This article seems to indicate HSLDA was/is representing them. http://danielsilliman.blogspot.com/2014/08/homeschooling-not-absolute-right.html It wouldn't take much money for an ISD to just add to their withdrawal form that homeschooling families must describe their curriculum. And if the school has a beef with that family, it could certainly make their life harder. Also, the ISD to our north has more time and money than the urban one I live in. A couple years ago, they sent someone around door to door to personally ask every family with school-aged children where the children were enrolled, and if they were homeschooling. This seemed to be more about marketing than about harassing homeschoolers, and they quit right away when homeschoolers freaked out, but clearly some ISDs have the leisure to do this.

There's certainly more to the facts - these seem to have been spectacularly unsympathetic plaintiffs - but now we're stuck with a state court opinion interpreting Leeper in a way that will apply to homeschoolers who don't have all this messy stuff going on.

Mottoes also often use the ablative, which gives an implication of "with" or "by" or "through." So you could have something like this: Veritate, Virtute, Bonitate. (Is "decor" the word you're looking for? I thought it was "beauty" more in the sense of "ornament." But I'm no Latinist.)

It's been a no-regulation state because we have no statutes about homeschooling; we have a state supreme court decision - Leeper - saying homeschools are unaccredited private schools. And private schools are unregulated here. So all you had to tell the ISD, if you were removing your child, was that you were enrolling them in a private school according to Texas law. The ISD had no more right to demand to see your homeschool curriculum than they had the right, if you were enrolling your child in St. Hypercatholica's parish school, to demand that St. H. show the ISD what curriculum they would be using. This ruling appears to have changed that, by saying the ISD can be a sort of gatekeeper before you qualify to be a private school under Leeper.

The recent understanding of Leeper was that you didn't even have to show that you were covering the required subjects, but just affirm that you were. That's the stated understanding of the ISDs in my area.

We don't have a regulation; just case law. And I gather part of the family's argument - which I agree with - was what you just said; that showing the ISD a curriculum is meaningless unless the school district also has the right to decide if that curriculum is good enough; which gives them an effective power of authorizing, or not, homeschooling.

Poppycock that HSLDA took this forward as a test case, or that our right to ignore the ISD isn't there anymore? If the former, it certainly looks like a test case. Again, just from reading the opinion, it looks like the McIntyres were pressing a theory - which I haven't heard before - that NO state actor has the right to inquire about curriculum. That has a test-case savor to me. If the latter, I welcome other interpretations of what the district court just said. Really. I want to hear that I'm completely misunderstanding it. But from here it looks like the court has ruled that the ISD gets to determine if you're a bona fide homeschooler before you get to fall under the Leeper ruling. Which is not what the general understanding was among Texas homeschoolers - and school districts - last week. Ellie, I'm not anti-HSLDA. They seem to have done good work, and bad work, for homeschoolers in this country. And I regret having brought that aspect up, because I'm not interested in a HSLDA-bashing thread. I'm interested in hearing, from those who are better-qualified than I, that this case hasn't done what it looks like it's done. I'm glad to hear you think (if I understand you correctly) that our rights haven't been damaged here. How are you understanding the ruling?

From a quick read of the opinion, it seems that the family refused to let the ISD look over their curriculum to see if they were "bona fide" homeschooling, which refusal I would have said last week was perfectly within the parents' rights; but then they further refused the JP court's request to see their curriculum, which was idiotic. If "Leeper says you don't have to cooperate with the court" was the advice of the HSLDA attorney, it seems to have gone over badly with the state court.

... and from what coverage I can find, it's looking like the HSLDA deliberately took on this case as a test case, and may as a result have narrowed Texans' rights to homeschool without interference from the ISD.

From the news coverage: "[EPISD attendance officer] Mendoza told KFOX14 that parents are usually very cooperative with district administration when using a bona fide home-schooling program, but they can be hard to deal with when they have something to hide." So it looks like the ISD has been taking it upon themselves for a while now to determine if El Paso homeschoolers are really homeschooling; and the court has agreed that they get to do that. Interesting inference that noncooperation with the ISD = "something to hide."

A district court in El Paso appears (i.e. IANAL and would appreciate the opinions of those who are lawyers here) to have interpreted Leeper, the Texas Supreme Court decision that controls homeschooling in Texas, in a surprising way. http://www.kfoxtv.com/images/lawsuit%20PDF.pdf "The [Leeper] court concluded that a home school can be a private school within the meaning of the statutory exemption found in Section 25.086(a)(1). Leeper does not hold, or even imply, that every alleged “home school†automatically fits within the exemption. Rather, the case simply allows certain home schools meeting specific requirements to qualify as “private or parochial schools†for purposes of exemption. In fact, the plaintiffs did not argue that every home school falls within the exemption, but only, “homes in which children are taught in a bona fide manner from a curriculum designed to meet basic education goals.†" The district court seems to be saying that, contrary to the general understanding that Texas homeschoolers are unaccredited private schools under Leeper, we're only private schools if the local ISD decides we're "bona fide" enough to be; and the ISD may investigate our curriculum and decide that. The court even brings up standardized testing as not the sole means, but apparently an allowable means, of deciding if we're bona fide. Is this as disastrous as it looks? I'm not prone to alarmism, but this seems pretty bad.

