Like: Miquon, Kitchen Table Math, Key To..., Singapore, 4th- and 5th-grade Math League questions Dislike: Saxon, Teaching Textbooks Beneath Notice: TERC, Everyday Math

There doesn't need to have been a law broken, nor a precedent established by the court. To sue for damages, you just need to show that harm was done, and that the defendants contributed to that harm through their negligence. For instance, it's not illegal for me to carelessly forget to wash the lettuce for the salad for the church potluck; but if people are hospitalized for food poisoning because of my negligence, I may be liable for their medical bills. If someone had a duty of care for this child, and fell down on the job, and the child suffered harm, the child has a right to be compensated for that harm by them.

I'm surprised to hear people saying there isn't much religious content in LLATL. I have the old 1994 set, and maybe there has been a substantial reduction of the religious content? In the Red Book, 16 out of the 45 lessons are based on explicitly religious passages. In the Yellow Book, 18 out of 45. The activities for these passages frequently presume your family is Christian. I prefer secular curricula, but I like LLATL, so I let it go. OTOH, the religiosity of the Gold Book made it just unusable (actually it was bad for multiple reasons - very disappointing after how good the earlier books were).

Hard to tell from the article, but I assume the parents are suing to obtain damages that may help the child with future medical or therapy costs. Which strikes me as the right thing to do. I don't understand what "suing the state to challenge its decision" means in this context.

Maybe the Swiss Lake Dwellers had already invented the tourism industry, and were gaily overcharging them for lake hut rental.

Good gravy - how did I not notice it was Bierce? It's not that great so far, but not bad. Great Girl read it when Fuentes died (a year ago this Wednesday) and told me as much. We'll see. Maybe knowing it's Bierce will improve it. Must look up Delafield.

On the topic of mothers in literature, Great Girl just sent me this, where Aeneas runs into his mom, the goddess Venus: Then suddenly, in front of him, His mother crossed his path in mid-forest, Wearing a girl's shape and a girl's gear-- A spartan girl, or like that one of Thrace, Harpalyce, who tires horses out, Outrunning the swift Hebrus. She had hung About her shoulders the light, handy bow A huntress carries, and had given her hair To the disheveling wind; her knees were bare, Her flowing gown knotted and kirtled up. --Aeneid, Book 1

Sorry to have neglected the book threads. Last week I finished (under dh's guidance - it was a little like a tutorial) Plato's Republic. Instead of an excerpt, here's a claymation video of the Allegory of the Cave that's apparently going the round of the philosophy blogs. http://t.ritholtz.com/bigpicture/#!/entry/the-cave-platos-allegory-in-claymation,518d241bda27f5d9d0c10281/media/1 Also, Balzac's paired stories, "The Unknown Masterpiece" and "Gambara," published with a long introduction by NYRB. The former story is much more successful than the latter, mostly because of the impossibility of conveying music in writing. But I didn't find either story particularly compelling, and this wouldn't be my first recommendation for someone wanting to try Balzac. ETA: Oh yes - now reading The Odes of Pindar (Lattimore) and Carlos Fuentes' The Old Gringo, and contemplating Faust Part Two and an intriguing little book called Five Hundred Years of Printing.

A Picturesque Tale of Progress.

We have Olive Beaupré Miller's "A Picturesque Tale of Progress" world history series, which features a prehistoric family in which the children, Dee and Dart, play around outside the hut while mom does the housework (and I guess dad is at his 9-5 mammoth-hunting job). Dee and Dart invent animal domestication, pottery, and agriculture on their own (a friend invents cave painting). Middle Girl finds it hilarious. I suppose it's, in some sense, educational. Oh I forgot, Dee and Dart and their parents go on a family vacation (though they fail to invent the station wagon), and discover the Lake Dwellers. Who are really nice.

No worries. "Favorite" in any sense: straight, ironic, post-ironic. Favorite = the one you most want to mention. The fable of Pocahontas is a good choice. ETA: I'm not even sure myself in what sense "Trail Boss in Pig Tails" is my favorite. It's so cheesy, and improbable, but a little Texan part of me is pleased that Great Girl liked to imagine herself as the heroine, showing those tough cowpokes that a little slip of a girl could herd longhorn cattle. It makes me think of the book a little fondly. More ETA: Sarah's erudite posts have made me feel horribly guilty for the zero historical research I did for Great Girl's history education. But at least, when she was taking a university course on the middle ages that focused on Charlemagne, though she probably had acquired some bad history about him through my neglect, she reported that a substantial number of her classmates had never even heard of Charlemagne.

Reading that thread, I cringed to recall that Great Girl's Favoritest Book Ever was "Trail Boss in Pigtails." The Kirkus review tells you everything you need to know: 'Trail boss Emma Jane drives the family's pint-sized herd of longhorns north after her Pa's death in Waco, and makes it all the way to Chicago by dint of lucky breaks, hard bargaining with the hungry Indians who try to extort a percentage of her stock (""They're displaced people, just like us""), and lots of help from tough cowboys who melt at the sight of a ""mere slip of a girl"" doing a man's job.' Pretty heady stuff for an urban Texas girl. She read it over and over and over. Good thing she's majoring in math! What ahistorical fiction did your children love, as it filled their impressionable minds with wrong views of the past?

Ms N-J may play what she pleases; but please not John Michael Talbot crooning the St Louis Jesuits. I crossed that barren desert and ended up with the Trads.

A repeat of something I posted in another thread, but dh, who has (sort of - complicated) a Ph.D. In grammar, seriously believes in teaching grammar at the K-12 level orally, not via writing. It's worked well for us. Just food for thought, YMMV.

