Christmas C.M. Countdown, Day 5

"...do we recognize that the proportion of Love must be preserved as duly as the proportions of Faith?" (Ourselves, Book II, p. 21) 

An instructed Conscience-judge is not tolerant of court employees who take time off for personal distractions. Anyone caught humming "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" will be severely scolded, and that includes friends to friends, princes to courtiers, even parents to children. Why?

"Over-fond and exclusive" relationships, besides being unhealthy, "shut out other claims of duty and affection" (p. 21). They can even be dangerous. Being exclusive is good in certain matters, Mason admits, such as in being faithful to one's spouse.  Deep loyalty to friends is admirable. But to be obsessed with any person, and needing to control their actions as proof of mutual love, is "unchaste."

In Chapter IV, Mason gives a literary example of friendship-done-to-excess, from Marlowe's play Edward II. Here's a slightly more recent example: the shapeshifting character Odo, employed as the space station security chief on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Odo is a loner; he seems to be part of no recognizable species. He is excited when  he finds that there are others of his kind, that he is, in fact, part of a "Great Link," a melding of all such beings. This, in itself, is fine; it means that Odo has a "family"; it could even be taken as a metaphor for the Body of Christ. But this newfound connection causes conflict. Vulcans can perform mind-melds, but this species can body-meld or "link" with each other; and in Odo's case, his fascination with linking causes him to ignore relationships, his job, and time itself. Odo eventually regains his sense of proportion, but these events cause others to question his loyalties; and (SPOILER) his initiation into linking eventually threatens the existence of his species (think virus).

(Now here comes the real spoiler. If you've never seen the ending of Deep Space Nine, and still plan to, don't read this.) During the series, Odo also finds true love with the space station's second-in-command, Major Kira. Although their relationship has a lot of bumps, they both discover something about love: they cherish, but don't need to possess each other. In the last moments of the final episode, Odo makes the decision to sacrifice his happiness with Kira to save his species (although they caused a war and don't seem to deserve his help) by fully entering the Link, possibly forever. (It looks like he's swimming out into a lake.) She understands and accepts his choice. That is love.

"Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man. And, having become man, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal. That is why God has now lifted him so high, and has given him the name beyond all names, so that at the name of Jesus “every knee shall bow”, whether in Heaven or earth or under the earth. And that is why, in the end, “every tongue shall confess” that Jesus Christ” is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Philippians 2:5-11, J.B. Phillips New Testament

Quote for the day: Perhaps this is the answer to everything.

"Captain Sisko (voiceover): Captain's log, stardate 50929.4. Two days ago, this station felt like a tomb. I'd never seen so many of my crew depressed at the same time. But for some reason, it now seems as though a new spirit has swept through the station, as if someone had opened a door and let a gust of fresh air blow through a musty old house. Why this is happening, frankly, is a mystery to me. After all, nothing has really changed. The Dominion is still a threat, the Cardassians are still threatening to retake the station, and I can still see the clouds of war gathering on the horizon. So why do I sense a newfound sense of optimism in the air? But maybe I'm overthinking this. Maybe the real explanation is as simple as something my father taught me a long time ago: even in the darkest moments, you can always find something that'll make you smile."

(Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "In the Cards")

R-E-S, C-U-E (Fashion Revolution Week)

Fashion Revolution Week starts next Monday

Recently we were watching the 1990's series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, an episode called "The Quickening." Starfleet travellers landed on a planet where everyone was born with a plague, and would eventually die in agony. Starfleet's Doctor Bashir thought he could easily find a cure for the problem, but his attempts at treatment failed. The people of the planet were angry with him, and he felt humiliated by his powerlessness. Near the end, the doctor's favourite patient died in spite of the new drug he had been giving her; but her baby had absorbed the drug and was born free of the disease. The adults were not cured, but their children could be saved.

This story can be read in many ways. It may be about admitting our own arrogance, and the limits of our knowledge. It is also about compassion, dedication, and hope for a better future. One of the biggest points was that nobody could help those already born with the plague; but someone who cared, and who kept trying, could make a difference for the next generation.

