Beth--I'm sorry, but I think it's misplaced to demand credentials in a polite conversation. Don't you? I don't think claims and counter-claims of credentials usually establish anything interesting, especially on the rather vague questions we are discussing. So although I could, I will not attempt to impress you with my credentials. I was speaking in generalities, and you seem to take me to be saying that it is impossible to get a good education at private and public schools. Of course I wouldn't say it's impossible. Of course there are some good private schools. Even some public ones. There are also plenty of excellent teachers and programs within schools. I'm not saying that a diligent student taking honors and AP classes at an average school won't be reasonably well educated, or as well as can be expected under the circumstances. What I'm saying is that at most schools, they simply won't learn nearly as much as they would if they were homeschooled under a good classical approach. A lot of the work done, or time spent, in public schools is spent inefficiently. Students are frequently drilled on what they already know--to make sure their peers are caught up--they are not challenged. Sometimes a student falls behind, too, and the extra help they would get at home just doesn't happen at school. The bottom line is that, I think, a lot of people just don't care about knowledge, and this sad attitude is reflected deeply in our public schools. As ordinarily used in colleges today, the liberal arts includes science and math.

Golly, I've got enough reading material here for a year...

A little educational philosophizing now. "What classical education is and why it is attractive" is a huge subject and I haven't read enough, yet, to have that much of interest to say on it. But I did want to make a few observations. As many people here know (I gather), the way that Dorothy Sayers, the Bauers, and a lot of the "classical education" movement use "trivium" simply does not match up with the classical usage. "Grammar" does not mean "early education memorization stage," it means the study of the mechanics of language. "Logic" does not mean "argumentative stage," it means the study of the nature and standards of good argumentation. "Rhetoric" does not mean "the stage at which students can put together their own original ideas persuasively," it means "the study and practice of communication, especially persuasive communication." For the ancients, they weren't stages at all, but subjects, three of the subjects that make up the seven liberal arts. If you didn't know all this already, look it up. Look up the meaning of "trivium" in some reliable source that describes the historical meaning, not the classical education movement meaning. Now, don't get me wrong--I'm also sure that Sayers and the Bauers knew all this, and I don't mean this as a criticism, because actually, WTM is my favorite homeschooling book and the method we use is closest to what WTM describes. Still, there is something ironic about trading on the solidity, ancient reputation, and tried-and-true-ness of "classical education," even to employ the terms, only to discover that they are being used in a new sense. So I have to wonder: am I attracted to WTM because it purports to have a classical approach, or on its own merits (which, perhaps, strike me as "classical" in some legitimate sense)? To answer this, we need to examine the WTM approach. Here's how I understand the main features of the WTM approach, stripped of the jargon: 1. Students should begin in the early years by doing a lot of reading and memorization. 2. There is a focus on academic (theoretical, scientific, and historical) knowledge, as opposed to practical knowledge (of how to do things). 3. Some subjects, like history and science, are taught in four-year cycles. When one returns to them, one studies the same subjects in the same order, but at a higher level. 4. Those subjects are taught in a roughly hierarchical or historical order. 5. In literature and some other subjects, there is a focus on classics, both in the traditional sense and in the "great books" sense, as well as on historically important documents. 6. Latin is taught; Greek is encouraged. 7. Logic and traditional grammar are both taught. Am I leaving anything important out here? Probably. But for what it's worth, I happen to agree with every part of this. By the way, I think it goes without saying that one can't embrace 1-7 and let the students choose to learn whatever they want, Unschooling style; Unschooling in any meaningful sense almost certainly guarantees that none of 1-7 is accomplished. Of these items, only 2, 6, and 7 are important parts of classical education in the sense of the medieval trivium & quadrivium. But I believe all seven (except, for all I know, 3) were important parts of the Western education tradition in approximately the 18th and 19th centuries. Therefore I propose that the "classical education" movement is really misnamed. Really what WTM represents is a traditional approach--not a traditional 20th century approach, but a traditional 19th century homeschooling approach. Perhaps it would be best to call it a "traditional liberal arts home education." It is "traditional" because the methods of reading the classics, memorization, oral examination/narration, teaching the mechanics of writing and thought in the form of grammar and logic, etc., are traditional methods. It is "liberal arts" not in the medieval sense but in the well-understood modern sense of the sciences, humanities, and arts. It is important to add the word "home" because what we are doing is very different from what schooled children did at bigger schools in the 19th century--children who were made to study the same things at the same times, often under strict and miserable discipline. Why is this attractive? I will answer only for myself. I think a liberal arts education is the best way to make a person into a well-informed and subtle thinker. This is important both because such people are needed to develop and run the machinery of 21st century civilization, but for the more timeless reason that the world is a terrifically complicated place; one simply can't make sense of it, and be at all rationally confident of one's way of life or world view, unless one has studied the world in the abstract and in historical detail, and one has been trained to think and write about it systematically. I reject Unschooling wholeheartedly because that approach, while it might train children in subjects and skills they are interested in, it is bound to leave them with significant gaps in their intellectual training. That's because hardly any student will just happen to choose to do everything that is required of a liberal education. I also reject most 21st century public and private schooling because, while it is possible for a diligent student to learn a lot, he or she will simply spend too much time on busywork and unnecessary tasks to be able to get a really robust liberal arts education. In fact, the only way such most schooled students can be thoroughly practiced in the liberal arts is if they go to college and get a liberal arts (rather than a technical) education there. This is the root reason why so many kids go to college now: primary & secondary schooling doesn't provide them an adequate education, and the demands of the modern world really require that they be better educated. Sadly, society has become so anti-intellectual that there are demands to dismantle liberal arts programs in colleges and to make them into technical training centers even more than they already are.

