Like the "salt and light" argument, this seems to be another variation on "Your Christian duty obliges you to regard your children as means rather than as ends."

Robin, Bradbury's advice makes me think of Penguin Books' various sets of short literature, such as were discussed last year (was it already last year?). Must get back to their Great Ideas Boxed Set. http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/greatideas/index_1.html Another famous bit from Boswell's Life of Johnson: ERSKINE. "Surely, Sir, Richardson is very tedious." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." Apparently someone floated the idea that he be put forward for a seat in the House of Commons, but it was generally agreed that witty epigrams don't hold up when one actually needs to produce substantive policy speeches. Nearing the halfway mark! I'm excited to get in a post on the thread before church for a change. Must go soon, and then out for my special dinner.... How many posts do you have to have around here for your birthday to show up on the sidebar, anyway? ;) ETA: And belated happy anniversary, Robin!

This is also a good age for poetry.

But this only begs the question, by assuming that the choice to tutor one's own children is, in fact, "opting out" of the public school system. But I reject that characterization of public education as the default. This was the point of my post about the absurdity of undermining two school systems at once; how can there be two defaults? We must see to the education of our children, and we examine various methods for accomplishing that goal; we choose tutoring at home. This choice constitutes neither abandoning nor undermining any of the educational systems that provide different choices. One might as well claim that enrolling a child in public or private school damages homeschooling.

Middle Girl is a similar age, and also finding she's less interested in books for kids., so we've been venturing into more adult books. Some children's authors she enjoys are Joan Aiken and Leon Garfield. In the adult canon, maybe try Conan Doyle (lots of great stuff besides Sherlock, like The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard); Stevenson (after Treasure Island and Kidnapped, there's David Balfour and The Black Arrow; Alexandre Dumas; Dickens; Victor Hugo; P. G. Wodehouse; Sir Walter Scott; Rafael Sabatini; Jorge Luis Borges (careful here - preread); Rachel Carson's sea trilogy; Gavin Maxwell's Ring of Bright Water; John Buchan. Also good are the Alfred Church adaptations of Spenser, Caxton's Charlemagne, the Nibelungenlied, and the Greek classics.

What I love best about this classic argument against homeschooling is that not only am I hurting the common good of the public school system by "opting out," I am also - so I've been told - damaging the parochial schools, and thus undermining the Catholic community, by "opting out" of them. Two school systems at once!

I never could upload photos on the iPad, but we've had some fun birdfeeder watching around here. A troop of quaker parrots has taken to coming by our feeder at midday, though their preference for hanging upside-down while feeding makes it a bit awkward for them to get at the seeds. When not eating, they sit in the cedar elm and squawk loudly at each other. And occasionally we get visits from a red-shouldered hawk who likes to sit at the top of the tallow above the feeder. Patiently. I think "bird feeder" means something entirely different to him. It can be very hard to get lessons done when colorful birds are being entertaining right outside the window. A third of the way through Boswell. I took a break and read a Faulkner short story, "Red Leaves," which was pretty disturbing.

We start with this child's version of Chaucer, which is pretty findable used: http://childscapes.com/bookpages/tenggren.html It's completely innocuous, and quite fun.

Call of the Wild is in its own category. I read an abridged version as a child and thought it would be fine for Middle Girl (this was a few years ago), as she's fine with sad and tragic. But as I was reading to her a passage introducing a friendly female dog that had been stolen, I glanced at the next page and saw she was about to get her face torn off gorily by another dog. We stopped. That would have been just too much for MG.

Regarding Mark Twain.... Dh, who is a more avid Twain reader than I, recommends the lesser-read short fiction pieces "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" and "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven."

First, it has to have been written in Greek or Latin. And I don't mean Kazantzakis.

Oh how could I have forgotten Henry James? He still counts as American.

I've always wanted to visit Mesa Verde! I've been to Gila National Monument many times. But to get the full Cather effect, you have to visit an inhabited Pueblo - Acoma or Isleta, for instance.

I'll put in a vote for Flannery O'Connor (her short stories are better than her novels). Faulkner of course: try Absalom, Absalom (btw you might or might not want to read the Bible story of Absalom first, if you don't know it; it does provide a partial spoiler, but then when Faulkner was writing, he would have assumed his readership knew the story). As a fifth-generation New Mexican, I am bound to recommend Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. It ends at about the time my great-great-grandfather became territorial governor, and is required reading in my family. Then you have to go visit Santa Fe. And the Pueblos.

My older girls read Church's Aeneid at about 4th grade; but they knew the story by then and were used to century-old diction. Certainly there's nothing inappropriate for that age, but it all depends on the reader, especially for books that old.

I just sent that link with the "vandalism" to everyone I could think of. Is it vandalism when the art is improved?

Eliana, your family is beautiful. "All alike," ha! And your grandbaby is adorable. One-quarter done with Boswell! Perhaps next year, his Tour to the Hebrides. A famous philosophical moment from the Life of Johnson: After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it,--"I refute it thus."

I don't know about Ferguson, but it happened last year two blocks from my house: http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2013-07-29/apd-searching-for-witness-to-fatal-officer-involved-shooting/ I found it disturbing how many locals had the reaction "Well, you shouldn't run from the police."

Still on Boswell. Realized to my horror, on reading Robin's starting post, that I had last week what we call around here a "brain blink" (blinkus of the thinkus) and wrote "Regency" where I meant "Georgian," with no excuse for the wrong century except a few letters in common. ETA: My excuse for slow reading, besides Boswell's determination to include every letter Johnson ever wrote to anybody, is that we started sixth and first grades last week, and I'm forced to waste valuable reading time planning and conducting lessons.

Coffee, then coffee, then some more coffee. Then diet sodas through the day and into the evening. Especially in this heat. Yeah, tell me how bad they are for me. I've been drinking this way for a quarter century. I scoff at the studies. Pass the Fresca.

Pitch 'em, unless they're genuinely irreplaceable.

That would be desirable.

The district court said that Leeper doesn't actually say that we are necessarily private schools, but that we are private schools, if we are teaching a bona fide curriculum. And that the determination as to whether that curriculum is bona fide - and therefore we're private schools - is properly made by the ISD. I agree, this seems to eviscerate Leeper, and turn on its head how both homeschoolers and the TEA have always understood Leeper to be interpreted. We aren't subject to the school district ... If the school district determines we're not. I wonder if this is going to be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. Or if it's going to be a political football in the Lege.

I gather the court is saying that, as you say, the local ISD doesn't certify private school curricula; but home schools aren't necessarily private schools, and it's the ISD that gets to make that determination - and they can do that by examining, if they want, our curriculum. So among other kinds of damage, this case has drawn a (previously nonexistent) sharp distinction between private schools and home schools, the latter of which have to satisfy the ISD that they are private schools before they get the protections of Leeper.

Thanks very much. Yeah, the Pound Sand interpretation of Leeper (may I use that?) has been the understanding on all sides. Here's the Texas Education Agency's longstanding policy: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=25769804368 Okay, so here's another legal question; how much does, or might, this affect us in other areas of Texas? As far as I know, this is the first time a Texas state court has offered an interpretation of Leeper (everybody previously agreed on the interpretation). Is it just El Paso that's out of luck, or will lower courts in other areas take their cue from this decision?