Clearing Off My Desk

A bunch of random articles I've been meaning to post:

Acceleration
The Coloradan on acceleration: Accelerate Our Brightest Students
"Terman's research reported that: Those gifted who graduated from high school at age 15 were more likely to have a superior career than those who graduated at age 17. There was little difference in IQ. Advanced grade placement was an advantage."

Science
Lots of fun stuff from The Human Genome Project

Yet another evolutionary link between fish and land animals: Tiktaalik
"Tiktaalik lived approximately 375 million years ago. Paleontologists suggest that it was an intermediate form between fish such as Panderichthys, which lived about 385 million years ago, and early tetrapods such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, which lived about 365 million years ago. Its mixture of fish and tetrapod characteristics led its discoverers to characterize Tiktaalik as a "fishapod"."

From Voice of America News: Anthropoligists Discover a "Missing Link" in Human Evolution
"An international team of anthropologists has discovered fossils in eastern Ethiopia that they say may be a missing link between our earliest and more modern ape-man ancestors. Scientists say the discovery fills a major gap in human evolution."

And Wolfie's "Fun with Static Electricity" won his Middle School Science Fair with a score of 193/200. Way to go, Wolfie! :D

Writing
Fibonacci poems from the New York Times: Fibonacci Poems Multiply on the Web After Blog's Invitation
"Blogs
spread
gossip
and rumor
But how about a
Rare, geeky form of poetry?"

Math
Math quotes from Furman University
What About Memorizing Math Facts? from Living Math.net

From the University of Minnesota News (if you're in the Twin Cities on 4/19/06, check this guy out!):
"The math behind the curtain A talk by 'Magic Man' Persi Diaconis reveals the mathematics behind magic tricks-and its more serious applications

Stanford's Persi Diaconis, one of the world's great mathematicians, left home at 14 to live as a traveling magician. His talk on April 19 will reveal the math behind magic.

Photo by L.A. Cicero, from the Stanford Report
By Deane Morrison
April 14, 2006

A career as a mathematician didn't seem to be in the cards for young Persi Diaconis. As a child, he studied violin at Juilliard, but he left home at 14 to begin a life as an itinerant magician. Still in his teens, he landed in a shady Caribbean gambling house, where he tried to find ways to keep himself and other traveling magicians from getting fleeced. For that, he needed mathematics.

The next thing he knew, he was studying math at City College of New York and then, at age 26, heading to Harvard for graduate school in statistics.

On Wednesday, April 19, Diaconis--now recognized as one of the world's great mathematicians--will reveal some of the amazing mathematical underpinnings to magic, using performable tricks that can even fool magicians. His free talk, sponsored by the University's Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), will begin at 7 p.m. in 125 Willey Hall, 225 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis.

But the math behind magic has its serious side, too. Diaconis, a professor at Stanford University, will perform several card tricks and show how the mathematics of such feats applies to situations like breaking and entering, robot vision, cryptography, random number generation, and DNA sequence analysis.

Take, for example, a door that can only be unlocked by punching the correct three-digit code, entered via punch pads numbered one through five.

"When I was at Harvard, one of the rest rooms had a lock like that," says Diaconis. "One Saturday night, I went there and found I'd forgotten the three numbers." There were 125 possible combinations, and he had no way to breeze through them. But, he says, thieves made short work of such a lock at the Baltimore Hilton by using mathematics.

"When you punch in numbers, the machine remembers the last three you entered," Diaconis explains. "So if you punch 1, 2, and 3, and it doesn't open, and then you punch 4, the machine treats it as 2,3, and 4. Then if you punch 5, it registers as 3, 4, and 5, and so on. That means that after you've entered three numbers you can punch just one number for each new try, but in what order? There is a mathematical way to find the sequence to punch that will run through all the possible combinations without repeating."

"He is one of the world's most original thinkers in statistics and mathematics," says Doug Arnold, director of IMA, of Diaconis. "He is also one of the greatest expositors and communicators in those subjects." Diaconis is no stranger to the IMA, having already visited the institute for scientific work. His lecture meshes well with the mission of IMA, which is to bring mathematics to bear on all sorts of real-world problems, from scheduling airlines to beefing up computer security. Last year, the National Science Foundation recognized its contributions with a $19.5 million grant. Nor is Diaconis' lecture the first time the IMA has been associated with a fun topic.

In the realm of magic, no problem is too hard for Diaconis to tackle. He is well known for finding that it takes seven shuffles to randomize a deck of cards and that if a deck is shuffled eight times in just the right way, the cards will return to their original order. And coin tossing, that paragon of fairness, turns out not to be entirely random. After observing numerous half-dollar flips, Diaconis found that it landed on the same side as it started about 51 percent of the time. But if you balance a penny or nickel on edge and spin it, it will land tails up almost 80 percent of the time. Diaconis is also a prominent debunker of tricks by psychics and scam artists.

Among his colleagues, Diaconis is known for his willingness to talk about some of the difficulties of mathematics. One example is his effort to find out whether shaved dice, thrown over and over by a team of graduate students, would land in a nonrandom manner. Using specially manufactured shaved dice and a specially constructed craps table, he uncovered a mathematical truth: that finding a bias in the way the dice landed would require so many throws that human counting error would mask any bias."

Homeschoolers in the Ivy League

There are few, but they're there. Check out this article from the Daily Princetonian: Homegrown Scholars; and from the Harvard Crimson: Homeschoolers a Small but Growing Minority.

The Best Years of Your Life?

Common wisdom holds that high school is the best four years of your life. Whose stupid idea was this? Even twenty years ago when you didn't have to walk through a metal detector to get to class, there was still bullying, ostracism and way too much mindless homework. I have even read a theory that teenagers are more likely than any other age group to commit suicide because "if this cr*p is the best year of my life, what do I have to live for?"

The bigger question is whether high school should be the best years of your life. Even if you're the captain of the football team, dating the head cheerleader and the whole student body loves you, do you want your life to peak at age 18? Keep in mind that peaking early implies the next seventy years will be all downhill. Is that a good thing?

I bring this up not only because I think the "best years of your life" mantra is a lie we use to try to keep kids in school, but also because it is frequently the first objection you encounter when trying to provide appropriate acceleration for a gifted child or when deciding to homeschool. "What about prom?" "You don't want to put a twelve-year-old in class with high schoolers--they'll eat her alive." (This is the other HS stereotype--the House of Horrors--not at all compatible with the Best Years of Your Life scenario!) "If he goes to college early, he'll miss the best years of his life!"

Bollocks. I'm devoted to my high school, still keep in touch with a couple friends from those years, the music department and honors classes were first rate, but they were not the best years of my life. I hadn't yet met my husband, had no children, no sense of who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. (Still haven't completely figured out the last one!) And I definitely do not want my boys to think of high school as their golden years. There is too much to do, see and be to have done it all by the age of 18. Keep growing and evolving. Make next year your best year.

Bill Gates on Oprah

Here are links to the two segments Oprah aired on April 11-12 concerning the crisis in American schools:

What Bill and Melinda Gates Want You To Know

Oprah's Special Report: America's Schools in Crisis

The Gates Foundation knows that smaller schools work, but I don't think they know why. They behave as though the competition of the free market improves the schools. I think it's the long term relationships that can develop between teachers and students in a smaller school that makes it better. The teachers understand the students--how they think, what is important to and relevant for them--and the students respond because they're treated like capable, worthy individuals. The free market does the complete opposite--focuses on the ends, rather than the means.

Education should focus on the means of learning: how do you figure change at a store? How do you analyze a political speech? How does the world work? Where can you find the answer to a question?

To be fair, current educational policy does a lot of talking about becoming life-long learners. Our school district even goes so far as to grade the kids on how well they fit the "characteristics of life-long learners," which misses the point completely. Grades (both letter grades and grouping kids by birth year) and efficient methods of instruction (lectures to 40 students at a time, drill and kill worksheets, bell schedules, etc.) suck the joy of learning out of kids before they hit third grade. A paradigm shift is in order--this much we're agreed on. Unfortunately the corporate leaders of educational reform just don't get it.

News flash: Bill Gates on Oprah this afternoon!

For anyone who might be interested, Bill Gates is supposed to be on Oprah today and tomorrow discussing what's wrong with the public schools. I already have it Tivoed and will report back tomorrow if he says anything of interest.

Here's an article from the Seattle Times about how the Gates Foundation is trying to reform schools.

Announcing the Stanford University Online High School

Press Release: The EPGY Online High School at Stanford University

Stanford, California, April 2006 – "Through a generous gift from the Malone Family Foundation of Englewood, Colorado, Stanford University’s Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) announces the creation of the EPGY Online High School at Stanford University. The EPGY Online High School (EPGY-OHS) will be a three-year, fully-accredited, diploma-granting, online, independent high school. Formally a part of Stanford University’s Education Program for Gifted Youth, and building on EPGY’s fifteen-year history of providing online courses to gifted students, the EPGY-OHS will provide gifted students with a course of study designed expressly for them in an educational environment ideally suited to helping such students realize their potential and develop their abilities. Through the EPGY-OHS, students everywhere will have the opportunity to receive an education comparable to that offered by the best schools in the world. ..."

