That was the most interesting thing, and it said that single parents, on average, spend almost twice what married parents spend, something like $1500 for single parents vs. $770 for married. That is starting to fail my "sniff test". Single parents spend, on average $1500 per prom per kid? Really? So half of single parents spend more than $1500? How? Where does it go? OK, so that's not the way math works, so I guess I'd like to know what the median amount spent on prom is. Could it be that this self-reported survey is just bogus?

34 courses or 34 credits? 34 courses seems like way more than most majors require total for a degree, and at 3 credits per course is 102 credits.

Can you get library books in Kindle format from either of these libraries? Easily worth the price of a Kindle if they have a decent selection.

Studying Latin for the purpose of learning English vocabulary, to me, is the least important reason to study Latin. Sure, some huge percentage of multi-syllabic SAT-words have Latin roots, and yes, Latin students have been shown to do better than their peers on the SAT vocab test, but if that's all you want to know, you might as well just sit down with an English dictionary and start memorizing. You might think there is an advantage to learning a modern spoken language, but a big problem there is there is a rush to memorize useful conversational phrases at the expense of learning the grammar and fundamentals. Because we usually don't teach conversational Latin, we don't waste time there, we go straight to the meat of the matter. For example, the first week in Spanish class, everyone knows how to say "Me llamo Maria". While this is useful if you want to make friends in Spain, there's also some tricky grammar going on there, that gets glossed over for a long time -- instead of learning what's literally going on, and how it might apply to other contexts, we just teach students to memorize this and many other phrases. So, in Latin, the fundamentals of grammar, which have a lot of applications to English grammar, are taught earlier, more thoroughly, and more directly. Anyone who has studied at least two years of Latin with any rigor will _always_ know when to use "I" and "me" correctly in English. Latin's inflected grammar is different enough that the student has to study it, and can't get by just on English analogues; but similar enough to help with English composition. For example, the passive voice in German is somewhat structured like in English, with a participle and a helping verb form, just like English. The passive voice in Latin is a completely different verb ending, so the student has to know the grammar roots here, as opposed to some surface-level mapping of words from one language to another. Still, if all you cared about was grammar, that wouldn't be a good enough reason to study Latin alone -- you could just study English grammar directly, and probably learn just as much (though it wouldn't be nearly so fun). The home-run benefit of studying Latin is reading the ancient authors in their original Language. Every orator, lawyer or politician strives to be as purposeful with rhetoric as Cicero. The style, themes and tropes of Vergil echo throughout all of Western literature. Caesar was a master of propaganda, rationalizing why a strongman should overthrow a republic. Good stuff to know if you want to be able to recognize demagoguery. And, though this is self-reinforcing, thousands of years of students have already studied Latin and Latin authors, and have based their work upon it. To not have read Ovid or Suetonius or Plutarch (even though he's Greek), is to not fully understand what Shakespeare, Milton and others were basing their works on. More importantly, all of the American founding fathers were well-steeped in classics. This didn't just color their thinking about how to form the new republic, but even in the way the wrote, and to not understand Latin is to not fully understand their mindset. I don't want to turn this political, but a common Latin grammatical construction is the ablative absolute, which doesn't have a single crisp translation in English. However, one reason we find the 2nd amendment to the Constitution so vexing today is that a key clause in there written with an absolute, no doubt an echo of Latin. Without understanding the absolute phrase, the whole amendment is hard to understand. So, there are many reasons to study Latin, it isn't easy, but there are many levels of dividends.

A couple of really telling quotes from the article:

Even if your only goal in college is vocational, it still pays to go to a better school. To be hired as an entry-level receptionist, you can get by with a 4-year degree from any school. I guarantee you, though, that a four year degree from even big-state-school will open more doors than a BA from third tier local school. And, it's not like you are saving money sending your twelve year old to the $13k/year private school either, versus waiting until they are 18 and sending them to big state school.