Who cares that much about the people of our planet, especially those who get the least attention? In spite of the annual media blitz around Fashion Revolution Week, disheartening stories continue to surface.

"In the wake of Rana Plaza, which occurred months after a deadly factory fire at Tazreen Fashions killed 112 mostly female garment workers, global outrage spurred several international efforts to prevent deaths and injuries due to fire or structural failures. Safety measures were instituted at more than 1,600 factories. Hundreds of brands and companies signed the five-year, binding Bangladesh Accord on Building and Fire Safety ...

 "In a recent series of Solidarity Center interviews, garment worker-organizers from several national unions applaud the significant safety improvements but warn that employers are backsliding. And workers seeking to improve safety in their factories often face employer intimidation, threats, physical violence, loss of jobs and government-imposed barriers to union registration.*

"They have forgotten the lessons of Rana Plaza," Fashion Revolution blog.

*I know the link is incorrect; that's how it was posted on their blog.

Whose responsibility is it to remember the lessons, and to make sure the rest of us do as well? Factory owners? Big corporations and retailers? Consumers? Media organizations like Fashion Revolution? National and local governments?  Religious groups?  Political activists? The United Nations? The workers themselves? At first we may feel far away from both the scene and the cause of such tragedies. But when we do become informed and want to do...something...we may feel like mice with very little power. Especially if we're just the guy holding the broom.


But there are things even mice can do. Ask questions and talk to people, in person or on social media. Find out "who made your clothes." Do some "haulternative" shopping (that includes non-shopping). Read news sources that seem to care about giving true facts (not propaganda). Give Black Friday shopping sprees a pass. Write letters. Make videos. Donate, or give some volunteer hours, to groups concerned with justice in the garment industry, and with the education and health of women and the families they support.

Can't it be this generation that creates hope?

Star Trek Quote for the Day

Scotty:  Damage control is easy. Reading Klingon - that's hard. 

(Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 1986)

Sharper than your average bear: a vintage Star Trek funny

At his first meeting with Mr. Spock's mother, Dr. McCoy hears a deep, dark childhood secret. Finally, something he can one-up Spock with. Or not.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy: Eye of the beholder

Did you ever have an illustration for something just handed to you, so obvious that you didn't even have to think about it?

(one of the few videos I could find about The Dress that didn't include profanity)

"Perception of reality is not the same thing as reality." (SciShow, The Science of That Dress)

Chapter Nine of Herbartian Psychology, "Graphic Hypotheses," begins with something that was first mentioned in Chapter Three:

"It is true that in Reid's comfortable dogmatism we are assured that we perceive the outer world exactly as it is, and therefore we all perceive it alike. But Locke admits that the outer world may be modified in certain aspects,--colour, smell, sound, taste,--but in other more fundamental respects remain unchanged. According to this view, man is the measure of colours, smells, sounds and tastes..."

In other words, the size and shape of something may be fairly fixed and common to almost everyone; but on the other aspects, you're on your own. Referring back to his perception games in Chapter Six, Adams says, "Even a simple straight line may mean something slightly different to each new observer, and the greater the number of lines in a drawing, the greater the range within which its interpretation by different observers may vary." However, "when two persons are talking about the drawing that lies before them, there is at least something to go upon, there is a sort of least common denominator of thought, to which all the ideas of each party must be reduced before agreement can be expected." "The fact is that while our mental impressions of a given object are continually changing, they always correspond with each other, and to the given reality."

So there's room for personal interpretation, but there's also the possibility that someone doesn't understand, doesn't have the right information, is just inaccurate. Not everything is relative. The Dress may be seen as white and gold or as blue and black, but nobody has suggested that it's pink and purple, or that it's actually a ski jacket or a pair of boots.

What does this have to do with Herbartianism and education?

First and most practically, teachers can use graphic narrations to evaluate how well students understand something. Hence the value of Charlotte Mason science notebooks. Adams gives the example of student teachers reading Robinson Crusoe, who were asked to make drawings of Crusoe's tent based on the information given in the chapter. The story said that the roof was covered "with flags and large leaves of trees, like a thatch." Apparently some of them took "flags" to mean the Union Jack, and that's what they drew. They weren't stupid, just lacking information.

