Is that manual for ALL subjects, with goldened edges of pages and personal dedications of all people who worked on it? :D Seriously, what is 150€ worthy there? :confused:

I am very grateful that my daughters are able to have rich intellectual lives. Greater "gifts", in many ways, mean greater responsibilities, greater opportunities to use them well, but we have always emphasized it as a good thing, as a challenge to embrace, not as something to sweep under the rug NOR as prism through which to view one's whole self. People have issues. Many of those issues have nothing to do with intellect, because giftedness is not a personality disposition nor a temperament. There are gifted people who are reclusive misanthropes (I have known them), there are gifted people who are full of joy and energy and very well-socialized and adapted (I have know them too), and all sorts of people all over personality dispositions. I have never cried over my child's emotional or intellectual richness. It is a completely foreign way of thinking to me. I am thrilled they are capable of more and of higher... and yes, that means that they are also capable of more dangerous failures, because falling from the height of one meter and one thousand meters cannot possibly hurt the same... but still, I am very, very thankful they have wider arenas in front of them should they wish. And also confident that we are raising them the way that even when those failures occur, they are capable of getting up and continuing to grow. I also entirely reject the idea of "different frequencies" as a necessity, as somebody who had a beautiful youth, spent largely socializing, and who did not find it impossible to relate in many ways to people with whom I might not have clicked intellectually, but from whom I could still learn a lot and who could still be a part of my life in other ways. I never felt "different", except in ways in which EVERY individual feels "different". My intellectual pecularities were no different than a number of accidental qualities people have, and learn to live with, and even learn to live with in joy and harmony. Sure, it takes you a few breakdowns to get to a certain level of maturity to think about these things, but then again, it is so for every thinking individual, not only intellectually unusual ones. We all need went through a few major crises with ourselves. It is growing pains, a part of every journey, not a side-effect of specifically giftedness. There are a LOT of "gifted" people who cope fine. "Gifted" people have issues because, well, PEOPLE as such have issues - but most of that is not specifically related to intellect. They come in all personality variations, and while the intellect might exacerbate things sometimes, I think it is a very wrong and a very dangerous way of looking at it if we claim that it is the cause of it. The whole notion of some *necessarily* links between atypical intellect and atypical personalities / temperaments / psychological constitutions / social functioning is very problematic IMO. It may hold true for some, but NOT for all people in the group.

The problem is that in many people's eyes you ARE destroying the public education by opting your child out of it... and the ultimate consequence of that way of thinking is the lack of choice. (Which may or may not be worth it, depending on how you look it.) As somebody who was confronted over her choice A LOT, coming from a culture where it is an extremely rare choice, I have heard countless times the counter-argument of, "But, if all educated parents who care and have the means and time to educate their children took their smart, well-behaved, accomplished and curious children out of schools, a lack of balance would be felt and schools would become places of cultural depravity, amongst other reasons, because people like you took the kids out, and other kids would not have those children to lift them up a bit higher, so you would indirectly be responsible for widening the already existing gaps in education and culture, etc."

The thread is too long for me to read so sorry for jumping in like this and probably repeating what others said before. Those schools of yours sound prison-like the more time I spend thinking about them and the more news I read, it always confirms, in retrospect, my choice not to enroll my children there. Since when the school has a right to mandate what you feed your child?! And what if I do not want my child to eat meat and dairy in the same meal?! Furthermore, the school workers inspect kids' lunches and make sure kids eat them?! What the hell?! Since when is that the school's responsibility in any way? I operate within the system of values in which you send your child to school to get an education, not a parenting, while the latter is exclusively your own thing unless abuse is going on. And if a teacher suspects extremely poor nutritional choices, then it is much better to call a parent for a private chat, while still being very careful not to transgress some boundaries, than to go against parental authority in front of the child! I would be LIVID if this happened to my child, times four - once for having "inspected" what I send (as long as it is not illegal substances, what do you care?! and why should you even inspect what kids' bags contain - we were NEVER done that, NEVER searched in any way without a hefty reason first!), the second time for having taken it from my child and replaced without consulting with me whether it is okay with me, the third time for transgressing my parental authority in front of my child that way, and the fourth time for "making sure" my child eats (again, what do you care?! it is between my child and me, and I can even, as a parent, decide they would not eat at school at all, especially if it is a shorter program).

