When we were very new to hs'ing, one of the first homeschool Park Days I attended had a birthday party with a pinata. When it broke open, all the littles went scrambling for candy and toys, while the older siblings held back. Then the older kids went after candy, but also distributed candy they found to the younger ones who had only a little. I thought, "I want my kids to grow up like that."

It would be stupid of me not to. Maybe I need to spend more time getting a better sense of what's appropriate to post, however.

I'm serious. I've gained more useful information from these forums in a few weeks than I gained over the previous several years from disparate sources. I realized that, having recently given offense to several people, it would be appropriate to not only apologize but to, as a positive act, offer my gratitude to the forum members in general. And I mean it. I'm not sure about your FaceBook reference? :confused: I've never been on it.

Thank you to all the many homeschoolers whose advice and suggestions on these forums have given me so much assistance in homeschooling. I owe you a great debt.

Well it apparently just got me reported to the moderator, and scolded for not having a thicker skin. The latter point may be right.

I'd still like it if someone wanted to put on a private blog or website something like a Red Flag List of Classic Children's Literature (for instance). As an example, Moira mentioned that Peter Pan has some stereotypes of American Indians. That's something a parent might like to know; and it's not the same as saying "Peter Pan is evil! Don't read it!" Ten years ago, I would have liked to know that I might want to pre-read the original versions of Mary Poppins, Dr. Doolittle, or Raggedy Ann, and why. And I suppose I thought a big forum like this would be a reasonable place to assemble such a list. Stupid me.

Well, never mind. The concept appears to have been offensive.

Right, I will take the plunge. Unfortunately I'm 4,682 miles away from my library right now, so I'll have to go from memory.

Not disagreeing with you, and I haven't read the book: but the quotation doesn't, standing alone, seem to be saying "Slavery under these conditions wasn't wrong." It seems to be using litotes to say "Obviously Prince Henry had to think that slavery under these conditions was wrong." Now I suppose that leaves the possible implication that there would be some circumstances under which Prince Henry might think slavery was right; but as it stands, the quoted sentence only seems to be asserting that, under the referenced conditions, even Prince Henry must think slavery to be wrong. As for the mass deaths and the horrific conditions of slavery, I would want to know what age the book is intended for before judging it racist for omitting that information. Perhaps the context makes clear what isn't clear to me. As I said, I haven't read it.

Preach it, sister! :D

One caveat: dd7 has her favorite poetry book, Blishen's Oxford Book of Poetry for Children, all of which is good poetry selected for suitability for memorization. I assign some of them for learning, but now and then she'll make up her mind to learn one by heart, and I just make that one her current assigned poem. So she has several by heart now that I don't. Same with dd14, who did the same thing (and who also has lots of Shakepeare from plays she's been in, which I didn't memorize). I did make myself learn the 50 States song with them, though. Just in case I'm ever on a game show and asked to name all the states in alphabetical order.

I like the color-coded visual reinforcement idea (though I'm not sure I will be permitted that kind of time to make up color-coded words!). The personal list of Frequently Misspelled Words is good; I've been keeping such a list, but it hadn't occurred to me to just give it to dd. Thanks!

Not that that could happen....

Perhaps a continuing thread with text + concern? That's what I thought the "Evil Books" thread was setting out to be. It would work if everybody refrained from being annoyed that a favorite item raised a concern for someone else.

There are groups and websites with "red flag" lists to indicate material that may be objectionable to members. Has anyone thought of starting a WTM "red flag" list? Not necessarily one that would condemn a certain book or program, but which would indicate "this is something you might want to pre-read because of x." I would love a heads-up on materials. Bill? Do you feel like an organizer here?

Well, not really that much of a truism, no. I do agree beyond the obvious statement that everyone wants their group respected, and hope we agree that one must therefore avoid slandering, disparaging, etc. My point is that many hs'ers--and I've met Catholic, Protestant, LDS, and Moslem hs'ers who fall into this category--feel, rightly or wrongly, that a society that has at least ceased to marginalize certain groups has now found it acceptable to marginalize their group. Some people therefore feel that, as long as there simply isn't an unbiased option for them, better a bias in their favor. I'm not saying this is right, only that I've felt it and been tempted by it. But I have so far successfully found materials that at least fall within a, to me, acceptable level of bias; and often with no bias discernible to me at all. I feel like I'm typing the same things all over again. At any rate, I think we mostly agree.

In practice, however, I find that the best solution is (3) Find the best and most accurate materials for each subject, and where they fail to be fair-minded (assuming it's a small failing, and not the warp and woof of the material), discuss it. My oldest daughter used America: A Narrative History because it is a good, solid, history book that attempts to be fair-minded and scholarly. That it occasionally failed, and usually in an anti-Christian direction (e.g. the student is required on one chapter quiz to mark as true that the California Franciscans were engaging in religious imperialism), was something I was willing to accept in a textbook for an older child. I have a science book I like that has some obnoxious anti-theist propaganda in the beginning; I skip that part and use the rest. At any rate, I think you missed my larger point.