Second, Adams discusses the non-value of bad or misleading diagrams. If a diagram or an illustration is "an integral part of the idea it illustrates," then it can be worthwhile; otherwise, we might want to reconsider using it.  "Milton has been often praised for his reticence in not fully describing Satan. Can we say as much for the illustrators of The Pilgrim's Progress?" "There are certain things that are better left undrawn."

Third, we are given the detailed description of a "Map Robinson Crusoe's Island" contest.The Boy's Own Paper advertised the contest and offered a prize, and Adams says that over a hundred and fifty maps were submitted. The contest contained a couple of possible snags, although those weren't mentioned in the rules. The biggest one is, obviously, that not everything is given in the story, and some things must just be imagined; but the text also contains a few contradictions and impossibilities regarding the geography of the island, so even a careful mapmaker would have to deal with those. You can read more of the details in Herbartian Psychology at the archive.org site, but for now, the educational question becomes the double difficulty "of communicating an idea from one mind to another....The idea must be dissolved, as it were, in words, and then again crystallized out in the new mind....The concrete of one mind must be reduced to its abstract terms, and then rebuilt into the concrete of the new mind." It's like what happens when you beam somebody up on Star Trek.

And obviously, there's a risk of something misfiring. Words are tricky things. As was said in the last chapter, we have to make sure we're using the "same system" as the person we're talking to; a newer way to phrase it would be "on the same page." But we also have to recognize that our minds are all unique; we're not clones, and we don't see things exactly the same way. Our "apperception masses" are all different; to every lesson or situation, teachers and students all bring who they are, what they know, and their own ways of seeing. White or gold, or blue and black.

As a postscript: If the mind is a spider web, Adams says, a teacher may be seen as "a benevolent spider...whose business is not to make plain the already geometrically clear lines of the web, but to see that guiding apperception masses are so arranged that they shall lead ultimately to the centre, by the way, however crooked it may seem, that is best for each seeker." (I'm not sure whether these seekers are supposed to be younger spiders, or what.)

But oh dear, I don't like to be seen as a benevolent spider, do you? I certainly don't feel qualified to decide which way to the centre is "best for each seeker."

Rebooting the world, rethinking education

Last night Mr. Fixit and I dropped Lydia at her drama class and took a bunch of stuff back to the library.  I took out a couple of $5 Dinner books, Susan Branch's Autumn, and Oxygen: A Four Billion Year History.  Mr. Fixit borrowed some DVDs, including the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise, the series that started (oddly enough) almost exactly ten years ago.  Later in the evening we watched the season-opening double episode, in which crew members from 2154, who don't really know how to time-travel yet, nevertheless find themselves on Earth in 1944, in the middle of an alternative-timestream World War II, which was caused by something called the Temporal Cold War.  In this version of history, Hitler's army has taken over New York City, and there are also a bunch of strange-looking, red-eyed people...or something...wearing S.S.-type uniforms and making deals with the Nazis.  And there's this other guy, Silik, who's been sort of genetically modified  He can appear to be other people, crawl across ceilings, squeeze himself through letter slots and things like that, and he's an enemy, except that he ends up helping Scott Bakula fight the red-eyed guys.  Not to spoil the whole thing, but as you can figure, the mission (after lots of Earth-style gunfire and Trek-style futuristic weapons) is eventually successful; as the bad guys crawl into their time tunnel, the place blows up and that's all, folks.  Then, and this is what put Mr. Fixit on the edge of his seat, Scott Bakula / Captain Archer talks to this guy who's sort of a guardian of time, the one who sent them on this job in the first place.  Captain Archer isn't real impressed at the amount of upheaval and bloodshed they caused in their efforts to put the world straight, but apparently it was all worth it, and then you see all the scenes of history rebooting themselves.  The past and the future are all back where and how they should be.

