fun the next generation of Americans could actually grow up culturally and linguistically literate—how cool is that?

If our friend's four-year-old son can bowl a 198 in Wii Bowling, the possibilities are mind-blowing.  Yes, I know—Wii Bowling is not real bowling, and Virtual Paris would not be real Paris.  There are some true dangers that our computer models might lead us astry if we don't remember always that they are only models.  But this is too powerful a tool not to be used for good ans well as entertainment.

Tangentially related, here's an article for those like me, who think that video games and computers must be bad for the eyes.  They probably are, under the wrong circumstance, but a University of Rochester study showed they can also be used to improve vision.

People who used a video-game training program saw improvements in their contrast sensitivity, or the ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray....The training could be beneficial to people who have amblyopia—commonly known as lazy eye—and those who have trouble seeing while driving at night.

Researchers studied two groups that played video games for 50 hours during a nine-week course. One group played action games such as "Call of Duty 2" and "Unreal Tournament 2004." Another group played non-action games such as "Sims 2," which doesn't require precise, visually guided aiming actions. People who played the action games showed enhanced contrast sensitivity compared with those in the non-action game group, with improvements ranging from 43 percent to 58 percent, according to the study.

"When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it, and we've seen the positive effect remains even two years after the training was over."

Researchers suggested that the video game training's effect could last for years and could be a useful complement to other eye-correction techniques such as eyeglasses, contact lenses, or surgery. The study, which was funded by the National Eye Institute and the Office of Naval Research, noted that not all action games have such a benefit to the visually impaired. 

I awoke this morning to e-mails from two family members, each containing a link to a video.  They seemed as unrelated as can be...until I realized that each is a powerful statement of how we underestimate the abilities of ordinary human beings—from frumpy housewives to scruffy street children.

I'll admit it:  I did not get through Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent performance dry-eyed, her triumph over the sneering judges being overlaid on some pretty deep emotional memories associated with that song.

The lecture could have been better organized, especially at the end where the speaker is clearly running out of time, but the autodidactic abilities of these children will astound you.  And maybe frighten you, when you consider what a double-edged blade the Internet is.

SFSignal asked of several present-day science fiction writers, "What non-sf/fantasy books would you recommend to someone whose reading was predominantly in sf/fantasy?"  I found the responses notable for two reasons:

One of the respondents was John Kessel, whom I remember from the Science Fiction Society of the University of Rochester.  (I remember him as Jack, rather than John, but that could be either a no-longer-used nickname, or my own faulty memory.  In any case I'm sure it's the same person.)  Although an avid SF fan for much of my early life, I've been away from the genre for a long time and have read none of Kessel's books, but it was a pleasure to see that he succeeded in turning an avocation into a vocation.

The most delightful response to the question, however, came from John C. Wright.  It is neither typical of the responses nor what most people would expect from a science fiction writer.  I excerpt it here for those of my readers who care very little about science fiction but a lot about book lists and good reading. 

[I]t is a common experience to come across readers, especially readers of the generation after mine, who have read science fiction and fantasy so exclusively that they do not know what it is that they are reading. For them, the book is taken out of context, and is not part of that great conversation where the books of one generation speak to the books of another. The reading of the science-fiction-only reader becomes insular, and he does not recognize what he is reading. This kind of reader is the kind who thinks the trite ideas of Kurt Vonnegut are profound, merely because he has not come across them before in mainstream books, and (more to the point) has never come across the rebuttals. With fantasy the insularity is even worse: the fantasy reader who has not read the original ancient epic poems of which modern fantasy is merely a variation or imitation runs the risk of being unduly impressed with a watered-down and modernized version of a rich and ancient literary tradition.

He may be addressing current generation science fiction/fantasy readers, but what he says about lack of understanding of context and the "great conversation" probably applies to 95% of the American public, myself included.

1. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. These are the seminal works of which all successive Western literature merely forms a footnote. The fantastic elements, gods and monsters, curses and destinies and princes in disguise, the fall of mighty cities in the ruin of war, and all which form the backbone of modern fantasy, are present in their original forms here. These elements here serve a strong literary purpose usually absent from a tale of wonder.
2. The Aeneid of Virgil. The Roman poet and magician Virgil had a sense of history absent from blind Homer: his hero served a fate that would shape the world. It would be difficult to read about Conan of Cimmeria, Gandalf the White, Jommy Cross, Michael Valentine Smith, Paul Atriedes , or Ender Wiggins without an appreciation of the archetypical tale of a hero's journey, from the destruction of Troy, across cursed and monster-haunted seas, to the underworld and back again, through Punic love and Palatine wars.
3. Various Greek tragedies: Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone; Euripides: Hippolytus, Bacchae. These are the mighty and majestic writings of which modern fantastic literature is at best a variation on a theme, or, at worst, merely a pale imitation. One could make the argument that all science fiction follows in the footsteps of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (indeed, this is the gist of the argument made by Brian Aldiss). Frankenstein, also known as Prometheus Unbound, is a riff or reversal of Prometheus Bound. With apologies to classical scholars, I will not recommend any Greek Comedies: their influence on successive generations have been minimal.
4. The Biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Chronicles, Kings, Psalms, Job. A reader would be grossly uninformed not recognize the overwhelming impact the Biblical writings have had, not merely on the religion of Europe, but upon the literature. The basic difference between Greek and Biblical epics can be seen in the contrast between Oedipus and Jacob, or between King David and Prince Orestes. The ancient Greek cannot escape his fate; the ancient Jew can repent and choose again. No Greek hero would have spared King Saul when finding him asleep in a cave, as David did, for example.
5. The Peloponnesian War of Thucydides. There is no point in reading or writing military SF if you do not have an idea of why battles are fought. No writer has ever been clearer on the causes of war. Merely reading Starship Troopers is not going to tell you what the military is all about.
6. Paradise Lost of Milton. The Puritan poet pre-empts the entire field of English epic poetry in this work, and he suborns the motifs and tropes of Homer and Virgil, reversing the role of heroics to display the difference between Christian and Pagan themes. The modern world view which you, dear reader, have absorbed with your mother's milk, has been influenced, like it or not, by these themes, so you might as well know whence they come.
7. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The Modern SF tale is a variation of the traveler's tales of old, a genre that Swift expropriates for his own didactic and satiric purposes. Merely reading Stranger in a Strange Land is not going to tell you what satire is all about.
8. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This is the original for Asimov's Foundation, and is one of the books that founded the literature of history. At the same time, I might also recommend some of the historical novels of Alfred Duggan, such as Knight with Armor or Little Emporers. I have read far too many fantasy novels by writers whose knowledge of the Middle Ages comes from playing Dungeons and Dragons, and a little bit of realism comes in handy.
9. Plato's Timaeus and Critias. The origin of the Atlantis story. Also, the first attempt to use fiction as a vehicle for presenting a political theory.
10. Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia. All Utopian and Dystopian SF springs from this fountain. It makes for interesting reading, since what is being described is a Puritan, and not a Communist, communism.
11. Plutarch's Lives, especially : "Caesar," "Cato the Younger," "Antony," "Brutus."
12. Dante's Divine Comedy. This is what Niven and Pournelle were copying in their Inferno.
13. Tolstoy's War and Peace. Obviously.
14. Mallory's Le Mort d'Arthur. Modern fantasy should know its roots.
15. Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Again, modern fantasy should know its roots.
16. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is good practice learning how to read and to write a good book. Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is the germ from which endless SFF stories of time travel, first contact, and high-tech meets low-tech derive.
17. Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar and various Sonnets. If you have not read the Bard, you are a Philistine.

I cannot end the list without giving honorable mention to Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton, and Napoleon of Notting Hill by the same author. These are not science fiction, but they pass close enough that our watchmen on the boundaries can see them plain without a spyglass. Napoleon of Notting Hill, by no coincidence, takes place in the year 1984. In both these books we see some of the conventions and assumptions common to science fiction turned on their head to comical, and even philosophical, effect. (For example, the opening line of Notting Hill contains what could be a warning for science fiction writers: The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at one of the games called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.)

The reason why it is important to have a grounding in these great books, whose fame will never pass away...is that perspective matters....The modern reader who reads modern books by authors who only read modern books runs the risk of merely accepting the assumptions of the modern age without examining or questioning them. Since we live in an age particularly addicted to narrative propaganda fastidiously divorced from reality or reason, this danger is not harmless.

An unexamined idea is not worth having! (This is an idea of mine I have always accepted without question.)