WTM Forums is a wonderful resource! As a new homeschooler, I'm very grateful for all the advice that can be found here. But...there are dozens of threads every day. What I would really love to see is a "best of" threads for 2011, or of all time. Has anyone collected such a list...recently? If not, maybe we can use this thread to point others to our favorite threads. What are your favs, please???

Cartoon Guide to Physics looks great, but conceptually, it's pretty challenging. Maybe after we've gone through all the other books we could pick it up and be able to get it. Can You Feel the Force? looks great! Thanks for that! We've got Color Day Relay (Magic School Bus). No Nat Geo books on physics in particular, that were at his level.

All, after a careful review of everything everyone has suggested, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of it is definitely over my 5-year-old's head. Usborne's What’s Physics All About? and the Basher Physics book are more his speed. We're very interested now in Horrible Science and the Mike Venezia biographies. We'll return to the more advanced suggestions the next time around, when he's more like 8 or 10! Thanks again!

Here is a basic video about Bolivia for kids, created by five-year-old H., with a little help from me. H. decided on and wrote all the sentences, chose all the pictures, and more, while I instructed him on how to use PowerPoint and Google Image Search, and gave topics (basically, an outline to follow) and edits to sentences. We used a "True Book" about Bolivia as a reference. The assignment taught H. about geography and computers, and let him practice typing.

Thanks to everyone for your excellent suggestions.

Thanks a lot for the link to those lists--already found a few books that look good! We'll definitely look into Horrible Science and others you mention.