Mr. Fixit thought it was a very Doctor-Who type episode, and had it stuck in his head the rest of the night.  When I said I was looking for a blog post idea, he suggested I write about what we were doing ten years ago.  I said no, that wasn't a good fall (don't search the archives, it was before we were blogging).  Then he said I should imagine that we had lived in an alternative timestream and not homeschooled for the last two decades; where would we be and what would the girls have been doing?  I said no, I couldn't possibly imagine that and he could write it himself if he wanted to.

But just before bed, I was reading a bit of Thinkertoys, a library book about creative thinking.  (It gets mixed reviews--either that it's the worst of MBA slash pop psychology, or that it's the best thing ever for opening up new possibilities  Probably somewhere in between.) Thinkertoys is, mainly, about thinking in alternatives. Choose the unexpected, combine ideas, reverse the usual, modify or find new purposes for the existing version, ask different questions.

And it came into my head that homeschooling itself, especially the way we have come to consider homeschooling, is an exercise in alternative thinking. Maybe a reboot too...or some have called it a paradigm shift. It has much less to do with the small idea that it happens at home, than the big idea that education, the science of relations, can happen in a lot of different ways. Homeschooling parents, by default, have to enter a sort of different timestream where we ourselves are altered.

Homeschooling parents have to be, in many ways, space explorers. Many times we don't feel as confident, as clever, or as thoroughly Trekkie as the Captain Kirk crew; we're more like the early 2150 Enterprisers. kind of mucking around in space, breaking boundaries but making mistakes; encountering things we've never seen before. But we have learned to ask questions. And we learn that human beings...um, and Vulcans, and Denobians...are, well, human. Even if they eat leeches.

"If you're going to try to embrace new worlds, you must try to embrace new ideas."--Dr. Phlox, Star Trek: Enterprise

Not spending at all...um...

Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking of frugality only in terms of getting good bargains. What is important to remember is that often we can save the most money by not spending at all.--Crystal, Saturday Savings Smorgasbord at Frugal Hacks

Sometimes, frugal as we Squirrels are, it's hard to wrap my brain around that. I have a hard time understanding how those pioneer families managed on their infrequent trips to a store for sugar, salt and shot...or how people concerned with simplicity (who haven't engineered the whole thing ahead of time, stocking up on every possible thing they might run out of) manage to go on one of those no-buying-anything-at-all shopping unbinges.

I mean, some things are obvious to me: if you need to wrap a present and haven't saved up all the bags everybody else has given you presents in, you find some creative wrapping, even the thoroughly-clichéd colour comics. If you're short on baking powder, you can combine baking soda and cream of tartar, assuming that you do have cream of tartar. It makes more sense to use up the getting-dusty bag of split peas to make soup than it does to complain that the canned stuff hasn't gone on sale lately. If you don't have a crib, you can use a playpen (we did). And the list of ways to amuse children and improvise free toys and games can and does go on for pages. That, I get.

But it isn't a toy famine that we're usually experiencing here, nor a lack of furniture. We have more than enough kitchen equipment, lots of books to read, and a flip of the switch provides us with free radio entertainment and edification. What we run out of are the small things. Socks that fit growing feet. Tape. Printer paper. Working ballpoint pens; and I don't think the backyard crows would lend me any quills. Flour (and therefore all the things we make with flour). Toilet paper; and I have no burning desire to start substituting catalogue pages in that regard. Baking powder when there isn't any cream of tartar around. Foil. A VCR that quit working and that Mr. Fixit can't resuscitate. How do you manage without spending at all when life today seems like one big pile of little receipts?

"'What do we need to get in town, Caroline?'

"Ma said they did not need anything. They had eaten so many fish and potatoes that the flour was still holding out, and the sugar, and even the tea. Only the salt was low, and it would last several days."--On the Banks of Plum Creek

I'm looking at this from the perspective of one who went out and BOUGHT a cake this weekend for Ponytails' belated birthday party; not because I'm that lazy generally, but because I haven't felt up to it this week (still under the weather with a cold) and because I didn't particularly want to handle food that five non-Squirreling little girls were going to be eating. Meredith, we could have done the Pepperidge Farm thing too (your baby's cake was beautiful), but at least this took care of the cake, the decorations, and the name--except that the supermarket's cake decorator, despite our having said Ponytails' name clearly several times, wrote "Happy Birthday Aunt Ponytails" on the cake. She then scraped off the "Aunt," leaving the icing somewhat less pristine than it started out and not offering to compensate us for the mistake.