Some samples from Boswell's Life of Johnson. If you don't already know, Samuel Johnson was the great essayist and lexicographer of the eighteenth century, and James Boswell was his friend and kind of a Regency-era TMZ crew. --------------------- Dr. Adams found him one day busy at his Dictionary, when the following dialogue ensued.... "ADAMS. But, Sir, how can you do this in three years? JOHNSON. Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. ADAMS. But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. JOHNSON. Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman." ---------------------- A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, "Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance." ----------------------- ETA: Someone last week asked about "teaze." In the eighteenth century, it meant to annoy or badger someone. The equivalent of the modern "teasing," in a pleasant, friendly sense, was "raillery." P.S. This information came from my memory, not from Johnson's Dictionary. :D

All your posts have an implied "like" from me, on account of being accompanied by a picture of Galois. :)

Starfish. Never heard 'sea star' before. I thought "marine creature" was going to be something like this: http://www.outofregs.com/index.php?page=archives&keyword=squirrel

For the younger set, mine all loved the the Golden Press, Provensen-illustrated Iliad and Odyssey, and Myths and Legends. http://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Odyssey-Golden-Deluxe-Edition/dp/B000JJPUU2# http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Treasury-Legends-Adapted-Classics/dp/030760747X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top A little poking around and patience can usually get them for a reasonable price.

Middle Girl uses Artes Latinae, which is designed to be self-directed (though she likes company when she does it anyway). Dh made a few well-meant attempts at Greek with her, and finally we just hired a starving grad student from the Classics Dept. as a tutor for this year. We'll see how that goes. So if tutoring is an option, you could try that.

Thanks for the detailed description! I liked the radio version of Hitchhiker's Guide as a child, but not the book as much. "Absurd but intelligent" sounds promising. Good satire is always welcome. I suppose it's not the subject matter but how it's written that makes the difference. I think I'll just have to try Jurgen, and if it's good, try Pratchett.

Okay, someone tell me about Terry Pratchett. I picked up this book called Jurgen, by James Cabell, from 1919, off the clearance shelf, and the Wikipedia article said it was a fantasy novel and an influence on Terry Pratchett. Now I don't enjoy the modern fantasy genre, but I can't imagine something written a century ago to be an actual example of that genre. Should I read this thing? Is Pratchett the sort of book that I would toss across the room? Loving Boswell's Life of Johnson, though he is certainly thorough in his details.

Well there you are! Good to have you back, even if briefly. It won't just be briefly, will it? Alas for not having cable. I'm sure everyone will be eager to see how you work in product placement for Cuisenaire Rods.

I don't know what you mean by "ok." If you mean, "Is that a sin?" the Catholic answer is, "That depends." However, I was discussing the morality of getting tattoos, and specifically addressing the fact that tattoos are morally neutral, and so getting even the most ill-considered tattoo, in the most imprudent of circumstances, is not sinful. If you want to talk about the morality of the circumstances, that's a different thing.

I'm glad this thread is helpful. And your tattoos sound very well-chosen. Have you decided what your next one will be? Incidentally, getting spur-of-the-moment, frivolous, can't-quite-remember-last-night tattoos is also not contrary to Catholic teaching. Heck, that's how more than a few Catholic babies are gotten.

Likewise; the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or "Marymass."

Machiavelli makes an extended appearance in The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci, which I read a couple weeks ago. I think you should check it out. ;) I never saw those in Scotland. You'd think they'd show up there, what with the oats and all. I'll look more closely next time. Maybe they were in the "Better Biscuits" aisle. (As opposed to just the "Biscuits" aisle. How I loved Morrison's. And a much better Indian Foods section than HEB.)

A little fiction - ironically given my last week's reflections on women writers, a very forthrightly feminist writer of a century ago, Katherine Mansfield. From her suite of short stories, In a German Pension: "Whom then," asked Fraulein Elsa, looking adoringly at the Advanced Lady—"whom then do you consider the true woman?" "She is the incarnation of comprehending Love!" "But my dear Frau Professor," protested Frau Kellermann, "you must remember that one has so few opportunities for exhibiting Love within the family circle nowadays. One's husband is at business all day, and naturally desires to sleep when he returns home—one's children are out of the lap and in at the university before one can lavish anything at all upon them!" "But Love is not a question of lavishing," said the Advanced Lady. "It is the lamp carried in the bosom touching with serene rays all the heights and depths of—" "Darkest Africa," I murmured flippantly. She did not hear. "The mistake we have made in the past—as a sex," said she, "is in not realising that our gifts of giving are for the whole world—we are the glad sacrifice of ourselves!" "Oh!" cried Elsa rapturously, and almost bursting into gifts as she breathed—"how I know that! You know ever since Fritz and I have been engaged, I share the desire to give to everybody, to share everything!" "How extremely dangerous," said I. --Katherine Mansfield, "The Advanced Lady" ---------------------------------- Starting Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, which I've never read in its entirety. My copy is a hefty enough book that I'll have to choose something more purse-sized to read concurrently.

Extensive hand and arm tattooing is a centuries-old Catholic custom in the Balkans. There's no teaching on tattoos. Except on the internet, where there is a righteous rule for all things. Wait till you get to the sites where you're sinning for exposing your elbows at mass. It is the custom for one entering the Church to make a general confession of all serious sins since baptism. It would probably be sitting face to face with the priest, having arranged an appointment time, and talking things over like two normal human beings. But please, please, discuss these things - especially sin and marriage issues - with a priest, preferably one who is involved in RCIA, who will have had this conversation many times and who will have sane, human answers for your very good questions. The advice and information of internet Catholics is generally worth what you paid for it (not exempting myself). ETA: There's a guy who works at a local bookstore who has the entire St. Michael prayer (for the banishment of evil) tattooed on his bicep. In Latin. It's awesome.