All, I'm looking for suggestions on readable, high-quality science books that are written around the 3rd-5th grade level, particularly about physics. I'm not looking for a "curriculum" per se--you might say I'm looking for books that I can use to construct my own curriculum. Here are my preferences at this point, although I'm open to advice: 1. I do not want anything like a textbook. Questions in the text are OK, but none are needed. (We can think up our own questions.) The text should be stand-alone, and not require a workbook or other stuff. It should introduce topics creatively, interestingly. 2. My top priority is readability. It has to be well-written and clear. Generally, it should not use terms that aren't clearly introduced. 3. The writing should be engaging and interesting, too. I wouldn't have guessed it, but my son loves the Basher books. We've read Basher Physics--of course, a lot of the concepts went over his head, but he loved it anyway. 4. More pictures rather than fewer. 5. I do not want experiments-only books, lab books, workbooks, etc. We've got a fair few of those already anyway. We do a lot of reading, and while we'll do plenty of experiments and science writing, I can find source books for that separately. The books I'm looking for now should be relatively focused on explaining stuff clearly. 6. Secular...being a rationalist sort (agnostic, not militant atheist), I don't want religion in the curriculum. Or, if it's mentioned, it should be mentioned in a descriptive fashion ("Christians, by contrast, believe that..."); that, I might not mind, as long as it doesn't go into tedious detail; it's interesting to be exposed briefly to what so many people in our country (U.S.) believe, even if we disagree with it. Here are some books that we read in the last six months and definitely liked: the Basher books Physics, Chemistry, Periodic Table, and Rocks & Minerals (and about other subjects too); "100 Facts" books include 100 Facts on Rocks and Minerals; some Simon Seymour books; some True Books. Here are some books I came across in my Amazon searching which looked good: Eyewitness books (Matter; Force & Motion); Usborne's What's Physics All About?, See Inside Science, and Science Encyclopedia. I know some homeschoolers use The Usborne Science Encyclopedia as a spine--how does this work for you if you do it? Looks a little too advanced for us, perhaps. I saw the sample pages on the Usborne site, and I think it might be. Doesn't it go over some very complex material very quickly and summarily--more like a summary/review for students who have already learned the concepts elsewhere? But What's Physics All About looks no harder than much of what we've read so far. Strangely, though, the general encyclopedia is put at key stage 2+ (age 8+) while the physics book is key stage 4+ (age 11+). If you're interested, let me give you some background about where we're at and what we like. My son is 5 1/2 but he is reading (and comprehending) at the 4th or 5th grade level. We've read a lot of books, including a few hundred short science books and several longer ones as well. He's already read probably a couple dozen short books about physics and done a few dozen physics experiments. He has a special interest in electricity, about which we've read & experimented a lot. He is easily able to handle 3rd-5th grade science, as long as it doesn't have that level of math. We have really loved the "Let's Read and Find Out" and Magic School Bus books--we finished reading most of these series some time ago, but he still picks them up from time to time. He really likes the Basher series of science books (we've read a half dozen of these recently). As to how I'm teaching him (I'm his main teacher), mainly it's been me reading to him at mealtime, and doing experiments at other times. I explain a lot to him. This is an important part of our method. Whenever we come across some statement that I think he might possibly not understand, I explain it, often in great detail and with examples and even mini-experiments or demonstrations. (So he expects to understand whatever we read. He has no patience for stuff he can't understand. Anyway, that's how we can read some fairly advanced stuff together, like the Basher books, that he couldn't read by himself.) We have done almost no writing about science yet, but then, he wasn't able to write paragraphs until last spring. We don't do workbooks, and I have no desire whatsoever to do them, either--at least, not until we're doing the sort of mathematical work that requires workbook work. For a long time I thought we'd just read random stuff, the way we have been, but seeing the progress and enjoyment he's getting from systematically going through history, geography, and now writing, I'm inclined to start doing the same with science. If he were driven by changeable interests, it might be different, but he's actually pretty easy--he's game to have me read anything to him, and he'll read some things to himself as well. Also, to allay the fears of those who think a 5-year-old shouldn't be doing this sort of stuff, well, we won't actually be doing any more work than we already do, we'll just do more focused work. He's pretty happy with what we're doing so far, and I've added it up--he's studying around 3.5 hours a day. Sorry this is so long! Came across this thread, which I will study... http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=314273 And more linkage: http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/ http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=298629 http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=258500

You're welcome! My wife likes them more than ReadingBear.org itself, which is nice, but actually kind of disappointing since the website is taking me over a year to make. :001_huh:

I think of learning to read as a step-by-step process. The student really can't proceed to a step until she's thoroughly mastered the previous steps. A lot of people don't really understand this--they treat reading like a mystery. It really isn't. No offense, but I really believe that age-based "reading readiness" is a myth, as is the idea that some kids "just aren't ready" because of some mysterious brain development. That's simply not it; instead, whether the student is "ready" to read depends on what skills she has previously mastered (emphasis on "mastered"). Here are the steps as I understand them: 1. Learn to recognize the ABCs. Given the letter name said out loud, the child should be able to pick the letter out of a lineup. Also, given a letter written, the child should be able to say its name. There are lots of tools to help with this, of course--ABC books, Starfall, various Leapfrog toys like the "Phonics Bus" which we used, etc. I guess your child can do this, but if you're not sure, test her. 2. Learn the sounds of the individual consonants. These are not too hard if you stick to individual consonants--digraphs and blends are taught in phonics. The sounds of the vowels are also done in phonics, so you needn't bother with them either. These sounds must be learned thoroughly in advance. I obviously don't know, but this might be where your child is stuck. A child will be very confused if the consonant sounds haven't been thoroughly mastered. Again, Starfall and toys can help with this. Another good resource is this collection of videos I put together. 3. Be able to go from the word sounded out (e.g., /d/ /o/ /g/) by you to the word blended by the child ("That says dog!"). My guess is that your child is stuck here, if not at 2. This wouldn't be surprising, because this is the hardest step. Once a child begins to get the knack of going from individual letter sounds (which you supply) to a blended word, it's all downhill (assuming you've got a decent reading program to follow after that). This can be practiced in many ways. Refrigerator magnets, flashcards, and LeapFrog fridge phonics can help, as can lots of different software programs. My favorite is a website I designed myself--ReadingBear.org. 100% free, ad-free, and non-profit (supported by the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi). You'd use the "Sound It Out Slowly" setting. The first five presentations are all CVC words that drill about 150 different words at four different speeds. I hope you'll have a look. 4. Be able to sound out words. If the child relies on you to do the sounding-out, she won't progress. Note, I have this after 3, not before. This way you focus on one skill at a time. Blending words is hard, and it can be done without sounding out words. But once the child is blending, she can tackle sounding-out, and that isn't so hard. Also note that the child might not want to sound out words. Don't make her (at least, not regularly); if she can say a word out loud without sounding it out, and especially if she can decode previously-unread CVC words, then you don't need any more proof that she can actually sound them out. I believe it's preferable that she does the sounding-out in her head; this will make her a faster reader. But you should make sure that she can actually sound out the words. By the way, Reading Bear's "Let Me Sound It Out" setting drills this. 5. After that, it's simply a matter of systematically going through the rules of phonics. As you know, there are many packages available to do this. You can also guess which one I endorse, although right now Reading Bear has just 14 rules covered; I'll be adding 6 more in the coming weeks, and I'll have a total of around 50. Anyway, don't stop short in a phonics program. It's important to go through a whole program. (Well, maybe the last 1/4 of thorough programs can be skipped, if your child is really reading well.) Also, be sure to review old rules regularly--don't assume your child still remembers old rules. People hostile to phonics don't like it, but an extremely readable and practically useful book that I'd recommend to you is Why Johnny Can't Read. An oldie, but goodie. What a child who is having trouble learning something really needs is success. So go back to the point in the above sequence that she was very comfortable with, review it and build up her confidence with some appropriate praise, and then go from there. That's my advice anyway...

All--I have an update posted on my blog at: http://larrysanger.org/2012/01/update-about-the-boys-part-1-january-2012/

We just finished 1A too, about a month ago. I know your concerns exactly. I assume you did the workbook and not just the textbook--but if not, do the workbook, I think it's essential to the program. What helped us a lot was to do Two Plus Two Is Not Five, which teaches all basic addition and subtraction facts. We wouldn't have been able to go on to 1B without having memorized most of the addition and subtraction facts. For us, it was a slog in the beginning, but by Tier 2 or 3 it was pretty easy. We also did lots of addition & subtraction games on the iPad.