A few days ago at a little secondhand bookshop in Edinburgh I saw what is apparently Marshall's sequel to Our Island Story, titled Our Empire Story. The sections on South Africa are everything you could imagine.

Bill, I think the question about history books offending Christians gets near to the question you have about the use by homeschoolers of books that are unacceptable by any measure. Offering evidence-by-anecdote ... In my high school World History text, the Catholic Church was mentioned exactly twice (I checked the index). First for the Papal bull dividing South America between the Spanish and Portuguese, which was presented as a ridiculous old tyrant thinking he could parcel out the world and its inhabitants to whomever he wished. Second for the Reformation, which focused on Tetzel and his indulgence-selling, and was the most Whiggish approach to the whole period one could imagine. And that was it. More recently, for my oldest daughter's U.S. history text, I selected America: A Narrative History, which was recommended by both high school AP teachers and university faculty members for its fairness and high quality. In the very first chapter, behold the old canard that the Catholic Church, as it always had, simply appropriated pagan feast days and dressed them up as Catholic holy days. No footnotes, no suggestion that this might no longer be conventional wisdom among medieval historians: just the raw declaration of What Everybody Knows. I try not to be "offensensitive" (as Opus put it). But I think a lot of Christian hs'ers feel that the only way they can themselves be treated fairly, and not scorned, marginalized, or offered as history's villains, is to have recourse to these older books. I don't offer this as an excuse--I won't use these materials myself (though I'm chagrined to realize from this thread that I didn't pre-read Sarah Noble, and now I'm going to go do that)--but I understand the feelings that I suspect underlie their use. There are some really awful, triumphalistic history texts popular among Catholic hs'ers, which would make you spit to read (please don't read them :lol:), and yet sometimes I look at them and feel The Temptation: Who cares if others are being treated fairly, if at least we're being treated with respect for a change. Edited to add: I'm not at all trying to suggest that all, or most, or any hs'ers are using the controverted texts because they don't care how others are treated; only that (a) sometimes it appears that the better a text treats a marginalized group, the worse Christians are marginalized, and that using older, even racially offensive, texts seems like a tradeoff; and (b) sometimes I personally am tempted to place my own "tribe"'s interests above that of others, out of both impatience and exhaustion.

My dd7 finished Peterson a few weeks ago, and what we do now is practice strokes that are getting 'lazy.' For instance, today after a PLL lesson, I saw that the loop top basic letters -- e, l, and f -- were getting too "loopy." I have dd figure out which of the strokes making up the letters has gone awry, and she practices trace-writing the stroke to re-train her arm muscles. She actually quite likes analyzing letters to see what precisely is starting to go wrong, and then fix it. I want her eventually to be able to notice when her own writing is getting messy, and to practice to fix the problem. This would not have worked with dd14, who would have burst into tears at the words "too loopy," announced "I can't do it, I'm a failure at handwriting," and thrown her pencil across the room.

I know what you mean about the MCT thing. We used LLATL, but it wasn't working for my dd7; I'd been convinced by the wisdom of the hive mind that WT2 and then CW Homer would be the way to go ... and then a discussion of PLL/ILL (plus the ability to use the first dozen lessons for free on Amazon) lured me into PLL for the time being, until we get back to the States. So I figured PLL, ILL, WT2, CW Homer ... because you can't order too many English curricula, can you? Now I'm thinking, hmm, maybe MCT could fit into that somewhere....

Oh I remember the math cart, and pre-tests and post-tests from 6th grade. My (eventually) dh and I, along with a handful of other mathy kids, finished the last post-test (pre-algebra), and ... there was nothing else. So we came to math class and sat around each day, because the teachers didn't have anything else for us. Dh's mom was a teacher in the local elementary school, and made sure the next year that dh was advanced properly according to his math ability. Everybody else, the next year, went back to their 'proper' grade level (previous to pre-algebra). Other lousy school reform ideas: middle school abolition of meaningful graduation exams 'language arts' (instead of English) 'social studies' (instead of history/geography)

More good advice. Focus on the persistent troublemakers. 'Squirrel' really might have to make the list, though; she has an odd fascination with including the furry rodents in any writing assignment.

Interesting blog article; you give me hope.:) And another vote for AAS, I see. I do let her go over her writing--she will catch spelling errors resulting from writing errors (omitted letters, for instance), but will look right at a habitually misspelled word and think it looks fine. Things are complicated by not only the other orthographical details you mention, but also from her having just mastered cursive, and insisting on writing everything in cursive. However we were struggling with this while she still wrote in print; cursive has just given me the added skill of sorting "misspelled because of paying attention to the penmanship" from "misspelled because nothing can convince her that 'which' really does have two 'h's."

I haven't even heard of it before, but will look into it. Thanks!