This article shows that there is at least one third-tier college which will accept 12 years who aren't super gifted into a four year program. The implication here is that your undergraduate college doesn't matter at all, a bachelor's degree is just a piece of paper, a check-box to work through from any institution that will have you. I bet that if these kids waited until they were 18, they could get accepted to a more reputable and challenging school, not just the one that happens to be close enough to allow you to live at home.

Whenever I see additional requirements like this, I wonder what the new thing is replacing. Ultimately, there are only so many hours in the day, and I'd prefer to plan our high school years to focus on subjects that take more than one year. That is, I hope to have four years of math, four years of a modern foreign language, four years of an ancient language, four years of science, English and history. That doesn't leave much time for extras. If I had a very arty child, I might swap the four years of ancient language for, say music performance. But just squeezing in one year of "fine arts"? Sounds like a throw-away, check-box to me.

I think this says more about the college than it does about the kids.

Of course, you are right, it is at the beginning of every exam. Can't remember, but was reading this somewhere about the psychology of grading essay exams. Perhaps college papers.

Printing is allowed. Now, there's all kinds of interesting questions about whether the graders are influenced by cursive vs. printing or pencil vs. pen.

One thing that can help is to try to have a succession plan for the big volunteer commitments. For example, if one of the positions is Volunteer Coordinator, it's great to recruit an assistant Volunteer Coordinator who helps out and shadows the Volunteer Coordinator, with the understanding that next year, the assistant becomes the head Volunteer Coordinator. It's a lot less scary to be the "assistant", knowing that someone can train you, and there is an end in sight once you do sign up.

If you invite me out to dinner, though, I'm polite enough not to order the $5,000 bottle of wine.

That's an easy question. Two.

Sometimes if you give them enough funny vocabulary to make up silly sentences, say, about their Mom, it can help with this frustration...

From Latin -> English is often called "translation", where from English -> Latin is often called "composition". And, indeed composition is much harder than translation. This is because it is easy to use context to "cheat" when translating, especially when translating beginner's sentences. Latin is a very terse language, and often the context won't be around to help in "real" Latin. So, we use composition to make sure that the student understands the forms and grammar. Keep on with the composition. It is hard, but worth it.

In your first sentence, you mean "FROM English (To Latin)", right?

Back the forklift over here to take care of my jaw as well. I'm curious who is paying for these proms -- can't be the kids, can it? And my other concern is how much prom is mimic-ing a wedding "2nd most important night of my life", and all. And isn't this an interesting quote:

Just to be perfectly clear, I wasn't trying to cast aspersions against your son, just talking about the general case.

And not to be too politically incorrect, but if the guy is supposed to spend $500 or more on prom, I hope that doesn't place certain expectations on the girl.

I think your son is being perfectly reasonable, but it might be interesting to understand exactly why the girlfriend is upset. A lot of prom is hanging out with your friends, not just your date. Is she unhappy with his unwillingness to spend a ton of money, or is she just missing her friends? Would she be happier if one or two or three other couples were invited to the boys-cooking home-made dinner?

The general idea is that your resume is the same for all the jobs you apply for, the cover letter is that part that you customize for a particular job. These days, the email body is the cover letter, and the attached resume is, well, the resume. What employers want to see is that you aren't just shotgunning out resumes, that you've spent the time to research their business a bit, and your cover letter should reflect that. It should mention where you saw the posting, why you think you are a good candidate, perhaps echo'ing back some keywords in the posting, and highlight parts of your resume that are particularly relevant. I wouldn't comment about hours or pay, but I would make it seem like you are a great "fit" for the position. Good Luck!

Seriously, anytime we pay too much attention to numbers like these, we help to reinforce that school districts must "teach to the test", and that the only things worth teaching are reading and math. There was a poster on these board who, sadly, doesn't post anymore, who frequently praised the rigor of her Italian schooling. However, if you look at Italy, and see the endless number of failing governments it has had, the huge rate of organized crime, the failing economy, one has to wonder if we aren't worrying about the wrong things.

Perhaps, but the Swiss kids are probably reading in three different languages.

I agree with the non-fiction, and would add: "How to Read A Book" "From Dawn to Decadence" "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" "Godel, Escher, Bach"