Aha, one of my favorite subjects (just now). I wrote a couple of blog posts, "What is the best way to teach geography?" and "What are the best books about countries for children?" I also started this thread about geography books. I'm pretty partial to the method we're using now. Basically, we set aside fifteen minutes or so after lunch, daily, to read 2-4 pages of a geography book. The books mostly introduce different countries, organized by continent. Our favorite series are True Books and National Geographic Countries of the World. We've done Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and now we're almost done with Colombia. Chile and Argentina next, to finish our study of Andes Mountains countries, and then we'll wrap up with Venezuela and Brazil. We'll skip the small countries (the Guyanas, Uruguay, and Paraguay) and didn't spend so long on Bolivia. (I wouldn't recommend doing them in the precise order we've tackled them--we did because we started by using a "spine," and Peru was the first South American country in the "spine." In fact, we have a couple of spines (children's atlases that feature a significant amount of text about the countries), and while we still use these, they have become practically irrelevant once we've reading whole books. We toss off the sections about the area of South American we're studying in a day or two, and basically just use it for reinforcement/review. We have also read a couple books about South America in general. As we read the books, we very frequently look things up, either on maps in the book itself (especially when using the superlative National Geographic books), or on a 16" floor globe we have (for less-detailed things), or a ginormous atlas we have (for more-detailed things). When there is not a picture of a place or thing in the text, we usually look for one on the iPad. Using iPad to search Google Images is one of the best ways to supplement and make things "visual"--we also do this with history study. We also frequently look for videos to illustrate things like music, ethnic groups, and more about what things looks like in general. The iPad also has a couple of good apps, Google Maps, Google Earth, and a couple National Geographic map apps. I've also had him trace simple, line political maps of South America and Colombia using tracing paper. But I'd say 75% of our work is reading the books about countries. I've never seriously considered using a canned geography curriculum. It's simply not detailed enough and frequently involves what seems to be busywork, which I would like to avoid. My argument for using books, and not doing so much map copying, projects, or worksheets, is simple: it's more efficient and I think he'll learn and retain more in the long run. Of course, it's impossible for him to retain all, or even half, of the information he's exposed to--but he's exposed to so much more, and such a richer and richly interconnected variety of information, that he comes to "live in" a continent. Factual information such as a country's capital is becomes second nature, because it's mentioned many times in different contexts: several times in the text, in our study of the globe, atlas, and map apps, pictures, videos, etc. Because of the rich variety of media, our focus on only the best geography books, and our daily (albeit fairly brief) exposure, we have come to enjoy the time learning about different countries. The other day, my son had another 10 minutes of reading to do in his daily hour of reading, so he read six pages of the National Geographic Colombia book--which bothered me, because now I'm not going to be able to read it! We are as it were slowly travelling around South America. Because we've learned so much, things that might seem dull, like the varieties of Indian groups or different geographical areas (e.g., "Los Llanos" grasslands in Colombia and Venezuela, or the Guajira Desert which I hadn't heard about before), become genuinely interesting. It really, really helps--in fact, is absolutely essential--that we look at pictures and videos of things we're unfamiliar with, or things which we think might be impressive to look at. Combining a reasonably detailed text with lots of visuals makes all the difference. I happen to think that study of geography is at least as important as modern language study. If a large part of the reason for studying a modern language is to be able to get around in that country and to understand the culture, how much more important is it to study the country itself, head on? Geography is necessary is you want to travel, to understand international news, and to formulate opinions on foreign policy. It also helps a child to understand the wider variety of current human experience, history, landscapes, etc. It makes a child more worldly and less provincial--and hence capable of understanding many things he might not otherwise be able to understand (or, not so easily) when it comes to subjects that really demand an open yet critical mind, such as philosophy, history, and world literature.