A brilliant student, Marcus sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Marcus puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Marcus suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Marcus (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

The story above is from a Scientific American Mind article entitled The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. (I've changed the name because in the original it is "Jonathan."  Apologies to any Marcuses who might read this.)  I insist that Marcus was probably right:  most seventh grade schoolwork is boring and pointless.  Be that as it may, the article investigates a question I have wrestled with for decades:  Why do so many bright students fail of their promise, surpassed sooner or later by their apparently average, ordinary classmates?

My own conclusion is that children who meet no challenge in their early schoolwork miss the opportunity to struggle early in life, when they are best able to learn from the experience. Eventually, even the most intelligent person will encounter a problem that does not admit of easy solution.  An average student will learn while still very young that answers aren't handed to him, but must be wrested from the universe with much study and effort.  The gifted student may not encounter this harsh reality until college or graduate school, when his approach to learning and problem-solving is already well established and may be difficult or impossible to change.  Hence my frustration with the American educational system, which in the main deprives young, smart children of the opportunities they need to develop one of life's most essential skills:  perseverence in the face of difficulty.

The article suggests another dimension to the problem, and what's better, an approach to counteracting it.  "Helpless" students have a fixed mind-set about intelligence, viewing it as something inborn and generally unchangeable.  "Mastery-oriented" students believe intelligence is malleable, and have what the authors call a growth mind-set.  Unfortunately, telling our children that they are smart, and allowing them to be labelled as "gifted and talented," encourages the former view.  We would do well, instead, to praise them for hard work and persistence, and emphasize to them that the brain, like a muscle, grows with exercise.

[M]ore than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

[C]hildren...who coast through the early grades [in school] under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted....hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

The students with a stagnant view of intelligence were presumably unwilling to admit to their deficit and thus passed up the opportunity to correct it.

Mind-set can affect the quality and longevity of personal relationships as well, through people’s willingness—or unwillingness—to deal with difficulties. Those with a fixed mind-set are less likely than those with a growth mind-set to broach problems in their relationships and to try to solve them....After all, if you think that human personality traits are more or less fixed, relationship repair seems largely futile. Individuals who believe people can change and grow, however, are more confident that confronting concerns in their relationships will lead to resolutions.

How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about math geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up a child by telling him  or her how brilliant and talented he or she is, our research suggests that this is misguided.

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, [we] gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”  We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

[Some colleagues and I] recently designed an eight-session workshop for 91 students whose math grades were declining in their first year of junior high. Forty-eight of the students received instruction in study skills only, whereas the others attended a combination of study skills sessions and classes in which they learned about the growth mind-set and how to apply it to schoolwork.

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

As the semester progressed, the math grades of the kids who learned only study skills continued to decline, whereas those of the students given the growth-mind-set training stopped falling and began to bounce back to their former levels.

Teaching children such information is not just a ploy to get them to study. People do differ in intelligence, talent and ability. And yet research is converging on the conclusion that great accomplishment, and even what we call genius, is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift. Mozart, Edison, Curie, Darwin and Cézanne were not simply born with talent; they cultivated it through tremendous and sustained effort.

Declining by Degrees:  Higher Education at Risk premiered on PBS in 2005; I watched it for the first time this week, intrigued by this Netflix summary.

Debunking commonly held notions about the rite of passage known as the college experience, this PBS documentary follows 30 students and their teachers along the path of higher education, from admission to graduation, and exposes the disappointment, disorientation and deflation many students feel—in both public and private schools. This revealing study also addresses the quality and readiness of America's future work force.

"Disappointment, disorientation, and deflation" fairly describes how I felt watching the show.  Here's what I learned:

• A college degree is absolutely necessary for anyone to get into and stay in the American middle class.
• Administrators, and consequently professors, are under great pressure to retain students; it is very difficult to fail.
• Grade inflation is rampant; only an extraordinarily terrible performance will get you a C.
• Many classes are huge, and often taught by graduate students or part-time faculty.
• Professors are rewarded for research and publication, not teaching.
• Whether because they need their time for research or for working several part-time positions, professors resort to true/false and multiple-choice exams, and assign few papers, essays, or anything else that requires much time to grade.
• Students have discovered that they can "sleepwalk" through college, doing just enough to get by, and still receive the degree that is the reason their parents sent them to college.
• Hence they have plenty of time for the real reason they're in college:  to party.  To get drunk, to get high, to indulge in as many fleshly temptations as possible.  "I don't want to be 40 or 50 years old," one student proclaimed, "and saying, 'I wish I had partied then, because I can't now.'"
• Other students are holding down full time jobs while attempting to attend school full time.  Like the partiers, they are ruining their health while gaining little from their classes.
• There is an unspoken agreement between professors and students, each to help the other "get by":  You don't expect much of me, and I won't expect much of you.
• Students whose lives have been bounded by home and high school quickly become lost in a world of little oversight, no restrictions, no rules, great freedom, and low expectations.
• Professors are demoralized by students who come to college without the needed skills and habits, who can't think, don't work, don't pay attention, don't respond, don't show up, don't care.
• Employers, who control the jobs for which most students are purchasing their degrees, are increasingly complaining to the colleges that the graduates come to them ill-prepared and under-educated.
• The cost of a college education has risen out of sight, and most students—or their parents—come out of the ordeal with a massive debt load.
• This is the sad situation with respect to our state schools.  The small minority of fortunate students who can afford $40,000/year attend private schools where classes are small and interesting, professors care about and work individually with their students, and their fellow-students are bright and devoted to intellectual pursuits.  [I do hope no one was drinking a hot beverage while reading that last point; I'm only reporting what I learned from the show.]
• When Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill providing educational benefits to WWII servicemen, the United States entered into a social contract to provide all its citizens with a college education.
• Beginning in the 1980's, we have reneged on that contract by not providing enough state and federal scholarship money.
• Merit-based scholarships are bad, because they "help those whom God has already helped."

In summary:

• College is where high school graduates go to ruin their physical, mental, and spiritual health, waste their time and their talents, and emerge four years later unfit for employment, let alone a responsible, mature place in society.
• Therefore we should make this experience available to everyone at no cost.

I could confirm several of the points made by Declining by Degrees, and refute others, but I'll content myself with standing in awe of its logic. 

I've written often enough about threats to the fundamental right of parents to educate their own children:  the dreadful situation for homeschoolers in Germany, my concerns for Switzerland, and the unwarranted judicial intrusion in family life and education touched closer to home, in California.  California ultimately upheld the legitimacy of home education, but it appears North Carolina is the next battleground.

As with the Terri Schiavo case, it is family problems that allowed the court's nose into this tent.  It illustrates a serious problem with our "no fault" attitude towards divorce:  despite the husband's admitted, ongoing, adulterous affair, his desire to send his children to public school has been allowed to trump his wife's desire to continue homeschooling.  What is truly worrisome, as it touches homeschooling is the judge's power and attitude, as well as whatever precedent his decision may set.

(Quotations are from two separate articles, here and here.)

[Venessa] Mills was forced to defend her right to homeschool during divorce proceedings brought on by her husband's unfaithfulness.....Even with abundant evidence showing the Mills children are well adjusted and well educated, Judge [Ned] Mangum ruled overwhelmingly against Mrs. Mills on every point. He stated the children would do better in public school despite the fact that they are currently at or beyond their grade level. Evidence showed two children tested several grades ahead.

When issuing his verdict Judge Mangum stated his decision was not ideologically or religiously motivated. However, he told Mrs. Mills public school will "challenge the ideas you've taught them."

The judge...explained his goal in ordering the children to register and attend a public school was to make sure they have a "more well-rounded education."

"I thought Ms. Mills had done a good job [in homeschooling]," he said. "It was great for them to have that access, and [I had] no problems with homeschooling. I said public schooling would be a good complement."

The judge said the husband has not been supportive of his wife's homeschooling, and "it accomplished its purposes. It now was appropriate to have them back in public school."

I can't help wondering what qualifies the judge to determine that the family's homeschooling had "accomplished its purposes."  What purposes? Purposes for whom? 

Mangum said he made the determination on his guiding principle, "What's in the best interest of the minor children," and conceded it was putting his judgment in place of the mother's.

[T]he judge also ordered a mental health evaluation for the mother – but not the father – as part of the divorce proceedings, in what [family friend and fellow homeschooler Robyn Williams] described as an attack on the "mother's conservative Christian beliefs." 

"This judge clearly took personal issue with Venessa's stance on education and faith, even though her children are doing great. If her right to homeschool can be taken away so easily, what will this mean for homeschoolers state wide, or even nationally?" Williams asked. 

What, indeed?  Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.