Maybe we would have been better off with Pepperidge Farm. But I digress.

Could I actually go any length of time without buying anything? I know there are so many things you can improvise, and many more that you can just do without. We lived through our hot chocolate mix famine last winter. I really do like using things up and finding ways to use what's in my hand. It's the Year of Abundance, after all.

But then there's the really good candy corn for Thanksgiving from the Bulk Barn...and some classical CDs from Dollarama that will make great stocking stuffers and Secret Sister gifts...and the purple Northern Reflections sweater I found at a rummage sale Friday night (I do need sweaters). And the Turkish Cookbook I got there for a quarter, and a spool knitting set as well. (Crayons thought those were both awesome.) And dancing-class shoes for the younger Squirrelings, because their last-years' pairs are worn out (call them the 2 Dancing Princesses); those cost more than a couple of dollars, but we didn't want them to have to dance in their bare feet.

And that aseptically-packaged apple juice from Giant Tiger for 77 cents a box (amazing deal)...and, if you don't think we should be eating candy and drinking juice (too much sugar), how about the pumpkins and apples and squash and broccoli and the most excellent popcorn that will be gone all too soon when the farm stand closes up for the season? And we just bought a hot-air popper at a yard sale for $2...and a couple of VCRs for about the same price, no kidding. I said VCRs, not videos. See, you have to admit, sometimes spending is just fun. And smart; check the big box stores, VCRs are quickly disappearing from the shelves, and then how are you going to watch all your Star Trek videos?

So while my preferred way of dealing with don't-have-that problems is trying to see another way around it, I'm not going to stress out with guilt over the things we do need to buy. Want to buy.

"And in the lean-to they found a boughten broom! There seemed no end to the wonders in this house."--On the Banks of Plum Creek

Life would certainly go on without a purple sweater and a popcorn popper; I'd wear my old frog-playing-with-a-yo-yo sweatshirt awhile longer, and keep making popcorn in a pot on the stove. If we found ourselves without any means of watching videos, we'd probably read more books or listen to more records. (We found a few of those yard-saling yesterday too. Lena Horne at The Sands, 1961--that would cheer anybody up.) Life goes on no matter what little you have, right? But a few well-spent dollars here and there can be all right too.

[P.S. Update and Little House nitpick: Crayons and I are reading, obviously, On the Banks of Plum Creek. While they're stuck in winter blizzards and living off beans and cornmeal, Pa plays his fiddle and Ma knits. What I want to know is, where did she get the yarn? That's another thing I have a hard time keeping in stock here unless we find a yardsale cache.]

Books for The Apprentice

Math: Mathematics, a Human Endeavor, by Harold R. Jacobs (text & workbook)

Literature: The Battle of the Books (Swift)
Pride and Prejudice, or another Jane Austen novel, or Jane Eyre
"She Stoops to Conquer" (play by Goldsmith)
"School for Scandal" (play by Sheridan)
An Anthology of Verse (edited by Charlesworth & Lee)
The Count of Monte Cristo

Citizenship, Government, Economics:
Are You Liberal, Conservative or Confused? (Maybury)
How Canadians Govern Themselves (e-book)
Economics, essays by Jane Haldimand Marcet
Ourselves, Book II, by Charlotte Mason
"Common Sense"

Biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Anton Lavoisier, Marie Curie, Abigail Adams

Science Reading: The Physics of Star Trek
Inventing the Future, by David Suzuki
The Case for a Creator, selected chapters
Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe
The Sea Around Us, by Rachel Carson

Life Skills Reading: Books by Don Aslett and Edith Schaeffer.

Christian Studies: The Hiding Place
The Fight, by John White
Know Why You Believe, by Paul Little
The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis
One other book by Paul Little or C.S. Lewis

Geography: The Walk across America, by Peter Jenkins
Heidi's Alp, by Christina Hardyment