Hi Tracy, he has seemed to get a kick out dictating to me. A couple times it has taken a little coaxing, but when he starts, he likes it pretty well. I agree that it's important, especially at this early age, to keep things as fun as possible. I'll keep researching and thinking about WWE and other writing programs. I'm impressed by how many smart people are using it. Still, I'm pretty happy with what we're doing right now. It seems to be working, and he's made definite progress since we started writing 3+ sentences daily. I just like having the freedom to do whatever we want, without feeling obligated to keep up with a program. Besides, I tend to think that plain old regular writing is the best way to practice writing and grammar, and adding other sorts of activities (such as grammar worksheets) would tend to cut into the all-important time we have for writing. Re not expecting a similarly advanced output from an advanced reader, I appreciate the advice. I hope I'm not doing so. Generally, I make sure that my son isn't resisting, or not too much. If he is pushing back much, I take that as my cue to scale things back some, or simply switch activities. He really likes writing, though. He has frequently asked for "books" to fill in, meaning 2-4 pages of blank printer paper folded over and stapled along the "spine," which he proceeds to fill up with one sentence per page, plus pictures. The results are usually nonsense (not always entirely), but he's gotten better and he practices penmanship, spelling, etc. More recently he's asked to do emails instead (only to family members), so I let him. BTW saw your blog and the post about doing stuff at mealtime. Since I work at home, about half of our homeschooling activities take place at mealtime. Reading at the table is not rude or anti-social in our house!

Thanks for all the comments. This is very useful! I didn't know (remember) that Bauer said to start oral narrations at age 6. (But this is surely a rule of thumb...see below.) I bring out of this that it's normal to begin just a few times a week, when kids are just starting out with oral narration. But later, they can do more, up to a few times per day. I didn't know that (1) both WTM and Charlotte Mason use narration, but (2) WTM suggests more leading questions, while CM is against that. But surely some leading questions and hints is a good idea for a rank beginner, even from CM's point of view? I'm not using WWE or any writing method other than my own. Basically, my son is capable of writing 3-5 (or more) sentences per day, so we're learning different rhetorical modes, narrowly understood. We began by copying historical narratives, then rewriting them by memory (a.k.a. narration). Lately we've been doing dialogue. He's copied about three dialogues, and dictated a couple to me. I haven't had him reproduce one from memory, which I might do. I correct mechanics and occasionally make style suggestions. This and the two Basher books about grammar are our whole exposure to grammar so far--I have no real interest in doing a grammar workbook. I'm of the school that believes that, with a decent writer looking over his shoulder, the student can learn grammar and spelling by very regular writing and correction. I appreciate the suggestion that we stick to narrating things like history and science, and not longer texts like "fun" reading or bedtime reading. Re "I have a low tolerance for bad homeschooling books--there seem to be a lot of them out there"... Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. What I really miss are books that deeply reflect on teaching at home, and talk about general principles instead of specific recommendations and techniques. Frankly, I wish there were more of this sort of reflection in WTM, but WTM is still my favorite homeschooling book. Finally, I thought I'd share something we did this afternoon. For his reading this afternoon, my son read the Flat Stanley book Stanley in Space. I suggested that we do a narration, and at first he didn't like the idea, but then suddenly he got excited about it. I let him have the table of contents of the book. My prompts amounted mostly to "what happened in this chapter?" and "didn't you skip that chapter?" In 2-3 places I suggested either whole sentences or a few extra words that helped make it clearer. He was always enthusiastic about accepting my suggestions. Anyway, this is what he came up with--this is 90% him: That took us about 10-15 minutes to do. Did I prompt him too much? Thanks again!

