Dickens at Christmas

On Christmases past, we've read A Christmas Carol together as a family, but this year we settled for watching the old classic Alastair Sim movie as we have to finish Pickwick papers read-together. It was interesting to discover here that Dickens commissioned the artist John Leech to produce 4 hand-colored etchings and 4 wood engravings for the volume. Leech had been forced to abandon his medical studies (he excelled at anatomical drawing) because of the bankruptcy of his family, but was able to support himself as an artist and became the chief cartoonist for Punch.

Recently for our son's Veritas Press Omnibus classs he had fun with the challenge of writing in Charles Dickens' maximalist style. The assignment was to expand a sentence in a Dickensian fashion (for those of you who are curious, Dickens was not infrequently paid by the number of words...)

The starter sentence: "Beebo Appleby walked into the room, looked out the window, and patted his jacket pocket. He heard his mother's footsteps approaching and turned to the door to greet her."

Our son's: "Beebo Horatius Appleby wheezed and puffed through his plump, pursed lips as he waddled his massive girth into the narrow parlor of his cozy country cottage. In the dim light cast by the fireplace, one might almost have mistaken him for a great bespectacled Christmas goose (a goose, by the way, ample enough to feed a very large, and very hungry family.) His chubby face was ruddy and moist with perspiration, but the haunted look in his sunken, squinting eyes suggested this was less a product of physical exertion than of some secret strain. As his inertia carried him over to the window and he absently gazed at the gently drifting snow, glowing eerily in the moonlight like a ghost-filled graveyard, his hand moved, almost unbidden, to his breastpocket. In it was his father's last will and testament, which he realized, much to his discomfort, that he would have to discuss with his grieving mother. All of a sudden, he heard a rap-tap-tapping coming down the hall in his direction. He steeled himself in preparation for what he was about to endure, and turned towards the door."

Merry Christmas everyone!

Getting Ready for Christmas - Virtual Volunteering to Help a Christian Homeless Ministry

We're getting ready for Christmas, and we had been talking with our teen son about taking on a volunteer experience to 'give back' some of his blessings that have come his way. We also had talked about making a choice that might build on what we thought some of our personal gifts might be. As a result of this discussion, he searched the options for volunteering at ChristianVolunteering.org and decided to sign up as a web ministry intern with Hoskins Park Ministry, a ministry to the homeless in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you would like to support the homeless this Christmas season, consider donating to their cause. Theirs is really a mustard seed ministry, coming along side individual men, women, and families, helping bridge the gap between emergency shelters and independent living. They help provide safe homes, Christian fellowship, and practical living, medical, and other assistance that helps people get out of the cycle of poverty and abuse. There are limits that people can stay in emergency housing, and especially with the grim outlook on jobs, without places like Hoskins Park, the previously-homeless have a hard time getting back on track, holding down jobs, and being able to afford rent and utilities.

He's only just started working with Hoskins Park (first trying to improve the website design, but also search engine optimization), but we've had family meetings together trying to help with suggestions, and its already been a blessing...and hopefully we can offer some help to them. If you haven't thought engaging in a volunteer work as a family, we highly recommend it. Right now we just have great plans. Maybe later in the upcoming year, we'll be able to update with what we've been able to accomplish.

The Loyalist vs. Patriot Debate in American History

Our son had fun writing his Patriot position for the upcoming class debate in his Omnibus course. He is supposed to counter the argument that the colonialists should be grateful to England for her protection.

He found this link and the Declaration of Independence very helpful for his research. This is a great activity for synthesizing information about the origins of revolutionary war, making arguments, and persuasion / rhetoric.

His speech:

My fellow Patriots, it has been suggested that the Colonists should be grateful or indebted to the British. I vehemently disagree.

Some have said that we should be grateful to the British for fighting with us in the French and Indian War. After all, they say, our men fought alongside your men, and our men died alongside your men. The Colonists and the Crown both helped win the war against the French and the Indians, and both of us benefited from the defeat.

I pose that England did not enter the war simply to aid us, though, but solely to fatten herself. The British now hold vast tracts of land in America and freely trade fish and fur.

But, my fellow Patriots, there are many questions we should ask ourselves regarding our gratitude to Britain. Should we be grateful for the British blockade of our trade with the rest of the world, impoverishing the hardworking citizens of this country and making us reliant on the scraps King George gives us? Should we be grateful for England's refusal to pay us back for the loans we were forced to give Her Majesty for the war? Should we be grateful that Parliament has abolished our laws and stifled our entire system of government? And should we be grateful that the Crown has sent us armed troops for the purpose of threatening us, shielding them from any punishment should they murder our citizens? Should we be grateful for the deaths of Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, Patrick Carr, and Crispus Attucks, all of whom were murdered by the British troops in the Boston Massacre?

Classical Education: Don't Let This Happen to You...Oh no, I forgot to think!

You'd think classical educators (parents and formal teachers) would be among the last to commit this mistake, but perhaps this yet another mistake. Because classical texts are so difficult to decode in the first place, we think our work is done if our kids can read the Great Books, understand basically what they mean, and do well enough in the challenging work assigned to them. But it is surprisingly easy for all of us to be swept up in the work of this education (Latin nouns to decline, etc.) that we forget to think and we forget to ask our children to think, too.

Oh no, you might say. I'm not ready. I'm just getting through Aeschylus, and want to be through Zeno before I...

Well, there's no time like today. It's not enough to work through the texts. Our kids need practice thinking through why they believe what they do, and they need to practice thinking, considering other viewpoints, and really grappling to understand why they believe what they do, where are their gray areas, and what they might reconsider.

We've recently as a family been watching and debating the issues of Michael Sandel's Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do course at Harvard. It was last available on the Internet 3 years ago and its replaying with free videos on Youtube.com, Discussion guides, and Discussions forums (haven't tried the latter). The content is for older children and preview it to see if it might be appropriate for you. Sandel presents some extreme cases to get participants to reflect on what they believe and why.

Last night, we had a spirited discussion at home as Brock put our son in the 'hot seat' having to answer some of the discussion guide questions such as:

1. Is it unjust for the government to require people to wear seatbelts and not engage in self-endangering activities?
2. Should the government legalize narcotics?
3. Should there be a minimum wage?

We're on Lecture 3 out of 12, and Sandel discussed the viewpoint of Libertarianism and Robert Nozick. We've just finished Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism and John Stuart Mill's view of liberty and higher and lower good. A surprisingly wide discussion of topics arose from this film, rights of individuals and statism, the definition of good in a pluralistic society, economics, and political differences.

I think it's especially important to connect classical ideas with contemporary challenges and its programs like this that help bridge the gap

So whether you're a lifelong or newly minted student of classical education, don't forget to think!



Artist: Roy Lichtenstein

Largest Anglo-Saxon Treasure Found in the UK

An amateur treasure hunter with a metal detector found the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure ever discovered. It was found on a friend's farm. The inscription above is from the Bible.


Anglo Saxon Treasure