It is because most schools have stopped being academic institutions. Something I rant against all the time here. ;) In my little utopia, I would personally kick all but academics out of schools, including free time activities / sports, and especially including the "raising the child" aspect, which is an entirely family matter in my opinion.

You know, this is a really good comparison. I agree with you. I think, though, that there should be a legitimate outlet for people with those types of problems too. In places where people of all walks of life meet, like this virtual community, people should not have to self-censor all the time lest they somehow offend. It is quite easy, logistically, to ignore the things you do not wish to read about. I think internet is a wonderful medium in that we can be a lot more *open* than we normally would be and find people with whom we can discuss issues which are still largely taboo to be discussed in general society. On a strictly logical level, if you treat people as individuals to the fullest, all adjectives are gone. A child cannot be tall if there is nobody to compare to, so "tall" has no inherent meaning; the same can be said about being "smart" or "advanced" or "behind" or "pretty" or... you name it, all of the adjectives we use, some with a more objective basis, some with a more subjective basis. The sole labeling of people admits to the existence of comparison. Comparison is the only way to make sense in a huge variety that exists. But, at the same time, one should strive to view each person as an individual, with their right to their own growth and their own set of virtues and challenges. Thus the tension. And that is okay, but only as long as we do not reach a conclusion that "some children are more special than others" and when the issues of those "others" start being downplayed and people start self-censoring. Nobody has to listen or read anything they do not want, but people with those other type of issues - the ones stemming from wealth rather than poverty, the ones stemming from having rich intellectual lives and leisure, the ones stemming from having atypically accomplished children rather than the ones that are not, etc. - need a platform too, for discussion and free exchange of ideas, in which they should not feel judged if they share. That is why, in some ways, the emphasis on discretion (which I 100% agree with if we talk about casual IRL conversations with people who are not our closest family and friends) is in my view not always a good thing. Sure, people should not be "in your face" about it if it can be prevented, but those are legitimate subjects for discussion too. There should be a time and a place for them without it being somehow morally problematic or problematic as regards common etiquette.

Yes. PISA ranks 15 year olds and when schools are selected to participate in it, there are fairly strict parameters that you must respect to give a fairly realistic snapshot of the society (e.g. you cannot have all urban schools, all GT magnet schools, etc.). PISA is problematic for other reasons, but manipulations of this type are actually minimal, from what I am told.

:iagree:

While there most definitely is such a thing as parental bragging, blowing things out of proportions and being mesmerized by your offspring to an extent to not get that, really, they are not all that special compared to other children, there also is a very disturbing trend of trying to shut up parents of academically precocious children (NB: I have issues with the term "gifted" and with the "gifted industry" around it; I will use it to "speak the common language", but it will not reflect the actual categories within which I think about these things). And, like you said, nobody would dare to write a blog post about being tired of hearing about the difficulties of raising a special needs child - it would be a social suicide. But, putting down parents of academically atypical children on the higher end is a commonplace. It is also a commonplace to not give the benefit of the doubt and to interpret every sharing as boasting or a hidden attempt to compare. And of course, there is a LOT of jealousy, just plain mean jealousy, around those individuals. On the other hand, there is a lot of blowing out of proportions on the gifted end too, as though being academically precocious somehow entailed a particular personality structure and a need for a particular parenting (both of which are false, IMO - academically precocious children fall in all ranges of personalities and general parenting matters are based on all the factors you would take into account for any other child too). That irks me too, especially if you have a child who is NOT "misunderstood", NOT "oversensible" in any way, does NOT need any particular type of parenting other than what you would normally afford to any child, is NOT a social misfit... and yet is academically precocious. Psychologically normal, socially adjusted, accomplished and happy child - but only academically precocious, which in a homeschool setting can be dealt with nicely. So, fine, you accelerate them accordingly and get them college materials, and yeah, some of that could be described as a struggle with finding what works and how it works. But overall, no big deal. Not a special, unique parenting situation on the whole, and being academically precocious does not mean having a particular type of personal disposition. A lot of parents of bright kids, or even of genuinely intellectually atypical kids, make me roll my eyes too when some of these issues and overgeneralizations are brought up. At the end of a day, though, nobody is forced to hear or read anything they do not want. Pass the bean dip IRL, ignore the threads that irk you online, no big deal, so I do not see a point in posts like that blog post. Why get all worked up over something that other people do or do not do and which has zero effects on your life. Live and let live.