Read more by clicking the link above. Click here to get on their mailing list.

This is very exciting for gifted students as well as for homeschoolers looking for academically rigorous online coursework. EPGY is the standard for online accelerated classes. EPGY-OHS also offers up to 8 weeks of residential programs at Stanford in the summer for its students. More info coming soon!

More Thoughts about Gatto's College Advice

With due respect to Gatto, I don't believe that dropping out of college is really the only or even the best way to change the world. From Cradles of Eminence, a book that examines the childhoods of between 400-700 famous men and women:

"The authors found that these 400 eminent people did have many childhood experiences in common. They grew up in homes where excitement and love of learning were present, though they often disliked formal schooling and some were schooled at home. The homes they grew up in were full of books and stimulating conversation and strong opinions, so that as children, they learned to think and express themselves clearly. They had at least one strong parent, usually the mother, who believed in them." (Introduction)

It has been suggested that to achieve greatness, a person first has to overcome adversity:

"Three-fourths of the children were troubled--by poverty; by a broken home; by rejecting, overpossessive, estranged, or dominating parents; by financial ups and downs, by physical handicaps; or by parental dissatisfaction over the children's school failures or vocational choices." (p. 282)

On the other hand:

"The homes of the Four Hundred were exceptionally free of mental illnesses requiring hospitalization."

To be fair, only Faulkner, Bill Gates, Ray Kroc and Ted Turner are mentioned in both this book and Gatto's article. I'm sure there are just as many successful entrepreneurs who did go to B-school, Donald Trump for one.

The authors do devote two introductions and an entire chapter to how crummy school was for these people. Those who weren't homeschooled were after-schooled (house full of books, family love of learning) and flourished primarily under mentors and tutors. It also mentions that "One-half of the parents were opinionated about a controversial subject, which set them apart in their own time but is accepted with little or no animosity today." Sounds like homeschoolers to me!

Chemistry Card Game: Fun for the Whole Family

Chemistry Trumps Top Card Game plays like War, except you compare atomic weights, dangerousness, usefulness, melting point, year discovered of particular elements. Our cards came today and we played for two straight hours! Easy enough for younger kids, they work like flash cards. The only drawback is that there are only 32 cards.

While you're there, check out the other webelements products. The "Periodic Noir" t shirt features the periodic table--the radioactive elements glow in the dark! Youth size large to adult XL

(I get no kickback for recommending these products. We're just having such a good time with them, I thought I'd pass them on.)

It's Charter Schools Day!

Full disclosure: Klaus is attending a public virtual charter high school next year. Wolfie and Xavier are considering public virtual charter middle school. While I think Wolfie would be better served by fully homeschooling and cobbling together our own system of virtual, community college and middle school classes, he definitely does not want me as a teacher. I can't imagine why not. I think he's afraid I'm going to turn into Galadriel when Frodo offers her The One Ring: "In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night!... Look on me and despair!" LOL

Found another virtual school in Wisconsin in the Kiel Area District: http://www.kiel.k12.wi.us/kieleschool.htm
Unfortunately Open Enrollment is over for next year. They also offer information for people wanting to start their own charter school.

Some other links about charter schools generally:

Charter Schools about Social Justice, says Fuller -- http://www.wicharterschools.org/news.main.cfm?id=87

What is Chartering and Where Did It Come From? -- http://www.wicharterschools.org/news.main.cfm?id=89

Teachers' Unions vs Public Charter Schools

Virtual Schools, Real Innovation
By ANDREW J. ROTHERHAM

New York Times, April 7, 2006


A WISCONSIN court rejected a high-profile lawsuit by the state's largest teachers' union last month seeking to close a public charter school that offers all its courses online on the ground that it violated state law by depending on parents rather than on certified teachers to educate children. The case is part of a national trend that goes well beyond virtual schooling: teachers' unions are turning to the courts to fight virtually any deviation from uniformity in public schools.

Unfortunately, this stance not only hinders efforts to provide more customized schooling for needy students, it is also relegating teachers to the sidelines of the national debate about expanding choice in public education.

Virtual charter schools grab headlines, but they are actually relatively minor players. The Center for Education Reform reports that there are 147 online-only charter schools in 18 states, with 65,354 students. In other words, virtual schools make up just 4 percent of the entire public charter school sector. And a third of them can be found in just one state, Ohio.

Still, they are valuable for many students. For example, a student in a rural community with few schooling options who finds the curriculum in her school too limiting might be better served through an online program that allows her to learn at her own pace. So, too, might a ninth grader who finds unbearable the jock-and-popularity culture that still largely prevails in our high schools. And some parents may want to be more involved in their child's education than is possible in traditional public schools but don't have the time or resources to do fully independent home schooling.

To be sure, virtual charter schools raise some accountability problems. The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, Ohio's largest virtual school, and two online charter schools in Florida ran into trouble recently for such practices as enrolling ineligible students. The schools clearly need better state regulation and oversight.

What they don't need is reflexive opposition from the teachers' unions. And virtual charter schools are just part of a larger debate about public education. There is a universal American desire for customization and variety in goods and services, and education must respond to that demand, whether the unions like it or not.

The two main issues, of course, are giving vouchers to students who switch to private schools and offering more choices through public schools in an effort to improve quality. While there are legitimate reasons to be skeptical of school vouchers as a remedy for our educational problems, it makes no sense for teachers' unions to continually fight against the idea of more choices for parents even within public education.

Public charter schools, in particular, are a worthy effort to provide non-standard students with non-standardized options. On average, charter schools are smaller than traditional public schools and often have longer school days and more intense curriculums; they also experiment with using instructors without traditional teacher training or having the teachers collectively manage the school themselves without a principal. This sort of variation should be welcomed, not tamped down.

America's teachers are ill served by the unions when policymakers and politicians are increasingly forced to work around them rather than with them; and the important contributions teachers' unions can make are lost. In an era of strained budgets and competing priorities, it is politically foolish for the unions to alienate parents and essentially encourage families to leave public schools. [emphasis mine]

This debate, like the ones over many other education issues, is fundamentally about who gets to have power. Yet the power the teachers' unions now wield will be fleeting if public schools do not become more responsive to parents.

An industry cannot survive by rushing to court every time a new idea threatens even a small slice of its market share. Instead, maintaining, and even broadening, support for public schools means embracing more diversity in how we provide public education and who provides it.

Andrew J. Rotherham is the co-director of Education Sector, a nonpartisan education policy group, and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Some Advice about College by John Taylor Gatto

The Richest Man in the World Has Some Advice for Us about College . . .
(P.S. He didn't take it himself)
by John Taylor Gatto

1. William Faulkner

On April 12, 2005, the August "New York Review of Books" pronounced William Faulkner "the most influential innovator in the annals of American fiction," a man well-deserving of his Nobel Prize.

Faulkner, a high school dropout, was later able to enter the University of Mississippi on a special waiver for ex-WWI servicemen. After a single year there he dropped out with a 'D' in English. Between that time and his Nobel Prize he never returned to college.

2. Bill Gates and China

On February 28 of this year, Bill Gates of Microsoft, told a gathering of the 50 American state governors that the United States has reached a competitive crisis which we were losing. This could best be combated by making college prep the sole function of secondary schooling, college prep for everyone, and college, too.

Those who couldn't afford it should be subsidized by the states. In Erving Goffman's chilling locution, college was to become a "Total Institution," controlling all work in the economy.

Gates' speech was headlined in the European press, where I read about it the following day at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, which I was leaving for Guangzhou, China. When I landed there, it was big news in China, too, if the English language "China Daily" can be believed.

It was the first thing my Chinese hosts wanted to talk about -- this radically utopian idea of college for all.

3. But ... Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I asked my hosts to consider this: If Gates' proposal was such a great idea, then how was it that Gates, like Faulkner, dropped out of college his freshman year? And why didn't he ever go back? And how was it that from among millions of college-trained techies, Gates decided to hook up with another dropout, Paul Allen, to found Microsoft?

That could have been a million-to-one coincidence, of course, except for the fact that Steve Jobs, the brains behind Apple, dropped out of Reed College after one semester. And never went back to college, not for a single day! Was it only an accident that Jobs chose to partner with another dropout, Steve Wozniak, in the founding of Apple?

Michael Dell of Dell Computer didn't bother with college either. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, said he didn't have the time to waste on college. Is the penny beginning to drop? These multi-billionaires, who've changed the face of the global society in technology, were all dropouts. What do you make of that?

