Since we started using Spam Karma it has been doing an excellent job of handling spam comments. But a couple times a week 1 or 2 show up in the moderation queue. This week’s spam comment was priceless. The url of the author lead back to one of those sites written for the naive, written like the scripts of if you follow our simple program you to can lose weight/keep fit/become a millionaire/get friends/influence people/blah, blah, blah.

In this case, the drivel that the site is selling is supposedly the surfire, can’t fail, easy to follow program for parenting infants. It only takes having 2 children to learn there is no such thing. The irony that I couldn’t resist was that the post the spammer chose to associate with the site was How to be a Bad Parent.

I had intended to go on and talk about things that are somewhat fluffy when compared to the above post. But ended up re-reading the things I posted on the above subject. So, I don’t have the heart for fluff atm:

October’s question: Unschooling Math: If you’re like me and went to public school, you grew up being taught math from a text book. Now, as an unschooling parent, how do you live math when you’ve been conditioned to think of math in school terms. How do you go from one to the other?

Details on how to submit.

How do you live math? : One day at a time In the world that I live in math is all around me.

There are sales taxes to be calculated. 14% in New Brunswick.

Land here is officially measured in square metres but otherwise measured in acres. A hectare is 10,000 square metres and an acre is 43,560 square feet. There are 2.47 acres in a hectare.

Gas is sold in litres. Odometers measure in kilometres. Gas mileage is discussed in miles per gallon. There are 4.54 litres in a Canadian gallon. 100 miles is approximately 161 km.

I have a household budget to maintain, interest to pay on borrowed money, retirement to save for, etc. I’m renovating a house. There are materials to buy, quantities to be calculated. Whether or not we let other people (or technology) do it for us, math is all around us.

How do you go from one to the other? : For Emma, the only tool we bought specifically to help her learn math is cuisenart rods. The rods are fun and I’ve already made a fair number of interesting designs and structures with them but I expect she will learn math mostly from a hefty pile of coins and things like lego. But our primary method of ‘teaching’ her math will be letting her see us do everyday math.

Although 13 years ago we were not doing it this way, we migrated to what I consider a foolproof approach to teaching math. Don’t introduce the ‘school’ math until they already know how to do the math. Once they can add then show them paper addition. Once they can subtract then show them paper subtraction. Both geometry and algebra are amazingly easy subjects to explain when the person you are explaining them to is someone who can do arithmetic and enjoys it.

If I were to offer advice to a parent looking to teach their children math it would be to do math. There are an endless number of fascinations and games in math.

When we adults think of children there is a simple truth that we ignore: childhood is not preparation for life; childhood is life. A child isn’t getting ready to live; a child is living.

See the rest at A Day in our Lives

Also, Too Much Homework. There is interesting reading in the comments as well. (HT: Carlotta)

HT: Chris

You Are Incredibly Logical

Move over Spock – you’re the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

A long comment in response to Carlotta’s post:

In North America most (excluding military which have their own scale) IQ measurement is done with a mean (average) of 100 and a standard deviation of 20 which arbitrarily define a standard bell curve. A standard bell curve is a nice smooth symmetrical hump (a graph) that conforms to the following statistical observations:

1. The highest point on the curve is the mean
2. 68% of a normal distribution fall within 1 standard deviation of the mean (34% below and 34% above). So, irrespective of who takes IQ tests (with a std dev of 20) there will always be 34% whose IQ is identified as 80-100 and 34% whose IQ is identified as 100-120.
3. 14% fall in each second standard deviation from the mean: 14% will be identified as 60-80 and 14% as 120-140
4. That leave 2% above and below: 2% less than 60 and 2% more than 140
5. On this scale 140+ is considered genius.
6. Less than 40 and greater than 160 is pegged at about .1% each

The standard bell curve is a substantial degree just a mathematical theory that is used to box things in. I don’t put much stock in IQ. To an extent it might be representative of the combination of how familiar the test takers are with the way the questions are posed, mentally how fast they are and how prone they are to mistake. Someone could perform consistently on a series of these tests and get varying numerical results because of where their score falls against that average of those who have taken that particular formula of test.

It seems that I’ve wound down to about 1 insightful (not inciteful) post a week. All of the driving and being away from family is wearing me down in terms of new ideas for thought provoking posts. Fortunately, all of you are still visiting here and leaving me comments which give me things to think about. And while I’m driving I do get a good chance to think. The issue tends to be more one of having the mental energy to write. For this post, I have to thank Kim who left a comment below. Here is the excerpt of her comment that gave me some food for thought:

… I believe now, that some people need more help than repetition based on their motivation to learn how to do so. It is about 10% of the population and they need spelling guidelines, sadly, which most of us never needed to think about. Sorry to rant, but I just wanted to bring it up because dyslexics are often underrepresented in the homeschooling world.