Your post made me so happy to read it. Good for you, mom!

A slightly wild suggestion, and ignore it if it wouldn't work for you ... but grammar is part of dh's field of expertise, and I've learned from him that it's often easier to understand it through spoken, not written, language. We do all our grammar study orally. Would a non-written approach help your dd, at all?

Silly. The bluegrass. Http://Tinyurl.com/cqpufkv

Bill, Since I'm probably just repeating myself, to the utmost boredom of other readers, here's the best and briefest responses I have for you. 1. Texas is different because homeschooling was never legalized (at least that's the judicial fiction): it was found always to have been an existing form of private education. And it's different in that private schools have political immunity from reglation. Finally, it's different in that our sole controlling law is case law at the highest level, which is a better thing than being controlled by statute. That last point will cease to be true if a court - state or federal - finds that later legislative action has created a separate category for "home schools." 2. "Regulation" means exactly that. There are currently zero regulations for Texas homeschoolers. I understand that you don't think it would be a problem for there to be some "accountability." Can you see that we do? We don't want the legislature to be able to create, or enable a state agency to create, regulations for us. That's why many of us oppose this bill. 3. I didn't mean to open a can of worms by bringing up school vouchers. I was trying to make the point that the Texas political climate, particularly regarding education, doesn't follow the national red/blue predictable battle lines. (I don't support them either, but that's not relevant to this discussion.) 4. NOBODY IS SAYING THIS BILL WILL END HOMESCHOOLING. Pardon the shouting: you seem a little deaf on this. We're not saying it will entail regulations, or that regulations would immediately ensue. What it WOULD do is give a future court more than adequate grounds to find that, since Leeper, the state legislature had created a separate classification for "home schools," distinct from that of private schools. The untouchability of private schools would then no longer protect us, and Texas homeschoolers would have to fight every single proposed regulation offered. I understand that you think that's okay. The fact that you do - and you're an educated, intelligent person with a full, balanced view of homeschooling - tells me that we're right to be concerned. Nothing else to add. Must go homeschool now instead of just talking about it. Thanks for the invigorating debate!

Bill, You're putting words in my mouth, and I don't understand why. I said exactly what I meant: that regulation of homeschooling isn't an unpopular idea in Texas. This is a modern, increasingly urban state. School vouchers are shot down every time they're introduced, to the repeated amazement of the non-Texan media. When the Tebow bill was discussed in the Lege, there were comments about how it might be a good thing for homeschoolers to be tested. Look, just because Certain National Homeschool Organizations rely on sky-is-falling alerts to drum up membership doesn't mean that sometimes there isn't really bad legislation pending. And this is one of them. It will remove the immunity we've long enjoyed from regulation.

The THSC has its view, and not all Texas homeschoolers agree. Some responses: http://txlege.ocati.org/d/tebow_talking_points.doc Yes, there are places here and there in Texas law where "home schools" are mentioned. And a lot of homeschoolers fought those fiercely. But mentioning homeschoolers in the law isn't like losing your virginity - courts considering the question of whether the Leeper definition has been superseded by legislation will look at the totality of legislation and its import. And a statute that doesn't just distinguish homeschoolers for some trivial health and safety reason, like reflective clothing, but distinguishes us in a way as significant as UIL eligibility and specifying academic eligibility requirements, has a good chance of being seen as the Lege superseding Leeper. I'm glad other states have arrangements that work for their homeschoolers. But our legal situation is unique.

We're the unintended beneficiaries of Texas private schools being almost totally unregulated, with any attempt at regulation being political suicide (thank you, Southern Baptist Conference). Regulating homeschoolers isn't unpopular in Texas; but as long as we're private schools under the law and not some separate entities called "home schools," we can't be touched.

Wee Girl and Middle Girl are spaced just like yours, so this might work for you, too: I asked Middle Girl (while Wee Girl was out) to pull off the shelf any picture books that were bad, boring, or useless; and also any picture books that she thought were so wonderful that we should keep forever. The second stack stayed, no matter what I thought of the books; the first stack went. Then dh and I pulled any books still on the shelves (the great unwashed middle) that we hated, or that were falling apart, or that nobody had ever read, and added them to the first pile. Then we sold that first pile very quickly. (And! Two of the books I'd bought second-hand for a dollar, and both Middle and Wee Girls disliked, turned out to be valuable! So decluttering can pay off.)

What Ellie said. IANAL, but I gather the worry is that Texas homeschooling is currently controlled by the Leeper case (Texas Supreme Court), which found parental control over a child's education to be a form of private schooling. But once you have a statute that explicitly separates private schooling from parent-directed education*, you've given the Legislature, or relevant state agencies (perhaps TEA) the obligation to distinguish the two. The "Tebow" law could be handing a state agency (that has been historically hostile to Texas homeschoolers) the ability to promulgate regulations defining what children do and don't count as homeschooled. And that would be a very, very bad thing. *I'm not being coy with this phrase: "under the direction of a parent" was language deliberately employed by the court , such that in Texas, a "homeschooling" family can have their children taught entirely outside the home and entirely by other people, and you can "homeschool" other people's children.

I have two brothers-in-law, and don't get me wrong, they're great guys ... but oh man, I envy you. I bet you can't wait for Thanksgiving dinner each year.

The last time we attended our community opera's open-to-students dress rehearsal (which I will never do again, in great part because of the atrocious behavior of the homeschoolers attending), there was a standing ovation at the end. A dress rehearsal, for pete's sake, where the tenor saved his voice to the point of complete inaudibility, there were frequent pauses for direction, and in general it was clear that it wasn't really meant to be a performance at all. But hey, standing ovation.