Ted Turner, founder of CNN was pitched out of college on his ear, flunked out just like Al Gore did at Vanderbilt. Ray Kroc of McDonald's told his mother at age 15 that he didn't have time to waste on high school, dropping out at almost the same age that the female auto-racing phenomenon, Danica Patrick did. Danica dropped out at 16, went to London on her own (just like Benjamin Franklin did two and a half centuries ago) and signed herself into a course on how to sustain speeds above 200 mph on a racetrack!

A few years later she almost won the Indy 500 and would have except for an error by her pit crew.

4. A Mass of Clerks

In his monumental history of civilizations, Arnold Toynbee said that institutionally forced schooling was always about creating a mass of clerks for the prevailing bureaucracy. Not educated people who can think for themselves, but clerks - parts of a social machine. In your heart, you knew that, with or without Toynbee, didn't you?

Over in Guangzhou, I witnessed the largest society on earth undergoing phenomenal, dynamic changes that were intended to make China over in the model of Western industrialization, which steam-rollered the global economy between 1800 and 1960.

China has mastered the techniques of the West and has gone far beyond them. It employs the ruthless logic of financial capitalism with a discipline it would be impossible to achieve in the soft-hearted management systems of the United States and Canada.

They don't make things better than we do, but they do make them just as good and cheaper, by a factor of from six to thirty. It is fanciful to say, as Mr. Gates did, that if we just have more schooling, we'll be okay. In the next 10 years, China and India, et al., will release ten million well-trained engineers in excess of domestic needs on the world's skilled labor markets.

These men and women will bid for work against your own techie sons and daughters.

At sixteen cents or so on the dollar, the effect on wages will be a catastrophe for this important segment of middle-class life. Mr. Gates didn't bother to tell his audience that Microsoft has already opened large colleges in China and India to train young people in those nations to its own specifications.

That puts a new spin on his appeal for universal college training doesn't it? Perhaps you believe the corporate policy of Microsoft will prefer to continue to pay high wages when a stream of its own foreign graduates becomes available.

Unless you do believe that, it becomes a duty for all of us to wake up and warn our children because one thing is certain: Schools won't.

5. The Answer Is Jazz, Not Schooling

Saturation schooling, kindergarten through college, was a leadership response to the demands of a centralized corporate economy that replaced American/Canadian entrepreneurialism between 1880 and 1920.

What corporatism required was two things: A laboring mass - including a professional laboring mass of doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects and schoolteachers - who did what they were told without question, and a citizenry in name only, one which defined itself by non-stop consumption, one which believed that choosing between options offered by management was what democracy was all about.

Lockstep schooling, driven by standardized testing, testing not to measure learning but obedience, was the mechanism used to drive out imagination and courage. It worked and still works superbly, but, like the little mill that ground salt when salt wasn't needed, this brilliant utopian construction is about to kill us.

North American economies dazzled the world for centuries because they encouraged resourcefulness, individuality and risk-taking to dominate the marketplace, and these qualities were encouraged in everyone, not just in the elites.

Three North American commercial juggernauts are currently blowing away competition all over China: computer hardware and programming, fast food franchising and commercial entertainment (singing, dancing, story-telling, games and all the rest).

Each of these businesses is almost exclusively the work of dropouts, from college, high school and elementary school. They are erected from imagination. Our fast food franchises don't really sell "food" at all, but two intense tastes - salty and sweet - surrounded by clean, well-lighted places and spotless toilets and primary colors. They sell a return to early childhood and its simplicities.

Our computer world is built upon imagination inscribed on silicon chips on grains of sand. It's magical. And our entertainment industry, which dominates China and every place else? Assembled from the raw material of people pretending to be who they aren't and singing their hearts out about emotions some writer made up.

We need to realize what all this means. We need to follow the path opened by our unparalleled jazz domination of the planet.

Over in China, at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (the oldest continuous music school on earth) they have a hard time believing that jazz can even exist, that with imagination and courage you can hear a piece of music once and ring dazzling changes on it forever.

Jazz writ large has always been the key to North American genius. As David Richardo, the great philosopher of capitalism often said: The road to wealth comes from understanding what it is that you do best, then doing it. It's time we abandoned the cowardly path of imitating what China and India will do best in the future, realizing that our own security can only be preserved by encouraging imagination.

6. Stiffening the Backbone

Not long ago, I got a letter from Ed Hamilton, the largest mail-order independent book dealer in America, in which he disclosed that he had taken three college courses long ago before he realized that the time and expense was largely a waste and struck out for himself on the course that made him a multi-millionaire and, for what it's worth, one of the most influential purveyors of self-education in the country.

Hamilton admitted to delight in the fact that most of his potential competitors did so waste their time, thus leaving the field much less difficult for him to negotiate.

Chris Paolini, a real-life homeschooled kid from the remote Absaroka Mountains of Montana wrote a fantasy novel at 15, "Eragon," self-published the book with his parents and drove from school to school, library to library, with mom and dad who quit their jobs to help him so, so much did they believe in his book!

So far "Eragon" has sold 2.5 million copies - earning enough so mom and dad and Chris won't ever have to work for strangers again - and Knopf is bringing out a sequel called "Eragon, The Eldest" with a first printing of 1.3 million copies. "Eragon" is scheduled for Hollywood release in 2006 starring Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich.

Chris is 21 as I write and, like Danica Patrick, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, has no plans to go to college.

Or, how about the boy who flunked out of second grade, the kid labeled with dyslexia and ADHD who was fired from his job at a gas station for writing illegible receipts? In 1970, that dropout, Paul Orfalea, founded Kinko's.

And how about the dropout Richard Branson, who at the age of seven, was treated to this lesson in self-reliance by his mother: Miles from his London home on a drive with mom, she pulled over and asked little Richard, "Do you think you could find your way home from here?" He said he thought so, whereupon, she opened the car door on his side and said, "Well, get out and do so."

Whatever education is, one thing is certain: It doesn't take place locked in seats following the commands of total strangers, your obedience measured regularly by short answer tests. And it's education we need to meet the future, not schooling.

7. Let the Past Go

Mass college attendance once served America and Canada very well, but that time is gone and good riddance. It dampened down the inventive, entrepreneurial spirit in the interests of habit-training and attitude-adjustment.

We have the most efficient management in the world at a very high price: Mutilating the public imagination, vesting it in a handful of corporations. School was the factory producing incomplete human beings who were easy to manage. It worked for a century to produce national riches and a citizenry increasingly poor in spirit.

Gates is correct: North America faces an emergency. Vested interests will have to be set aside for the common good. The biggest obstacle blocking progress is the shape of our forced institutional schooling and its weapons of mass destruction.

As Pope Paul once said to the Poles: "Young people, don't be afraid. The future depends on you."

Let me add, parents, don't be afraid, either. Take your lead from Herman Melville's immortal Bartleby, the Scrivener, and say to Mr. Gates and his ilk: "I would prefer not to."

Copyright © 2006 by John Taylor Gatto, www.johntaylorgatto.com, All Rights Reserved

Some Thoughts on Vouchers and School Choice

There's an article in today's NYT about the voucher program in Washington, D.C. and many of the minority students the program is benefitting.

"Last year, parents appeared lukewarm toward the program, which was put in place by Congressional Republicans as a five-year pilot program, But this year, it is attracting more participation, illustrating how school-choice programs are winning over minority parents, traditionally a Democratic constituency.

Washington's African-American mayor, Anthony A. Williams, joined Republicans in supporting the program, prompted in part by a concession from Congress that pumped more money into public and charter schools. In doing so, Mr. Williams ignored the ire of fellow Democrats, labor unions and advocates of public schools.

"As mayor, if I can't get the city together, people move out," said Mr. Williams, who attended Catholic schools as a child. "If I can't get the schools together, why should there be a barrier programmatically to people exercising their choice and moving their children out?"

School-choice programs have fervent opponents, and here, public school officials worry that the voucher program will diminish the importance of the neighborhood school, though the program serves only a relative few of the district's 58,000 students. National critics of school choice like Reg Weaver, president of the country's largest teachers' union, the National Education Association, accused voucher supporters of "exploiting the frustration of these minority parents to push for a political agenda" intended to undermine public schools."

Common rhetoric from the opponents of school choice/vouchers goes like this (I've put my response in italics to be clear.): "If vouchers and "school choice" are allowed in the USA, it will spell the end of public education. The rich and the privileged will be placed into the "good" schools, parents will have MORE pressure to make more money finacially, (assuming the vouchers will not cover the complete tuition to the most expensive schools) the best teachers will be funneled into the few schools which pay the most, and the poor and those who need more help learning will be left in poor schools with virtually NO money for what they need. Vouchers are reactionary and elitist and will not be a benefit to anyone whose family makes less than middle 6 figure income, AND will be the end of any decent public education."

But we already have school choice, in the form of open enrollment, and none of these dire predictions has come to pass. My state's virtual schools are free, include computer and modem and a stipend to pay for internet access, and offer, at the high school level, a plethora of AP classes so students can accumulate college credit for free. They are open to anyone who signs up in February. This seems neither reactionary *nor* elitist, nor does it only benefit kids whose parents make more than a middle 6 figure income. The New York Times article shows that it is the poor and minority families who are taking the most advantage of the voucher program in D.C. and benefitting the most from it.

