Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Waiting until
> you need something to learn it works fine in some cases, especially in
> early and middle school level education and for adults who are already
> in a job/career, but for teens and young adults, I feel that they really
> need to have a more well-rounded capability in math, even if they end up
> in a career that doesn't use it.

Why?  First 99.9% of all higher math learned in a vacuum is forgotten within 
a short time.  Don't thinks so?  If I were to take your highschool or college 
math textbooks, how much of it could you still do cold?  For most people it 
is 
very, very little.

Is what you 'feel' based on observation and experience or is it part of the 
schooling conditioning?  It's a fair question.


> I want to ask James if his 14 year old can do this or that, but I know
> that would only be setting him up for a comparison against other 14 year
> olds that attend public school, so I won't do that as I know unschoolers
> learn things at different rates and at different times.  However, I
> would like to know how James' son/daughter will learn, if he/she hasn't
> already done so, logrhythms, trig functions, scientific notation, base
> 2, and other concepts in a practical way.

Bev, you are indulging in the schooling practice of amputating something from 
reality and holding it up as if it were a separate thing with a life of it's 
own.  For example, the older children were once engaged in speculating how 
tall a certain dead tree was.  I told them they could figure it out without 
measuring the tree directly.  After some dialog, they figured it out without 
usng 
what you'd recognize as 'trig functions'. (I will go through the process they 
came up with if you are interested).

That is, if you took the standard exams (TCAP's in this state) and gave them 
the trig parts, they'd think the author of the test was demented and far 
divorced from reality (and they wouldn't be far from wrong).  Yet they have 
an 
intimacy with angles and how they function that completely does away forever 
with 
the false concept that any of it is beyond them.

 > How much reading do they do,

A very great amount.  All of it having to do with their lines of interest.



> how much practice with problem solving do they get, or will they get?


Life, for them, is the problem to be solved.  Not so much solved as savored.  
Take today for example, a friend took all of us for a day's outing on the 
local lake on his steam launch.  Eldest was given the helm, told to keep the 
boiler between 100 and 120 psi, and to call out the depth on the depth gauge 
(fish 
locator).  We had a great time, as he was wearing his pirate hat. 

"Helmsman, where away?"
"Bearing SSW, depth is 128 feet."
"Give us that in fathoms, mate."
"Ay, 21 fathoms, capt'n."
"And what speed."
"Ah ... uh ... what be the length of this vessel, bos'un (friend who owned 
the boat)"
"28 feet"
Here eldest tossed his apple core near the bow and counted as it passed the 
length of the boat.
"Speed be 4 feet per second." (The boat passed the core in seven seconds).
"Give us that in knots."
"Aye, capt'n, remind us again what be a nautical mile."
"1.15 land lubber miles, mate."

After a few minutes he came up with the right speed, the direction we were 
going based on the sun's position (roughly) and how long it would take us to 
make the return trip.  All in his head while steering the boat and looking 
out 
for shallows.

Meanwhile younger daughter was asking how the steam moved the boat, what did 
the 120 psi on the gauge mean, and what happened to all that energy by the 
time the cool water was exhausted.  

> What are his/her interests (the oldest)?

Making model ships, historically accurate ships from scratch.


> Homesteading *can* be complex and full of lessons, but many who
> homestead don't pursue the more advanced trades and skills that require
> higher math.
> 

Life IS complex and full of lessons except by those who have been absorbed 
into the insect like matrix of the industrial/consumerist complex.   More 
advanced? do you day?  More highly specialized does not mean more advanced.  
I 
worked with "more advanced" biochemists at GSK's research department.  Take 
them 
even 2 degrees outside their "expertise" and they were helpless.  One fellow 
probably knew as much as God about the chemistry of flavorings, and yet I 
found 
that he didn't know how a lead/acid battery worked, nor much of anything else 
outside his narrow field.

It is an unexamined myth that an integrated education such as the unschooler 
has makes it difficult to deal with artificially specific subjects such as 
trig functions and scientific notation.  To an intelligent mind that has 
never 
had the false focus that it ought to be hard and mysterious, it takes all of 
five minutes to explain scientific notation and not twenty to use it in 
calculations.