Refuse to read it unless they can write legibly. It does not have to be a beautiful handwriting, but it is VERY reasonable to ask it be legible. You are not supposed to waste time deciphering illegible writing. If the writing is poor due to a physical disability, then there would probably be another arrangements in place already (typing, etc.). So probably not. Put your foot down and refuse to read it or grade it.

:lol::lol::lol:

Interesting thoughts, Bluegoat. A few comments / questions if you are interested in talking about it: Are you talking here about him being wrong from the moral(istic) perspective, in that he disdains, or you find him wrong in a factual sense, as if his distinctions were not drawn very well? My personal ethics allows time and place for disdain - I do not disdain disdain (how was that for a sentence? :lol:), so to speak, and I find that there are certain disdain-worthy phenomena out there. I do not have any problem with other people allowing room for disdain, too, and I find something very dissatisfying about moralism (not imputing it to you, just saying in general) which says that I am supposed to "agree to disagree with respect" or "appreciate even if I dislike" at all times. I find that respect and appreciation are earned, rather than given (past the basic level of respect for another person because they are a person; but that is a different topic, mentioning it here only as a disclaimer). So, in and of itself, I do not have an issue with somebody having a relationship of "the opposite of respect" with some phenomena out there. What I am interested in is whether the distinctions drawn by that person are drawn in a way that makes sense to me. For example, a simplistic distinction between "high culture" and "popular culture" is, although useful in some contexts, often pretty simplistic. There are even works which we classify as high culture today, but which originated in popular culture, or whose elements are drawn from popular culture (e.g. rhyme was originally a "barbaric invention"; much of Romanticism is rooted in popular culture elements synthesised with high culture forms, etc.). In every remotely serious discussion, people must be aware of this, and I assure you that anyone with a good background in literature is very aware that there is much grey here, rather than a black and white opposition - but many people, when they do not have "serious talks with serious colleagues" or when they do not write "serious writings", will oversimplify, just like a person of another profession oversimplifies things for those outside of it when he talks to them. The problem is that this is the field that everyone feels like they "own" too, in spite of a lack of professional education (which *does* make a difference when done well), so a lot of intellectuals are considered "elitist" by people who feel they, too, are qualified to draw those same distinctions because they can access the same texts... but the difference exists. A person of an education comparable to Bloom's disagreeing with him is not the same level of disagreement as somebody with a high school level of literary education disagreeing with Bloom, just like I cannot reasonably argue with my husband about nutrition, because I have common sense (and it can be tricky), and he has biochem and pharma advanced degrees and accesses food and what it is made out of on a whole different level. Another pharmacist may disagree with him, but it is a different level of disagremeent. The HUGE problem with humanities is a notion that many people cherish, and that says that there pretty much are no such distinctions between people who are professionally into it and those who are not. This is a HUGE problem because we have collectively turned it into "everyone's" field, and that reflects on the quality of university education today too, which is shaped by those attitudes, so even less distinctions are being produced, and you get a sort of a vicious cycle, then add the component of "anti-intellectualism" and "anti-elitism" today... a very complex situation. We diluted an entire academic field, and most humanities are suffering the same. But if I get on that soapbox... better not. I am considered "elitist" enough around here, LOL. :D Sometimes it is difficult to tell snobbery backed up by unclear thought and high-brow stupidities from a really distinguished and nuanced education. I do have my personal little opinion on where approximately Bloom fits in the grey field between the two :tongue_smilie:, but I do find that much of it is a really mixed bag. Interesting thought. Where do you draw the distinction between the complex and the profound? Can there be something artistically pleasing and something skillful about a carefully arranged complex thought, even if it boils down to the same degree of depth you would find in less skillful writing? Is art about profound wisdom... or about skill? And are there cases of exhibition of skill for its own sake past good taste (e.g. kitsch?)? But where does one draw all of those distinctions? I sometimes still struggle with it, honestly. Bible is difficult to access from a literary standpoint, IMO. Much, much easier to do it from a religious one, seeing a fundamental value in the text, a religious value, which then makes the trifles of literary analysis somewhat irrelevant. It would probably be easier to be accessed as literature had it not been so burdened by the millennia of being classified otherwise. A serious attempt to access it the way one accesses any literary text is a fairly new one. Some "lenses" are already inherited and difficult to get rid of, the texts from different sources already compiled into one unit with connections between them established, some lines being blurred... Very very difficult. It is difficult to even say what are separate "texts" in some parts of it. I am not sure it makes any sense to discuss who wrote which parts of the Bible, except perhaps on philological and historical grounds - but not on literary grounds. Irrelevant. The text is there, who cares about the context. Some other disciplines deal with the context of texts, but literary analysis deals with the text itself. :( But it does not surprise me AT ALL.