"Poor and poorly performing students, as well as minorities will be corraled into virtual day care center, with little or no money for materials, books and repairs to buildings, no good teachers and graduate with little or no usable education."

I'd suggest that this is already the case in public schools all across the country. This is exactly why we need school choice, so poor, poorly performing and minority kids, as well as middle class, high performing and non-minority kids, can choose to go to a school that actually teaches them something worthwhile. Right now, most have no choice.

America was founded on the freedom to choose: which religion (if any) to believe in, which political party (if any) to join, where to live, where to work. So why should I not be able to choose what school my children attend (if any)? Why shouldn't everyone have that choice?

Do Kids Need "Friends Their Own Age?"

There is a long-standing myth in the gifted education community that gifted children should not be accelerated so they can "make friends their own age." Even educators who have had a considerable amount of experience with gifted children who have been accelerated successfully still believe children will only find playmates among those of their own chronological age.

I beg to differ. It's very common for gifted kids to play with older *and* younger friends, as well as friends of the opposite gender, even when the other kids would never dare. I've seen it in my children as well as myself. I've never had more than one or two friends who are the same chronological age as me. Still don't.

Friendships are based on mutual interests (social) and understanding (emotional), which have little to do with birth year. One of the signs of giftedness is a dry or adult sense of humor. Can you make deep and lasting friendships with kids who don't get your jokes? Or, worse yet, who only think bathroom humor is funny?

We've been grouping children into grades according to birth year for so long, the practice is no longer questioned, even though it makes about as much sense as grouping them into grades according to astrological sign. At least all the kids born under the same sign should have the same personality, right?

New NASA Kids Club

NASA has created a new online 'Kids'Club' serving up games, activities and plenty of action for future explorers. NASA will rollout the Web site Thursday, April 6, from 8 to 9 a.m. PDT in the Redondo Room, Hilton Anaheim Hotel, 777 Convention Way, Anaheim, Calif. The event is part of the National Science Teachers Association national conference, and it is open to the media.

The new site will feature animated, colorful, entertaining and educational activities for children in kindergarten through fourth grade. Interactive games include exploring and learning about space, building and launching rockets, exploring Mars, keeping airplanes on schedule and helping a comet travel through the solar system.

The Kids' Club site serves a dual purpose. Children can play the games at home for their pure entertainment value. Educators can use the activities as a fun way to reach students in the classroom, the library, during after school programs or anywhere children and computers are together.

NASA's education programs motivate and engage students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The programs support activities in the nation's schools and distribute information through instructional and outreach products. For information about other NASA education programs on the Web, visit:

www.education.nasa.gov


For information about NASA and agency programs onthe Web, visit:

www.nasa.gov/home

NCLB and the Gifted

From today's NYT: "No Child Left Behind? Ask the Gifted"

Mostly a fluff piece about an immigration field trip by a group of NJ fifth-graders, it mentions how NCLB has forced districts to refocus their budgets on the low end of the educational spectrum, leaving kids on the other end to fend for themselves.

"A new study by the Center on Education Policy found that the federal law put so much emphasis on reading and math, there has been a reduction in teaching history, science and the arts. And that appears to have affected field trips.

Peter O'Connell, who runs the educational program at the national park in Lowell, Mass., just completed a survey of school visits to 10 history museums in New England, including Old Sturbridge Village and Plimoth Plantation. He found a 20 percent decline in student visits in the last few years. "Schools aren't devoting as much time to history, especially urban districts," Dr. O'Connell said."

Tool-Using Orangs: Implications for the Gifted Child?

From the April 2006 Scientific American:

Scientific American: Why Are Some Animals So Smart? [ INTELLIGENCE AND EVOLUTION ]
The unusual behavior of orangutans in a Sumatran swamp suggests a surprising answer


In this article, author Carel Van Shaik, director of the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, proposes a new, culture-based theory on the development of intelligence. His observation of wild, tool-using orangutans in Sumatra suggests that "even though infants learn virtually all their skills from their mothers, a population will be able to perpetuate particular innovations only if tolerant role models other than the mother are around; if mom is not particularly skillful, knowledgeable experts will be close at hand, and a youngster will still be able to learn the fancy techniques that apparently do not come automatically." Sounds like school, huh? Also apprenticeships, mentor relationships, etc.

Van Shaik goes on to apply his theory to the so-called "enculturated apes," those great ape infants raised as human children, who display the ability to imitate and understand complex behaviors like language, art and practical jokes. He asserts these cases reveal "the astonishing potential that lies dormant in great apes", suggesting "an ape growing up like a human can be bootstrapped to cognitive peaks higher than any of its wild counterparts."

The theory also seems to resolve the question of why apes in captivity readily use and make tools where wild animals of the same species do not. "The conundrum is resolved if we realize that thwo individuals of the same species can differ dramatically in their intellectual performance, depending on the social environment in which they grew up."

This sounds suspiciously like "all children are gifted, some are just more fortunate than others." If Van Shaik's theory becomes the accepted model of the development of intelligence (as could be likely since I found this in a mainstream, rather than a scholarly, journal), it might have serious repercussions in the way intelligence in human children is viewed and researched. Gifted children generally have gifted parents, who create an intellectually rich environment for their kids, but is nurture the only explanation for differences in measured intelligence?

I say no, for a number of reasons, but the basic one is this: some children learn things quicker than other. A gifted child may need 1-3 repetitions of a concept to master it. A high achieving non-gifted child needs 6-8 repetitions for mastery.* An average child needs even more repetitions.

No matter how rich the environment is, different children are going to need different amounts of time to experience all it has to offer. Teach each of the three learners above the same completely-new concept and the gifted child is bored already by the time the high-achiever "gets it." To my mind, that is the fundamental difference and the fundamental reason why gifted children are different and why they do need accomodations in the classroom.

*From Understanding Our Gifted, Spring 2003

Dihydrogen Monoxide and You

It kills thousands each year.
Inhaling it can kill you.
It improves athletic performance.
It is found in every lake, river and ocean.
It's a major component of acid rain.
It corrodes metal.

You owe it to yourself to find out more...
DHMO.org
The Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division









P.S. APRIL FOOL!

Online Classes: Coming to a School Near You?

From the March 30, 2006 edition of the Christian Science Monitor Online

Online courses aren't just for home-schoolers anymore:
Small schools use them to broaden class offerings; Michigan aims to mandate them.

By Kate Moser | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

If high school student Kelsey Speaks had taken all of her classes at her bricks-and-mortar school, she wouldn't now be three years into her Latin studies. Since junior high, Kelsey has enrolled in eight courses in a virtual classroom through Colorado Online Learning, a state-funded program. The junior at tiny La Veta High School in southern Colorado says taking courses online is a great choice. "It's allowed me to do things I wouldn't otherwise have been able to do," she says.

In addition to letting her take courses (for free) that her school doesn't offer, online learning has made her schedule flexible enough that she can captain the debate team, edit the yearbook, and do volunteer work as well. She also gets to study independently, which she enjoys.

Once considered the domain of home-schooled students, K-12 online learning is a fast-growing option for public school students in rural, urban, and suburban areas. Michigan lawmakers are likely to pass legislation soon that will require high school students to take one course online before they graduate."

For the most part, I'm all in favor of virtual school. Klaus has thrived in such a program and I'm keeping options open for Wolfie and Xavier to do virtual middle school next year if they so choose. But I have to disagree with this part:

"The current national emphasis on math and science in schools might also create a new relevance for online learning, says Tim Snyder, director of Colorado Online Learning. Virtual teachers could help ease the nationwide shortage of math and science teachers, he says."

In our experience, math and science classes are better taught in person, rather than online.

Does Fidgeting in the Classroom Fight Obesity?

Apparently not (big surprise) but the most important (and relatively overlooked) result to come from this pilot study in Rochester, Minnesota is an academic one. "...Rynearson and Superintendent Jerry Williams say the fourth- and fifth-graders are more focused on the curriculum than their peers in a comparison group in an ordinary classroom. And there are fewer distractions than in the traditional setup — where a lot of time is spent trying to get children to sit still." (emphasis mine)

Wouldn't it be delightful for kids to be able to get up and walk around to clear their heads, just like adults do? And what a boon for kinesthetic thinkers! Hopefully more schools will try this.

Right Brain vs. Left Brain

Is there such thing as "Left brain thinkers" and "right brain thinkers"? Some say no...

'Right Brain' or 'Left Brain' -Myth Or Reality? 03 July 1999
By John McCrone
The New Scientist* Magazine issue 2193C New Scientist, RBI Limited 2000

The popular myth about the hemispheres grew largely from "split-brain" research in the 1960s, such as that which later won Roger Sperry of Caltech a Nobel prize..... But, says Joseph Hellige, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, this picture changed dramatically as soon as brain-scanning experiments began to show that both sides of the brain played an active role in such processes. Rather, it seemed to be processing styles that distinguished the two halves."

