I loved Kelly’s post from yesterday and the wonderful comments Eric wrote below it. I think he expressed the feelings of a lot of right thinking people in those comments. His links to web pages here and here about Solomon Asch’s conformity were especially enlightening. Then, when I got into work this morning, I found that I had come to Jeremiah 5 in my bible reading. It is amazing how timely these reading have been. You would almost think someone planned for me to read them when I did. I highly recommend reading Kelly’s post, Eric’s comments, the pages on Asch’s conformity experiment, and the first five chapters (if not more) of Jeremiah.

We left all formal academic pursuits behind for two weeks in October to go to Mexico to visit Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita. Those two weeks are probably the most educational weeks of the year. It was all Spanish all the time with visits to museums, concerts, and natural wonders, Mexican cultural immersion, etc., etc. Kelly got sewing lessons from Grandma Conchita. Christian installed Xubuntu on Tio Lynn’s computer which truly qualifies as a piece of trash and got it to run orders of magnitude more robustly and rapidly than it ran with Windows XP. It was wonderful. We got a little behind with all the upheaval, but should be completely back on track by the end of the coming weekend.

The only deviations we are making in our homeschool plan are associated with the ACT college entrance exam both Kelly and Christian will take on February 7. Kelly will take the optional writing portion of the test while Christian will take only the English, Mathematics, Reading, and Science portions. We had not planned to cover Trigonometry until after the test, so I will add some introductory Trig material for both Kelly and Christian. I will also add some ACT writing preparation to our normal coursework which should be good for both of the kids even though Christian will not take the optional writing test for the first time until next year. Christian is taking the test as part of the Duke TIP program. We have received the paperwork from the ACT people, so we are all set to go.

Update: If they actually get under $200, we will get one for homeschool!

November 4, 2004 – Lorena’s math proficiency test
November 5, 2004 – Kelly wins writing contest (Photos)