As is quite often the case with me and a comment the things that come to mind are not really a response to the comment. More often than not my train of thought rebounds from the comment and heads off in a different direction. In my early career, synergy was a buzz word everyone was using to describe it.

I’m going to start by saying I have a very low opinion of repetition as a method of learning. I’m going to differentiate repetition from practice. Practice is trying to do something over and over again until you have mastered it. Repetition is doing something over and over again period. I don’t expect that my children (or anyone else’s) will learn from repetition. They do learn from practice. In this instance, I don’t expect Emma will learn to spell from us spelling for her over whatever period of time. Instead, by enabling her to communicate, we are giving her a skill that she will want to keep. Eventually she will be in a spot where we are not there to be a crutch to that skill. It may take her quite a while (possibly years), but she will work it out.

TBH, my spelling is brutal on first pass at a word. But, I’m a better than average speller because mispelled words do not look right to me. Some words take a half dozen changes before they do look right. I’ve read a few thousand books. I’ve seen nearly all of the words I use in writing in print thousands of times. Up until a certain point in my life if I wanted to write something I had to have a dictionary with me. And I’m confident that as long as my children develop a taste for reading they will be able to do the same thing I did.

For a moment allow me to digress into a little rant on repetition. In one of my programming classes, I would give the students the option of write a program called knight’s tour in lieu of other assignments. The object of the program is for it to be given a spot somewhere on the chess board and the program would find a path for the knight to move (the knight moves in an L) around the entire chess board using each square only once.

There are two approaches to solving that problem. The first is to evaluate the board and based on the things you know about the board and the movement of the knight. Using that knowledge you build into the program a set of rules it will use to determine which of the available moves is most likely to lead to a solution. There are a few sets of rules that work really well and a solution will be found on first try.

The second way is to have the program try randomly until it finds a solution. This does work eventually. It would probably take 5 to 10 minutes on the computers you are using. Among programmers this is called ‘brute force’ programming. And I believe that educational methods which rely primarily on repetition are brute force education. Nearly every math curriculum I’ve seen has been brute force.The thought behind it is that eventually the kid will learn it through sheer repetition. The curriculum itself makes no effort to accomodate itself to the learning needs, abilities or interests of the child.

The other thing that Kim mentioned was dyslexia. I have a few thoughts on learning disabilities (LD) in general. the first one I would like to tackle is ADD. Now, we have to realize up front that children are born with varying strengths and weaknesses. It’s one of the things that make us individuals. In those strengths and weaknesses there are going to be some who have weak control over their attention.

I had a student who I believe was ADD. During the first test I gave him, in the first 10 minutes or so he wrote like crazy on the test paper. Every once in a while he would stare off into the corner of the room for a few seconds while he thought about the question he was working on and then write some more. Somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, he looked off in the corner. As best as I could tell he did not move from that position for over an hour. After every other person had handed in their test, he was still there. I had to say his name 3 times to get his attention. Because of the expression on his face when he looked around, I’m as sure as I’m sitting here that until then he had no idea that any of his 40+ classmates had left. To the point where he stopped on the test, he got 100%. The remainder was blank.

8 months later he was in his fourth class with me. He didn’t miss a thing through any of my 2 hour classes. There were often times I would reexplain things for him or answer questions. I’m convinced that the main 2 differences were that he was interested in what I was teaching and that it was not repetitive. I did not teach the same things twice. It was a transformation that took time as well. Do I think he was ‘cured’? No. I’m sure that he still deals with his weak attention control today.

A second LD which is ‘growing’ is ADHD. I don’t know what your experience has been, but every child I’ve met who had been diagnosed as ADHD had a very active mind that was always on the go. I would expect that an ongoing diet of repetition is a brutal assault on an active mind. The second tidbit I have on ADHD comes from a workshop I attended 3 years ago on LD. There was a study which showed that up to a certain age (8-10) dyslexia was often misdiagnosed as ADHD.

Finally, I’d like to write my thoughts on dyslexia. First, I’m going to tell you some interesting facts about dyslexia and dyslexics. Then, I have a story and I’ll finish with some thoughts I have on the subject.