THE BRAIN'S HALVES COOPERATE TO HELP US REMEMBER EVENTS, GIVING "LEFTY FAMILY" MEMBERS BETTER EPISODIC MEMORY
"The researchers stress that memory performance has nothing to do with so-called "brain dominance." "While the notion of people being right-brained or left-brained is common in the popular press," says Christman, "it has received very little support in the scientific literature. Both hemispheres of all people are going to be involved in virtually all tasks."

The Secret Power of the Brain in Second Language Learning

"Right/left brain theory, which separated the mental functions to either of the hemispheres became the popular trend in the 1970s. Since then, the rapidly growing body of brain research has supported the fact that most brain functions overlap." The original work of right and left brain researchers has been updated by new research. We now know that we usually use both sides of the brain in nearly every activity. It is just a matter of degree, but some individuals have a distinct preference for one of these styles of thinking. Some, however, are more whole-brained and equally adept at both modes of thinking. Therefore we should avoid generalizations about right and left brain activities. All learning involves our body, our emotions, our attitudes and our health. Brain-based learning says that we, as teachers, must address these variables more comprehensively."

In Search of . . . Brain-Based Education By John T. Bruer

The fundamental problem with the right-brain versus left-brain claims that one finds in the education literature is that they rely on our intuitions and folk theories about the brain, rather than on what brain science is actually able to tell us. Our folk theories are too crude and imprecise to have any scientific, predictive, or instructional value. What modern brain science is telling us -- and what brain-based educators fail to appreciate-- is that it makes no scientific sense to map gross, unanalyzed behaviors and skills -- reading, arithmetic, spatial reasoning -- onto one brain hemisphere or another.

AP Classes: All they're cracked up to be?

Apparently not. According to Prufrock's Gifted Education Blog, while AP classes may be a boost to the high school GPA, it is only the tests that are a good indicator of how you will do in college. How can this be? Well, apparently schools are adding "AP" to just about all of their college prep classes, whether there is an AP test for that subject or not. (AP Ceramics, anyone?) And not all classes are doing a good job of preparing their students for the AP tests. This has led to the College Board deciding to audit and certify AP classes starting in 2007.

On another list, I heard some schools are offering "Pre-AP" classes as well as AP classes. There are also cramming classes like they offer for the SAT and ACT, etc. Methinks you'd be better off just getting one of the many AP guides on the market and studying by yourself instead of wasting an entire year in a class of questionable merit. Of course, that's quite a bit like homeschooling... LOL

Don't get me wrong. My senior year I took three APs: English, US History and Biology. I loved them (except Biology) and did well on the tests (except Biology, but at least I passed!). Those were the first classes where I really felt I was learning something, the class moved at an appropriate pace and I had to put in some effort in to keep up. Finally! So I think AP classes can be a god-send for a gifted high school student. I can only hope that once the College Board beings auditing these classes, they'll be such a good environment for every AP student.

Reading and Math: Who Could Ask for Anything More?

Oy vey, Maria. An article in yesterday's New York Times reports that schools across the country are "narrowing the curriculum" to nothing but math, reading and gym in order to do well on the NCLB tests.

"The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group that is to be made public on March 28 indicates that the practice, known as narrowing the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities.

The survey, by the Center on Education Policy, found that since the passage of the federal law, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math. The center is an independent group that has made a thorough study of the new act and has published a detailed yearly report on the implementation of the law in dozens of districts.

"Narrowing the curriculum has clearly become a nationwide pattern," said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, which is based in Washington."

Quite honestly, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Sure, intensive practice in math and reading will bring test scores up, since that's the only thing NCLB cares about. But what kind of citizens will we be graduating? They're proficient in reading and math (what does proficient mean anyway? 8th grade level?) but completely ignorant of our country's history, not to mention our place in the world. Do we want them running the country in twenty years? They're expected to get jobs in our heavily tech-savvy economy with no knowledge of science? How will they better themselves when they're only exposure to the fine arts is MTV?

Administrators say they are using these intensive remedial classes "as a motivator", as in "you do better on The Test and you can take some electives." Quite frankly, if it was me, I'd drop out. That's not a carrot, that's a stick. And it's going to create a permanent, barely educated underclass, further devaluing the high school diploma and eventually the bachelor's degree which in many cases already stands in for what we would have considered a high school education twenty years ago.

So what should we do, Princess Mom? If we graduate kids who can't read, won't that lead to the permanent-underclass-worthless-high-school-diploma, too? Yes, it will. What we need to do is stop promoting kids who can't read. Intensive reading and math instruction is what first and second grade is for. We need to stop failing schools and start failing kids. No child goes to third grade unless he or she can read at a third grade level, add and subtract. Period.

Yes, that probably sounds harsh. "What about poor Bobby who comes from a broken home/abusive home/foster care/etc.? Poor Bobby needs someone in his corner." He sure does. He needs a teacher who insists he learns something and who will work with him year after year until he finally masters the material. No social promotion so he "doesn't feel bad about himself." How much self-esteem does an illiterate 8th grader really have? No "get him out of my class" promotions, either. If there's a bad mis-match between student and teacher, putting poor Bobby in a different class is in order, but not a different grade. And if a teacher has a large number of students she doesn't get along with, or a large percentage of her class who needs to repeat a grade, that teacher's job should be in danger.

Our kids deserve better than they're getting. They deserve to learn, to understand the wide world and as much of what is in it as we can teach them in eighteen years. Narrowing their world to save administrative necks is an injustice.

The Multi-Tasking Generation

Interesting cover story from the current Time Magazine decrying the amount of screen time our kids use. Warning: Reading the article while watching a stupid movie on Sci Fi will cause you to take twice as long as usual, just as one of the experts in the article predicts. Guess how I know that?! LOL At least I've never had to IM anyone to come to dinner. So far.

Even this Late in the Game

'Tis spring, when a young mom's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of "What are we going to do about school next year?" During the February Open Enrollment period, we decided to apply for enrollment to IQ Academies for Klaus and the Monroe Virtual Middle School for Wolfie and Xavier. IQ offered, along with guidance counseling, free online classes and loan of a laptop, a partnership with our local brick-and-mortar school so Klaus can take a couple courses with his friends (i.e., gym, shop, Japanese) but work at his own pace on the academic stuff. The local school said all he had to do was come down to register for classes, couldn't have been more accomodating. :D

Monroe Virtual Middle School has been less so. They offer a huge variety of online classes, including classes through the University of Missouri which offers accelerated classes for gifted middle schoolers. Great yes? I've spoken with the principal and one other woman on behalf of the principal about taking these classes (called GOAL-Gifted Online Accelerated Learning). Principal wants me to send test scores for Wolfie and Xavier to prove they can handle these GOAL classes without "getting in over their heads". Even though Wolfie is already accelerated in math and science at the local school. Sigh. Packet of proof pending.

The title of this essay refers to adjustments we're making to Wolfie's sixth grade experience, even this late in the school year. His grades have been uneven at best. It took him a good six months to tell me his 7th grade science class was new material but not moving fast enough and that English was deadly dull. We made arrangements with his science teacher to give him the unit review questions at the beginning of the unit, when he's still interested, rather than waiting until the end. She's been very helpful and even offered to accept homework early so it doesn't get lost.

At conferences last month, I had a number of talks with Wolfie's English and Reading teacher. She was very concerned that he had stopped participating in class and wasn't turning in his work. She suggested he was acting out because his need for freedom wasn't being met. But she needed to know that the class curriculum standards were being met as well and she just couldn't think of any alternatives--could we suggest some?

Haha, little did she know I am now the Queen of Educational Alternatives! :D

At the first meeting, it sounded to me very much like she was trying to manipulate him into hanging his head and saying, "Okay, I'll do what you want." Particularly when I mentioned that in order to demonstrate that he's meeting the standards, we would need to know what the standards were, and she looked at me funny and changed the subject.

She gave him the weekend to see if he could come up with some alternatives. I discussed partial homeschooling with Wolfie and he brought the idea up with her. To her credit, she asked me to drop by conference hours that night so she could show me the standards. She actually gave me her copies, to make copies for my own records, said she couldn't recommend the EPGY class I was suggesting as an alternative because she'd never had a student take one but if I could show how the standards would be met, we'd see what we could do.

So I wrote up a two page proposal that Wolfie skip his first hour of school (English) to work on homework for the EPGY class, listed the curriculum standards the class addressed and Wolfie's significant lack of achievement in reading relative to other subject areas on the ACT. We also asked that Wolfie be excused from homework and classwork for the rest of the year and we would substitute the EPGY work for her to grade.

To my surprise, Wolfie's teacher called me at ten am the morning she got my proposal, said she thought it was a good idea and so did the gifted coordinator, but that she didn't have the authority to excuse him from the curriculum but the counselors/administration did and they had forwarded the proposal to them! Hallelujah!

