"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

San Pedro Garza Garcia

Tag: Sonlight Blog

Steven Pinker and other Sonlight/Luke stuff

Luke, over at the Sonlight blog is on somewhat of a roll, both in what he is writing and what he is linking in his Other posts of note list. He went away for a week on a road trip and now I have several new blog posts that need to be written based on his stuff. Especially surprising was a link to an article on a humanist pop-scientist named Steven Pinker. Steven Pinker regularly says ridiculous things about science and is just as regularly slapped down by people with deeper understanding of the things on which he pontificates. That being said, the last line in the article about Pinker caught my attention and actually makes me want to read his book. It says,

Scholars who argue for the beauty of language over the correctness of it always win my heart.

To my way of thinking, that is high praise. New York Magazine wrote an article about all this titled Steven Pinker on Why It’s Okay to Dangle Your Participle. It is quite a good interview article and I recommend it in spite of the venue. Steven Pinker, amazingly, has a coherent idea or two, at least on the topic of writing.

Maybe Luke should try to go away for a week more often. Week long road trips are awesome for those taking them and, under the right circumstances, very educational for those stuck at home.

Luke’s homeschool blog post aggregation site

As long as I am writing about blog posts I had better mention my favorite aggregation site for stuff that has to do with homeschooling. I do not know whether it is part of his job or not, but for whatever reason, Luke from over at Sonlight Blog has one of the best RSS aggregation sites going. The articles that appear there are completely different from any of the other article aggregations I regularly follow–most of the others tend to all link to the same set of articles on any given day. There are two blog posts I found there that are on my list for possible posts here. I think he must handpick the stuff and he does not necessarily put stuff up there with which he agrees, but what is interesting.  I highly recommend it.

Update: I should not have forgotten to say that the Sonlight Blog itself is a great place to visit every day. I do not always agree with them, but I agree a lot of the time and it is always interesting.

Betty Blonde #146 – 02/05/2009
Betty Blonde #146
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Luke at Sonlight experiences homeschool disconnect in his class

Landmark History of the American PeopleLuke Holzman over at the Sonlight Blog wrote a post about how he learned less about history in his traditional school than he did in homeschool.  That experience resonates with us.  See here, here, and here.  He talked about the Sonlight Core D & E Curricula that includes the Landmark History of the American People books. He is right and this is part of the reason we have been such big fans of Sonlight. They are awesome books and give a feel for history I have not seen anywhere else. Now if they could just kick that horrible Joy Hakim history curriculum to the curb and find a worthy replacement.  It was less than useless for us.

School kills creativity?

I noticed that Luke has linked to one of our posts from the Other Posts of Note section of the Sonlight blog (Thanks Luke!).  He has a link there titled What are Other Posts of Note?  I followed a link in that explanation to a post at the Molding Minds Homeschool blog.  There was a wildly interesting education video embedded there.  I have embedded it here.

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