The problem is that you are presenting reading exclusively as getting a certain body of information. Reading artistic texts is not the same as reading texts whose primary function is to transform information - the emphasized function of artistic texts is how that information is conveyed, not what information is conveyed. What differs Dostoevsky from a newspaper article containing the exact same pieces of information of "what happened" is the way in which that information is fleshed out and connected. Artistic is not in what, it is in how. Artistic texts / fiction are not read to gather information from them, the way that you would read a science textbook. And here is where it gets tough if your "reading" already includes a piece of "interpretation" - by listening to the work, a LOT of forced pace and interpretation is going on. It is a handicap in the context of the work's autonomy, it is taking a part of that autonomy away. Some people can hardly read without that "compromise" (e.g. those who are blind, but cannot read Braille), that is true - but it does not make it any less of a "compromise", one that is ideally avoided. It is a bit like original vs. translation thing. Translations are limitating in what they can convey, because each translation is automatically an interpretation. In my language, artistic translations are called "versioni" - versions, because they literally are different versions of what is technically the same body of information, but the act of interpretation that is inherent in translating things already changes quite a bit. Are we doomed to use translations? Yes, even if we speak several languages, unless we wish to limit ourselves to a certain body of texts, so we consider that "compromise" a necessary one to learn. But I do not for a second deny that it is a compromise, not an ideal situation, because of an element of interpretation that goes on. The same thing happens when you read aloud a work: you are listening to a layer interpretation on the top of the text. For some people the compromise may be worth it, but it IS a compromise. I am not bashing audiobooks (which I use occasionally too ;)), I am only insisting that it be recognized that something is compromised here and that we are not talking about the exact same thing. Crystal, plays are not the same because "the text" is not the same. Theatre, like music, is two-stage art: plays, like music notation, are HALF of what it is about, NOT the "full text", more like a blueprint - the "full text" already includes an interpretation, somebody putting the blueprint of it alive. But we know it, it is a different kind of art, an art which cannot be accessed without an intermediary of an interpretation to be "full" - we can read the text of a play, of course, but then we are treating it as a one-stage art, not as a two-stage art, just like some people can hear musical notation in their mind without intermediary of an instrument. Which is why Homer is not an adequate comparison :), because there we have a "blueprint" which is a later innovation - like you say, Julie - but the only authentic thing to access there is that fossilized text. The distance between us and the context of its genesis is too huge to be able to ever access Homer the way the Greeks did access it. Later literature, however, is a written culture, with the affirmation of text as a means to carry it, which can be accessed "on its own terms" as far as the medium is concerned. So why compromise that medium? Another interesting aspect is recitation, which shifts one-stage art (a poem) into a two-stage art (a concrete interpretation of that poem by the one who recites it). It is not the question of what is "better" or "worse" - those are value judgments anyway - but the point is that it is not the *same*, because the latter creates an additional "layer" between you and the work. You may decide that it is worth it and that in that layer itself you see a value (appreciate recitation as its own form of art) - but you are still one step further from the work itself, treating what was "the full text" as a "blueprint" for another form of expression, which is by default already an interpretation. So, in a way, there is a certain "ontological inferiority" (this expression is to be understood very loosely and without any moralist connotations to it :)) of interpretative forms. As such, it can still be an art in and of itself, but it is an intermediary between you and the pure abstraction of the text. (Keeping in mind that literature which was supposed to function as a blueprint rather than full work is a bit of a different situation.) Sorry for the length, this is the shortest version possible to explain what I meant: that it is simply not the same, not two sides of the same coin, because interpretative forms (theatre, recitation, reading aloud, etc.) already add another layer, thus making it a different coin altogether. Which is why some of us are very careful about using interpretative forms for our first encounter with the work. Once you accessed a work through an interpretation, you can never fully "undo" it and something precious is taken away from you, a certain innocence as regards work and an ability to access the *form* of it per se without intermediaries. I agree with you here - but you are talking about listening *for information*. Literature is not accessed primarily for information - nobody reads Dostoevsky to learn certain information, but to see how those ideas are connected and expressed. Every Dostoevsky's work can be retold in a few paragraphs conveyed all the relevant pseudo-factual (because it is a fiction) information in it to get "the full picture". But you do not read Dostoevsky for the same reasons for which you read a scientific text, or a text about Dostoevsky. The point is not in the information. The (pseudo-)information for Dostoevsky is not the *goal* in and of itself, but a *tool*. When you listen to a lecture, the point is in the information. Which is why a documentary need not necessarily be inferior, information-wise, to a textbook. But artistic literature is a whole 'nother beast. I do agree with a lot of what you said, Julie, but I found it important to explain why I believe that you are comparing apples to oranges if you introduce Homer or university lectures. In my mind, there is a whole set of carefully nuanced distinctions between those - not every listening is the same.