In the meantime, we've signed Wolfie up for the class, it starts a week from Thursday. I really think this is the best way for him to learn critical reading and writing, since that was Klaus' lowest scoring area on the ACT, too, so obviously things don't get much better in 7th and 8th grade. Is this going to make a huge difference in his grades for this year? Probably not. But if the administration goes along with it, we've set a precedent, and then maybe we can work a similar deal for Wolfie and Xavier next year and maybe eventually partial homeschooling or taking online classes at school will be suggested as an option to other underachieving gifted kids. Wouldn't that be swell?

Unschooling Article from Chicago Tribune

For these kids, school is always out

Method of home schooling allows children to learn by pursuing their
interests rather than set curriculum

By Vincent J. Schodolski, Tribune national correspondent. Tribune staff
reporter Mary Ann Fergus in Chicago contributed to this report
Published March 12, 2006

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. -- Riley Brown is 12 years old and lives a life many of his peers might envy, or perhaps find incomprehensible.

On any given day Riley will probably sleep until he is ready to get out of bed and then spend his time doing whatever interests him. Maybe he'll play his guitar, or go to the park to meet with like-minded friends. Or maybe he will boot up his computer and start "playing around" with HTML codes.

His younger brother, Casey, 10, and his sister, Maggie, 5, do more or less the same thing.

And their mother, Deanne, could not be happier.

"I love unschooling," she said. "It has been the best decision I could have made for me and my family."

The Browns are part of an approach to education that is called "unschooling" and allows children to pursue what interests them, rather than trying to make them interested in things that interest others.

Read the full article here.

The Fall of the Standard-Bearers

Excellent essay by Diane Ravitch at SchoolandCollege.com about the founding of the College Board and the development of the SAT. Particularly interesting in light of the fact that the SAT, formerly the Scholastic Aptitude Test, is now the Scholastic Achievement Test and so nearly comes full circle from the original purpose of the College Board. I say nearly because, as we know, the academic standards are much more subjective now than they were 100 years ago. Do check this out if you have any interest in standards-based education.

What's more important: handwriting or keyboarding?

In a February 28th article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, author Jessica Blanchard quotes "experts" who argue that devoting class time that would ordinarily have been spent on handwriting to computer skills is crippling our children.

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds a lot like a fourth grade teacher trying to justify holding onto the old ways of doing things. I have terrible handwriting. It has never stopped me from being able to decipher my own notes. In fact, it has probably helped me be able to read others' terrible handwriting (I used to work as a medical secretary). All this despite the fact that I never close my a's and I draw my I's backwards (according to my fifth grade teacher).

With computers becoming ever cheaper, is the day we sit down at a keyboard to write an essay test really so far off? [see note] Certain colleges have been requiring that undergraduates bring a computer to campus since I was in high school 25 years ago. Certainly now they're de rigeur, if not required. There are already software programs being used in distance learning classes that support administration of both multiple-choice and essay tests. Blackboard is the program that Klaus's school uses for all his schoolwork. It's not perfect, but it works.

I absolutely agree that if your focus, as you're writing, is on forming the letters, you're not going to be as eloquent as you could be. But the answer to this problem is not more handwriting instruction but less. Grade essays on content, not whether the page looks pretty. If you want to give extra credit points for a neatness, fine, but don't count off for its lack. Handwriting should be thought of as an art form, like calligraphy. Computer skills are not masking the importance of handwriting, because handwriting is not important. The function of writing--communication of ideas--must be more important than the form.

NOTE: 5/2/06 Scottish schoolchildren sit online exams for the first time ever, according to BBC News. You heard it here first, folks! :D

Great homeschooling article on CNN.com

Homeschooling Grows Quickly in United States

"Parents cite many reasons for deciding to opt out of formal education and teach their children at home. In the NCES study, 31 percent said they were concerned about drugs, safety or negative peer pressure in schools; 30 percent wanted to provide religious or moral instruction while 16 percent said they were dissatisfied with academic standards in their local schools."

And surprisingly, no "Gotcha" at the end like the last homeschooling story they ran. Yay for CNN!

Does Television Rot Your Brain? Study Says No

"Does television rot children's brains? A new study by two economists from the University of Chicago taps into a trove of data from the 1960's to argue that when it comes to academic test scores, parents can let children watch TV without fear of future harm." Study Finds Test Scores Not Lowered by Television in today's New York Times.

The gist of the study is this: "The result showed "very little difference and if anything, a slight positive advantage" in test scores for children who grew up watching TV early on, compared to those who did not, said Mr. Shapiro. In nonwhite households and those where English was a second language or the mother had less than a high school education, TV's positive effect was more marked."

This is great news for parents of gifted children, whose kids, on average, watch 5+ hours of tv a day, particularly when they are young. TV is an excellent way to absorb lots of information, particularly for a pre-reader. For toddlers with a voracious little mind, it's a God-send. I'm not saying that babies should be plunked down in front of the tv and ignored for hours on end (most of them wouldn't sit still that long anyway), but for 30 minutes? Sure, why not? When Klaus was a baby (<3 months old) I would put him in the playpen and turn on MTV because that was the only way he'd be quiet long enough for me to get dressed for work in the morning. And he turned out musically gifted--and ADD, but they both run in the family so I'm giving MTV a pass. (In my defense, this was 1990, when Amy Grant could get on heavy rotation and Nirvana was as antisocial as they got.)

So tune in Nick Jr. and sit down for a minute, guilt-free. Kids and television do mix!

When Washington Was a Boy

I intended to get this up yesterday for Washington's birthday, but...

This excerpt is from the essay "President George Washington" in the Leaders and Success Section of Investor's Business Daily, 2/21/06:

"George Washington aimed to grow into greatness. And safeguarding the accuracy of his legacy would help chart his path.

So from the time he was 14 years old, he "deliberately preserved every scrap of paper belonging to him, including diaries, letters sent and received, accounts and other day-to-day transactions," said Paul Johnson, author of "George Washington: Founding Father."

Johnson said that Washington (1732-99) wanted to show "the offices he held were undertaken from duty, and not pride." "

Ah, the irony. I showed this to my boys and they didn't get it, but I can just see young George in his room, sans powdered wig, feeling all self-important and misunderstood. LOL!

An Olympic Poem by Wolfie

Otters want to be
Olympic swimmers
They spend their life
Perfecting the art
But the farthest
They get
Is a show
In the zoo
But people still clap
So the otters don't know

Why Gifted Is a Dirty Word

This link is to an article in the Phi Delta Kappan, April 1998, called "Only for My Kid: How Privileged Parents Undermine School Reform". It's a very long article, but the most pertinent (and most confusing) assertion Kohn makes is that "affluent parents" want to keep their gifted and talented programs, AP and honors classes and want more worksheets, basal readers and drill-and-kill in the classroom. Both of these goals are to keep little "gifted and talented Johnny", excuse me, little "rich and lucky Johnny" receiving ever more exclusive credentials only if it's at the expense of other students.

So yes, the whole article is ludicrous and I'd write a rebuttal if the Phi Delta Kappan hadn't done it for me.

Both these links are from the Madison (WI) Area Talented and Gifted Parents group.

With this kind of rhetoric floating around for eight years now, no wonder people bristle at the G-word.

There IS Such a Thing as a Stupid Question!

Apparently college students have no idea how to approach their professors. Blame it on email? The NYT does. In an article in today's issue, Jonathan D. Glater writes:

"Jennifer Schultens, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, received this e-mail message last September from a student in her calculus course: "Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I'm a freshman, I'm not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!""

Um, hello? Has this child spent way to long with her parents telling her exactly what to do, all the time? And how did she get into UC-Davis without knowing how to buy school supplies?

Glater suggests that the consumer culture might be to blame. "While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor's time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment."

Take this guy for example: ""If the only way I could communicate with my professors was by going to their office or calling them, there would be some sort of ranking or prioritization taking place," said Cory Merrill, 19, a sophomore at Amherst. "Is this question worth going over to the office?"

So thinking before you speak is a bad thing? Maybe it's just me, but if the question is not worth going over to the professor's office, it's not worth bothering him with an email, either.

Granted, 18- and 19-year-olds, on the whole, are idiots. I know I was when I was that age. But at least I knew better than to ask a professor what kind of notebook to buy. Are we really raising a generation of kids so clueless, so self-involved, that they don't realize they have any negative effect on the lives of others? That they're making themselves look like idiots when they email the professor to say they skipped class because they were hung over? (Really!) I skipped plenty of college classes because I couldn't get out of bed, but I never emailed the professor to explain. And if an explanation were required, I'd make up something good! Don't want to lie? Fine, tell the whole truth: "I didn't come to class because what you were teaching was not as important to me as sleep/lunch/Wheel of Fortune reruns/whatever."