1. NASA recruits dyslexics. The statistic I was given in the workshop mentioned above is that over 50% of their staff are dyslexic.
2. A substantial number of children exihibit symptoms of dyslexia at ages 5-6.
3. The majority of the children above (I believe about 2/3) lose the symptoms by age 8.
4. I have a CD at home of a workshop given by a doctor specializing in learning disabilities. I’m going to paraphrase what she said regarding the studies she had participated in in the study of dyslexia:
   

   Medically there is only one way that she had found that would differentiate between a young dyslexic and non dyslexic child. The fact that a young child showed symptoms of dyslexia was not an indication that they were dyslexic. The medical test consists of monitoring the child’s brain with an EEG while giving it a test. Not a medical test but a school test like spelling. What the EEG shows is the degree and type of stress the child experiences.

The story: A few weeks ago, Emma and I were drawing and writing on letter paper. The marker I was using was a black sharpie (permanent ink). Since we were making them for each other the last thing we did was fold them up so the other person could open it. When Emma opened the one I did for her she opened it up so that she was looking at the back of the sheet. Because I’d done it with the sharpie the ink had soaked through the paper and she could see what I had done. She looked at it for a few seconds and turned to Andrea and said, ‘it says …’ And she was right. Not only were the letters backwards, but the sentence went right to left. Until Andrea told her she had no idea that she was looking at the wrong side of the page. She’s 5. Am I concerned that she may be dyslexic? No.

I think that many children are able to do similar things when they are in that age range. IMO, dyslexia is only a disability in school. I believe that dyslexics can mentally flip things around on the fly and whether it is a b or a d does not slow them down. It’s when they are under pressure to pick the one that we recognize as being right that a problem surfaces. The fact that young children spell would ‘woulb’ doesn’t mean they don’t know how it’s spelled. It might say that they are brighter and more capable than we are.

And that is my 2 cents worth.

Thought up by our second-oldest child, Sarah (15). She’d like a list of books people think all kids should* read by the time they leave school. Since she’s pretty busy with work, I agreed to look through our stash of books (mostly in boxes now) and come up with a pile from which she will choose ones she thinks she’ll enjoy.

But I thought I turn it over to you as well, dear audience. Sarah says, “When in doubt, ask teh Internets.” What books do you think all kids should read by the time they reach adulthood?

Feel free to leave a list in the comments or trackback from your blog.

* Yes, we are well aware of the potential dangers of saying things like “all kids should”. I still feel it a valuable exercise and something that should be an interesting comparison. It won’t be a die-hard list we’ll follow by all means. In the end, it doesn’t matter how well-recommended a book is; if we don’t like it or find it interesting, we don’t read it.

This week I’ve been working on getting a duplicate of homeschooljournal running on this computer. Hopefully, by the end of tomorrow night I will have that sorted out. I’ve been keeping up with my blog reading, but programming in the evening doesn’t leave alot of mental room to write the sort of posts I have on my mind atm. And, it was a tiring day at work.

I haven’t been linking to alot of blog posts lately because I am often a week behind reading them. Today, I got a pingback from Todd. He wrote a fantastic response to the cartoon I linked to last night.

Unschooling voices is up.

Tonight Andrea logged onto the chat program to say goodnight. Within a couple minutes, Emma also popped on. Yes, she’s 5 and has her own chat profile. So far as I know, I’m the only person she has chatted with. When I noticed her on, I sent her a ‘hello Emma’ and waited. A few minutes later she sent a full correctly spelled sentence telling me something that was important to her about her day. Before she was done she had sent me 3 or 4 more full sentences all spelled correctly.

Andrea told me after that she had asked for help with the spelling. You see, for quite a few months, she had been using her own version of phonetics to write things. But there were times when we misunderstood what she was writing. In the last month or so, she has changed her strategy by getting us to help her spell what she wants to write.

It’s come back to me again tonight how silly it is to set out to teach children a bunch of skills with the intention that once they have learned all of them they will be able to communicate. A child learns to talk because the child wants to communicate. When they are first learning to talk we don’t, “no, no, no you say that word this way and until you can say it that way we are not going to introduce the next word to you.” The secret to teaching a child to read, write and communicate is to accept the ability they currently have and understand that at some point their desire to understand and be understood will push them to develope those skills until they are every bit as proficient at them as the people around them. And for the abilities that they currently lack, compensate for them in the same way you do before they are potty trained, before they can dress themselves and before they can feed themselves.

Honestly, the only way I can imagine that someone seeking to understand child education could not see that is if they view the child as the object of education.