Long-term married. Husband in a travel-heavy professional culture. I guess that sort of answers it, LOL.

"Homer" is a matrix of orality in Greek literature and culture, VERY obvious as such in the original language in its repetitive aspects, easy to get into the flow of it (metrically too) and learnt by heart (as presumably it was done). Furthermore, there is no clear authorship there, but a presumed organic growth of the material in the realm of people. Comparing an experience of listening in our culture and in the oral culture is apples and oranges. "Getting Homer" is another problematic concept - we are working on "getting it" today, but presumably for the people of that time it was a living culture, a part of cultural praxis. "Pace" has nothing to do with anything here, in that context - but in ours, it sure does, because we relate to it differently, and it does in all of the latter written culture literature.

It has nothing to do with modernity, IMO. There *never was* an immediate need for that type of skills. For most of history, a serious academic study of humanities (and sometimes the only one practiced) was the occupation and the past time of idle minds (read: those with abilities and means to dedicate themselves to it). No, exactly the opposite. Those that are truly good today are hardly worse than those that were truly good in the previous generations. A fragment of people always cares, and there is something "hereditary" about those circles. What happened is that with the whole thing got "diluted" when it went en masse. Mass education was the end of truly good education on secondary and post-secondary levels, for many complex reasons, so those people are scattered and frustrated in the sea of intellectual mediocrity and pseudo-intellectualism and many even end up leaving formal academia and going back to exclusive private circles because they cannot stand what the academia has become. There were some very rough patches in the previous few generations. No, we would not - because universities are no longer universities, they are corporations, and our whole world operates by that logic. Gone are those days. Even in Europe, where graduation period really was a lot more flexible thing. It is sad. It is not that it is more quickly that is a problem. It is that the pace is *forced upon you*, the flow is forced upon you, and an interpretation is forced upon you (the tone of voice, the way of reading, etc.). Reading with eyes is pure abstraction. You and a series of characters, it is ALL up to you and your imagination to bring it alive - to "hear" it, to "see" it, to imagine it and to own it. Audio-video takes a very precious element away from the process of reading, the one of individual imagination. The two are nowhere near same.

I saw this interview. About 4:45 a certain deja vu kicked in, and that about ruined any hopes I might have had to actually watch that episode sometime. LOL.