While I'm raising my boys to have a healthy lack of respect for the status quo, they'd damn well better keep in mind that everyone they come in contact with deserves as much respect as they'd like for themselves. The Golden Rule still stands, boys and girls. Teachers, fast-food workers, waitresses, the homeless, yes, even professors deserve to be treated with respect, simply because they're human beings. So ask someone who cares. Or better yet, keep your stupid questions to yourself.

Movie Review: Eight Below

Eight Below, the latest offering from Disney, opened here Friday night on the coldest night we've had all winter. Coincidence?

For those who don't know, "Eight Below" is the story of eight sled dogs who work for the National Science Foundation in their Victoria research base in Antarctica. An accident at the end of the season and the worst storm in 25 years forces the human team to evacuate leaving the dogs at the base temporarily. "Temporarily" ends up being more than six months. The action alternates between scenes of the dogs' fate and scenes of their master trying, somewhat half-heartedly in my humble opinion, to raise the necessary money for a rescue mission. This is pitched as a family movie, but may not be for everyone in your particular family (see below).

The dogs' scenes are shot in the same gorgeous documentary style of The March of the Penguins, without the Morgan Freeman voice-over, since dogs are better actors than penguins. It helps to have some familiarity with sled dogs going into the movie. I'm sure audiences in warmer climes thought it cruel to see the dogs sleeping outside on a chain as a matter of course. Yes, their fur is that thick, particularly dogs who have been bred to pull sleds for generations. Pampered pet Huskies are likely not as hardy as these dogs are. I can't find a listing of who played the dogs, but we all agree that Max was played by at least one of the dogs who played Demon in Snow Dogs in 2002.

Overall, I thought the dogs did a better job acting than the people did. Paul Walker, who played musher Jerry Shepherd, did a particularly poor job. Personally, if they'd been my "kids" (as he referred to them), I would have stolen a plane and flown back to base the next day with a pistol held to the pilot's head. Instead, after whining around for grant money for about fifteen minutes, he goes home to Washington State and gives kayak lessons to nine-year-olds. Excuse me? Perhaps if he'd made his case a little more passionately instead of glaring and pouting, the dogs would have been rescued after six weeks instead of six months.

**Warning--Deliberately Vague Spoiler Ahead!!**

Not all the dogs survive. After one death, a toddler in the front of the theatre began to wail and had to be removed. After the movie ended, Xavier burst into tears in the theatre lobby, something he'd never done before, so be aware that sensitive kids, particularly animal lovers, might have a problem with this.

Meet My Teachers: Mom and Dad

Excellent article in this week's Business Week entitled Meet My Teachers: Mom and Dad, A growing number of affluent parents think they can do better than any school.

I'll grant you the subtitle sounds a little snotty, but the tone of the article as a whole is positive. "No longer the bailiwick of religious fundamentalists or neo-hippies looking to go off the cultural grid, homeschooling is a growing trend among the educated elite. More parents believe that even the best-endowed schools are in an Old Economy death grip in which kids are learning passively when they should be learning actively, especially if they want an edge in the global knowledge economy. "A lot of families are looking at what's happening in public or private school and saying, 'You know what? I could do better, and I'd like to be a bigger part of my kid's life,"' says University of Illinois education professor Christopher Lubienski."

The lone voice of criticism in the article isn't even really a criticism for those in the know: "Schooling in isolation could threaten civic cohesion and diversity of thought, says Stanford University education professor Rob Reich." (emphasis mine)

I absolutely agree with him. What we as homeschoolers need to get across is that homeschooling does not occur in isolation. Even the article points this out in the final paragraph: "The biggest misnomer is the word home since the family travels all over, from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington to Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry to the world's most active volcano in Hawaii. Morillo's fear was that homeschooling would make her kids' world smaller. But instead, she says, "it's opening it up more."

Well done, Business Week!

Wolfie's Joke

What do you call a fish with three eyes?

A fiiish!

Invention Contests Worth Checking Out

The Build-A-Better-Mousetrap Contest at Surfaquarium is looking for K-12 classes who want to participate in their program. From their website:

"We welcome K-12 classes from around the world to join us in the Build a Better Mousetrap Project!

Each participating class will develop criteria for evaluating inventions based on their functionality and marketability.
Classes will submit their criteria to create a rubric on the project web site.

Classes can then use the rubric to evaluate inventions presented on the ABC reality program, American Inventor which premiers March 16th.

Each class will then design and create an invention of their own choosing to be showcased here on the project site.
This can be a modification of an existing product (such as the mousetrap) or an entirely new product idea.

Each class submitting a project will be recognized and awarded for its unique contribution as engineers and inventors!"

Registration period for this contest is 2/27-3/31/06. Inventing phase takes place from 4/2-6/3/06. Open to homeschoolers.

The Rube Goldburg Machine Contest for high school students is sponsored by Marquette University. The 2006 Challenge is to design a machine that will "Cut or Shred Into Strips 5 Sheets of 8 1/2" x 11" 20lb Paper Individually With a Shredder in 20 or More Steps!"

Registration deadline for this event is January 27, 2006, so make up your minds this week! Design is due March 1, the working model of the machine goes to the contest in Milwaukee on April 28, 2006. Teams are limited to six people.

And a final note: the rules state "No live animals" in your machine, so leave your hamsters at home!

IQ vs Intelligence

From Darryl Miyaguch's site Uncommonly Difficult I.Q. Tests:

IQ vs. Intelligence

from a letter to me by Grady Towers dated February 24, 1999
Used with permission from the author

Did you know that Homo erectus had an IQ of about 45? This is not just a guess, but the result of an experiment carried out by Thomas Wynn, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado.

Homo erectus produced a category of stone tool that anthropologists call the Acheulean tool industry. Dr. Wynn discovered that it takes a mental age of at least seven years to learn how to reproduce an Acheulean tool. Using the classic formula

IQ = 100 x (Mental Age) / (Chronological Age)

and using 16 for chronological age, we get an IQ estimate of 44. Using 15 for chronological age, we get an IQ estimate of about 47. An IQ of 45 seems to be a good compromise.

I used to be an anthropologist, and lived for several years with an indian tribe, which gives me a perspective on IQ that no one else in the super-high IQ societies is likely to share. So let me take this opportunity to expand your vision of human intelligence.

IQ tests measure something real and something terribly important, but they do not assess all of what is called intelligence. Many important mental abilities are left out. Abilities responsible for art, music, dance, cooking, mechanical invention, clerical exactness, foreign languages, caring for a baby, defeating an enemy in war, and so on, have little connection with IQ. They have little connection because literacy and numeracy have little to do with excellence in these fields.

IQ tests are powerful predictors only in the fields in which literacy and numeracy are of central importance. These are the core abilities responsible for the creation, maintenance and progress of civilization. Without them there could be no literature, law, religion, philosophy. There could also be no mathematics, science, technology, market economy, computer science, etc. No one could have more respect for these qualities than I have, but I don't mistake them for an index of human worth. There are other mental qualities of equal worth not assessed by IQ tests.

Homeschooling Athletes, Olympic-style

Olympic athletes get younger every year ;-) and just where are they getting their education? At home! Check out this list of homeschooled athletes from A to Z Home's Cool. Shaun White, Men's Snowboarding Gold Medalist, and many other Olympic athletes and hopefuls homeschool as a way to free up more time for training, as well as the usual reasons, according to a June article in USA Today. So why don't the papers carefully mention when homeschoolers do well, like they do when homeschooled kids kill someone?

How Does a Homeschooler Change a Lightbulb?

First, mom checks three books on electricity out of the library, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison and do a skit based on his life.

Next, everyone studies the history of lighting methods, wrapping up with dipping their own candles.

Next, everyone takes a trip to the store where they compare types of light bulbs as well as prices and figure out how much change they'll get if they buy two bulbs for $1.99 and pay with a five dollar bill.

On the way home, a discussion develops over the history of money and also Abraham Lincoln, as his picture is on the five dollar bill.

Finally, after building a homemade ladder out of branches dragged from the woods, the light bulb is installed.

And there is light.

LOL Thanks to the TAGMAX list for sharing!

Study in the Shower

A couple months back, I ordered a Top 100 SAT Words shower curtain for the boys' bathroom. I was hoping it would help boost Wolfie's vocabulary a bit before he took the ACT. Unfortunately, the ACT was this morning and the shower curtain arrived this afternoon (it was on backorder). I just put it up, though, and it looks great. The Intuitive Learning Company also offers shower curtains for English Grammar, multiplication tables and SAT math concepts. I have high hopes. I mean, why should the bathroom be the only intellectually unstimulating room in the house? What else is there to do in there besides read the shower curtain? LOL

Middle School: A gifted girl's worst nightmare?

Article from the Palm Springs Desert Sun.