Hi all, I've been reading and thinking about starting to do oral narration with my 5-year-old. We've done a couple narrations already. He seems to do OK, gets a number of details right though not necessarily in anything like "the right order," and he likes it fine--he really got a kick out of the narration we did this evening, which I typed out--so I think motivation won't be a problem. I've found http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/2009/07/narration.html which was a tremendous help. But I have a few questions remaining: How often should we do narration? I read a lot to my son, and I can't imagine asking him to narrate all of it. He also reads an hour a day to himself, and again there's no way he could narrate all of that. Is there? Surely not without a lot of training in how to summarize a lot of text, right? Anyway, attempting to narrate everything seems like overkill, and would surely kill his motivation. How long should we spend on each narration? The few times we've done it recently, we could have gone on for a few sentences' worth or for several paragraphs, depending on whether I prompt him (see below). What's the optimum? Sometimes it is recommended that you never interrupt the child when he is narrating, or prompt him with questions. Sometimes it is "reasonably" conceded that asking a few questions, and making a few corrections, is OK, as long as it doesn't become a question-and-answer session. What should we really do? Have any actual studies been done of narration as a method? Is there any interesting evidence that it really does improve memory and writing and speaking ability? That seems plausible to me, but I'd prefer to have data, or at least a really good argument. I'm sure there's some Charlotte Mason book I should read in order to get these questions answered...any suggestions? (Bear in mind that I have a low tolerance for bad homeschooling books--there seem to be a lot of them out there.)

My son, who is also 5.5, started reading young. But even though he could read very well, he did not have much of a desire to read by himself. After much speculation about why this might be, I think I finally figured out why: if you're a beginning reader, reading is hard. It requires a lot of concentration. Five-year-old boys are generally not excited about giving things that much attention. I have a few bits of advice. First, let your son pick the books, and give him a lot of choices. Second, let him read aloud or silently--whatever he prefers. (If silent, just ask him questions afterward.) Third, if you haven't done it yet, try "switching off" reading, where you read a line or two and then he does, and so forth. This is a handy half-way activity. "We Both Read" books can be great for this. Fourth, if there is a younger sibling, you might try having the 5-year-old read to him/her. There are lots of other tricks, too!

Agreed!

Have I got it right? http://larrysanger.org/2011/12/manifesto-for-schools/ This expresses the main reason why we're homeschooling. I mention a fascinating study, reported today in the Atlantic: "Everything You Know About Education Is Wrong."

Aha, I see! Poor style, yes, but not an incomplete sentence. I don't actually know whether "unclear referent" applies to the word "more," but I guess so. If so, the question is simply whether having unclear referents makes sentences incomplete. The answer is no, they don't. I'd be surprised to learn that any bona fide grammarian used the phrase "incomplete sentence" differently.

If, by "thoughts," you are referring to mental entities, then arguably, there are no incomplete thoughts. (All thoughts are complete by definition.) The things that are sometimes incomplete are sentences. It is easy to come up with examples of complete sentences which do not completely express a thought, because "complete sentence" is defined in terms of syntax, or so I always thought. So does this English professor: http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/completesentence.htm

It's definitely a complete sentence, as others have explained, and depending on the context, there's nothing wrong with it stylistically, either. "These" refers grammatically to "the first cars that used gasoline." If there was some mention of the fact, earlier in the text, that steam-driven cars (for example) looked strange or unlike modern cars, then "more like the cars we drive today" contextually implies that the first cars that used gasoline looked more like modern cars than those steam-driven (or whatever) cars mentioned earlier. Adding any more clarification as to which cars were non-modern to the sentence in question would actually be a poor stylistic choice if the context made it perfectly clear. It would be stylistically incorrect, however, to use "more" if there weren't such a mention earlier in the text. My opinion on the semicolon question is that if the text were mainly or specifically about the appearance of the cars, a semicolon might be in order. Otherwise, it's probably not necessary. In any case, as with most semicolons, it's a matter of taste. A few people (like me!) probably use too many semicolons, probably because we want to emphasize the logical connections between thoughts; we don't trust readers to get the connections without the help of punctuation!

Read the second edition once, reading/skimming it again--but is the third edition significantly different? Sorry if this question is answered elsewhere...