:lol: Wait - it is possible NOT to like Billy Budd? LOL, to each their own, I guess. :tongue_smilie:

Funny how many people brought up Madame Bovary. I HATED that in high school :lol:, and found it no better when I actually read it fully with more concentration for the next occasion, but in retrospect, I am actually glad I have read it, because I feel it did give me an important piece of the puzzle of literary landscape, so in that sense, I am not sure I would consider it a "pure" waste of time. From my previous list, Faulkner probably gets the same treatment, too. Not my thing at all, but still in some ways glad to have read him. Some other things from the list, though, are what I consider "pure" waste of time, in that I would not consider myself the least bit less educated or having missed anything if I had not read those.

In no particular order: Gone with the wind. Tristram Shandy. Woolf anything. Faulkner anything. Coelho anything. The Secret. :lol: (I was bored out of my mind so I tried even that.) Most of those self-help stuff one comes across a lot, as it is typically pseudo-intellectual psychobabble with zero actual content (I positively loathe that type of books and consider them a waste of paper.)

Funny you should mention this. I was *mortified* earlier today with a casual mistake in gender my daughter made in her native language. *Mortified*. She did not even catch it in her writing until I specifically called her attention to it. She wrote a sentence about military fronts (i fronti) as though they were foreheads (le fronti). She does know the distinction, of course ;), but boy, was it a terrifying moment. I have no idea how to help you with French (other than the stereotypical: talk a lot and get somebody correct you every. single. time. - tiresome, but it works), but this was supposed to make you feel better. :D

I will give you one: natural method. Which prepares you, as explicitly stated on the website, for other natural method based courses (Oerberg, etc.). I checked the general sequence with audio files, how things are fleshed out, and read the sample - overall, it gave me a bit of a "blah impression" (with the disclaimer that I have not checked further than that, only audio & samples). So, I am not particularly impressed, but not negatively impressed either, keeping in mind these are young elementary kids with whom you cannot do much anyway. Still, I am a snob and I do not like natural method. BUT, if I had to choose one of those elementary programs to use with young kids, I would rather go with Minimus I-II (that one I am actually familiar with and even own - still not what I would personally prefer pedagogically, but I think would rather use that than ISL if I had to choose with the target age groups).

Professional translation and interpreting is typically specialized. For example, court interpreters (:D) rarely do written technical translations, and vice-versa. The first prerequisite is absolute proficiency in the foreign language, which can, but does not have to, be acquired by advanced degrees in the language. At the very least one typically has to have a formal recognition of the highest level (C2 in European terms) in a foreign language on internationally recognized exams for that language - and then one can begin the process of further specialization for translating and interpreting. And then it gets FUN! You have to learn all the terminology you would deal with in both languages (e.g. if you deal with court stuff, you need to know the equivalents of all courts and stuff in both languages, how terms from a different legal tradition are translated, etc.), which typically involves some exams on the field itself - and that is for translation only. Most people translate into their mother tongue, still. Translating into a foreign language is a more difficult task. Interpreting is insanely difficult and a whole 'nother beast. Few people can handle that because it requires excellent concentration, prompt reactions (unless you do consecutive and have a few extra seconds to think of words), on the top of good knowledge. People typically specialize ONE combination, regardless of how many languages they speak, their L1 is typically their mother tongue, and their L2 typically the foreign language they know best. Some work with L3 too, but I do not know anyone who works on a high level with more than that. Most people from the field I know do "know" some 6-7 languages (and know better than amateurs), but actively work with only one combination, because it is a whole different level of proficiency, nuanced understanding and competence you need to work on that. If you are good and work your way up to international tribunals, EU organizations, UN, etc., it pays well. But the competition is fierce, too, if you are ambitious. "Knowing a language" is no big deal in anyone's eyes in this world, you have to stand out. Another thing to keep in mind is that it is good to have an "exotic" combination - less competition, higher prices, etc. But once you settle, settle and work on that combination, rather than exploring all the other options. In any case, your son should do a lot of research in advance to pinpoint what exactly he wants to do - it is a very wide field. But an interesting one. ;)

[He (is)] nonetheless (tamen) suffers (patitur) most evil (mala plurima) [inflicted to him] by the evil ones (a malis).

Each kid separately.