Risk of Complications from ADD Meds

Reuters story from last Wednesday, FDA Reports 51 Deaths of Attention Drugs Patients. The drugs in question are specifically the methylphenidates: Ritain, Adderall, the stimulants. Bottom line: "Conclusions about the relative safety of these two stimulant therapies cannot be made on the basis of this analysis," the FDA staff said." In other words, they cannot confirm or deny a link.

Common sense dictates that if you or your child are taking these meds, be sure to have your blood pressure measured on a regular basis and report to your doctor any dizziness or light-headedness, heart palpitations or sudden weight gain. Of course, the same is true of any other medication.

What Does Testing Prove?

Over the course of its implementation, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has managed to alienate teachers, parents and students with its focus on results of standardized testing. In my boys' elementary school, the teachers have said the actual content of the NCLB test is "laughably easy" and yet the stakes are so high, before the test the school sends out "relaxation exercises" for parents to practice with children to help raise their scores. My boys freaked out, of course, assuming that, since they'd never had school mandated "relaxation" before, the test must be a life or death situation.

There are complaints across the nation that good schools are being penalized for bringing kids who are performing three years below grade level to "only" one year below grade level, while schools (generally in white and middle to upper-middle class neighborhoods) with students performing at or above grade level (including the gifted) are completely ignored. Does the Bush Administration admit they may have created a fiasco by trying to measure the unmeasureable, namely measuring achievement instead of learning? No! They want to apply the same oversimplified, reductionist philosophy to colleges, according to the New York Times!

I know some of you don't have access to the NYT, so here's the gist:

"David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a group representing private, nonprofit colleges and universities, said: "What we oppose is a single, national, high-stakes, one-size-fits-all, uber-outcome exam. The notion of a single exam implies there are national standards, and that implies a national curriculum. Then we are on the way to a centralized Prussian education system."

When Ms. Spellings, the education secretary, named the commission, she said that choosing a college was one of the most important and expensive decisions families make and that they were entitled to more information."

"Entitled to more information"--what is that supposed to mean? That we shouldn't have to visit a campus to get a feel for how the school works? Can we reduce the education at Harvard College, a non-Ivy private school like Northwestern University, large state schools like University of Michigan or Minnesota and small state schools like the University of Wisconsin-River Falls to a single number or ratio? No! Despite what Ms. Spellings seems to believe, not everything can be quantified.

And education should not be seen in terms of producers and consumers. Education is, or at least should be, the gradual unfolding of intellect, the finding of one's place in the world of people and ideas. Standardized testing has nothing to do with education. At best, it's a snapshot of one person's fund of knowledge on one particular day. At worst, it's a snapshot of one person's test-taking skills on one particular day. What do test-taking skills have to do with education? Nothing! They're not problem-solving skils, no matter what some educators would have you believe. They're "let's see if we can figure out what the teacher is getting at by asking this question this way" skills. That's kissing-ass, not solving problems, and certainly not education!! Right now, college offer a haven for gifted kids, because they can self-select what to study and at what level. But if the government decides that everything in education can be reduced to 1s and 0s, i.e. you know this or you don't, and colleges start teaching to the federal test like the elementary and high schools have, then there will be no point in going to any school at all.

Will AP Make Us Globally Competitive?

Interesting article about the Advanced Placement class system in today's NYT. AP classes offer college freshman level instruction in any of 35 different subjects, with the opportunity to earn college credit by examination at the end of the year. College admissions counselors give AP classes more weight than CLEP, the competing credit-by-examination program (also run by the College Board). International Baccalaureate (IB) programs seem to be even more rigorous than AP, but not available nearly as widely.

The NYT article made the following observation:

"Over all, students in the United States have lagged behind their counterparts in other countries in math and science on international tests. The Trends in International Math and Science Study, developed by an international group and gathered every four years, showed in 2003 that American students scored the lowest of 16 countries in physics and the second lowest in calculus.

But A.P. students did far better. Those who had taken A.P. calculus, even including those who scored only a 1 or 2 on the exam, did as well on the TIMSS exams as students from the first-place nation, France. And those who had taken AP physics, including those with low scores, were outperformed only by those from the top two nations, Norway and Sweden."

Technically, AP students have taken college level classes in these subjects and are competing against typical 12th-grade students in the other countries. Unfair advantage? Or are our high school students capable of more than we're giving them credit for?

My Most Amazing Talent?

Ever since Xavier had bronchitis at the beginning of December, we've been trying to get him to learn how to swallow pills. (Not many adult-strength medicines come in liquid or chewable form.) A couple weeks ago, I was showing him the apparent pinnacle of pill-swallowing success--me. Between prescription meds and supplements, I take six pills in the morning and up to ten at night. If I took them one at a time, it would take me an hour, so I do the whole handful at once. This amazed the nurse who was giving me my morning meds when I was in the hospital last spring. Xavier was just floored.

The second time, he ran to get Wolfie. "C'mere, c'mere, you gotta see this!" Of course, I complied by adding some cheesy magic act music. They applauded. :D

Yesterday morning, Xavier happened to pass me while I was collecting my morning pills. "Wait, wait, wait for me!" So I waited until he came out of the bathroom. Clunk (pills hitting my tongue), swallow, ta-da!

"Wow, Mom, you should be in the circus!" he says.

And I'm still wondering--Was that a compliment?

Why Gifted Students Need to Flock Together

There is an undercurrent of feeling that putting gifted kids in classes and activities with other gifted kids only reinforces their feeling of superiority over the "average" kids in their other classes. This elitist view is the exact opposite of why it is important to group gifted kids together. Gifted kids, with IQs ranging from 130 to 180 (and beyond) are even more different from each other than a spread of 50 IQ points in an "average" classroom, say from 80 to 130 IQ. But these gifted kids are sailing along at the top of their "average" class. They don't have to work, so they don't. They don't have to learn study skills, so they don't. Why bother trying to better yourself if you're already better than everyone in your peer group (i.e. your class)?

More importantly, they don't realize that they aren't the be all and end all of intelligence. And why should they? Classwork comes easily to them. The teacher and other adults in their lives constantly reinforce how smart they are and how easy school is for them. They spend much of their day entertaining themselves while they wait for the rest of the class to catch up. They have no opportunity to struggle and fail, much less to challenge themselves and grow.

In a gifted classroom, or summer camp, or Saturday program, most gifted kids will find for the first time that they aren't the smartest guys in the room. Surprise! In the Nov/Dec 2002 issue of BizEd, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon, described the moment he realized he had to work in school:

"In my first quarter, I distinctly remember sitting in my accounting class after we had taken a test. Before the professor handed out our tests, he put the distribution of grades up on the board, so he showed how many people got As, how many people got Bs. There was one person who had the lowest grade. I remember sitting there thinking, wow, that poor bastard, how embarrassing to be that one guy at the bottom! There weren’t even two people at the bottom, just one! Well, he handed the tests back, and I was that guy. And I remained at the bottom of that list until I figured out just how much work was required to get an MBA and I started doing it.

I know that I came out of the MBA program much, much better prepared to do anything. And when I encounter people who have not had a similar educational experience, the thing I’m amazed at is that they don’t know what they don’t know. So they don’t know they’re missing anything. That’s the scary thing. I didn’t know that I was missing anything. And frankly, I didn’t go to school to learn; I went to school to get a degree so that people would think I was smart, but I wouldn’t actually have to be smart. My biggest surprise was that I actually took away from that experience skills so valuable that, for me, they made the difference between success and not success." (emphasis mine)

Adams' experience in his MBA program is exactly what I want my boys to experience, although preferably earlier than graduate school. Some people think gifted students will learn this lesson "only when they are forced to spend time in an average classroom." It is simply not the case. And I believe my job as parent is to make sure my boys don't buy into the notion that they're better or smarter than anyone else. I want them to know that the point of living is continuing to learn and grow, that challenge and struggle are good things, things to be sought out at every opportunity. This is why I'm advocating in the schools for them to be in gifted classes and why I'm spending our vacation money to send them to camp. Scott Adams learned to work only when he got to graduate school. Imagine what he could have done if he learned that lesson in junior high.

"Only" an 8th Grade Education, Revisited

Thanks to Anonymous for sending me this link from Snopes.com. Snopes doesn't say the test is a hoax, but makes the point that much of that information is not taught anymore not because it's too hard for our soft brains, but because it's unnecessary for today's children. A 21st century city kid needs to know keyboarding and online search strategies, not how much wheat they have in bushels/hectare. Orthography, anyone? Don't get me started. LOL

The other point is that the test would be much easier if it had been administered right after we'd studied all this stuff. We do forget all the stuff we learned that we didn't need to know. I wonder how those 1895 8th grade graduates would do on this test in 1925?

"Only" An 8th Grade Education?

The Batavia Historical Society Publication of January 2006 included this:
Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895? This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS -1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of "lie," "play," and "run."
5. Define case; Illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you
understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts/bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals
4. Give four substitutes for caret `u.'
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10 Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10 Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Duh, I feel stupid.

Great Quote

"... People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds,
people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a
strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls."

Lev Vygotsky